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And Cathy, coming home from the US, and I'm telling her to pick up a PowerBall Ticket. In Oregon, she'll be passing through. And I tell her my lucky numbers: 3 - the multiplier, then 9 (because it's 3X3 and the month that both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were born), and then, what the heck there's an eclipse coming so let's do that again, 27 (9X3), 22, because it's both Bilbo and Frodo birthdays, and 44, because its double 22, and 52 for the weeks in the year and 69 because, hell, everyone loves that number.
Grilling her, now she's back, did she get my lucky ticket? And yeah, but she did the quick pick in Idaho not Oregon and I'm like "CAAAAAATTTTHHHHHYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!".
I'm quite literally the world's best numerologist and yet nobody believes me ... but lemme tell you, that jackpot woulda helped.
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You see this everywhere, everyone looking for what they can't have.
The problem, is of course, in the question. When there's no ready answer you need to think it through and come up with a better question. The question is better asked "What can I do to improve the world", and, understanding your own unique skills find a way to contribute them to the general well being of the both your community and the world.
There are other things that rather follow naturally from this, such as exposing oneself to new ideas, art, people and culture, to forge meaningful and hopefully lasting relationships, and to - very hopefully, find one's "tribe" in an increasingly fractured and diverse world. But start at the beginning and you'd be surprised at how things start falling into place...
I just saved you $20 bucks on some lame-assed bestseller, and 3-4 hours reading 50-100, 000 words of drivel that would try and tell you the same thing.
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Everyone going on about the Solar Eclipse yesterday, here in Nelson it was pretty cloudy, but I still managed to snap a couple of good photos...
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The town has become overrun.
Not just this town, everywhere I'm sure, but summer brings them out, and from where I wonder?
Walking home from dinner last night, along Front Street, Past City Hall and the homeless encampment set up there, for the most part the legitimately homeless, people with no other issues other than a want of reasonably priced housing.
And crossing Vernon towards Baker there's a homeless person, shopping cart tipped over in the middle of the street, walk over to help them upright it and reload their possessions...
A new face, although I can't see it, obscured between masses of matted hair, and she's swearing at me "FUCK OFF!! GIVE ME A MINUTE!! JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING MINUTE!!" and my helpful disposition expires, carry on, fuck you you little crackhead.
In the time I try to upright her shopping cart I notice her pants are down to her knees.
The locals, by and large, they're not like this, they're not this degree of sketchy, adversarial, violent, and we have all of that, you can tell summer's coming by the non-stop sirens, and I've asked before where they come from, and why here of all places, but to find out...
Everywhere, the alley behind the liquor store, the parking lot behind share, needles, single-use crack pipes, it's not just this town, it's the country, the world, that largely invisible but growing subset of the disenfranchised, the overlooked, the unhoused, the wedges have been set and the hammer's being pounded and we all pretend that nothing's wrong.
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And, as per the previous post, I unbox a fine stainless steel Bavarian pub-mount corkscrew. Brand new. It's quality, how to price, say $20.00, put it on the shelf.
Later in the morning a box comes in, full of that dirty pressed-crystal, vases, canape and olive plates, straight into the garbage, we get so much of this, hundreds of pounds of it per day, it never sells, none of it. Even the finer cut crystal is a hard sell, can't give that stuff away.
But in with the garbage there's another freestanding corkscrew, with a price - $5.00 still on it, my handwriting, I remember this from last spring or fall...
On a hunch I check, the fine stainless Bavarian Corkscrew has sold, somebody is organized, bought the clearly better one, re-donated the old one. Garbage in, Garbage out.