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The thermometer's rising, by 6:00 AM my car's unlivable, it's the search for AC and Shade. Wake, drenched in sweat, the sun warming the oven. For a few days there's been the hint, promise of rain, but the forecast for the next week has nothing, merely 30+ degree temperatures, and all this heading into the July long weekend...
This is going to be a long summer, and yet too brief given the number of bills I have yet to pay.
5 more days until my next day off, 10 more weeks until I wrestle some portion of my life back from this, and then - too quickly thereafter, unemployment, and the game is to pay all the bills outstanding and upcoming before the famine begins...
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Sunday night, drive up to new road above Kaslo. High up, had done some research, now time to check it out.
25 or so KM of logging roads - the geology, exactly the same as Crystal Mountan, abundant dirty & rusty quartz, metamorphic shales, Monday morning I find I actually had been up here before, or close enough, a rave (the one with the lunatic on acid)...
Check it all out. Off the road there is nothing, but there are mines - and amazing views - another 15 KM further up, but this has to be done hiking, and so now I've got to plan for some water and a long evening hike up the mountain...
Later, later in the summer, there are too many other places I have to get back to...
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Tuesday, an unexpected day off, the text while I'm at the gym and just leaving for work, plans now that I have it free, to go the library, do some slight work, then for dinner - treat myself to a steak at the Diner on Baker, and I should have known better, the steak, it's an ordeal, not a treat, chewy, tough, with no great flavor, it's wretched really, but I suck it up and put on a happy face for the server.
Followed by the Poetry Slam, now in the Royal, busy, I always preferred poetry in Cafe's, but I must be a beatnik, the bar, this bar, it's nearly full, and the stage is a proper stage and they have some guest readers, some old faces, some new faces, and - mercifully, most of the poems are short so when quality fails you're not being tortured long.
Follow this with a trip to the liquor store, I'm in need of my medicine, the ambulance whirring across the street to Narcan another overdose, this - 3, 4 times a day, note all the new migratory homeless faces...the ambulance, it's; going 3-4 times a day, and this in a city of 10,000...
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The past week few opportunities to write, working longer hours (phew - as much as I hate it I've made no progress on any of the financial battlefronts and now, with a clear objective to work toward it's time, it's time). The weather this week has cooled, rainy, Father's day, despite the reservations a non-starter, Pa being taken for dinner by his adult children or grandchildren or wife, and always, always, it's Pa paying the bill.
Work has begun interfering with the Gym, days off are precarious and announced an hour or so before I'm due to start, the new hires, T* and H*, aren't working out, T* abandoned work due to pressing personal issues, H* is a princess who only wants to work when she wants to....
And it rains. God we need the rain, every day overcast, clouds ragged and low on the mountains, when they part you can see snow upon the peaks that wasn't there before, evenings watching movies on my phone, catching up on culture.
The cool weather, damp, humidity, it cements the smells into my vehicle, the scent of tobacco, sweat, vodka, coffee, before work beachcombing new flints and finds, the rain is good for this, every day something new...
Time passes...
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Last week, an email, that I'm up for consideration for subsidized housing. A committee interview, I'd put the application in some 8 or 9 months before, and am just now getting considered.
At first I'm thrilled, and then anxious, because what do I need housing for in the summer? And I do, there's actually a hundred reasons, not least of which living my vagrant lifestyle is far more expensive, eating and coffee out, gas, and I need a space to work on my creatives, and .... well, I could go on forever.
My lifestyle is far more trying on my friends than it is on me, than it should be.
Anxious, because it's been so long that I've had even a cupboard to call home and I need this and I don't particularly like needing anything.
Commitment to a place to live, not where I want to live, but still, economical; just a new economy I need to readapt to, a healthy economy of home-cooked meals, of nuts & berries, of creative productivity and staying up late with a book or a movie and affording a working laptop so I can do my writing and painting...
I don't know. I'm an all-or-none sort of guy, this step - it's only a step, and somehow I imagined that I'd win a lotto or all at once....and this would all be dealt with, only, well, I have to take a step in the right direction. This is how it will begin..
I bought a Lottomax and 6/49 and won both, $1.00 each draw, bloody hell, and so my intent has been fulfilled, just not in the capacity required. No cancelling the interview yet.
Wednesday morning, the interview, tour of the building, the apartments small (but bigger than my car), well kept, and I imagine myself Indoors, playing with light switches and the faucets in the Bathroom, flushing the toilet, working out all this indoor luxury living...might have to get myself a glass for my Vodka, be able to get mail and order things off Amazon, things like resin and resin molds and luminous paints and...
Well, it could become a long list.
Before the Interview I consulted the Tarot, long overdue: Single Card, drawn from the deck, Upright, The King of Pentacles...An auspicious omen.
The date, if selected, would fall mid August, and I'm reassuring them, I'm housed in my car all summer if required, I have a hard time arguing my need when there are so many people clearly in worse straights than myself, they reassure me that I "Check all the boxes"...bloody hell...
They give me a tour of the features I'd never use, the rooftop deck, the social room,...
I'd have a home.
After the interview, a trip to the Antique Shop on Baker, I'd not been for a few months, and lo-what do I discover hidden on a shelf (after umpteen perambulations, I knew I was missing something) - an Atmos Clock, Jaeger la Coulter, this, this is it, $280 after tax and while it's worn, missing it's top glass, points of corrosion on the base, this is it. This is my housewarming gift to myself, buy it, I'll pick it up in a future imperfect...
I'd bought one before, it ended up at the Boys Mothers, this one will be for the daughter...
And so the day passes in the celebration of things that may not come to pass, but - fingers crossed.
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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