Brewery gay side-eye.

A couple weeks ago I was at the local brewery and I walked in with my mask on to go order a beer and a glass of water and take it outside to the patio like I always do, and the place was absolutely crazily jammed for the trivia night that was going on, even more than I've ever seen it before, to the point where all of the tables were like completely full.

And, as I walked up to the bar, I noticed a (late middle-aged) (mohawk-bumped) (scrawny) (white) (gay) couple at the edge of this group, and one of them starts looking at me up my legs and then gives me the side-eye.

I have some healing scabs from scratched mosquito bites that were visible because I was wearing shorts, and I bet he thought that it was monkey pox.

Three more local economy tidbits:

1) At the nearby chain pharmacy, I asked the manager who was checking me out what was up with the pharmacy issues, since I'd read about them in the paper and seen them there. He said that recruiting pharm techs had already been a national problem way before that story, but the pandemic made everything worse, since people retired and now new people haven't been coming up, since it's not all that much money and there's no room for advancement.

2) A (pleasant) (cognitive psych) Ph.D. student who I chit-chatted with outside at the local brewery was telling me that due to local pharmacy troubles, the only 24-hour pharmacy in town closed down a bit ago, and then the nearest one was a half hour away in a town to the east of here, but now that one closed, too, so the closest 24-hour pharmacy is now a two-and-a-half hours drive away.

3) The local community college in the town just east of here sent out a flier advertising wind tech jobs. Part of it might be that enrollment in hands-on tech courses dropped a lot during the pandemic and maybe they haven't been recovering so fast, but part of it might also be wages? The flier said entry-level was $19-23 with rapid advancement, so that's not all that much money for all of the training that you have to go through, and who knows if the promise of advancement is real, we've all heard that one before. I think the jobs used to pay a lot like 8-10 years ago, but it seems like it's yet another case where as the minimum wage has been bumped up, the jobs that were like a half step hire haven't kept pace, and are just stagnant.

Dreams (2 of 2): Meditation.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm back in my childhood hometown after a long absence, and I stop by to visit my one childhood friend's (second wave feminist) mother.

And, as I walk into her living room with the big potted plants and the smell of cigarette smoke and patchouli, somehow she knows I'm coming, and she's starting a meditation, and I'm on the couch with my eyes closed as she delicately sings, "Changing times, changing places...", and suddenly I know that even if you always stay in the same place, still things change, and that change is the rule of life for everyone.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Dreams (1 of 2): Mailbox.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm at my childhood house and go out to the mailbox to look for the paperwork that I'm expecting for my dual citizenship application, and the lower part of the mailbox is like this milk crate on its side with two shelves of rough wood, and there on the lower shelf is this plasticene blue folder with my documents, but on the upper shelf there's this very large grey cardboard egg carton, and in some places in it are eggs, but in other places small glass jars of homemade jams, and there's a tag in the middle of it, too, somewhere, and I suddenly know that my parents have told me that that's the outgoing mail and the postman will pick it up soon, and not to interfere with it, but still I wonder how something can be mailed like that.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Animals lately seen (4 of 4): Woodpecker addendum.

I forgot, along that same stretch of street like a few weeks prior, I was coming home in the late afternoon and heard a woodpecker pecking, and so I stopped and looked up into the trees to find it, and finally I saw it hanging out and occasionally pecking on the underside of this great tree limb that was stretching out over the street.

And, this (younger) (black) guy had been coming up the street towards me, so as not to freak him out by being some weird (white) guy stepping off the sidewalk and lingering while he approached, when he got closer, I was like, "Shhh, if you look, there's a woodpecker right here."

And, he not only stopped and looked, but he also pulled out his phone and took a zoomed-in picture to go show people.

He said he was visiting family here and was from Mississippi, and it was his first time in the area.

Animals lately seen (3 of 3): Silhouetted bird of prey.

The other night I ran a quick nighttime errand, and as I was walking down the dusky street near my house, I can see up ahead on the sidewalk this gigantic side-silhouetted bird of prey just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, like with its wings folded down to the right and then to the left its big crooked neck and its head hanging down, almost like some kind of buzzard, though the proportions seemed exaggerated for a buzzard and it was quite a bit bigger than the hawks I've seen around here.

And, I start to wonder what it's doing up there, and if it has some animal thing like rabies and that's why it's in an unnatural place, and I wonder if it might attack me if I come up too close while it still doesn't move.

And then, all of a sudden, it like unfolds itself and lowers, and I can see that it's actually a mild-mannered black-and-white cat that was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk looking at me, and under the streetlights the white part of its fur had blended with the concrete in back of it, and somehow the way it was sitting, its black markings were folded over on top of one another and made it look like some big threatening bird!

And then, the cat sauntered off across the grass divider and onto the street and over by some trashbins, and then it disappeared.

Animals lately seen (2 of 3): Hummingbird.

The other week, I'm by the front porch of the front house that's in front of the back cottage where I live, and suddenly I see something up in the gap of the lower branches that hang down from a big tree up front by the sidewalk, and then it moves in the gap again and then it starts to hover, and suddenly I realize that it's a hummingbird.

And yet, oddly, that stretch of the street is oddly vacant of flowers.