- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 810
Still feeling like shit, this morning before I go to work I do the test.
It's not Covid.
My head is clotted, filled with green lumps that come up every time I blow my nose or expectorate. My thinking - appropriately cloudy, as if I were trying to join thoughts through a dense cloud of frog spawn. Which lightly throbs and occasionally is blown out my nose or coughed into a Kleenex. These are not things to be trifled with.
Go to Volunteer, wear a mask.
Today is Volunteering, apparently now I'm on the "schedule" for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. They tell me the salary. Lol.
I have been a long time away from the retail end of things. This will financially help me out only in proving my destitution, which - really, I was trying to get away from.
Anyways, it's a short term gig, "contract", until they clear up the backlog, the Volunteers alone aren't cutting it, so - head down for the next few weeks, try and get it done so I can be off to do other things...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 991
Work, at 3 days a week, enough verging on too much but there are the bills of winter still overhanging.
Volunteering, an unstoppable tide of kitchen kitsch, dishes, cups, pots, pans, a 40 foot trailer unloaded - this is never ending, the avalanche of disposable goods...there is no need for humanity to manufacture another thing - another coffee mug, another plate. We have it all. The manufacture of said goods should be prohibited.
Asking my workmate he estimates a third of all donations end up in the landfill.
This is - in my observation - a gross underestimation. More like a half. Two thirds even. And it's not that there is a lack of quality in the donations (often there is) - it's often just the sheer superabundance of repetitive items.
Like branded coffee mugs. Unless your brand is "Nike" or "Adidas" or "Gucci" or "Starbucks" don't put it on a coffee mug. It's not promotion, it's manufactured rubbish.
I could go on.
Anyways, the volunteering has led to another commitment - they need to hire someone - 2 days a week - why not? I need the cash. And so my schedule is filling up.
The boy, on his way to pick up his sister in Vancouver and take her on the big tree planting adventure - stops by in Nelson Wednesday/Thursday. There's not much going on in town these days, we go for dinner, catch up, I'm envious of their impending adventures, half thinking I want to tag along, it's been awhile, make it a proper family adventure...
Not now - right now - there's other things that beg my attention.
And now, something new, a persistent, phlegmy cough, runny nose, congested sinuses, foul breath, could it be the plague? I'm saying probably not, there's a lot of other things going around, in any event, even if it is the world is still turning and no restaurant is shutting down for this again, there will be no time off allocated, and so it's just be miserable and shake it off.
The weather, unusually dry, cool, but spring is not far off - in 2 weeks we'll have extraordinary weather, in 4, 5 weeks will begin the fires and heat domes, all while trying to persuade ourselves "this is the new normal", and it is, but it's not normal at all...not at all.
And so - for the moment - that's it.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 829
With Chris, to points around Nelson exploring and doing some light panning. A nice day to be out of doors, a quartz seam that yielded up a few small crystals, hints of bigger ones, some microfine gold, paths at elevation still are obstructed with snow - nice weather is to be had only at the lowlier elevations, but the season begins...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 876
I once posted pictures of her here before, older, hippy woman. Now 80, fashionably dressed, took her for dinner a couple of times...
She's a regular.
And - today she's breathless, has something to tell me...
It's a long story, involving fallen trees, animosity with a married neighbor turned to secret crush, and - today - this very morning - the first time in over 20 years...
She got lucky.
And I have to laugh, she's over the moon, like a young woman again, and I'm talking about burning the scarlet "A" into her breast, and calling her the "Town Bike", and she's taking it in stride...
But really...80 years old.
There might be hope for me yet...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 816
So it continues, because, not that I like it but I have some sort of civic obligation. And I like the people I'm working with.
It has quite literally destroyed my love of thrift shops - the donations - a never ending tide of used kitchen supplies - quality; rubbish, largely rubbish. Thrift shops are largely a dumping ground for unusable, unsaleable items. And no one - or - rarely anyone - washes their donations before bringing them in.
Everyone here is a hoarder...
I mean, who am I to talk? I know, I know. So - I'm not throwing shade, but to watch my paid partner unbox - laying aside items, he intends to price them, sell them, but he doesn't, they end up in one of several dozen boxes in the back he means to have appraised, to perhaps purchase or "up-cycle", it's hilarious, you watch his eyes and you can see the light of covetousness come on when something grabs his eye...
Another volunteer, they're all harridans, well-meaning daughters of the Church of ... asks my function - do I stage the furniture? Dress the shop?
I tell her - "Mine is more of a Cinderella role...".
My partner finds this funny.
These women, most of them volunteering to get first dibs on the best handbags, clothes, uncomfortably close to my age and so you have to be careful someone doesn't take it in their head to "set you up...".
I price shit, but I'm no authority, there's no telling, someone bought this shit once, they'll buy it again, I'm amazed, put it out and no sooner do you put it out then you walk past a shopping cart with the item in it. Why, I pluck items from the trash that my partner (the paid employee) has discarded to price and sell them - and he sees them come through the till with that de-ja-vu, there's no telling. I know quality, workmanship, what I like, but these are not indexes as to what sells.
4 hours grows long, no more a pleasure, a job, the cause, worthy, but - well, it's the necessary friction to move the wheels...