When the slumlords at Royal Crest Estates in North Andover FORCED all of their tenants to pay rent by automatic bank account deduction, I told them this was going to happen. They made up some appalling story about how they were cutting down on their office staff (they haven’t) and were too lazy ... sorry ... too BUSY to process the checks people delivered by hand, and this was why they were forcing all of their tenants to sign up for this automatic deduction thing.
And here we are! Woke up Tuesday morning to discover Royal Crest Estates had taken two rent payments instead of one, and were balking about handing me a refund check that same day – which you would think anyone with a conscience would promptly do. This is Saturday morning and I still don’t have the money back. Nice interest garnering scheme, wouldn’t you say? Is the Massachusetts District Attorney listening or is he/she in on the scheme?
But there are better moments in September than battling Royal Crest Estates and AIMCO over grand theft rent ... I start the year-long witchcraft studies in New Hampshire. I go to New York. I spend the night in Boston – same place as last year. I see l’uno e solo (“The One and Only”) not only once but twice and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who THAT is.
And if that weren’t enough, I am preparing to move again – sometime in the next (mumble, mumble) months – a decision made when the Evil Slumlords took it upon themselves to raise the rent to a whopping $1400 per month (and then deduct it twice – AGAIN!), and so have begun a slow, very methodical sorting of possessions. Things to keep, things to discard. Exhausting, carting empty boxes and bins back from the storage shed – my late brother being the one who took them there.
I decided to transfer notes from the witchcraft course at Enchantments all the way back in 1988 from a three-ring binder to a file folder, to save space. Half way through the process, I had to laugh ... I have no idea why, but I had decided at the time to hide what I was doing (“ooooh! Witchcraft! Naughty, naughty!”) from prying eyes ... although goodness knows what set of prying eyes I thought I had to be worried about. In any event I decided to record some things (fortunately not all) in runes. Or code. Something symbolically unintelligible, anyway! The only problem was: I neglected to keep the key to the code with the notes I was keeping, so I have no clue now what I wrote. I need to look up some runes to see if maybe I used a standard set of them and hoped “prying eyes” wouldn’t know what they were.
WORD OF ADVICE: Keep a reference to the location of any code you choose to use – in the same place you keep the notes, lest all of your brilliant thoughts and stunningly intelligent ideas are lost forever!! (*sigh*) Or, more accurately: “D’oh!”
On the other hand, one of the many fascinating handouts from 1988 caught my attention: a recipe for Best Aphrodisiac - ever. This one uses whisky as a base; I am not at all fond of whisky and should find something else; I’m thinking of my favorite Old Ipswich Rum or spiced rum. Problem: in this lengthy recipe, the author is switching back and forth between tablespoons and liters, to ounces, to milliliters to centigrade. [Insert heavy sigh of annoyance]. Oh goodie. Recipes like this should come with conversion tables ... this is as bad as the unintelligible runes.
Reminder to myself: THIS IS WHY you purchased saw palmetto berries and angelica root – which arrived on Thursday. What didn’t arrive, unfortunately, was the food scale. Was planning to purchase one anyway, but now – thanks to the annoying recipe – I needed one, to measure the aphrodisiac ingredients properly.
Although – did I actually need it? “Some users of the combination tea (Damiana and Saw Palmetto) report that, taken an hour or so before sexual activity, helps to produce a more satisfactory experience. One cup per day for 2 weeks.”
So, regardless of the food scale, perhaps I only needed to use the same volume of Saw Palmetto and Damiana leaves in the aphrodisiac recipe using the liquor. Hmmmm. Shall report on tremors in the sexual earthquake scale ... when I actually experience any. And speaking of lust ...
Piero Barone has returned to the USA for Tour 2013, and so far he and the Il Volo boys have Vancouver, Los Angeles, Fresno, San Francisco and Phoenix under their belts. Better still, the One and Only has a new solo that knocked my socks off:
So tonight, I’m going to start mixing the aphrodisiac and investigate the properties of horsetail. This one makes me smile. It sounds so “witchy”, as though I’d snuck into a pasture in the middle of a stormy night and deprived a skittish horse of its tail. No. (And I wouldn’t do that even if the spell DID call for a horse’s tail). “Horsetail” is actually a grass – shavegrass – and, according to http://www.ancient-wisdom-herbs.com/proddetail.php?prod=Horsetail has the following magickal associations:
“Feminine, Saturn, Earth. Snake charming, fertility. To summon snakes, make a whistle of the stems & play. The plant may be used in fertility rituals, mixtures or sachets, & can be placed in the bedroom to achieve the same purpose. Health, Fertility, To Strengthen Work and to keep focused. Bring out the self's own Stable Emotions, prosperity protection. Snake Charming.”
Snake charming and summoning. Hmmm. Ahhh, zee plaizure zat comes wiz zee double-entendre, non?
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