Much of today was fueled by the activities of last evening. For example, I still felt a bit heady from the herbal cigarettes I made (and smoked) last night while watching Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. This morning I woke up for a lazy Sunday, ate, and watched another classic horror flick, Poltergeist. I’ve seen this movie numerous times, but probably due to my activities of last night, I noticed a scene in the movie where the mom is sitting in bed “rolling her own”. Now, she could have been like me and making a completely legal herbal cigarette to help her relax before bedtime. This is completely plausible, except that she was laughing way too much. That, and if you’ve never watched the movie, the mom on that show is hawt. As most of my close friends can attest, I am a complete spaz who knows quite a bit about the esoteric chemical properties of things like nutmeg. That’s totally not-hawt, or kewl, or whatever the kids are saying now-a-days. Lesson learned: don’t smoke pot or your kid might get dragged to the other side; or don’t have kids and then feel free to smoke pot so YOU can get dragged to the other side.

After watching Poltergeist, I went to nearby Lake Johnson, intending to feed the ducks. But a more interesting bread-eating target appeared in the guise of a couple of gulls. After throwing a couple broken off pieces of bread at them, there were now between thirty and forty of them surrounding me. I’m sure that at least one of them thought my hair was reminiscent of a red-headed version of Tippi Hedren. All the birds on the bridge scared everyone who wanted to cross (except me, of course). Anyway, my wacky Mexican neighbor Esperanza snapped this picture that looked eerily like the latter half of “The Birds”. Lesson learned: absolutely no lesson learned.

Other than blogging and my pre-blogging desk cleaning ritual, I had a pretty good day. I finished it up with a little bit of herb grinding using my new mortal and pestle (as detailed in yesterday’s post, “Adventures in Herbology”).

I was planning a different topic for tonight’s post, but got distracted after attempting to follow up on a suggestion for getting back to better health. Friend Brien Barbour suggested that I visit my local Whole Foods store to look for a particular product in their vitamin aisle. On the way there, I stopped at my local gas station and (among other things) picked up some rolling papers so that I could roll my own herbal cigarettes (using completely legal herbs, of course).

This spurred me to think that Whole Foods might also have a couple of things that I could use to powder and capsule some of my herbs that wouldn’t work as well in a smokable form. When I got there, I headed to the fresh herb section where I picked up a mortar and pestle and some empty vegetarian capsules. I was so stoked that I forgot to get my vitamins. I’ll make up for it by getting some orange juice in the next day or so.

When I got home, I started working. I decided to try my hand at rolling my very first herbal cigarette containing an herb called Leonotis Nepetifolia (also called “klip dagga”). This tropical African herb can also be made into a tea, but it is pretty nasty in that form. It’s used for a number of medicinal purposes such as fever and coughs, in addition to it’s relaxation and meditative properties. Since I’ve never rolled any type of cigarette, I had to Google for some instructions. Not surprisingly, I found some instructions for rolling marijuana joints. I figured this would translate pretty well to my task. Normally, I would post photographs of my early efforts, but seeing as how I have absolutely no skill in such endeavors, I skipped the photo session and evaluated my first three models. It took moments to feel the relaxing effects. After about an hour or so, I also found movies much more humorous. I mean I don’t think that Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was really meant to be a comedy, but it clearly came across that way after a couple of cigarettes. Better yet, my throat felt much better.

Anyway, I hope to continue my “Adventures in Herbology” tomorrow by grinding some herbs using my new mortar and pestle and making capsules. Judging by this evening’s success, I’m definitely looking forward to further exploration in this field.

My day started at 9:00am. Last night and this morning was a bear emotionally, so I really wasn’t in the mood for things like waking up. After kicking it with my current favorite energy drink, Full Throttle Unleaded, I began work on a client deliverable writeup for my consulting class. Nine hours later I started sending the file to my project team. Due to an email problem, I finally got it sent to them an hour later. Since I had forgotten to eat during my monster work session, I was glad that I had rallied my friends in advance to go see singer-songwriter extraordinaire Brien Barbour with me.

I showed up at Vines Bistro at about 7:45ish. I reserved a table the night before. That was a good decision, even though the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it was for last month’s show at the Vines. After a day of feeling stressed and like a loser, it was good to be greeted with a “This way to your table, Mr. Crawford.” Classy. I ordered a Yuengling, one of the two draft beers this fine Italian restaurant serves. Since I hadn’t eaten, I got a lot of buzz for the buck. I mulled over the menu and listened to Brien’s warm-up while waiting for my former co-workers Ricky and Sue to show up.

After they arrived, we chatted momentarily and ordered. Ricky and Sue both went with the special of the evening, lasagna for about $10 or $11. Not wanting to be like everyone else, I ordered the penne a la vodka (like I did last time I was at Vines). It was about $14 or $15 and one of the tastiest pieces of pasta I have ever had. Oh, yeah, I ordered my second beer too.

I knew that Ricky and Sue would totally dig Brien’s set. Ricky is a big fan of Celtic music and quite often shows up at social gatherings dressed in a kilt. He’s also got learning to play guitar on his lifetime to-do list. I figured he would appreciate the acoustical styling. Sue is an eclectic spirit who I figured would be taken back in time by covers from the Eagles, Billy Joel, the Mamas and the Papas, and Simon and Garfunkel. That, and being a chick, she would fall in love with Brien’s wit and golden voice. I loved the show, but was still feeling like shit from my nineteenth day of this vicious cold. The good part was that my hearing had returned. The bad part was my cough had drastically worsened.

All-in-all it was a great night. I said during dinner that if I died tonight, I would die happy. I would recommend Vines in a heartbeat if you’re a fan of Italian dining in North Carolina’s Triangle region. The food was great and the entertainment provided monthly by Brien Barbour is an asset. Good food, wonderful friends, and fine music — what else could you want?

And as usual, all of the evening’s exploits were recorded in photographic form on my Flickr profile.