Roxy
He's the new village idiot of sorts, 19 years old, wanders aimlessly about the kitchen between the dishwashing and salad station, hardly working, you'd need a time-lapse camera to actually see him in any way contributing to the workload...lives at home, spare time spent on the X-Box or computer, editor for 4Chan & Reddit, not exactly stupid, but something's missing...
He walks, lumbers, shuffles, slowly, a psych patient in a psych ward, arms hang by his side, bent 90 degrees at the elbow and again at the wrist, reminding you of the T-Rex toy from Toy-Story, he's painfully slow at whatever he's told to undertake (and that's the only way they'll be undertook, in 4 months he hasn't figured out what exactly his routine should be), he meanders without a speck of motivation whatsoever, is happy to stop and chat and catch up, he's good natured enough, takes our ribbing, laughs, how could he not? Little Ralphie Wigham, this was the kid that got his tongue stuck to the monkeybars every recess, every winter until Grade 12. Not surprisingly, this is the longest he's held a job. He corners me as I'm outside trying to have a cigarette...explaining to me:
"You know, often people who try and blow their brains out recover and find that they managed to get rid of whatever it was that was bothering them..."
He knows this, he saw it on the internet, a thread on reddit or some-such...
Essentially, it's curing themselves through suicide. I can't believe he's telling me this, and I'm torn...
"Did you try this?" I ask, "Because if you did, it would explain an awful lot...Otherwise, I think you're just tempting me to recommend it to you..."
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- Category: People
Concentrates
Before and between shifts I sort the concentrates from the field trips, a million possibilities. The two locations in SE Ab, very different rocks, the one site yields perhaps a handful of concentrates, the other, easily 4, the second location too proves infinitely richer in possibilities, more of the clearer stones that might be, more garnets, each location has the fish scales (There's actually a fish scale horizon in AB, artifact of the several meteorite impacts/extinctions).
Looking at these stones, through a LED powered 20X loop, there's an infinitude of possibilities, it's a kaleidoscope, madness, this, trying to tweeze out all the diamond-maybe's and maybe-nots, a big stone a mm wide, shards and splinters of garnet, it's a sort of zen relaxation, but uneconomical (and messy), in the end I'll find some vaseline, try and pan them over it, perhaps try sorting them with a vibrating table, soak them in the acid, there's all sorts of possibilities here, Ballas diamonds (from the meteorites), macles, bort diamonds, miss nothing, a stray shotgun pellet, vivid flashes of pale pink and deep red, occasional green chromites, amazing how the gravels change over short distances...
I'd buy a USB microscope, love to show you, maybe you'd understand what I was up against, but having to deal again with Canada Post is one more obstacle than I need. Maybe when all the mail's in...
And in the 10 days since the last trip I've sorted them plenty enough, time to start planning another, there's only a few weeks of autumn left, and still hundreds, thousands of places left to check...
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- Category: Calgary
Go North
I've finished taking some sort of deep water prospecting course, the instructor, a hippie chick, dreadlocks tucked into a toque, she tells me there's no diamonds down here, I should head north, that's where the diamonds are, Potter or Kotter Lake, and I look on a map and sure enough, there it is, somewhere north of the Yukon and Alberta border, and I drive and there's an intersection there, with pretty, vibrantly painted houses, and the road North leads through tall mountains and past crystal blue gushing rapids...
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- Category: Dreams
Canada Post (3) - Destroyers of E-Commerce
September 24th and another parcel arrives, 2 month delivery from Singapore, 3 down, 4 to go. I didn't want to, but it was time to write them a letter, and trying to do so without any trace of vitriol or sarcasm proved quite a chore. In the end I succeeded, more of a "Hey, what's up with my mail" sort of thing, no response as of yet, probably no response ever, if my experience is the standard then they're doubtless pretty busy.
Canada Post, singlehandedly destroying E-Commerce, 1 parcel at a time...
Update: Checked mail today, Parcel #4 Arrived. Too late to leave feedback on Ebay. 3 to go...
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- Category: Rants
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