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Meanwhile, Tuesday, day off, a few chores done before I flushed it down the toilet.
Books, done, I went light, big books, "The Complete Charles Dickens..." heavy to carry, light on the cash. But they took them.
An email from a local restaurant, I'm due a free Pho, "won", I downloaded their app and then never used it, probably a win-back on their promotions front. So - for lunch, Pho it is. Pho is good. And after Pho I get an email promising me a free dessert, but that will have to wait until next week.
Neighbour, "Kramer" needs a hundred dollars to invest in her online crypto scheming, she'll e-transfer me the money. "Sure" I say and duty obliged wait for the transfer. It's not forthcoming. She comes over and I am a little sauced and confrontational and mention it. No money arrives. Now - not a big deal, I never lend money (anymore, not since Sam at Da Guido's) with the expectation of return, but this woman has perverted the word "borrow" to such an extent I feel obliged to correct her.
She's not pleased. She's down thousands borrowing from the Bank of Rod, and Rod's been a little too lax in collecting. Bank of Rod owes the Bank of Alberta thousands due to Rod's easy lending policies. Bank of Rod is exhausted.
Neighbour is not happy.
Fortunately she walks out before things get ugly. They were already ugly, just getting more so, I hate dealing with money, find it vulgar, as must she, but sometimes things have to be said.
Today, work, another shift picked up, I have bills, need to work more so neighbours can "borrow" more, and bills of my own long overdue, so - Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho...
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The boy comes for a visit on Wednesday, he's on a short break from planting. Dinner, steak and potatoes, the steak a ribeye, expensive, big, and I'm not particularly a fan. I prefer tenderloin. More discreet portioning sizes. The boy (Man)(Son) is doing work where quantity matters, so I have to accommodate.
Thursday, for lack of other plans and pandering to his interests we head in a roundabout way to Rossland. Thrift shops in Salmo, Fruitvale, Trail on the way. Nothing found.
In Rossland we stop at the Ferraro's for their much hyped sandwich. Beef dip. Cut into 4, I only need a quarter. And he's impressed. I offer another but - well, he's considering it...
There's a play - matinee - "Gold Rush Fever", a burlesque/vaudeville style performance at the old Miner's Hall, we're tempted to go, but he's just back from the Edinburgh fringe and considering the 90 minute run time and probably empty theatre (making an early escape impossible without being rude) we give it a pass and check out the Museum instead. I've never been.
The show - I didn't see, but I've seen enough. Maybe it was great, but it was a calculated gamble, and on a more leisurely day or with visitors not so savvy I might have whittled away the day but the boy's a little too bright for this. And don't throw up a small community burlesque against the Edinburgh Fringe. Unless it's Nelson.
These museums, all of them the same. The mining history, artifacts, equipment, the people that did what, etc, etc. "Nancy Greene" - whom he knew from Sun Peaks (and the legend is no longer the reality), well, it's again the dull repetition of things I've seen a thousand times before only because of my interest in the local geology it's a bit of a "MUST DO". He's kind in that he humours me in this.
They have a hall with mineral specimens, more just rocks, and mostly from places all around the world. Which does me no good whatsoever, I'm looking for local minerals, gems, gold ores. The rest are irrelevant. There's a beautiful quartz spray or cluster, from Riondel, the mine there has long been closed and while I've combed the tailings - found some points, but nothing like this, and it inspires me to visit again. The entrances have all been sealed, but there has to be a way underground some place...
And then I find the cabinet with the local specimens. One cabinet, small. Visible gold in Granite and Quartz, enough visible gold to realize that I need to metal detect the area, these pieces would sound, and a pound of this would yield an ounce.
Then there's the ore, a coppery-gold-shining-chalcopyrite blend that contains both gold and copper, looks spectacular but not the bonanza I need. I'd still take it.
Then towards home, Nelson, and just out of Rossland he's realizing the folly of leaving that second sandwich at Ferraro's only I've planned an Elk Bolognese for dinner still another one of their sandwiches would not go amiss...
We rediscover Peter Caine, who has the most amusing videos about his Bigfoot experiences, listen to him like an audio podcast while eating dinner, he'd fallen off my radar for a bit then began showing up on Facebook. The man is Legend.
Then to the Royal (Pub, Nelson, BC) where we have a couple of drinks before I abandon him. Thursday night, Line Dancing, sure, it's Country and Western but he should check it out. Without his Pa.
Which he does and I next see him Friday late morning for coffee before heading back to Fernie. And he has no words, still shaking his head at the night before, he showed up, took part, still incredulous, this town, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. True.
And he's back to Fernie and that night I get the call, I've misread the schedule and end up being an hour late for work. Which brings us into ordinary time...
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To the locker and 18 boxes of books left, mostly I'm guessing. They're piled in my hall and the apartment is unliveable. It has been since inspection.
This will be the end of them; and my desk is full and my countertop unmanageable. There are piles of the books they rejected - for reasons I'll speculate upon later, and books that I doubt that I have read and so my "to read" pile grows daily. I'm allowed, if I time it right, up to three trips to the bookstore a week, but all that hinges on knowing what clerks are working when. Fortunately I have a good relation with the Sunday clerk and get a schedule for the week.
In the rummaging through them I found my Violet Ray Wand and 2 (2!) Yashica Large Format (120mm) cameras; which is one too many but can I bear to sell the other? I will play with them both a bit first and then decide.
Things that are still missing - well, 3 volumes of Casanova, Nabakov's "Pale Fire", the Singing Bowls, a art-deco or nouveau crystal inkwell, canvas stretchers, perhaps already here in the boxes in the hall...
The locker will have to be kept, unfortunately, there's too many art supplies and things that will not fit in the apartment. But - it gets easier to navigate. The rest of the contents - furniture, still to be sold, large pieces now just in the way; the Apothecary and Hope Chest, boxes of CD's and children's toys and a ton of other random stuff, mostly "Mixed Media", my umbrella term for stuff I mean to do something with but haven't gotten around to and am realizing if I don't get a move on I never will...
And - in the hunt for things I already own I find the insane repetition of objects and books. Like the 2 Yashica Cameras. Or the half-dozen Pentax/Nikon/Other 35 mm cameras and lenses, or the 2 copies of "The Enormous Room" by EE Cummings, or "20 Love Poems" by Pablo Neruda, "Hesiod & Theogines", others - bought, packed up, bought again, packed up again, and now, finally to the bookstore. And some, bought because they on occasion can be hard to find and I proselytize books, books like "Lolita" and "Les Liasons Dangereuse", only people no longer read and I'm like that earnest bearded prophet of old selling a religion that's given way before the digital revolution...
Then there's the books they rejected. An antiquarian volume titled "British Battles on Land and Sea", with engravings, a fine volume to make your games of "Battleship" interesting with kids, mine loved it; especially when they won and I fell over and yelled "Kiss me Hardy!!!", there's "Song of the Sky" by Guy Murchie, perhaps not a "Great Book" but competent, lyrical, poetic...
That pile grows as well, some are damaged, too damaged to sell, others out of fashion (all my reading basically) - Thomas Wolfe, Books on Magic (That in some bookstores would be under lock and key, here - no interest). Some I take personally, others not so much, some definitely great but I'm thwarted again by the repetition, again; I have brought them 2 copies already they don't need another, not right now, still others water damaged by a leaky roof in the locker, others? Well, who knows. They have joined the "Mixed Media" pile and I have my work cut out for me...
I have been compiling a list, all the books I have read (and kept, which is a long ways from all the books I read but I am a bit fussy), and - when done, soon I hope, will create a digital library for the world to share, for the AI version of myself to digest and reconstitute in the not-so-distant future; to appear and haunt my children and grand-children...
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Meanwhile, work, busier, busy, not so much. The days are lacking order, Tuesday is crazy - (7, 6, 5, 9, 2, 2, 3, 2, walk-ins), Wednesday, busy but less so, Friday largely dead.
Strange days.
Wednesday, the Hospital, Some tests of my heart (broken beyond repair but play the game); a 20 minute fast walk from the other end of town. So I am much better - not mended, but better.
***
Then there are the Crows. They - while I go hungry - are fed. One, watching it outside the building, playing with a paper coffee cup. The cup, empty, but the Crow is standing it on it's rim, pecking at the base, putting it on it's side, trying to balance on it, flipping it over and over, investigating...
It's curious to watch, but it's playing. Exploring the topography of a cup. And it picks it up and moves it and plays with it some more and it took me a while to realize that it's "Playing" - I'm too used to seeing the "Eating" rhythm, but this, this is different.
I flip them peanuts when I'm out, fill the pockets, I have to, there's 20 now and counting. Some have grown quite adept at catching peanuts on the wing, before they even hit the ground. I'm impressed. Others jump up and splay their wings to stop the flight and catch it, others joust it out, I'm pretty sure I could teach them to play soccer. I've bought little cupcake holders to hide the nuts I leave on the concrete bollards; I'm introducing them to "The Shell Game", they're going to have to work harder for their treats...
***
The pigeons mob you as soon as you show up. 40 of them, flapping in a great cloak of insolence and disease, trying to land on my knee, my shoulder, face, head....This is all a nope. Although the neighbour was in tears because she had managed to grab one, and it was allowing her to cuddle it to her meagre breast, "Playing along" as it were, although she has since been threatened with eviction if she keeps up feeding them...
***
And then there's the Seagull, a proper "booby" with his expression of idiocy, hanging out with the pigeons although he can't peck the millet and rice, and with the crows and he can't peck the peanuts. So he's properly confounded by the commotion that attends my visitations and cigarettes, by the murder of crows and the flock of pigeons descended, the pigeons - even when unfed, can find crow-crumbs of peanut and cashew, the Seagull can't, grabs instictively at the peanut only to discover it can't open it, the pigeons, they will surround the peanut, move away for the crow to open, then run it off when it's been cracked.
***
Which should catch me up. The news, not much, work - ever diminished, I need to find a lucrative 9-5:00 ASAP; bills mounting and I'm a little bit done with service. And next year I'd better have a Jeep.
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They're all straws, but there's a little too many at the moment. The end-of-year expenses, all come due on August 1st for some reason. BCAA, Insurance (homeowners, a condition of my residency in Community Housing), Kootenay CO-OP Radio, there's the phone bill (every month), the prescriptions (a new thing...), the Dentist (!!!), Nelson Hydro, a dozen other trifling bills I hadn't counted on or - more - knew were coming but due to an involuntary 6 weeks off couldn't address.
So at the moment I'm in the shit, paying them off one at a time...late, every one, but I might just take a week or two to enjoy the break from the phone and internet.