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A fools economy
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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And I've been doing the math, this homelessness, it's gotten a bit much. Even when I have a vehicle to stay in the expenses mount. No place to cook means all meals are taken out. A couple hundred bucks per week. Coffee. Another hundred. Gas, and the revolving expense of a perpetually broken/breaking down vehicle. The inability to entertain, or sit up late on the computer and write, or get at a few overdue rock & art projects.
It's costing me far more to not have a place than it would if I did have a place.
Out of pocket costs and Opportunity costs mount.
So, time to resolve things in my head, it's not forever but it's time to start looking for a place to call home...
Ainsworth Hotsprings
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 767
The Pools, now priced at $18 and by reservation only, prices subject again to increase in July.
Because people will pay.
The restaurant, for dinner, Bannock and Mussels to start. The Bannock is really a scone. The mussels, they've changed the sauce, now only white wine. Meh.
A half dozen servers, the place is full.
For a main we split the steak - 10 oz NY. It's OK. The vegetables are good.
They have posted signs - 20% minimum gratuity for parties over 6, tipping options on their machine run 15-20-25% - stupid. And a mandatory 12% gratuity on all to go orders.
Service is fine.
It's all fucking preposterous. H* - new hire - talks of working there - she describes it as "if people who new nothing about restaurants opened a restaurant'" and she's right, 100%, and yet still they're successful, largely due to the lack of reasonable competition.
The Daughter Visits
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 509
On a break, from working at Sun Peaks to going treeplanting in Williams Lake, 4 days in the paradise of Nelson.
Only, of course, the weather was no paradise.
So, time spent hopping from cafe to restaurant to cafe to restaurant to bookstore to bars...
We pick her up a copy of Elizabeth Smart's "By the Stairs of Grand Central Station I sat down and Wept", The Epic of Gilgamesh, "Don Quixote", Cervantes, there are many many more, Heroditus, Lolita, Pale Fire, Spekes, The Conquest of New Spain, I make my recommendations but we can't find them all, recommend podcasts, to audit university lectures, download, masterclasses, free, listen to when in the bush, keep the mind going.
I realize the lack of touchstones, her years abroad didn't broaden her education in any sort of direction I'd recognize. In conversation, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Albatross, she doesn't get it, she's unable to recognize a Monet, Klimt, Klee, Mondrian, Cezanne, Degas, in short she's never learned what is what, there is still time, university and all, we go up to the hotsprings, soak, and then that is that and she is off on the summer's adventures.
I'm stuck spooning her snowboard until I can get to the locker...
She chastises me about not having the hospitality to offer her a sofa, and I'm starting to feel it, this homeless schtick is getting old, has been old for a while already...
Ellen
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 502
One of the thrift shop volunteers, an older widow, 70's (I think....daren't ask). We've a lot of these widows volunteering.
She gets it. I only point that out because so few do. I can find an ashtray with a painting of Don Quixote by Picasso on it and she recognizes both subject and artist.
TO me this is a common thing, but - test a few people and you'll find it incredibly rare. A pair of badly painted statues, Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" and "Pink Lady" - she knows.
I like this, and she has the sniffles and so I rib her about sitting up with B* - her volunteer friend - and doing lines of Blow all night (an image I find curiously humorous) - and she laughs and says "It's been a while...eight ball". Books, she's read a few, art, and so - bored with Michael as you must get bored with anyone you work in close quarters with I find myself querying her - certainly one of the more "lived" people I've met.
I note this only because it's so rare to find people with shared touchstones, the "pre-internet" people who absorbed the common culture before the internet so thoroughly divided it.
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