A night out with staff, so far I've avoided most of them, the bonfires, the Karaoke nights, but tonight the girls - waitress and chef - have gone to town on their day off to party and arrived far too early at Bloom.

I get the text at work - "We've bought you tickets....bring M***". M*** is the charming one, pleasant, always smiling, a few of our alternative sexual identity waitresses have felt safe enough around him to declare that he's their unicorn. Unlike myself he's intuitively likable. 

We arrive, 10:30, still way too early. The club is empty but they're on a tear, by "they" I mean the waitress, a formerly straight but gang-raped-turned-lesbian-who-would-fucking-blame-her is well on her way. I gotta be straight and sober, I'm M***'s ride back.

The night passes, the waitress gets increasingly drunk, you can see why she'd be a mark, she can't hold her liquor, and here - well, it's the safest place in the world, everyone is looking out for her, but elsewhere...

M*** and I, we carry her back to her hotel room, drop her on her bed, then head home.

The next day, working, busy, I'm waiting her arrival. I want to take the piss. You know it. Me, I've had a few of these nights, always, the next morning, "Never again..." I'd tell myself, but she comes upstairs around 3 for a coffee...

"That was the best night out ever..."

Not the expected reaction, but I have to admire it, commit to a course of action and then follow through, damn the consequences and the torpedoes. She's hurting, bad, but, in her mind, and mercifully there are no videos, it was worth it.

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Category: People

I was sad to learn this. But it was never a favorite thrift shop, just another one on the route, a little more expensive than most, but it just made my treasure hunting a lot easier.

Link: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/20/25643598/value-village-brings-in-1-billion-a-year-and-gives-very-little-to-charity

Yeah, you wonder but never get around to googling it and when finally you do this is what you find out. Never again.

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Category: Link of the day

And, while day tripping at the CO-OP I spotted these:

I mean, I might be day-tripping but the daughter is laughing as well, a buck for a gold-foil wrapped potato. This is absurd. This is man-shopping, too lazy and stupid to buy a bag of potatoes someone out in a hurry to get the barbecue going buys these, the gilded foil must be to elevate them above the status of regular foil-wrapped potatoes, justifying the 4, 5, 10-fold increase in price. And the plastic bag with a potato in it is proof there's no overestimating human stupidity...

Membership pays? Who?

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Category: Miscellany

This is a new thing and I'm already seeing the benefits. 

I mean, I have an enormous amount of respect for this, and so have been hesitant to try it since my last big trip, but had I when I was here over the winter there's no doubt I'd have been a hell of a lot more productive.

Now, first of all, the effects - well, they're subliminal. They're supposed to be anyways, only I'm unable to cut up the already tiny square of paper into tinier bits, I can get it in half, in a quarter, but after that the little bits, even with the best of glasses, are disappearing, and so I make do with quarter tabs. There are ways to reduce it further, but I'm finding a quarter works fine, given that a full dose for me is somewhere in the tab-and-a-half range.

The effects - noticeable, supraliminal even, you know something's different, you're a little more alert, a little more aware. Perspicacious.

The rule is - day 1 on microdose, day 2 and 3 on recovery, repeat on day 4. Day 2 and 3 you can get a hell-of-a-lot done, it's a bit of a mental cleanse, all the trifling procrastinations and trivial thoughts have been swept away, your mind is clear.

And so, arriving in Calgary late on Saturday night and exhausted come Sunday morning I microdose again. A quarter tab, but I'm so enjoying the effects that I take another quarter. And, while still a low dose the effects are even more apparent. I'm not tripping, there are no fairies and leprechauns or swirling Aztec or Mayan symbols opening portals to infinity, but - I'm substantially more alert, more - acute, my vision is widened and includes the peripheries. The day - beautiful, cloudy, sunny, a deep blue sky, is somehow all the more perfect. A perfect day squared. And watching people - at Beano, at the Midtown CO-OP, I find myself seeing less the people and more the relationships between them, their most exaggerated qualities, the ones they'd most like to project, caricatures of themselves. This microdosing, it immeasurably improves the day, maybe not suitable for work but a fine augmentation to a short visit to Calgary...

I'd heartily recommend this.

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Category: Conversations
  1. The Dirty Hippy
  2. Zincton & Lamproites
  3. Cinnamon
  4. Bears, Bears, Bears...