One more story about veganism.

Last week I ran into my one (half-British) (half-Sudanese) (Muslim) friend at the gym when I went to do a post-workout stretch, and he was in the most bizarre stretching pose I've ever seen, like he was kneeling, but then had laid back all the way and puffed his chest up.

"What the fuck is that, yoga?", I said as I came up, and when he grimaced, I was like, "Oh, I get it, you're Hindu now, you're trying out the religion of Britain's other brown people."

Later, when he paused doing his stretches, he told me that he once got in a dangerous situation in the Sudan because someone found out that he was vegan and then they said that he was Hindu, because he would talk all the time of how people should be spiritual and not so dogmatic, religiously.

"Hinduism is like a heresy there, you know," he said.

Addendum.

Like a month later, the next time I ran into my one (British) friend, I said that I was spooked by that restaurant, and though I enjoyed the food, I'd never go back, for fear that the Supreme Master would give out some signal and suddenly they'd start poisoning everyone the night I happened to be in there.

He seemed unconcerned, so I was like, "What, you weren't bothered?"

"Not really," he was like. "I actually found it kind of sweet."

"Sweet?", I was like, "Try fucked up."

"No," he was like, "It's kind of nice to have the Supreme Master turn out to be a woman for a change."

Weird Vegan Meal with my One (British) Friend.

So, over spring break, I ended up trying out this new vegan restaurant with my one (British) (vegan) friend.

I was late, and when I got there, he immediately told me how much he loved the place, which was clean and brightly lit and had inspirational quotes written all over the walls.

When we went up to the counter to order, he asked the (black) counter(woman) if it was a chain, since he had looked online and noticed there was a store that recently opened in London.

"No," she was like, "But we're all related, we're open to promote veganism and support the family," and she gestured to this small rack of literature that we took up, that had a picture of a gently-smiling dyed-blonde hair Vietnamese woman on it.

It was only halfway through the meal that we noticed that the closed circuit channel was playing something called "SUPREME MASTER TV", and showing pictures of the gently-smiling dyed-blond hair Vietnamese woman strolling through fields with her adopted pets, interspersed with vegan cooking shows.

The night Osama died...

I got a text from a friend, and I was in my nightclothes and had just sat down with a late dinner (a microwaved bowl of beans and rice into which I had cut up a little Hungarian sausage, with a hardboiled egg to boot). I didn't feel like going out, but then I changed my mind, threw on some clothes, and jogged down to the bar near me that has a plywood sign out front.

There, I texted pretty much everyone in my cell phone's address book (at least 10-12 of whom weren't aware it was going on; having free texts sure is useful!).

The Sunday-Monday bartender (who I had heard of but never met before) turned on CNN and turned down the jukebox music, but there were some (Mexican) drunks dancing to salsa and they kept asking her to turn the music back up, even though a few of their (Mexican) friends were at the bar and pissed because they wanted to watch the breaking news.

So, the Sunday-Monday bartender kicked one loud drunk guy out, and suggested to the other that she buy a 6-pack and go home, which she did. The (Mexicans) who wanted to watch thanked me for asking the bartender to put on the news, and the bartender bought me a drink to apologize (which made me feel horrendous, so I apologized and left her a $5 tip; she said it was nothing, it was just those 2 who left, and she herself wanted to watch the news).

So, we watched the news, and before I left I introduced myself to the (Mexicans) who wanted to watch, one of whom said she was "Chiquita", "like the bananas."

The one loud drunk guy had kept trying to get back in the bar, too, and the bartender had locked the front door against him, though later she opened it and he had come back in, which made Chiquita yell to kick him out and call the police.

After she did that, she turned to me and was like, "That's my husband."

2 statements of my mom.

#1 - She would sign the recall petition for Michigan's governor. She says she doesn't mind taxing union members' pensions, but to depose elected officials is too much.

One of her Republican-sympathizing library coworkers (who is white and very poor and without benefits) said she didn't mind so much, so my mom was like, "Let me personalize that for you - the library has a head appointed by the county, so the governor could step in and appoint someone who fires all of us or a new head who would fire all of us and could rehire whoever they want, or go back and change the terms of our jobs, and we'd have no control, since we could no longer elect officials. That's effed."

#2 - She thought Obama looked tired and had a lot on his mind during that one Press dinner where he made all the jokes (which she thought as always were funny; she likes his sense of humor, esp. about how during the Easter Egg Roll he gave out candy to kids and Michelle snatched it back from them).

"I think it's from touring all that tornado devastation in the South," she was like.

Later she revised her comments to say that it must have been because his mind was on the covert ops going on in Pakistan, and that she thought that he must have had that in mind when he was making fun of Trump, too.

I'm an extreme couponer!

I save coupons that Macy and Express send me, and throw them out when I noticed they're old.

Express sent me a $15 "yearly customer appreciation" coupon, and it turns out I had a "$10 off of $30" coupon saved that was still valid...

So, I stopped through the store, found a $30 hat I liked, used the $10 off coupon, and then the $15, so it came to $5.38 plus tax!

I wonder how many fingers a Chinese worker lost to give me such a cheap, fashionable hat.

I also had to get the right salesperson to ring me up... The 1st one I asked said I couldn't double-coupon, so I found another who said I could...

Back to the job search...

Ideas:

- restaurant work.

- retail work.

- writing the new chancellor of the local community colleges to see if I can get on her report team (b/c I have good presentation and report-writing skills).

- writing a locally-based national religion magazine to see if they have odd jobs (like 6 months ago when I was committed to teaching a class I got circulated a notice for an editorial assistant).

- contacting local rich schools that teach Latin and Greek to see if I can tutor or even set up a summer reading class for a highly-motivated high school junior or senior.