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Diamond Tester
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2540
I squandered my Ebay winnings on a diamond tester. And when the daughter found out, well, she was up for checking the mail every day.
Every day.
Until it arrived.
At which point there was the battle to test all my collected pebbles for the possibility of their being diamonds.
I wanted to do this alone, share my success when it was assured...
"You can bullshit N***, but you can't bullshit me, dad" was her response...
And so we read the instructions, cursorily, as impatient people do (and how many winning lottery tickets are lost this way?), a couple of false positives, otherwise it appears we have to keep searching...
Now I'm a little perplexed, was certain I'd found....well, something, but there's lots of places left to check, I've only lightly read the instructions, and, after all, it would be ridiculous to expect success on our first effort...
Saskatchewan
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2487
Moose Jaw, late for a funeral. Grandma, she died, finally, earlier in the year, and so a family reunion of sorts, too late for the funeral but in time for those who haven't yet caught a plane and left.
My children, boy and girl, it's the first time they've been...fist time I've been in about 25 years, and I'm curious to see how it's changed.
With the exception of my old high school, torn down, an ugly new one, and my great grandparents old house, torn down as well, it hasn't changed. Every house I lived in still there, the old schools, familiar landmarks, walking through Crescent Park, the old hotels, River Street, they're all there, the same, only smaller than I remembered them...
A curious glitch in my memory, I'd always remembered the town hall being on the east side of the street, walking down main I find it on the west, I check with my father, they haven't moved it, it's always been there, I'm curious as to when this revision to my memory took place...
The children, they feign interest, there's not so much to see, a long weekend, mostly everything is closed, museums, galleries...
It's hauntingly familiar, another lifetime, two, three even, ago, and amazing to see whole neighborhoods exactly as I'd remembered them, amazing because in Calgary you can't drive around the block without seeing a new development, infill, landmarks are perpetually erased and rebuilt, but here, time has stood still.
I recognize, realize, how much of this landscape fills my dreams, consciously I've never thought of it, unconsciously the city has built itself again, with slight revisions, somewhere deep in my mind, and on restless nights my mind paces the empty streets...
After a day's visit we leave, this time through Gravelbourg, Eastend, new roads for me, a thousand places to get out and explore, prospect, but the boy has other obligations, and so we drive straight through, a brief stop in Eastend to see the dinosaur museum, quaint town, more Montana than Saskatchewan, then in Cypress Hills where we stop at the daughters insistence, then back to the number one, drive, storm, home...
Last Day
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2481
Anticlimactic, this, there should have been a countdown of blog posts, this will have to suffice...
The last day, hot, muggy, hungover, a little bit early for work, the owner's outside with some friends and a woman...I recognize her, a nurse, she ate dinner in the restaurant last week, we argued about whether nurses had souls, I disagreed, she's here, flushed, embarrassed, she recognizes me and beats a hasty departure...
I don't care, it's the last day, my last day, fucking hell, 9 weeks back in hell and I've been treated well, but I'm well done. Hopefully this puts him in a better mood. And no sooner are his friends gone than he's telling everyone how he fucked her in the office...
The night passes, slowly, we appear to be busy, to look at the book, but the customers only trickle in, never do we get even half full, and the night drags on, there are a thousand tiny deaths on the way to this vacation.
There are the cheques, we are to be paid before going, the owner is livid, furious, screaming, there's something wrong, we can't have made this much money (nearly a thousand dollars, tips & wage, in a little over a week...), he tries to call the accountant, blames G, everyone stays out of his way.
Out expediter is called in, as is our hostess, the hostess arrives chauffeured by another of the owner's friends, some light mirth, the hostess, she's older, but he's easily 15 years older than her, more a piece of furniture than a man, the boys ask the obvious questions, she shuts them down, I don't want to know...
There are the inevitable complaints about business, how slow it is, how the NDP and their proposed minimum wage are going to sink this province, ruin it for everyone. I find this curious, it's always the owner, his friends, that have this conversation, this fear of a reasonable minimum wage, I meet all sorts of people, from economies varying from $50 to $200 thousand dollars a year, none of them have any qualms about a living minimum wage. But the owner, easily 6 degrees of separation from any firsthand knowledge of minimum wage, poverty or debt, him and his cronies, they're certain this will sink the province, it will be the end, the final straw...
The cook paces the kitchen, flyswatter in hand, he's got vacation plans as well, going to Regina, the salad girl to Italy, the dishwasher to try and sell his photoshop services on 4chan, the night drags it's heels, it's hot in the kitchen, in the dining room, hot outside, we're in hell and the flames are licking our heels...
The customers, typical long weekend customers, some larger parties, families, an expensively dressed Colombian "lady" darts from the private room to fill her Gucci bag with handfuls of candy from the vase by the front door, I hate our customers, never have I worked anywhere where I so loathed the people that pay me...
They clean the fridge, hundreds of dollars of produce, pasta, groceries, the hostess will take these home, I could too, but am leaving for Saskatchewan tomorrow, it will just rot in my fridge, packing boxes to fit in the car...
The owner, his friends dropping by to say their farewells, he's on vacation for 3 weeks, they all sit on the makeshift patio in the back, drinking, laughing at his stories of how he fucked the nurse in his office while his friends waited outside, drinking expensive red wine cooled with ice, diluted with 7up, red Ferrari's advertise their middle aged impotence, inane requests for more ice, more 7up, more wine, liqueurs, they will be the last table here, for sure, wealth is defined by the ability to ignore all social cues, ignore the folding of chairs and umbrella, the absence of music, the departure of staff, drunkenly laughing about the day and postponing the vacation ...
It ends, finally, my car, outside the restaurant, broken into, the MP3 player and USB stick stolen, nothing of value, only annoyances, now on to the vacation...
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