Moroccan Hashish

Come with me to the kasbah.

2009

It's a New Year and we have a new president, and HOPE is the buzzword. Here's hoping. So far, 2009 has had its rough patches for yours truly, the worst being the sudden and unexpected death of my beloved Stevie, my female wheaten terrier. She would've been 10 in March. On the morning of January 5th, she howled and died instantly, and all the king's horses and all the king's men . . .

We still have Jimi gracing us, who turned 12 in December, but without Steve it's like one hand clapping. She was a jewel, a truly sweet little girl who loved mountain meadows and wading in an icy creek, riding in cars and a good dinner. She was a real mama's girl, adoration personified (canineified?) I miss her awfully. 

Then, I lost a very valuable ruby from a ring my mother had given me years ago, a microwave blew and caught fire, and I had to replace a brand new tire because of a nail puncture, and I caught a cold. I'm just assuming that the Fates had to get this crap out of the way so the rest of the year can soar.

Amen.

Kalifornia

So. A friend of a friend of mine, an insufferable, reckless woman, or so I hear, decided to conduct a social experiment and investigate Medical Marijuana. California has approved the "medical" use of marijuana, a Compassionate Use Act, but the Feds still say pot's illegal, even though the state says it's fine, and we have the Kalifornia Konundrum.

Here's the deal:
To obtain medical marijuana you have to go to a health professional, usually an MD, who "recommends" your use of marijuana for Whatever Ails You. Whatever Ails You can be just about anything, and in my FOAF's case, what ailed her was arthritis. The doctor, a thirty-something, very serious, stocky man who explained he would never, ever recommend cannabis for recreational use, only for What Ails You, spent a long time with my FOAF, so I hear, explaining the many ways to manage pain, and just when she thought he was going to turn her down for not taking enough Aleve, he wrote the recommendation, an officially sealed document on good ecru colored stock, and valid for 1 year. For this, the reckless arthritic woman paid $150 cash. She told my friend that the clinic waiting room was teeming. She said it was a diverse group, from the elderly and the rickety to another MD (attired in a suit and tie) patiently awaiting his "recommendation", as well as the usual friendly-if-skanky types you might expect in such a "joint" (so to speak). She also said that the cult classic Reefer Madness was playing on a television set in the waiting room, providing ironic ambience.

So then, recommendation in arthritic hand, the plucky, reckless and enterprising woman sought out a "pharmacy", and this is where the story gets good. This FOAF went to one of the many "pharmacies" advertised in the clinic (the clinic is only to get recommendations). Outside at the given address, the signage indicated a nail shop, the windows covered and a security gate in place. She rang the buzzer, she told my friend, and was buzzed in to a clean, well-lighted place that reeked of slaughtered skunk. She signed in and sat to wait. When her turn came, she was ushered into another, private room filled with jars and jars of fine, perfumed sinsemilla, as well as cookies, brownies, and other products. "We just moved here," the cheerful clerk reportedly told her. "We'll be getting more stock soon: edibles, hashish and lollypops by next week.

LOLLYPOPS!

She bought a half ounce of OG Kush for $175, and my friend hasn't seen her since.

The BF

He's a baaaadass mo fo, and this here's the proof.

Saturday Night Fever

Last night the BF and I went out on a date. We hit Zono Sushi for dinner, and I had the Seafood Soba Salad, an artful presentation of freshly cooked-to-order buckwheat noodles and mixed greens in a pungent wasabi/soy/lemon dressing and studded with tide pool shit, dee-licious always. The BF ordered the weekend special with teriyaki salmon and sashimi, and we kept to green tea in interest of staying awake (our beloved Sapporo is super but soporific).

Then we hied on down through Hollywood, but first, we hit the drive-thru Baskin Robbins for sugar cones of Jamoca Almond Fudge. Happily slurping these in the BF's shiny new Prius, we got to the Farmer's Market and walked around, incorporating the adjacent The Grove in our evening promenade. If you're not familiar with The Grove, it's a mega mall, Disneyland's Main Street, USA meets Shopping America. It's all done up for Christmas, complete with hordes and hordes of holiday shoppers of the white, affluent persuasion, and we got some coffee and people watched, feeling festive and even a little gay. We bought tangerines and pears and bananas (pomegranates were $3.98 each, why, you could buy a gallon of gasoline for that. Unlike Persephone, we passed on the 'granates), and then:

We hied our asses to the Regency Theater on Beverly and Fairfax to see He Was a Quiet Man starring Christian Slater, who plays a sick nerd, the kind that goes beserk and goes on shooting rampages, and that's pretty much what happens. I'm a jerk for quirk, but this one, this one, no.

Then we went home. The BF was horny, I wasn't, that was the end of that.