Amazon.com: Cheap Bed Sheets

Dear old dad and I never really got along.

Well, that's not strictly true. I was a daddy's girl to the core until I was eight. Until my dad suddenly withdrew from his family into the downstairs office, then to the basement. By the time I was nine, he'd taken to locking the door 24/7, leaving my previously unemployed mother to struggle to find work on short notice and with almost no education to speak of. She couldn't support three little kids on nothing, though, and my father certainly wasn't bringing in money anymore.

We finally moved out when I was ten and I hadn't heard from my father since. That is, until last week.

I received the call at 2 in the morning on a Tuesday. I make absolute shit money working 8 to 7 every weekday as an administrative assistant, which is what secretaries are called now I guess? My point is that I was exhausted and very crabby and mostly answered the phone out of blind instinct as I swatted at it to make the sound stop, eyelashes still clumping together in sleep.

"What?" I practically snarled.

"Hey, gumdrop."

My focus sharpened, although the very dark room was still quite blurry. I rubbed at my eyes. "No one but my father ever calls me that."

There was a sigh on the other end, which only served to heighten my irritation. "I know. Sweetheart, I wish I had the time to tell you how sorry I am, and how much I regret what I did, and how much I miss you and your mom and your brothers. But I don't."

"Right," I said, some of the rage seeping out as the exhaustion set in once again. "What do you want, exactly?"

"Two things," the man I now knew was my father said heavily. "First, I need you to seal up the basement in the old house. Please. No matter how tempted you are to poke around...it's important."

It didn't make any sense. I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers, feeling my brow scrunch in tired frustration. "Whatever. And number two?"

Another sigh, this one significantly wetter-sounding. "I need you to remember that no matter what you may think of me, I have never stopped loving you more than life itself."

And then he hung up. Which was honestly very upsetting, as I was full of fourteen years of rage and at least two weeks' worth of sleep deprivation and would have said some very choice words to him had I been given the opportunity.

Whatever, though. He'd seemed unstable near the end when I was little. It wasn't a huge stretch to think his mind had started to go, all these years later. I wasn't even sure why he thought I'd be anywhere near his stupid basement, much less why I would want to go explore the place that some part of my mind still thinks ruined my life.

Later that day, though, I received another call. Expecting one of the endlessly irritating political calls, I answered just to stop the ringing, stepping away from my desk.

"Ms. Hawthorne?" a professional, gentlemanly voice asked.

"What," I grumbled. I'd never gotten back to sleep, and I'd already nearly committed murder when my boss had asked me to re-fax something she'd accidentally misplaced. This guy was about to be next.

"Ms. Hawthorne, I'm Isaac Carson. I'm the attorney representing your father's estate. Is this a good time?"

"I'm really not in the mood for prank calls, so..."

"Please, Allyson. I would appreciate a moment of your time to discuss your father's will."

"His..." My mind, which was already operating at substandard levels, seemed to stop. "His will?"

Isaac was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded genuinely apologetic. "I'm very sorry, as it seems I'm the one to break the news to you. Ms. Hawthorne, your father passed away early this morning."

"Oh," I said cleverly.

"I understand if you need a moment," Isaac said gently. I decided that I at least liked him enough not to cause him to regret being alive just for doing his job.

"It's okay," I responded distractedly. My nails had become incredibly interesting. My eyes were dry. "We weren't close."

"Well, your father did not have much money to give, but he did hire me shortly prior to his death to ensure that his estate is properly dealt with. It's a sizable house on a large plot of land, and his instructions for you and your siblings are rather specific."

"Well, tough," I said, immediately forgetting my kinder thoughts toward Isaac as irritation took hold again. "I don't want any part of his stupid estate. Tell my brothers they're welcome to it. I'm not interested."

Then Isaac said a number, and then he explained that the aforementioned number was the estimated value of the estate.

"Can you email over the document to sign?" I asked.

"I'm afraid it's not quite as simple as that."
...

Anyway, that's how I ended up pulling up to my old house in the cheapest possible rental car, which barely got up the snow-laden driveway in the first place but screw me, I guess.

No other cars were in the driveway, so I supposed I must have beaten my brothers there. If they were even coming. We'd never been particularly close, and they had been even younger than me when my father had left. Last I heard, one was a successful lawyer and the other was an anesthesiologist in New York. I doubted they needed the estate's money the way I did.

I turned the key I'd been given in the front door, almost disappointed when the resulting click sounded. There went my last excuse not to go in the house. I'd been hopeful that my father had somehow broken the door beyond repair. But if I could get in, then I needed to go. I couldn't really afford not to.

The door opened with a loud creak. It probably hadn't been repaired in any way since I was a kid. My father used to be really handy around the house in a way my mom never was, but once the whole basement obsession started, all of that just...stopped. Sure enough, when I glanced up, I saw the same splintered wood that had resulted from an errantly thrown baseball when I was seven. My dad had tried to reach up and catch it and had ended up bonking his head on the door to boot.

Except I was not going to think about that, or any other happy memories with my father, because he was dead and I hadn't seen the man since I was a small child, so who cares.

I guess I could've meandered over to my childhood bedroom or the kitchen or the spare room I used to hide in when I was feeling particularly mysterious. I could've reminisced on the space-themed sheets I was sure were still strewn on my bed, covered in an inch of dust, and how I used to hide under the covers with my dad and a flashlight late at night, giggling to ourselves. The thought didn't really occur to me at the time, honestly. My eyes were instead drawn to the basement door, which was ajar. As I watched, it shifted slightly, opening more with a creak.

I will admit, I was floored by the rush of memories that assaulted me. My father, closing himself in there, looking around almost nervously before slamming the door shut behind him. The screaming that came when I opened the door, the way he hunched over his desk in that accursed room. He had been so unlike the father I knew in those moments that my young brain had detached the new him from the old, created an entirely new character. There was dad, and there was New Dad.

Looking back now, I wonder if some of my mother's motivation for getting out of there was preserving the image of my dad. I wonder how long it would've taken for me to hate him. I ended up hating him anyway, so it would've been sort of pointless.

I huffed a sigh and touched my hand to the door. It groaned in protest as I pushed it open, but for just a second, I thought I heard another groan from inside. Lower, animalistic. I swear, I felt a breath of warm, moist air on my face.

I gasped and fell back, landing solidly on the floor on my butt.

"Allyson?"

The voice was familiar, but not intimately so. My heart still pounding in my chest, I took a steadying breath and saw a hand extended to me through the slowly clearing haze of fear. The hand clasped mine and pulled me up, and I was surprised to see that it belonged to a young man, probably around my age, with a fine stubble of coarse black hair darkening his jawline and almond-shaped brown eyes the same color as the oak of the house.

"Are you alright?" he asked, spurring me out of my stupor.

I cleared my throat and shook my head to clear it. "Sorry, I, uh...I guess it's been such a long time since I was here that I got a little spooked. You are?"

"Oh, of course," he responded, flushing slightly. It was a good look on him. "I'm Isaac. We spoke on the phone."

Instantly, I felt stupid for not recognizing his voice. Frowning, I said, "I didn't realize you were going to be here."

He smiled, equal parts apologetic and charming. (And yes, I understand this story isn't about how cute Isaac was, but like, it's important to me. So shut up.)

"I wasn't initially going to come," he explained. "After we spoke, I had one of my interns run the documentation up here so that you would have a physical copy, and so we could ensure the stipulations of the will are followed. But we never heard from him, and he never came back into the office." He shrugged. "His car isn't here, so I'm assuming he didn't come here. I took the same route he should have, so I'm betting he took off. His work ethic was never great."

"Well, I thought I heard someone in the basement," I said. "Maybe he is here?"

Isaac's lip twisted just a little, clearly skeptical, but at that moment there was a knock at the front door.

"Or maybe he's late?" I said hopefully.

Isaac checked the peephole and then opened the door. "Welcome. I'm glad you could make it," he said, and in walked my brothers.

Technically, I just sort of assumed they were my brothers, because in truth, I hadn't seen them in years. It was hard to identify the chubby-faced little boys I knew with these tall men wearing expensive coats and horrendously patterned ties. I could tell by the perplexed looks on their faces as they eyed me up and down that they were probably thinking the same about me. More speaking pulled me from my thoughts.

"I am Isaac. I spoke with you both on the phone. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise," said one of the brothers, the darker-haired one, smoothly. "I am Paul, and this is Jim."

I'm glad I hadn't assumed, because when we were children, Jim had been the darker-haired child. Oh well.

Jim spoke up. "Allyson, it's nice to see you."

I swallowed. "Been a while."

There was a moment of awkward silence in which Isaac looked curiously between me and my brothers, and then Paul said, "Well, I don't have all day. Let's get this over with."

Isaac handed me a sheet of paper. A copy of my father's wishes, I assumed. I glanced at the list and couldn't help but raise my eyebrows.

1) Enter the basement.
2) Locate the basement door key in the middle drawer of the work desk.
3) Exit the basement.
4) Lock the door behind you.
5) The key is metal and can be melted at high enough temperatures. Melt the key using a furnace.

Did the guy think I make a habit of collecting industrial-grade furnaces?

Note: when in the basement, DO NOT interact with anyone or anything you might see or hear. This includes unexpected landmarks and items. Get in and get out. And remember: do not trust anyone. Anything you see in this house is subject to certain limitations and may not be entirely real.

What the hell did that mean?

And then, at the very end:

6) Mr. Potato always has enough food and water to last him two weeks in the house. When you find him, please take care of him.

I didn't know what a Mr. Potato was, for the record. Hopefully not a human.

"What exactly does he think we're gonna run into?" I vaguely heard Paul snicker.

"Maybe there's something scandalous in there," Jim said. "Fuzzy handcuffs or Mom's underwear."

"Probably," laughed Isaac. "Well. Seeing as you don't have all day. Shall we?"

And he gestured to the basement door, his eyes seeming to flash in the light.

I can't really tell you why. I couldn't then, and I can't now. But the second my gaze landed on that door again, I got the strongest and most overwhelming shiver of fear down my spine. You know when you were afraid of the dark as a kid? You'd stare into the darkness of the hallway, and your stomach would flip over, and something deep and heavy would settle into your chest. Paralyze you, halt your breath, freeze your eyes wide open. You'd feel like running, but you'd know that'd just make it scarier, and the thought of risking something actually chasing you was unbearable. So you'd have a staring contest with the nothingness, sweating and hoping it didn't move and trying to pretend it was your imagination when it did.

That's a long-winded way of saying I wasn't having a nice time.

I tore my eyes away from it to nod. Isaac tilted his head curiously, but still led the way.

The basement door creaked open, and we stepped inside. I don't know if I was expecting a monster to jump out or something. Regardless, nothing happened, except that I sneezed when a solid wave of dust flew up my nose as if determined to cause me harm.

Paul and Jim immediately moved to investigate the room. My eyes on the prize, I hissed, "Guys, it says not to look around."

Isaac chuckled, which sounded lovely and rough and soft. "That's a ridiculous stipulation. I won't hold it against you guys."

Which struck me as slightly odd at the time, but I supposed it was sort of an odd rule.

It was so similar to the last time I'd seen it: the work desk in the corner of the room, the posters of periodic tables and anatomy and various blueprints lining the walls. My dad didn't really use them, just said he liked them. The rickety old bookshelf was leaned against the far wall, looking a breath away from collapsing and piled with even more heavy volumes than before. Dust coated the walls, only breaking on a blank section of wall that was mysteriously clean, a perfect rectangle cut out of the grime like a doorway of solid brick. Upon the desk were not the architectural drawings and artistic musings I remembered, but instead, messy drawings that looked like a child had drawn them. I walked up to the desk despite myself and gazed upon the topmost of the disastrously disorganized stack of papers.

Which is when this night got into some truly cliché horror movie bull. Because the drawing was swirls and swirls of dark, charcoal-like graphite, crudely forming the shape of a man. There was a swirly head and swirly dark eyes in that head, and thin sticks for arms and legs. No mouth, no nose, no ears. No clothes. Just dark and swirly pencil that I got dizzy trying to comprehend. It looked like a kid's understanding of a shadow.

But it wasn't. It was more terrifying than that, because I could tell, up close, that it had indeed been drawn by my dad. He's right-handed and holds his pencil in an odd sort of way. Not proper, according to my teachers. It resulted in him dragging the top of his hand along the lines above the one he was presently writing on and heavily smudged the graphite to the right-hand side. And in those graphite smears was always a fine clean line where a small scar was sunken into my dad's hand, failing to pick up the lead. The smearing almost looked like a comically horrific intentional effect at first glance, but it was there.

Why would he have drawn this?

"Spooky," said Isaac at my shoulder, and I couldn't help laugh despite the tension.

"Yeah. Not sure what he was on. Too many scary movies, I think."

Isaac tilted his head, gazing at the picture with a far away look in his eyes for a moment. Then his eyes cleared and he smiled handsomely again. "I don't know. I think he looks a little sad, don't you?"

I gazed down at the eyes, swirling, remorseless pits. He didn't look sad to me, but I guess I shouldn't judge. I wasn't used to reading emotions on things without noses. Or mouths. Or defined foreheads.

"I guess," I said rather untruthfully.

I turned, another chill running up my spine, to see my brothers tinkering with the globe my father had always kept on top of the bookshelf. One of them held the base while the other spun it as fast as he could. It made a whirring noise with little clicks that told my instincts something was about to go wrong.

"Hey--"

A lot of things happened then. The globe burst from its stand, hitting Paul squarely in the forehead. He yelled, and so did Jim, and Paul toppled to the floor. An eerie sense of deja vu swept over me, that sickly feeling settling into my stomach again, like looking down from a high ledge while deathly afraid of heights, and I heard something right by my ear whisper, "Give." And the lights sparked, hissed, and went out.

We all sat there in the utter dark for a moment. Then I screamed, unable to stop myself, and extended my hands out in front of me to feel along the wall.

A banging noise, suddenly. My hands grappled and only found the smooth wood of the door. It had been shut. I tried to open it, and it made an unruly clicking noise. Locked. Well, the key was in here with us, but it was too dark. I switched to flipping the light switch, which was right next to the door, but to no avail. The sound of me switching it up and down, up and down filled the room, which stayed pitch black.

"This is not funny, you brats," I spat. "Jim! Paul! This may have been funny when I was a little kid, but it's not funny now!"

I guess I sort of hoped that if I was ticked off, I wouldn't be scared. Which is how I learned that it sucks even more to be both.

"Shut up, Ally," snapped Jim's voice from behind me, by the bookshelf. Nowhere near the door. "I think Paul's knocked out, the idiot. Didn't good old dad keep a lantern in here? He was like eighty million years old."

And yeah, I hated my dad, but I think I decided then that I sort of hated Jim too.

I huffed as I felt around blindly for the metal handle of the old lantern. I'd seen it, briefly, when we'd entered, although I highly doubted it was still functional. While I did so, I carefully asked, "Isaac, did you close the door?"

Isaac's voice sounded from over by the desk, which is right where I knew he was. He'd been right by me when it happened, after all. "No. Are you okay? Were you hurt?"

"I'm fine, but whoever did that is in deep, uh. Doodoo." Don't ask me why I felt weird swearing in front of Isaac. It was a thing.

My hands landed on the lantern. I breathed out a sigh of relief, then slid my hand up to where I knew the handle was. I found the handle, but I also found that a freezing cold hand with unnervingly smooth skin was already resting there. I shrieked and jumped back, falling on my butt yet again.

"Allyson!" yelled Isaac, while Jim gave an annoyed groan. "Are you okay?"

I took a deep breath, realizing that neither of their voices were any closer than before. "Yep. Y-yep, I'm fine. Isaac, can you rifle around in the bottom drawer of the desk? There are some matches in there, I think."

I grabbed the handle again, quick as I could without risking punching the wall I couldn't see. Luckily, there was no hand there. I felt faint as I picked up the lantern and cautiously made my way over to where I heard Isaac rifling around in the drawer.

Blessedly, Isaac found the matches, and the lantern lit. I was staring at his flame-lit face, feeling giddy with relief at the light, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A shadow, darker than the others.

I snatched the lantern and swung it toward the shadow. It was right where I could've sworn that weird clean spot on the wall was, except...there was no wall there now.

Instead, there was a staircase, descending downward into utter blackness.

I swung back around, instinctively moving so that my back was up against an adjacent wall. "Um, guys...?"

The lantern's light fell on a freaked-out Jim with an unconscious Paul in his lap, then on Isaac, who looked oddly calm. His eyes gleamed in the low light. "That's new," he said, clearly curious, and he walked over to where I stood and peered down the stairs.

His calmness was starting to freak me out. "Isaac, what is going on?"

"Don't know," he said. "Should we go down and investigate?"

"We should grab the key and get the hell out," I snapped. Isaac straightened a little, and in the space between when he was in the dark and when my lantern's light reached him again, I realized his eyes were even brighter without the light.

"Okay," he said, and walked over to the desk. He opened the top drawer, showing it to be empty of the key. "Well."

That definitely wasn't good.

"Look. Let's go explore downstairs," he said earnestly. "There might be something there we can use to help us."

I eyed it distrustfully. Isaac turned to my brothers, but the actually conscious one shook his head stubbornly.

"Fine," Isaac sighed, still smiling kindly. "If I go down first to prove it's safe, will you come?"

I held his gaze but made no move. He laughed a little, to himself, and then set the lantern down on the ground, disappearing into the darkness of the stairway.

And the more I thought about that, the more weirded out I became. And I started to get a tiny bit suspicious, and then a lot bit suspicious. And I thought it couldn't hurt, right? To make sure it was really Isaac walking in the utter darkness into a staircase that technically doesn't exist. I don't know why the thought entered my head, really, except that nothing was making sense and I felt like I was living in my own personal horror movie.

I grabbed my cell phone, making a note to call the police if anything else went wrong, and picked Isaac's number from my recent calls list. I pressed the call button and waited.

For a long moment, silence. Then...

Riiiiiiiiiiiing.

Except that wasn't a cell phone ringing from the staircase. It was the familiar sound of the landline, echoing from behind the locked door, where the rest of the house was.

How did I not recognize my own childhood landline?

I cursed and made to dial 911, suddenly realizing what an incredible pickle I'd gotten myself into. Just at that moment, a cold, clammy hand covered mine. I froze, my eyes darting to my side, but there was no one there. Just an arm as black as my surroundings that was wrapped around me from behind.

A breath of cold air tickled my ear, fluttered the fine hair at the base of my scalp. I shuddered. That feeling again, worse, intensified.

"Truce," it hissed.

I thought furiously through all my options, the first and foremost of which was crying, closely followed by trying to finding out if whatever this thing was had a ball-sack I could kick with all my might.

"Don't waste your time," it said. "You saw your father's pictures of me, did you not? He was quite the flatterer. But you...you're a straight-forward girl. I think we could come to an arrangement, you and I."

My eyes frantically searched the dimly lit room until I found my brothers. Paul was still out, and Jim seemed to be completely unaware of my little conversation. He wasn't even looking at me.

"Isaac?" I whispered, and Jim definitely heard that.

"What?"

"For convenience," the thing murmured, a spindly, frigid finger coming up to caress my cheek. I shivered again, the absolute power of it flooding my entire body. This...this was not some mere ghost or something, I don't know. This thing felt like it held the power of a planet, of a star. I could feel it, pressing against my own soul like the ocean upon a raindrop. It threatened to smother me, but for some reason, it held back.

I wondered, in my head, what it wanted. It made an odd strangled hiss that I realized was most likely a laugh. "How very like your father. He was straight to business, too, when he needed to be." I felt the curl of something cold and smooth against the back of my head and realized it was smiling into my hair with its mouthless face. "I require souls. It is time for me to feed. Your father ceased feeding me, and so outlived his usefulness."

What, did this thing want me to kill somebody?

"Nothing so barbarian as that," it whispered. I could feel its face against the back of my skull, awfully smooth, flawless. No nose. No mouth. "No, I just need them to come to me."

"The staircase," I gasped in a horrible moment of clarity.

"What?" Jim asked again, snappier this time.

"It's your choice. But I will take souls, regardless of your actions. I know you feel that. The question is: will yours be one of them?"

For the record, I'm not proud of this.

"Sorry, I just...just called Isaac," I managed to choke out. God, I sounded so sketchy. "He says there's a door down there, some sort of emergency exit. Guess our father kept it covered up for some reason."

Jim grunted, hauling himself to his feet. My heart was beating so, so fast. I could feel the thing lingering behind me. I knew it was only about my height, could feel its head there, and yet, I had the instinctive sense it was the size of a mountain.

"Fine, but you're gonna have to grab his feet," Jim said.

I nodded, my mouth completely dry, and complied. "You'll have to go down first, though. You know how weak I am. I'll fall."

Jim just nodded, and I hated him a little less and me a little more.

We walked to the staircase. Even right next to it, the light of the lantern didn't penetrate past the first couple steps, as though there was a veil of darkness there. Jim, facing toward me with his arms under Paul's shoulders, didn't notice. He started down the stairs, and then, it was my turn. I hesitated, felt the warmth of my brother's body through his jeans where I was holding his ankles. Imagined the heartbeat running through his body. Remembered being a kid again, remembered Jim's tiny, chubby hand plucking a flower, remembered Paul's defter fingers weaving it through my long hair.

"Boo," the thing hissed into my ear, and I let go.

Jim and Paul didn't scream. They just toppled down the stairs, and when they hit the wall of darkness, they were gone. And it was completely silent other than my breathing and another something breathing, deep rattling breaths very unlike my own.

A few moments later, Isaac stepped out of the stairway and smiled handsomely. He handed over the key, and when my hand brushed his, it was freezing cold.

"Keep in mind," Isaac said gently, "that I'll have a copy of this key. Every once in a while, gumdrop, it'd be nice to see you up here. Feel free to bring friends."

The mockery of my father's nickname fell heavy on my ears, and I ran. I ran and I slammed the door on Isaac and I locked it behind me and I slid against it to the ground and sobbed and screamed. And when I was done with that I got in my car and I drove home, wondering if I'd done it, if it was finished.

And the thing is, I don't really think it is. Because I was out for a cup of coffee yesterday, and I spotted Isaac across the street, watching me.

Edit: I FORGOT MR. POTATO. Guess I'm going back. Wish me luck!!!

[Displaced] - Chapter 8 Part 1

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***
Somewhere on a lone hilltop engulfed in fog stood an old tree, its gnarled trunk and leafless branches suggesting it had seen better days. There a young woman sat, back resting against the tree, head bowed. For an eternity, nothing stirred. The wind was calm, and quiet enveloped the hazy realm. Suddenly, without a word, a young man in his late teens emerged from the fog and took a seat beside the woman. Neither spoke for what seemed like ages, each simply soaking in the silence.
"You're blaming yourself again, aren't you?" the man asked finally. The woman did not respond, and the world lapsed back into stillness.
"It wasn't your fault. You know that," the young man said eventually. "Just like Sebastian. Just like your father. None of it was your fault."
"I know," the woman finally replied, her voice soft and melancholy.
"And yet you drag me out every time just to have me say it to you. It would be nice if you came to visit just to say hi sometime, you know, instead of only whenever everything falls apart."
"I'm sorry, Peko."
"Don't say that, Arlette," the young man said as he wrapped the woman into a gentle embrace. "Thinking only of myself when my best friend is suffering right in front of me... I'm the one who should be apologizing. Call on me whenever you need me, and I'll tell you to stop blaming yourself as many times as it takes."
"If I hadn't brought them there, they'd still be alive right now. They trusted me to keep them safe."
"Oh, and you also summoned that monster down from the heavens? Should we all be blaming you for all the thousands of dead in that city?"
"Sometimes I wonder... Maybe I'm cursed. Maybe if I hadn't been there, the city-"
"Curses aren't real, Arlette. I know it hurts to lose those you care about, but you must remember to keep moving forward. Spend too much time looking back and you'll lose your way."
"They're gone, Peko! Just like that!" she wailed as tears fell onto the man's shoulder. "Why? Why are they gone and I'm still here? What did I do?"
"Shhhh..." Peko said as he stroked the crying woman's head with a brotherly affection. "Just let it all out. I'll stay here as long as you need."
Arlette cried into her friend's shoulder for what felt like hours until her sobs finally dried and she returned to silence.
"You should probably wake up soon. We both know how much work is left to be done, and you can't let Jaquet do it. He'd just mess it all up."
Arlette let out a dry laugh, a small hint of humor showing in her reddened eyes.
"And I'm serious, come see me sometime other than right after disaster strikes. I feel like you forget I exist sometimes."
"Sorry, I will," Arlette promised. "Thanks, Peko. You're the best."
"I'll be here any time you need me," he said as he ruffled the woman's hair with a loving smile. "That's what imaginary friends are for."
* * *
Arlette Faredin opened her eyes to a wooden ceiling and a window showing the predawn sky. She was in an inn, which could only mean one thing. They were already at Poniren, the closest town to Zrukhora big enough to be called a town instead of a hamlet or village. The Ivory Tears had stayed a night in the cheapest inn Poniren had to offer just several days ago on their way north. It had taken the group three days to reach Zrukhora from Poniren. It seemed that Arlette had been out for far longer than she'd hoped.
Everything hurt, which was to be expected given how far she had pushed herself past her limits a few days ago. With a grunt, Arlette tried to sit up, only to find that her left arm was being held down by something. That something turned out to be the slave she had saved back in Zrukhora. The young woman was asleep, her arms wrapped around Arlette's limb so tightly that it had gone numb. What was she still doing here? Arlette reached over with her right hand and poked.
The slave squirmed and grumbled as an annoyed Arlette continued to poke the woman out of slumber, until suddenly her eyelids shot open, her eyes filled with terror. She looked around with panic until she spotted Arlette's aggravated frown, her face lighting up with joy as she recognized the mercenary.
"You're awake!" the slave chirped with relief. "I was afraid you weren't going to wake up. You wouldn't move when I shook you and I was so scared that something had happened to you and I didn't know what to do and-"
"My arm," Arlette grunted.
"Eh?"
"I can't feel my arm. Let go. Of my arm."
"Oh! I'm sorry..." The slave released Arlette's arm and sat up. Groaning as her entire body bemoaned her slight exertion, Arlette worked herself into a sitting position as well and looked over at the slave while rubbing feeling back into her appendage, studying her in the firelight.
The girl looked to be in her late teens and nearly as tall as Arlette. Two wide, bright eyes with gray irises, placed on her small face around a somewhat elongated nose, returned her gaze with no small amount of adoration. Long, black hair flowed down well past the her shoulders. Arlette had expected the pleasure slave to have a more traditionally beautiful face, given her lot in life, but she was decidedly average in Arlette's judgment. The reason for her selection as a pleasure slave, however, was no mystery to the mercenary. Arlette had never seen skin so perfect before in her life. Nary a pock mark or blemish could be seen on the woman's face or body. How had she achieved such radiant skin? Arlette had met noble women who would literally kill for such a complexion.
Her body was thin, almost to an extreme, though without looking starved. A quiet series of clinks caused Arlette to realize that she still wore the restraints that she’s had on when they’d run into each other on the street. Arlette found it strange that they were still there. Still, none of that really mattered. There were much more important questions to be asked, such as...
"Why are you still here?"
"What do you mean? You saved me?"
"You begged me to rescue you from Zrukhora. I did. That was at least three days ago. Why are you still here?"
"B-but I need your help!" the girl stammered as she began to tremble. "I'm so lost and everybody is so horrible and I don't know what to do and I'm so scared and I just want to go home but I don't know how! Please, you're the only person who's been nice to me ever since I came here! If you won't help me then-"
Arlette sighed as the slave began to weep openly and ramble on and on about something. She told herself to stay strong. She'd already done enough for this person, and if she were realistic about her situation, she couldn't really afford to do anything more. She had little money, since most of it had been invested in the journey to Zrukhora, and with her comrades gone there was little prospect of making much more any time soon. No amount of tears would change that. She would just have to break it to the crying young woman gently, that was all.
"Hey, hey," she comforted the girl, who was still blabbering on. Something about pain and two moons and being captured; Arlette hadn't really been listening. "Calm down. Let's start over. Hello, I am Arlette Demirt. What's your name?"
"Sofie Ramaut..."
Strange, Arlette could not place the origin of her name. Now that she thought thought about it, that's wasn't the only odd thing about her.
"Your speak is strange. Where are you from?"
"My speak?" Sofie asked, apparently confused by the simple statement.
"Yes, your speak. How you talk with your mouth. I've never heard something like it before. Where are you from? Ramaut sounds somewhat like a clan from the Droajan Federation. Did you come from all the way on the other side of the Divide?"
Suddenly Sofie's face fell, though Arlette could not fathom why. Did her question bring back painful memories?
"You won't believe me," she mumbled.
"Sure I'll believe you," Arlette assured her.
There was a moment of quiet as Sofie seemed to struggle with something in her mind before she raised her head, a look of determination in her eyes.
"I'm... not from this world. I'm from a different world, from a country called Belgium. In my world, magic doesn't exist. People don't just understand each other no matter what comes out of their mouth. There's no slaves, and we only have one moon. That's where I'm from."
"I see," was all Arlette could say as the import of Sofie’s statements bored into her. Oh no. She had rescued a crazy person.
“You don’t believe me.”
“You certainly have some... profound notions.”
“Nobody believes me.”
Arlette heard the booming voice of Jaquet from somewhere outside the window. “I have to go.”
“No!” Sofie cried, grasping for Arlette’s arm with trembling hands. “You’re just going to leave me! I don’t want to be all alone again!”
Arlette leaned back and avoided the girl’s lunge, her attempt easily dodged thanks to the shackles that she still wore restricting her.
“Calm down. All our supplies are here. We’re not going to just disappear without coming back for them, okay?”
“Y-you won’t leave me here?”
“We won’t leave you here.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
* * *
“So how do we go about leavin’ ‘er ‘ere?” Jaquet asked when she joined him outside in the cold morning air.
“I don’t know, I’m trying to come up with something,” groaned Arlette as she massaged her temple in frustration. She pulled her flask out from her tunic and took a swig. “Have you talked to her?”
“Nay. She barely said a peep all the way ‘ere. Just grabbed on ta ya when ya collapsed and didn’ let ya go fer tha entire journey. Didn’ eat, barely slept.”
“She’s deranged.”
Jaquet’s face stiffened. “Severed?”
“No, if that didn’t trigger her, nothing will. Still, she’s completely delusional. She even made up her own country. Says she’s from ‘Belgium’.”
“’Belgium’? What kind o’ name fer a country is that?”
“I know, right? If you’re going to make something up, at least make it sound believable.”
“So it’s settled then. We leave ‘er ‘ere and ‘ead fer Xoginia in tha mornin’.”
Arlette paused. “I don’t know.”
“Yer not seriously thinkin’ o’ takin’ ‘er with us, are ya? You said it yerself, she’s touched in tha head!”
“I know, I know. It’s just... if we leave her here she’s going to die. That, or end up a pleasure slave again, in which case she would be better off dead. She’s completely clueless. There’s no way she’d survive on her own. I might as well just kill her myself instead of leave her to suffer first, if we’re going to just leave her here.”
“Letty, I know ya feel bad, but we’re a mercenary company, not a charity. We can’ be gallivantin’ around doin’ good deeds just because we feel like it, especially not now. There’s nothin’ in it fer us.”
“That’s not always true. What about Olenset? The people there love us for what we did. We even got discounts at the shops.”
“An’ tha Lord there ‘ates us fer the same reason. Did ya ever think that maybe that’s why Maddock ‘ad it out fer ya? Nobles love ta talk ta each other. Pretty much all they do, as far as I can tell.”
“What if we just took her along with us to Xoginia? Then we find somebody to take her in and wipe our hands of all of this.”
“An’ who would take ‘er? What kind o’ skills could a pleasure slave ‘ave?”
“I bet she can do numbers.”
“What makes ya say that?”
Arlette risked a glance back towards the inn’s upstairs window and Sofie, who was trying to hide that she was watching them and doing an absolutely terrible job at it.
“Look at her and use your head for once, muscle-brain. What kind of life do you think she’s had?”
“Are ya talking about ‘er skin?”
“Yeah, that’s not the skin of somebody who spends time outdoors. No calluses on her hands, either.”
“So some kinda noble. An’ that means learnin’.”
“Exactly.”
“Then ‘ow did she end up like this?”
“Maybe she was born with problems, so her family sheltered her until she was discarded for some reason, like they tried to marry her off but nobody wanted her. Or she was part of a small noble family that we haven’t heard of that was destroyed and left her as a slave, and she cracked and came up with the nonsense that she’s spewing now to explain it all away. Who knows. You could try asking her, though I doubt you’ll get anything useful.”
Jaquet sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “This is a mistake, Letty. It’s gonna come back ta haunt us. I can feel it.”
“I’m sorry, which of the two of us is the boss?”
“Letty, I’m just sayin’-”
“And which of us could have been the boss, but said ‘no’ because he ‘didn’t want to have to deal with hard choices’?”
“Okay!” he relented. “Okay. Ya win. Of all the things ta pull rank on, I never thought you’d do it over a girl ya just met, but whatever. I can see that ya made up yer mind o’ this.”
“Relax, it will be fine. We’re just taking her to Xoginia, then she’ll be gone and you’ll never have to deal with her ever again. Now tell Basilli to pick the locks on her cuffs while I get ready.”
* * *
Arlette, Jaquet, and Basilli stood around a large rock surrounded by a ring of smaller stones out in the woods outside of Poniren. They’d had to travel farther out than she’d expected, as hundreds of refugees had set up camp around the town proper, but they’d eventually found a worthy location. Somewhere behind them, Sofie leaned against a tree, most likely still absent-mindedly rubbing her now-shackleless wrists and ankles while wearing a spare set of Arlette’s clothes. She’d started crying again when Basilli had finished removing the restraints, though Arlette didn’t blame her for such tears of joy. Overall, the girl continued to act withdrawn, saying little to anybody except Arlette. Clearly some sort of attachment had formed in the addled ex-slave’s mind. Arlette worried about how she would take the news that they were going to dump her in Xoginia, as Arlette hadn’t yet found the right time to inform her. She’d been busy with much more important things, like what laid on the ground in front of her.
The stone arrangement was the best the group could manage for a grave, given their situation and the complete lack of bodies. Jaquet had chipped the mark of the Ivory Tears, a water droplet inside a diamond, into the side of the center rock. The arrangement of marking stone surrounded by a ring of smaller stones was a widely recognized form of grave marker, and she believed that even as shabby an example as this would be easily recognized and respected, if for no other reason than to avoid angering the spirits.
Jaquet cleared his throat, his countenance solemn. As the eldest person there, he took the role Voice of the Dead and thus was the one who began the ceremony.
“In this world o’ struggle, tha only truth is tha’ all things must end. We, who ‘ave met our ends, ask tha livin’ tha’ they do not forget all that we were, so tha’ we may continue ta touch the lives o’ tha world. Tha’ ya remember us fer our failures as much as our triumphs, our sorrows as much as our joys. Will ya grant us this?”
“We will,” replied Arlette and Basilli in tandem.
“Esteemed spirits,” intoned Basilli, serving the role of Speaker for the Living, “we mourn your passing with grieving hearts. We pray that you accept these grave stones as a monument to your existence, and that they serve you well in the future. We ask only that you guide us through a future that we cannot see, and protect us from evils that we cannot know. Will you grant us this?”
“We will,” replied Jaquet.
“In death, as in life, we remain as one in the darkness,” they all said together, “until the sun returns once more.”
Arlette and the others stood there for a little while longer, each lost in their own thoughts and memories, until one by one they turned back towards the town and a very intrigued Sofie.
“That was interesting,” she commented to Arlette. “Fastest funeral I’ve ever seen.”
“Don't tell me you've never attended a Rite of Passing before. It’s the most common form of death ceremony on the continent.”
“That’s not how we did funerals on my world.”
Skies above, she was committed to her wild fantasies. Arlette decided to drop the topic rather than delve deeper.
“So... now what?” Sofie asked.
“Now we hold the other funeral.”
“You need to have more than one funeral?”
“That was the funeral for their spirits, the one that everybody performs. This is the one that only we mercenaries do.”
“Is it also for their spirits?”
“No, this one is for us.”
* * *
“An’... and then ‘e said... ‘If tha’s a vekkel, where’s my wife?’”
The three mercenaries burst into another round of alcohol-assisted hilarity at the punchline to Jaquet’s story. Sofie sat beside them at the cheapest bar in Poniren, watching them as they poured mug after mug of liquor down their gullets for the third straight hour. She’d barely made a peep, choosing instead to simply stay out of the way. Arlette thanked her for that.
“Another round!” Jaquet shouted to the bartender. “Who’s next?”
“Tayt,” Basilli responded. “Oh man, Tayt. That man drove me crazy. He would do the stupidest things, and then somehow get rewarded for it. Every damned time. Remember what he said when he first met Lilybeth? Walked right up to her when we were in that bar in Agosa. Nobody had any idea who this guy was, and he just walks right up to her and says... uh...”
“‘I heard you beastwomen enjoy hunting. What do you say to hunting a snake upstairs in my bed?’ That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard!” Arlette laughed. “And without a word she just turns to him and WHAM! One hit and he drops, and then she undresses him and hangs him by his underclothes from a pole outside the bar!”
More cackles echoed off the tavern walls.
“Right!” Basilli said. “And then what happens? Before even a year is done, he’s part of the band and the two of them get fucking married! How?!?”
“Ya sound jealous, my friend,” chuckled Jaquet.
“How about you, Arlette?” Basilli teased, his face red from the hours of hard drinking. “You ever think about marrying somebody? What about Jaquet here? You spend so much time working together you might as well make it official.”
“Maybe if he was just old and fat, instead of old, fat, and ugly,” Arlette replied, bringing about perhaps the loudest guffaws yet.
Arlette sat there with the others for hours, reminiscing about those who could no longer join them and cracking up so hard that tears rolled down her face. But even in that drunken haze, she couldn’t quite convince herself that they were tears of laughter.
* * *
“As much as I would hate to interrupt your little party,” came a voice from behind them, “I’m afraid that I require your names.”
Arlette turned to find several identical-looking men, each holding a sheet of parchment and a quill. She found it odd that they all seemed to move simultaneously, but pushed that thought off to the side so she could pay attention to what the they three men were saying.
“We are tabulating a list of survivors, especially those who were working for the magistrate. Could I have your names, please?”
“I’m Arlette Demirt,” she managed to slur out after a few seconds of work, “leader of the Ivory Tears. We were working for the city when it happened.”
“I see,” came the reply as the three quills began to scratch away at the parchment. “And the others?”
“Basilli Inciar, Jaquet Delon,” she stated, pointing at each as best as she could.
“And what about the young woman? Is she a member as well?”
“Nahhhh, that’s Sofie Ramaut. She’s nobody. We just met her and we’re gonna leave her in Xoginia once we get there. Don’t bother with her.”
“Very well. Thank you for your time.”
Soon the group teetered back upstairs and Arlette fell over onto her bed and started to fade into slumber. As she did, a small part of her brain, deep in the back, seemed to be saying that she’d made some sort of mistake, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. It was probably nothing.

Desperately need help with suicidal thoughts. I've been chronically ill for 2 years & I'm bipolar. Been trying hard to find the spiritual meaning but I'm so tired of being broken :(

My first experience with Uncle Bens tek - Full Grow Report.

This is a follow up to this post showing the results of my first flush of my first time growing mushrooms.
This is a long post so TL;DR: Innoculated 11 bags with 0.5cc b+ each, spawned to bulk with a 650g coco coir brick in an unmodified monotub, got 2204g wet (151g dry) 1st flush. 8 weeks from innoculation to harvest.
Intro
This section is about how I got into mushrooms. If you just want to know about the grow skip to the planning section.
In December I saw a post on the front page of reddit by a guy who said he was depressed for more than 20 years until microdosing completely changed his life. That post really struck a chord with me, so I started researching psychedelic mushrooms. What I found, especially about using microdosing to help with anxiety and procrastination led me to decide I had to try this for myself.
The problem was I had no idea where to start. I'd never done any drugs in my life. I hadn't even smoked a cigarette. I had no idea how to go about acquiring some illegal drugs. At first I thought I would have to resort to buying them from the dark net. But then I found out grow kits were a thing, and then shortly after I found unclebens. I learned just how easy growing your own shrooms could be from uncle bens, but ultimately I went with the grow kit. Even if the grow kit was more expensive, it was also much simpler, and I could always switch to uncle bens after the first time.
The grow kit didn't work out. In hindsight, I can see this was entirely due to my own inexperience and if I were to try it again now I could get it to work. But for my second attempt I decided I would go with uncle bens. I had been lurking on this sub since January and felt I had learned enough that I could make it work.
This grow report is entirely thanks to reading the posts on this sub from people new to growing mushrooms and advice from more experienced growers. This isn't the only place I learned from, but this community was what encouraged me to start my own grow. In fact I only made a reddit account just so I could one day help others with my experience the way reading other peoples post helped me.
Planning
My only real priority for this grow was that it didn't take up much space. Both because I live in a shared place and don't have much space to myself, and because I'm very much aware of the illegality of growing shrooms. I wanted something I could keep hidden away under my bed or in a cupboard. This meant one monotub rather than multiple tubs.
As for the size of the tub I wanted something that:

could fit a hydrated 650g brick of coco coir
a 1:1 - 1:2 spawn to sub mix would be no more than 4 inches/10 cm tall
would be tall enough that mushrooms could grow with the lid still on. I.e. I wouldn't need a dub tub/plastic bag
would fit under my bed. Although I later grew paranoid about the increased likelihood of contam if I placed it under my bed, so I ended up putting it in a cupboard.

This Ikea 45 Litre box was what I settled on, because it was the perfect size to fit under my bed, had a clear lid and was by far the cheapest option.
Next I needed to calculate how many bags of uncle bens I would need to have a 1:1 - 1:2 ratio of spawn to substrate. I'm actually unsure about these calculations now but this is what I used at the time.
From Bod's easy AF bucket tek I read to multiply your coir weight by 5 to get the water weight you would use to hydrate to field capacity. (This is just a guideline; different brands may need more or less). 650g x 5 = 3250g of water. So the total substrate weight would be 3900g. To get 3900g of spawn would require 3900/250 = 15.6 bags of uncle bens. Since my vendor was selling 12ml syringes I thought innocluating 12 bags would be perfect.
At this point the last thing to consider was how much would all of this yield? Yield can't really be predicted accurately because there are so many variables to take into consideration, like genetics and grow conditions. One estimate I've seen thrown around on this subreddit is to expect between 5g-15g of dried mushrooms per uncle bens bag. So for me, I could expect between 60-180g.
At this point I'm questioning if this is really what I want to do. I realize this is a lot of spawn + substrate. I only intend to use this for microdosing and maybe occasional macrodoses. If I were to use 0.5g per week this could produce 2-7 years worth of mushrooms for me. Ultimately I decided to stick with this size monotub for 2 reasons:

I didn't want to be growing mushrooms multiple times a yeaall year round on a production line. I know some people enjoy growing mushrooms as a hobby, but I was only interested in the end product. If I could grow once and then never have to do it again for a few years that would be more convenient for me.
I didn't want to have half a brick of coco coir lying around. This might seem silly but I didn't want to use half a brick of coco coir and then have the other half taking up valuable space for a year or more. Or worse, throw away half a brick of coco coir that I paid good money for. Even if it wasn't very much it's the principle of the thing.

So basically, I decided to make a shit load of mushrooms because I didn't want to waste any coco coir.
Innoculation
I innoculated 12 bags on 27/06.
I had a 12cc syringe so I innoculated 12 bags of rice with 0.5cc each. I've read posts were 1cc was too much and 0.5 is much easier math than 0.75 so that's what I went with. In future I might try 0.2cc.
When I was innoculating I didn't exactly use a still air box but I basically used a setup like this. Except I was using a 22 Litre Ikea samla box. And I didn't use a plastic sheet. The room I was in had the door and window closed and any devices that created air flow were turned off. The top of the box isn't that large and since I was standing close to the opening my body mostly blocked the airflow from behind me. Even if it wasn't as good as a still air box I figure it was better than not using one.
Because the rice bags were vacuum packed I couldn't get the syringes into the bag. I had to hole punch the bags and cover them in micropore tape so I could inflate the bags first. Also since I saw that people with more/larger airholes tended to have faster colonization, I overlapped four punched holes so they were bigger. They looked like the mastercard symbol except vertical. I have no idea if they affected my colonization times though, there are probably better methods out there.
I used the capri-sun method to inject the bags. I know the guide says to innoculate near the bottom near the viewing window but I read a few posts where rice would get stuck in the syringe and cause problems, so I injected near the top. Good news - no rice got stuck in the syringe. Bad news - most of the bags had no visible mycelium in the viewing window until the very end. I could only tell how colonized they were by feel alone.
If I had to do it all again:

I would use the chip clip method when hole punching gas exchange holes.
I would innoculate lower down the bag near the viewing window.

Both pieces of advice which are already in the guide. Go figure. It's almost like shroomscout knows what he's talking about. ;)
Break & Shake
The guide says to break and shake when your bags are about 20% colonized but I delayed breaking and shaking my bags because I didn't have any of my supplies for spawning to bulk yet. So when I did break & shake on 13/07 the bags were closer to 70%. I know many people might say there's no point doing a break & shake that late into colonization, but I figured it would still result in 100% colonization faster than if I left them alone.
Here's where I encountered my first problem. When I was breaking up my 4th bag, I saw that the bottom of tha bag was covered in green. I stopped immediately. When I held the bag up to the light, I saw the top of the bag, not where the rice was but on the inside of the bag itself, the bag was covered in dark, wet patches. There must have been some contam near the top of the bag that spread when I was breaking it up.
Common consensus at this point would be to throw out the bag or bury it. I did neither. At this point the bag was about 70% colonized and because I had stopped the break & shake immediately after spotting the contam the top half of the bag was still solid mycelium. And some contam I guess. So I thought since this bag is mostly mycelium, could it eventually overtake the contam? So instead of tossing it I simply separated it from the other bags and decided to observe it. Admittedly my reasons was only one part scientific curiosity and one part desperation not to waste my precious 0.5cc of spore solution. But guess what? The myc won. I wish I had taken pictures every day to show some kind of time lapse of the viewing window but it basically went like this:

Day 1: 30% green, 0% white. (Mycelium doesn't appear white at all after break & shake)
Day 10: 50% green, 50% white
Day 20: 100% white.

I still have the bag unopened fully colonized. I didn't include this bag in the S2B because it wasn't ready at the time and because I didn't want to risk contaminating my monotub. I might do something with it later.
I didn't break and shake any other bags, and left them to colonize on their own.
Pasteurizing Substrate
Almost 4 weeks after innoculation, the rice bags are almost 100% so I got ready to spawn to bulk. The guide already has an excellent method for pasteurizing coir that many people have had work for them. I did not use that method.
Why not? Well it requires a bucket (or cooler) with a lid. I had a bucket (without a lid), and I did not want to buy a bucket (or cooler) with lid that I was only going to use once and just take up space doing nothing afterwards. And because I had still seen people get contam in their coir using the bucket tek and I wanted to make really sure my coir was pasteurized.
So how was I going to pasteurize my coir? By using this oven pasteurization tek. Or something like it. Now at this point I know some people are giving their screen dirty looks right now so I'll just say: use shroomscout's or Bod's bucket tek. It's simple and its worked for many people. This write up is just to tell people what I did.
So, I put my 650g brick of coco coir in my bucket (without lid). Then I poured in 4.25 Litres of boiling water and mixed. I know Bod's bucket tek said to use 3.25L but I used a bit more. Then (when the coir was cool enough to touch) I separated them into 4 oven bags and wrapped them in foil. Like in this youtube video. Then put them in the oven at 70C (160F) for 2.5 hours. Then took them out of the oven and into my empty monotub with the lid closed, and left overnight.
Spawn to Bulk
My bags were fully colonized about 4 weeks after innoculation so I set aside a day (22/07) to S2B. Unfortunately due to unforeseen ciircumstances I couldn't S2B that day and didn't end up doing so until a week later on 30/07. After opening the bags it was clear that doing it on the 22nd would have been perfect. Most of the bags had already started pinning. I ended up harvesting 40g wet (5g dry) mushrooms from that 'pre-flush' even before I spawned to bulk. Although about 35g out of that 40g was from one sainsburys bag.
While I was doing this I weighed the spawn from each of the bags before I mixed them in with the coir so I could record them in my spreadsheet. Here they are:

Uncle Bens 1 - 236g
Uncle Bens 2 - 240g
Uncle Bens 3 - 248g
Uncle Bens 4 - 244g
Uncle Bens 5 - 241g
Uncle Bens 6 - 235g
Uncle Bens 7 - forgot to weigh
Uncle Bens 8 - forgot to weigh
Tilda 1 - 232g
Tilda 2 - 241g
Sainsburys - 207g. This one weighed less than the others because it had already produced a decent amount of mushrooms. Also as an aside the mycelium in this bag looked the healthiest by far. While the others had parts that were a little yellow or brown (myc piss not contam) this bag looked pure white and as I said had already produced mushrooms. In future (the very distant future) I think I'll use Sainsburys bags rather than Uncle Bens bags.

So I mixed up my spawn and substrate (and boy was it a lot) as described in the guide. In my clean monotub, surface levelled, about 10cm thick then closed the lid and I was all set.
Except, I made another mistake. I had read good things about bubble wrap tek, so I placed some bubble wrap on my substrate before I had closed the lid and let it colonize. And a few days later I was seeing excellent growth everywhere in my monotub, except in the middle of the tub directly underneath my bubble wrap. So I lifted up the lid to investigate and found the substrate underneath the bubble wrap looked extremely wet and was likely suffocated from lack of FAE. So I removed the bubble wrap and replaced it with a piece of foil I had folded at the edges to make a kind of 'tent' about 1 inch off the surface. And I poked some holes in the middle for more gas exchange.
I eventually discovered my mistake when I reread the bubble wrap tek. The bubble wrap was only meant to be used when fruiting conditions were introduced not right after spawning to bulk. D'oh! After the bubble wrap was removed the bulk substrate recovered and started colonizing in the middle. However the mycelium at the sides always looked stronger than the middle and fruit was far denser on the sides as well. I'll see if that changes for the second flush.
Fruiting
11 days after spawning to bulk I put the monotub into fruiting conditions. Here are all the pictures.
It may not be visible in these pictures but all of the mushrooms had 'fuzzy feet'. This is supposedly caused by lack of fresh air / too much humidity. Up until this point I had not been misting or fanning at all. The surface conditions looked wet enough and I had the lid turned upside down resting on little foam padded tape pieces, so there was a 1cm gap all around the edge of the box and the lid. Evidently this wasn't quite enough to provide FAE. Or my tub was too humid from hydrating my coir a little too much. After I noticed the fuzzy feet I started fanning several times a day and eventually removed the lid entirely during the day. This seemed to make a difference but the fuzzy feet never went away completely.
As for lighting, during the day I would take the monotub outside of the cupboard and leave it on my bed for about 8 to 10 hours a day. I have a 6500k daylight LED bulb in my room and a window which lets in some indirect sunlight. I have no idea how much effect, if any, this had but I didn't worry much about light and most of the mushrooms grew straight up.
Harvesting
I harvested the first flush eleven days after I put the monotub into fruiting conditions. Only half the mushrooms were ready to be picked but the largest mushrooms were dropping spores so I couldn't wait any longer.
This is probably the biggest downside (for me) of having larger monotub rather than several smaller tubs. Combined with the fact that I didn't really plan ahead for this stage like I did the others, this was a real pain in the butt.
I used Bod's Easy AF harvesting tek. I didn't have a hose attachment for my kitchen tap, so I simply filled a 1.5L jug I had with water from the sink then carefully poured the water down the side of the tub where the bulk substrate had shrunk away from the edges. What I forgot to take into account is that 45L / 1.5L is a lot of refilling and pouring.
But things got worse. What I realized about half way through, was that this monotub was starting to get heavy. Now I was filling it up next to the sink, but there isn't much space by my sink to actually harvest my mushrooms (not with a monotub my size), so I planned to work on a large table on the opposite end of the room. So I carried the monotub over to the table then started filling it again. Filling the jug at the sink. Walking several metres. Carefully pouring the water. Repeat x 15. Just filling my monotub with water took far longer than I would care to admit.
Then came the harvesting. It might not be clear from the pictures since they were taken from above but there were several dense clusters of fairly small mushrooms, which made harvesting fairly difficult. And the side pins also made things more difficult. It took me more than an hour to harvest everything.
Then came the emptying. The was no way I could carry a 40+kg tub at shoulder height several metres without sloshing water everywhere. And I wasn't going to make 30 trips back and forth to the sink, so I siphoned the water into a smaller 22L Ikea tub and made just three trips emptying them into the sink. So if your going to use a large monotub like me, save yourself alot of trouble and plan ahead. Use a hose attachment. Or just use a smaller tub.
Drying
I didn't want to invest in a dehydrator that I was only ever going to use for this grow and then wouldn't do anything but collect dust afterwards. So before I harvested my first flush (before I even spawned to bulk) I tested a few methods of dehydrating on some store bought mushrooms.
Out of the methods I tested, which included fan drying and oven drying, the best and most convenient for me was putting the mushrooms in a mesh bag and leaving them top of my pc case which has fans on the top.
I loaded up the first bag with about a third of the mushrooms, placed it on top of my pc case, did some video transcoding so they were being blasted with warm air from underneath, and they were cracker dry in 12 hours. The rest of the mushrooms were being fan dried on the foil in my first picture so they were half way dehydrated before they even started and took even less time. It might not be obvious from my previous pictures, but more than half of the mushrooms are actually quite small so they dried very quickly.
Here's what it looked like.
Yield
From 2600g (estimated) spawn and 5000g (approximately) of hydrated coco coir I got:

Pre Flush	40g (wet)	5g (dry)
1st Flush	2204g (wet)	151g (dry)

So even if 2204g seems like a lot, it turns they were about 93% water.
This also works out to be 14.1g dry mushrooms per rice bag. So far anyway.
Cost
It didn't occur to me to include this but I got asked about it so here it is.

12ml Spore Syringe	£17
12 x Rice Bags	£12
6 x 2.5cmx9.1m micropore tape (I bought extra but only ended up using half a roll)	£7
Isopropyl Alcohol 70%	Already had some on hand
Sainsbury's Antibacterial Multi-Surface Wipes x40 (Not my first choice but cleaning supplies were hard to come by)	£1
Spontex Disposable Gloves 40 Pack (not great - thin, kept tearing. Only got them because cleaning supplies were scarce)	£5
650g coco coir brick	£6
22L Ikea samla box (used as improvised SAB)	£3.50
45L Ikea samla box (monotub)	£5.50
1m PVC Syphon Tube 10mm Internal Diameter	£2
Phillips LED 12.5W 6500k light bulb (I didn't buy it specifically for this grow, but I did use it so I might as well include it)	£7
ThermoPro TP53 Hygrometer Digital Indoor Room Thermometer	£13
10 Gram x 30 Packs Silica Gel Sachets	£10
TOTAL SPENT:	£89

I spent a bit more than I expected. But if I started another grow, my total spend would be £6 for twelve Sainsbury's rice bags. All my other supplies are reusable or leftover from the first grow.
Conclusion
When I posted the picture of my first flush I was thought I'd get a few congratulatory comments and one or two questions. Instead, I got a lot more attention than I was expecting and tons of questions. As a result this post is way longer than I originally planned and written in more depth than any essay I ever wrote for school.
There isn't anything in here that's revolutionary. Most of what I wrote about are the mistakes I made or the answers to questions others have asked me. As long as you follow the official guide, even a first timer like me can get good results first time. I'll answer any other questions in the comments and post updates on my future flushes.
Summary
Innoculated 12 bags with 0.5cc each - 27/06
1st visible signs of mycelium - 01/07
Spawned to bulk 11 bags - 30/07
Fruiting Conditions - 10/08
Pinning - 15/08
1st Flush Harvest - 22/08
Total time from innoculation to harvest - 8 weeks. Should have been 7 but I delayed S2B by one week.

Old Trip Report - May-June 2016 - 24 days

PART 1
So I was going through old emails and pictures and found detailed writeups that I sent a friend of mine during our 2016 Japan trip. My friend had never been to Japan and knew nothing about it, so I'll edit/ condense them for clarity, as I got into some pretty basic explanations that I'm sure a lot of you have figured out already.
** don't think too hard about the dates/timeline, as I condensed and sometimes didn't have time to tell Friend about things until a few days later, so the emails backtrack to previous days a few times -*\*
We were planning on going again this year or next year with our toddler, but alas, pandemic. COVID-19 having slowed down content on this subreddit, I figured some people would still find this a fun read.
We did a 4 person trip (myself, my husband (B), my sister (S) and her boyfriend (K)) for 24 days, sharing accommodations and fair bit of food/transport costs, depending on what we were doing. We ended up realizing that increasing convenience or comfort generally didn't cost a lot more than the cheapest options, so we often paid an extra $5-8/ night to get a business hotel instead of a hostel. We also opted for the convenience of the JR pass (which paid off for us) and the Jetfoil ferry.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's our budget in CAD - Rough planned (actual): pp = per person
Planned budget:
Plane ticket for [SISTER] & [SISTER's BF]- $800- 1000pp (Actual cost: $1100cad pp for YVR-PVG-NRT round trip)
Plane tickets for husband and I: 150K Alaska miles +$220cad (YVR-NRT direct)
Tokyo accommodations - 180 pp ($189 - $121 pp at Hotel Horidome Villa, 2 rooms x 3 days, then $68 pp at an airbnb near Oku Station x3)
Kyoto Accommodations - 123 pp ($367pp for 13 days at an japanese townhouse airbnb near Sanjo Station)
Food - 400 pp (I didn't end up tracking what we ate, but it was closer to $500 as we ate so many snacks and tried a lot of restaurants).
21 day JR Rail pass - 570 pp ($692 pp with taxes - the cost went up between us planning the trip and actual purchase, several months later)
Attractions - 200 pp ($10 per attraction/15 days of attractions) ($250-ish - didn't track this super closely).
Hiroshima Accomodations - no estimate ( 32.84 pp - I forget which hotel, but in honesty, it was a pretty forgettable hotel that smelled like cigarettes even though we had picked "non-smoking" and had a very squeaky bed)
Kagoshima Accomodations - no estimate ($34 pp - APA Hotel Kagoshima Chuo-Ekimae)
Jetfoil Ferry from Kagoshima - Yakushima Roundtrip - ($202pp - free booking through Yes Yakushima)
Yakushima accommodations - 85 pp (330 total) ($97 pp for 3 nights at Minshuku Iwakawa)
Yakushima Island tour - 100pp ($136 pp )
Yakushima Anbo River kayaking - 100 pp ($86 pp )
Yakushima bike rentals - 15pp (didn't end up renting bikes)
Kyoto daily transit - 70 pp ($5/day for approx 12 days) (ended up renting bikes for $30 pp + 20 deposit (which they returned to us - we used the bus twice, the rest of the time was us biking around or using our JR passes to do day trips)
Kinosaki Onsen ($86 pp for 1 night in the cheapest "nice" Ryokan we could find, Sinonomesou)
Other (souvenirs, essentials, LH's) - 300pp (ha... my sister managed about $400, I was $600, as I ended up getting a tattoo - the guys didn't buy much.)
Tokyo Skyliner + Keisei tickets: $44 pp
Total per person minus plane tickets = $3145
Total for S & K (including plane ticket) - $ 4200ish CAD ea
$3145 divided by 24 is approx $131 per day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reminder:
B = Husband
S = Sister
K = Sister's boyfriend.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DAY 1 (Tokyo)
(No email report, as I was too tired).
Flew into Narita, negotiated our way to the skyliner without Tooooo much difficulty, and met up with my sister and her BF at Hotel Horidome Villa. Pretty comfy little business hotel, and we had two adjacent rooms. We were a bit tall for the beds (B is 5'11" and K is 6'1"), but it wasn't the end of the world. My husband could almost span the room with his arms. Used the tokyo subway tickets that came included with our Keisei Skyliner tickets to get around. First experience of Japanese 7/11 and ended up bringing an entire bag full of snacks back to our hotel room to try, which we ate while watching incomprehensible Japanese TV, then fell asleep
Day 2 (Tokyo) - first email
We walked around for nearly 8 hours and holy crap, I am looking forward to soaking in the tub in our room. Despite the bathroom being so tiny, the tub is actually big enough to accommodate my thighs, Which is more than can be said for the one back home! ( I'm not a skinny person).
Due to jet lag, we fell asleep around 8pm last night and I woke up at 4 am. B always sleeps longer than I do, so I basically read for 2 hours, waiting for him to wake up.
Then we went to the gym. We have an anytime membership, and they weren't kidding. You literally can use it anywhere in the world. There's an Anytime fitness about 6 blocks from our hotel. We walk in, and about 4 old Japanese men who were on the machines just stop and STARE at us as we walked past them.
They try to be surreptitious about it, but it's a constant thing. I make a point of catching their eyes, and they quickly look away, then try to sneak another look, and then get embarrassed because I'm still watching them with raised eyebrows. Me and K got the worst of it later in the day, because I was wearing a red dress and K has visible tattoos.
The red dress thing was a surprise, because I had no idea that Japanese people really only wear like 5 colours when out in public here in Tokyo - black, navy, white, pale blue or beige. The school uniforms tend to be one of these colours and most men wear black or navy business suits of varying formality.
Literally, every person we saw who was wearing a different colour turned out to not be Japanese - either we ended up hearing them speak a different language, or they were obviously tourists. I knew I was already going to stand out, having red hair, but this was a bit ridiculous.
First thing in the morning, we went out to a breakfast place that served American food ("Bubby's"). Despite being advertised as a family restaurant, the mug S drank coffee out of had a caption of "F%*KING FRESH" on it. It took us quite awhile to find it and after that, we decided that 7/11 breakfasts were the way to go, both convenience and cost wise.
K also had a hilarious mishap in the morning while snapchatting with his mom, which I will copy-paste his own words:
Note to self: Be careful of the angles when snapchatting pictures of yourself in a Japanese robe with a beer. A few degrees can change a photo from G to 18A. ‪#‎justwantedacoolangle‬ ‪#‎sorrymom‬
After breakfast, we went down to Shibuya, which is where the giant 6 way cross walk is that you often see in pictures of Tokyo. Since we had been up so ridiculously early, we had missed most of the morning crowds up until this point. But once we hit Shibuya, rush hour was in full swing. People were 7-9 rows deep on the metro platforms and it was sea of dudes in business suits. People didn't quite have to be pushed onto the trains by white gloved attendants, but it was a close thing.
Gaijin perimeter was in full effect though, and people avoided standing near us a lot of the time. We wandered around Shibuya for about an hour, venturing off the main shopping street into the twisty back alleyways. At one point, we found about 12 love hotels in three blocks.
We also found what I like to call "The saddest playground in Tokyo", featuring PTSD Panda and Mr. Tiger.
After the huge crowds in Shibuya, I was aching for some quiet, so we headed to the Imperial Palace Gardens. However, we made a wrong turn, and went half way around the grounds in the wrong direction, so we didn't get to see the public gardens (by the time we realized our mistake, we had been walking for 25 mins and were at the opposite end of the compound)
It wasn't a loss though, because the exterior of the palace grounds is still really cool. I only got a couple pictures of the walls and guard towers, but it was eerie how perfectly manicured all the plants and grass were. We wouldn't put it past the Japanese Imperial household to clip the grass by hand, you know? It had that kind of feel to it. We don't know if it was the case, but everything was utterly perfect looking.
After the Imperial gardens, we came back to our hotel room and I passed out for about two hours - it was only like 3 pm, but we'd been walking around since 8am, plus I had done a run, so my feet were killing me.
After my (utterly delicious and much needed) nap, we went to the Tokyo Skytree. We got there right at sunset and it was gorgeous. It was really crazy to see how far the city extended - literaly, buildings as far as the eye could see (it was an overcast day, so the mountains that surround Tokyo were not visible.)
One thing that surprised me about Tokyo is it's not as dense as I thought. it would be. Everything is compact and small, but it's rare for a building to be over 12 stories. 6-8 stories was more likely, except for some of the government buildings and just right around the main metro stations. It was more just endless amounts of urban sprawl.
I've had Tokyo described to me as a "dirty great city" and that seems to be the truth - it's just a huge city that goes on for miles and miles. But because the metro system here is so extensive, you can cross it in like 40 mins, no problem. The metro system is super easy to get around - I barely remember any of my Japanese lessons, but didn't really need them.
However, I did make one embarrassing flub - I mixed up the words for "this is" and "Where is" - Kore is this is and doko is "where is" .
So I confused several station attendants when asking for directions.
Imagine a foreigner marching up to you and saying "This is the ginza line!" instead of "Where is the ginza line?" I asked three station attendants and a police officer this before I figured out my mistake and they all gave me looks like I was crazy.
DAY 3 + 4 (Tokyo + Kyoto)
OK, I'm awake now (slept 11 hours, jesus christ). I have walked more in the last three days than I have walked in months, good lord.
I forgot to tell you about a funny part of the Tokyo Skytree - they have a fucking window cleaner musical. They have a performance of window cleaners projected onto the windows, (the actors, thankfully, are NOT outside the 900 ft tower) where they sing and clean the windows in a synchronized fashion, then all march onto the floor with a brass band. I wish I was joking. I couldn't understand a word of it though, so I have no idea what they were singing about exactly.
After that we went downstairs and explored the mall underneath the skytree for a few hours - it was actually a lot of fun and we found a store completely devoted to cheese. Best. cheesecake. I've.ever.had.
As for yesterday, we got up and and took the Metro out to Shinjuku, where our friend's hotel was. (We were meeting up with some friends from China)
Remember how for Day 2, I said that we hadn't quite gotten to the point where white gloved station attendants were pushing people onto trains? Well, I had my first experience with it yesterday. The train was packed, we squeezed on, and about ten people got on behind us.
There was an awkward pause as you realize the doors weren't going to close unless something was done. I was already half buried under B's armpit, with my opposite arm and purse buried between two tall (for Japanese) business men, with another dude glued to my back.
Then the shove came and I was knocked into the two business guys. I wasn't even holding onto anything. The crush of people held me upright for about five stops, which was all kinds of no fun, because you can guess at the sort of momentum that the train drivers have to deal with when braking and accelerating with a packed train like that. Everyone got pushed around and elbows in places that you don't want elbows as the train stopped and started.
When we got to Shinjuku, it was pretty different from where our hotel was (we're in Nihonbashi). Lots of wide avenues and modern development. The suited Japanese businessmen were still everywhere. Our friends were staying in the Shinjuku Washington, and they reported that their hotel room (despite being much newer) was no bigger than ours.
We wandered around Shinjuku looking for breakfast, and our friends, both being Chinese, and thus indistinguishable from the Japanese, were shocked at our Gaijin Perimeter abilities. The crowds parted in front of B like sailboats dodging out of the way of a tanker, and giving him the same sort of wide berth, to the point where some people were stepping out onto the street.
We found a ramen place called Ichiran which had decent ratings. It was also very much the sort of place that drunk people would stumble into during their walk of shame. Everything was designed so that you could have minimal interaction with other human beings.
You ordered your ramen from a ticket machine, and then there was four bar style rows, each with a little cubby that shut you off from your neighbour (though the cubby walls could be folded away).
You pushed the ticket through a small bamboo screen and you were handed back a preference sheet that you ticked off - how spicy, how rich, what type of noodles, what veggies, and you returned it through the screen. Minutes later, a bowl of ramen ordered to your preferences would be pushed through the screen. You could literally accomplish all of this without saying a single word and the server was never visible - At most, you saw their hands through the screen. Perfect for anyone with social anxiety.
After that, we headed out on the JR lines to Tokyo DisneySea. You heard that right, DisneySea, not Disneyland. They are adjacent park, but the major difference is that DisneySea serves booze. Not that we had any (booze was not immune to Disney prices).
On a purely artsy level, DisneySea was awesome - everything was gorgeously and meticulously decorated. While walking through "King Triton's Castle"(as opposed to the Sleeping Beauty's castle that you'd find in the regular disney parks), we noticed that every single tile in every single mosaic was in fact engraved with pictures of Ariel, Flounder and Prince Eric. Not the same picture either - different poses and positions.
There was a huge Steampunk flavour to the park too. Everything was pretty to look at and the amount of detail was insane.
It was crowded though and the rides were ok. We only went on about 6 of them, but they were fun. Again, more just from the artsy side of it. I would say it was worth what we paid, but only just barely. I will say this though, when set free from the uniform requirements of black, navy and beige "NormCore" colours (according to my sister, that's the name that's used for that type of fashion?), Japanese people seem to have terrible taste in clothing. Lots of mixed neons and plaid.
I also got an extremely awkward sunburn, because I under-estimated how far the neckline of my dress went down and didn't put on sunscreen that far down. :/ It itches. The sun here does not play around, we had to buy 50SPF+++ sunscreen (which is everywhere, thank goodness)
We got home and passed out super quick last night. This morning, we woke up early and packed up our room, because we were heading to Kyoto today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SO, EIGHT HOURS LATER, WE ARE NOW IN KYOTO.
Kyoto is crazy different from Tokyo.
Big difference? The Japanese business-suited business man has completely disappeared. Now there's people walking around in actual kimonos (We saw no kimonos in Tokyo. none.) Oh, and people are wearing colours. Actual colours.
We booked out of our hotel around 10am and dragged our suitcases over to Tokyo station, which was around 20 minutes away on foot. Not bad at all, but it was a hot day. Also, the bank of Japan headquarters looks like a fortress and there is one office building just before the station that is entirely covered in roses - we're talking a 6 storey building. Completely covered in roses. It was pretty cool.
Tokyo station is just nuts. There are 24 platforms, both local and shinkansen trains. It is a white tiled rabbit warren. B and K's gaijin perimeter was invaluable when we were rushing through the crowds to catch our train.
There was also a mall beneath the station, and much of it was devoted to different stores that featured a particular character. Japan has a tendency to make a cutesy character mascot for everything. Literally everything.
Every prefecture, every city, has a character mascot. Most of the big companies have them. Some of them, like Domo-kun have gotten extremely popular. Others, like Snoopy, have been taken, bastardized, and then grown into something that bypasses all of their origins. There were, of course, stores dedicated to these two guys, and several others as well. My favourite was the Studio Ghibli store (obviously).
There was alot of specialized food places, of varying quality, including a standing sushi bar.
The shinkansen train was really new experience for me. I've been on really fast trains before - I've been on the TGV trains in France, but I was really too young to remember much about it. However, Shinkansen bullet trains are pretty ridiculous, in a very cool way.
First, they're extremely long - about 16 cars. Of course, our reserved seats were in the very last car, so we had to hike down the platforms with our bags (about 200 m and it was very very crowded).
They're arranged pretty much like an airplane, with overhead and under seat storage and similar seats and once you actually get going, you don't really process how fast you're going, unless the train passes really close to something. Most of the scenery passes much like it would if you were in a car. But when something passed by at less than 5 m, it was literally so blurred that you could not distinguish what it was. Several trains passed us on the adjacent track and you could not even distinguish the windows.
The Japanese countryside is really neat - Everything is really dense, and then there's wild countryside. They don't really do "suburbia" in the sense that north america does. There was very clear demarcations between human habitation, farmland and wilderness, and you didn't see much overlap. The mountains here are gorgeous, but wayyyy smaller than the ones back home. They seem gentler too, but it's hard to say, because I don't know what Japanese hiking habits are.
We went by mount Fuji too :))
Upon reaching Kyoto, it was much hotter and much more casual. As I mentioned earlier, the business suits have disappeared and everything is older and feels more organic, so to speak.
The townhouse were are staying in is extremely old and has tatami flooring, and we're sleeping on futons as well. There's a supermarket 1 block away and we had a lot of fun attempting to decipher what the hell different foods were. Sometimes my ability to read some Kanji helped, but most of it is a mystery, because Japan tends to favour cutesy drawings over pictures of products on their packaging.
Also, vegetables and fruit are very very photogenic here. Apparently, Japanese people are willing to pay a lot of money to eat "perfect" looking foods. The carrots we bought were fat, bright orange and perfectly shaped. That was the only option. Same goes for every other veggie we could find.
We also had a super awkward moment when we discovered that Japanese supermarkets do not give you bags. B and I bought a basket worth of food, then discovered that we had no way to carry it home easily.
So we opted for the most ridiculous route, and carried it all back to the apartment balanced in our arms. People were openly smirking at us, but oh well. How were we supposed to know? :P
Super tired today, so we're having a night in. S, K and B have been drinking the super cheap alcohol that you can buy in the supermarket. We'll be going to bed soon, because we're boring like that .

Day 5 (Kyoto)
We rented bikes for commuting around Kyoto. Kyoto is full of contradictions. The locals bike everywhere it seems, except on the actual designated bike lanes. But you would not believe the glares we get when we ring our little bike bells to get wandering Japanese Obasans (old women) out of our way, because they're in the middle of the bike path. There's also signs everywhere that tell you where not to park your bikes - only to have half a dozen bikes parked in front of them.
We rode up and down both sides of the Kamo river, which is in the middle of Kyoto - and there were a bunch of hawks and cranes up and down the river. The hawks were fighting quite low to the ground and nearly buzzed B at one point. Later on, we saw them steal a sandwich out of a girl's hand. She burst into tears and I don't blame her - I worked with birds and that still looked terrifying.
I should also note that it's fucking hot out. The airbnb we are renting has 2 bedrooms but only one of the bedrooms has A/C. So all four of us are crammed into one room on futons because the other room is enough to make anyone melt. We've been using the other room as a "dressing room" and keeping all our bags in there.
Day 6 (Kyoto)
So I have a massive case of bike butt right now.
As in, I've been on a bike for more than 20 hours in the last three days, and I have a seat shaped bruise on my ass. I wish I was joking.
Still by far the best way to get around Kyoto (and the cheapest - we only paid about $45 for a two week rental) but jeez, you pay for it in other ways. :P I'm going to be sitting funny for a few days!
Today was a lot of fun - we went out to Arashiyama (Biked to Nijo JR station from our airbnb - about 22 mins, then used JR pass), which is a district on the far side of Kyoto from where we are staying (we're in Gion, which is the famous geisha district - did you ever hear of the book/movie Memoirs of a Geisha? That's where it's set). Arashiyama is a gorgeous area, with steep mountains and these really beautiful gorges. It started raining like crazy, so we didn't go on the scenic train like we had been planning to, but we visited the Monkey park, which was a lot of fun.
Japan only has one species of monkey - the Japanese Macaque. They're not very big - they'd be about knee height on you, but they have red faces and red butts. They're the ones you see in pictures sitting in the hot springs! The ones at this particular park are a part of a study group and there's about 130 of them. The monkey park is also a 20 minute hike up a mountain, so it has a gorgeous view of the entirety of Kyoto - from the opposite perspective than the one we had at Kiyomizu dera (which I will tell you about in a bit).
We hiked up to the top of the mountain, the monkeys were mostly just laying around and chilling out. Some were grooming each other, and a lot of the younger ones were running around playing. They're right underfoot! You weren't allowed to touch them or crouch down to look at them (it's a dominance thing apparently) but they were super chill around humans and only avoided direct contact.
One of the cool things you could do up here was feed them! Y100 yen got you a bag of apples or nuts and you could feed them at a designated feeding station, where they'll take the food right out of your hand.
They would crowd around and I got really lucky, because the macaque that came up to me to take the apples was a mother with a very young baby - he was so tiny, about 7 inches long, and was clinging to her belly and nursing as she ate the apples. Completely adorable. I also got pictures of her letting him wander around and explore later.
We came down from the monkey park and mostly just browsed the tourist shops, because the weather was so bad and sat in the the covered foot bath at one end of the high street.
~~
Kiyomizu dera is about 35 minutes south of our airbnb by bike, and it was a pretty cool ride until the very end - we managed about a quarter of the hill on our bikes, then had to walk up the rest of the way. The temple up is a narrow street lined with shops and there's tour buses everywhere, so walking ended up being safer. We really enjoyed wandering around the temple - it was crowded, but not claustrophobic and the view over Kyoto was gorgeous. There's tons of little side paths and little grottos that are sort of lurking around the main temple and pagoda, so you can spend quite a while just wandering. We checked out the shops on the way back down the hill and it was super nice.

(Kyoto)
We got up super early and went to the Aoi Matsuri festival (15 minutes bike ride from our airbnb). I'm not entirely sure on the origins for this one (it's one of the oldest ongoing "festivals" in Japan - about 1100 years) but it's very sombre. It's a processional from the Kyoto Imperial palace up to a temple about three kilometres upriver, and apparently it was originally done to appease the gods after a series of disasters at that point. All the costumes are modeled after the Heian era (about 900 years ago) and everyone carries hollyhock branches and the processional attendants carry an unmarried woman who was chosen as "Saio Dai" through out the procession, basically a priestess who leads the appeasement rituals.
Generally, the Saio Dai has to wear 12 layers of robes. It was about 27 C yesterday. I'm surprised she didn't melt. It was interesting to watch from an anthropological standpoint (everyone was wearing shoes made of reeds) but there was nothing to really engross the casual observer and we couldn't understand the chanting or the loudspeaker announcements at all. We left after about 40 minutes, as there was precious little shade.
The funniest thing we saw was that someone in a security guard uniform was basically in charge of making sure the processional's horses peed into a garbage bag instead of onto the parade route.
Afterwards, we biked around several of the temples just north of our apartment ( a lot of them are world heritage sites, and very beautiful, but Kyoto is very much a place where there is a temple on every block, so you have to be picky about the ones you go to). They were all beautiful and serene, but there weren't many differences between them.
After that, we biked down to Kyoto Station to get some ramen from the ramen alley (35 min bike ride straight down the river pathway, then across). In the station, up on the 10th floor, there is a section with 12 little ramen shops, each with a different style of ramen. S and K went to a ramen place elsewhere in Kyoto and ended up getting ramen that was wayyy to spicy for them, so they were in a lot of, ah, discomfort this morning. We've been taking it easy the last few days, as we haven't been getting much sleep. The person we're renting an apartment from didn't really give us good futons, so we've been pretty much laying on the hard tatami. Thankfully, the problem was sorted today and I hope tonight we can get a good sleep!

(Kyoto)
So, since I've always wanted to try on a kimono, but lacked the funds to get one of my own (they cost about $5000 minimum, due to the amount of embroidery they often have), we went to a kimono studio.
Most of the people walking around Kyoto are wearing yukata instead of kimono. Most good yukata will still set you back about $200 though, (but we ended up getting nice cotton ones from a cool 2nd hand shop in downtown Kyoto - we still use them as our summer bath robes).
So I was looking for places to rent them from (there's plenty) but I also discovered a place that will dress one up in a full kimono, as well as put on all the traditional geisha makeup. My sister wanted to try this too, so off we went the day before yesterday. It's a little three story studio several blocks south of where we were staying, that called itself the "Maiko Experience". Despite the good reviews, I thought it might be touristy, but the clientele was about 50% Japanese as well. Several older Japanese ladies were in the make up and dressing rooms with us.
Turns out that being belted into a proper kimono is NOT something you can do yourself. I had some vague ideas that you needed help to do it properly, but it's often a two or three person job.
We were put into makeup first. Traditional Maiko make up is where they paint your skin and neck completely white (with the exception of a small area at the back of your neck, because apparently it's erotic to have a small bit of skin showing through layers of white paint?) The white makeup feels pretty much like paint but they basically buff you non stop with a powder puff to get it to smooth out and cover everything, including the entirety of our lips.
The eye makeup wasn't too different from what some people would do - red/pink shading around the outer eyes and black kohl liner, which shows up quite dramatically against the white face paint. What was weird to me is that she spent several minutes painting my eyebrows red, then overlaying it with black kohl.
The effect was very interesting though, and one I saw it properly after she was finished, I figured out what she was going for. It makes for a far deeper and more subtle look than just putting black would have done. Just black would have made me look like I had huge black caterpillar eyebrows. Adding the red blended the whole thing with the eye makeup and added a lot of depth. Which is a weird comment to make about eyebrows.
The lips were the most annoying part. If you've ever seen pictures of traditional geisha makeup, you'll notice that they often only paint one of their lips fully (usually the bottom) and only a little line or a half done on the upper. This is because if you actually painted your entire lips with a white face, you'd end up looking like a ridiculous clown.
I don't have Resting Bitch Face or anything, but my default expression is definitely not a close-lipped smile, which is what the make up artist required to apply the lip paint. I had trouble keeping a close lipped smile while concentrating on keeping everything else still and, in her very meek Japanese way, I could tell she was annoyed with me, because every time I concentrated on keeping still, my mouth would return to a neutral position. Either way, it came out crooked and it caused a flurry among the hairdressers later when they noticed it and swooped in to fix it.
They don't torture you by doing your hair in the geisha hairstyles (which were usually expected to last for days), so they have a half wig that they comb your hair over and paint black.
After that, you pick what kimono you want to wear (I went with pink, my sister chose blue), and you get strapped into them.
I'm not even joking, it's like getting trussed up into a corset. There's about three layers of underwear, and while my sister had no problems (her shape being more similar to the typical Japanese woman), I could tell my boobs were giving the dressers trouble. Lots of untying and rearranging of padding, before being tugged tight again. Apparently they try to make you cylindrical shaped before they even put the kimono on. No buttons or anything - everything is held in place by cotton cords. Still pretty merciless on the breathing though.
After satisfying themselves with the undergarments (and they are not sexy undergarments ) we moved onto the kimono.
Kimonos come in one standard length, and the dresser folds them up to match your height. So this caused another problem, because all the padding they had put underneath to even me out had to be rearranged so that I didn't look pregnant when they folded up the kimono layers . By the end of it, you are trussed up so tightly that you are forced to have good posture and can't really even bend at the waist too good - all bending over is done with the knees.
However, that's half the pleasure of wearing corsets anyways (your back is forced to be straight, which alleviates a lot of aches) so it wasn't that bad.
We were taken for a couple studio pictures, then given ten minutes to take our ownpictures. B noted that he barely recognized us through the make up and we took a couple funny shots (as funny as you can get with your movement restricted like that, while wearing okobo sandals (which you should google). They're as hard to balance on as they look.
After washing off all the make up (also a lengthy process), we had a pretty quiet day in, as we have been going full speed for the last several days.
Yesterday, we went down to Osaka. We were late starting out, so we didn't get to do as much as we wanted, but we took the shinkansen down and went to the Kaiyukan Aquarium, which was extremely impressive. It's a 7 story structure, and all the tanks are layers so that as you walk down through the aquarium, you re-encounter the same tanks, but at different depths.
There's also a massive, 9 m x 34 m x 40m "Pacific Ocean tank" that takes up the majority of the middle of the building. It's about 4 storeys high and actually contains a whale shark, the only one in captivity. Half of the walkways have windows that open out onto this tank, so you could look at it from different perspectives. We also got to watch several feedings, though as per usual, everything is in Japanese, so we have no idea what the trainers are actually saying.
After the Aquarium, there's a giant ferris wheel thing that's 112m tall next to it, so we went on that, which gave us a pretty cool view of the city. Osaka is much denser than Tokyo, with taller buildings, but spread over less of an area. It had way more of a "crowded dirty city" vibe too. We might go back to check out Osaka castle.
(Kinosaki Onsen) (days 9-10?)
Good lord, did I ever get massaged into submission. And not even by anything alive. Our hotel room in Kinosaki had a rather frightening but extremely effective massage chair. As it, it was so effective that you had to make sure the massaging bits didn't push you right out of the chair before it was finished turning you into mashed potatoes. It was an impulsive trip - we didn't even know Kinosaki onsen existed until we were in Kyoto a few days, and decided to spend an overnight here - we left our suitcases at our airbnb in kyoto and just took a small bag each with toiletries and a change of clothes. It was worth keeping the Kyoto airbnb, because it meant we didn't have to haul heavy bags around when we were exploring.
Also, Kinosaki is probably the my favourite spot of our vacation so far. Not only did we have amazingly comfortable beds.... there was seven different onsens (hot spring baths) within walking distance of our hotel.
I know you're a loving connoseur of hot water, so this place would be heaven for you. Basically, this was a town devoted to multitude of ways that you can douse yourself in hot water.
Do you want it hot enough to turn you into a tomato? Check. Whirlpool jets? check. Outdoor hot pools set under a tumbling waterfall? Check. Stone benches to sit on with hot water running down the backs? check. Outdoor hot pools in rock lined grottos? Check. Steam rooms? Check Free and unlimited access to seven onsens that offer these diversions? check. (generally, your onsen fees are included in your hotel cost).
Plus, the hotels provide you with yukata (light kimono) to wear while wandering around the village, and you can move freely between onsen while they're open. It's extremely comfortable and makes everyone look colourful.
We had a lot of fun with it, and like all Japanese bathhouses, nudity is a given. Other than that, my sister and I got stared at a lot there (sort of like how it was in Tokyo - lots of side eye and awkward looking away when I caught their eye). The best example was when they started laughing at something I did by accident.
A bit of background - when you go into the bathing area in the onsen, you're only allowed to bring one teeny towel to "cool" yourself with. You're also not supposed to leave it laying around, so most people just fold it up....and set it on top of their heads. There's variations of course, but generally, it's just sitting there.
Not being used to this, I would usually forget it was there and drop it in the water whenever I tilted my head. After this happening three times, I've finally managed to keep the awareness of keeeping my head level down to a science. Then I started sneezing randomly while sitting on the side of the bath. violent huge AHHHCHOOOS. Shit, there goes my towel! I snatch for it, fumble, and manage to catch it just before it hits the water. All of the ladies in the tub burst out laughing. They're not laughing at me maliciously (it did look pretty funny) .... but I was in a corner, not really in the middle of anything. They were all watching anyways!
K and B had a very different experience - basically any tub they sat in, all the japanese guys got up and moved to the other tub.

See part 2 below

A week in your favorite firearm dealer's not-so erotic life *or* FC's tale of two grandmas! 9/18/2020

Friday 9/11/2020 to Friday 9/18/2020
I won't do the play by play. It's more fun to just amalgamate the highlight reel of the week.
Emails!
Subject: Sig P226
Message: Will trade for RAS-47?
FC: Sure. What do you propose?
I have a century arms RAS47 that has 30 total rounds through it. Magpul furnishing blk on blk.
FC: Right, you told me that earlier. Shipped or picked up? What value do you put on your trade?
Meet in person I’m in Lafayette. Value 900-1000.
FC: Okay, so I'm supposed to give you asking price for what reason? I have to resell that gun, so I'm supposed to buy it from you for $900 and sell it again for $800?
I was looking for a straight trade so you’d only have to sell it for what your asking for the Sig, or more if you're good at your job. AK's are definitely a hotter demand item right now. I’d prefer if you could text me (number)
(Editors note: FC does not text. Only drug dealers do business via text message.)
FC: Let me get this right. You want a straight trade so I only have to sell it for what I'm asking for the Sig. I have to do the work of selling two guns so I can make the same money?
You can sell an AK for more then the Sig in the current market. I’m just stating how easy it is for you to break even worse case scenario.
FC: There's a lot of gun guys in the breaking even business. I'm not one of them. Plus, if it's so easy to sell an AK, why don't you sell it and bring me cash?
It’s a trade so your only selling one anyways. Plus all will sell a lot faster... I’m not a dealer I don’t have people walking in looking for guns. Whatever easy sale and flip for ya but your loss bud
FC: Selling an Sig 9mm plus selling an AK is two guns. You must have gotten that common core math. I'll tell you what. You think it will sell fast? Bring it over here and leave it with me. I'll tag it and put it out at $1200 and when it sells, I'll have a 226 ready for you.
(No response)
Subject: Sig P220 on Gunbroker
Message: your ad says $1200 with CCL. arkansas ccl is reciprical with louisiana will you honor that?
FC: Picking up in person? No. Reciprocal for carry not for anything else like NICS exemption.
are you a federal firearms dealer ?
FC: No I am not.
(Editors note: I'm a manufacturer)
if i can l can legally hold own and carry any firearm concealed on my body or in my vehicle , then the rest is just cash exchange between to citizens , i can legally have own and carry the p938 , there is nothing not legal , we cN do a orivate bill of sale photograph my dl and ccl incase soneonencommits a crime , i can have a truck full of guns all legal, i just have to do the background check again to be able to pick up at an ffl , nit requred to register or anything like that
(Editors note: I delete the message)
Subject: Glock 17 Gen 5 MOS $775
Message: Is that price for real?
FC: No, that's wrong. I'll fix it right now.
(I change it to $875 on the website)
LOL o shit he raised it another $100, sorry man that petty ass shit doesn’t bother me. Honestly it just makes u look like a fucking joke. You’re the problem with dealers, it’s hard to find glocks this month so let’s jack the price up $300 and try to rob someone that doesn’t know shit about guns. Adam Kennedy FF/PM (name of his fire department and department phone number, sent from his department email)
(I google his name and email. He's got a low serial number HK Mark 23 for sale for top dollar.)
FC: I sold 10 at the gun shows for top dollar, this is my last one. Nobody's getting stock. If you want a $625-650 gun, I've got plenty of those but Glocks are selling for top dollar and then some right now. For instance, if you had a low serial number Mark 23 with everything that nobody could get - wouldn't you want top dollar for it too?
I had a mk23 preban with original woodland operators bag, and original Wilcox attachments (well all but the IR) and I put it on the forums. I let people out bid themselves not post it for an absurd amount/hundreds above MSRP just because they are hard to find. The point is I’ve been in guns since around 2012, met some really genuine people and what sets that site apart is people seem to have a mutual respect for each other. I understand that you have a business and have to make a profit but if you can’t separate the two and not price gouge the absolute fuck out of very common items just because you feel you can. Then maybe that site isn’t the best place for you, 95% of the people on that site are individuals and when a business comes along and does that it’s a slap in the face.
FC: So, you accept that you want top dollar because your merchandise is hard to find and are willing to accept the fact that the harder something is to find - the more people are willing to pay for it. You do it, and it's okay. I do it and I'm trying to rob someone? That's called moving the goalposts where I come from. Like it or don't like it, check gunbroker and all the other dealers - everyone's getting top dollar. I just did a show last week where I was $975 on Gen 5 19's, $775 on 43X's and $700+ on all gen 3 guns. The dealer across the aisle from me had Gen 5 34's at $1000. We're in business to make money, and people are willing to pay these prices because they're so hard to find.
How do I accept that?? When I sold the mk23 I posted it for a set very fair price, people offered me more because they wanted it. And top dollar would be MSRP or close to, top dollar is NOT hundreds above MSRP. Let me ask you this, does Glock charge you more (the dealer) because they are selling a shit load of them and they are “hard to find??” Does what you pay for glocks as a FFL change as drastically as the prices you are charging based off the market?
FC: You wanted, and got as much money for your rare hard to find product as you could? That's called getting top dollar! The new ford bronco is going to sell for above MSRP. For THOUSANDS more. are you going to call Ford and complain about that? Of course not.H Hundreds above MSRP is what guns are selling for right now. If you had some for sale, are you telling me you'd sell them for hundreds less than you could? I have not gotten a wholesale gun in stock in months, I have been buying guns at retail to resell. Glock does not set prices and distributors have nothing to sell me - so your question is entirely ridiculous. Do you remember the last time around 7 or 8 years ago when Colt 6920's were $2500 and SCAR 17's were $5000? That was nowhere near MSRP and I didn't hear anyone complaining. Since you don't seem to like it at all, I suggest you leave public sector employment and try to run a business and pay the bills with no product coming in wholesale.
(Editors note: FC used to be a public servant. FC used to work in the fire department. FC knows that you can get in deep shit for sending profanity laced emails on city email account with email signature. I forward the email to his department chief with a polite message tactfully reminding him that all emails sent to a city email are preserved as public records.)
Subject: Noveske lower
Message: Would you be willing to do a one for one trade? I have a NIB Anderson lower. I’m specifically looking for one of a few specific brands of lower and Noveske happens to be one.
FC: So I'm supposed to trade you even up and sell an anderson for more money? BTW. CTD got lowers back in this morning. They're andersons and they want $199 for them but I don't think I'm going to be able to get that price.
(No response)
Phone calls!
A: Guy wants a folding bracestock. I ask him if he wants a brace or a stock. He does not know the difference. I ask him if he's building an SBR. He says he's building an SBR, specifically an SBA3. I die a little inside.
B: Guy calls looking for 100 rds of 38 special for his colt python. Drives up in his tesla and hands me a ritz calrton titanium black card. $75/100 okay? No problem. He asks if I have any more at that price. I tell him as much as he wants.
C: Endless calls for 9mm and 380 ammo.
D: Guy calls me asking for a Glock 43X. He comes in and looks. I tell him $775 as he's holding an Amex. I say I'll do better for cash. $775 out the door. He says deal. Comes back the next week with $575 cash and I look at him funny. I paid $550 for the gun retail but he owns the Chickfila 20 miles up the road and gives me a stack of be our guest chicken sandwich coupons. I begrudgingly accept.
E: Lady calls me she's headed to the range in a few hours. She needs 500 rds of 40S&W and some 380.
Me: I got it. 500 rounds of 40 - $350
1: $350?
Me: $350.
1: No, no no!
Me: Yes, yes, yes.
1: It can't be $350! That's $350! That just can't be!
Me: Welcome to 2020
1: Well the 380 ammo is cheaper right?
Me: Not really. You're looking at $65 a box.
1: No, no no!
Me: Nobody's got ammo right now and we're getting top dollar. That's the price, feel free to shop around.
She never calls me back.
F: Guy calls me asking about my Federal 115gr 9mm. Cheapest on Ammoseek is $57 a box. I don't want to be that high so I price it at $55/box. He says how much for the case. I tell him 55 times 20. He's bad at math so I tell him that's $1100 for it all. He calls me an asshole. I tell him everyone's asking me to get 9mm ammo so I'm buying it retail and marking it up. He tells me not to buy it at retail and hangs up on me.
G: The gun club president calls me. the club needs a new 5.56 upper. I ask why. Someone shot 300 blackout through the old one and destroyed it. I tell them I don't have any uppers. I have complete rifles. Cheapest is $900 for an S&W sport M&P. I can hear his jaw dropping.
There's other miscellany but you get the gist of it.
NOW here's the meat and potatoes you've wanted! The tale of the gun show!
Friday 9/11/2020
I take inventory. I'm down to about 350 guns in stock and I pack as much as I can and get it ready for the show. I've got some Sigs left, a handful of Glock and a mishmash of everything else. I head to bed early knowing full well the next show will be a good one. I bought a bunch of Glock 43X's retail.
Saturday 9/12/2020
I pull chocks at 615AM. This show is about an hour down the road from my house, the last time I was there I sold nothing all weekend, broke my oakleys and vowed never to return.
This time is gonna be different, I said to myself.
At 7AM I walk in and I start loading into the show. It's a small venue in the middle of MAGA country. Everyone wearing red hats and trump train shirts.
In a few hours the doors will open and we are off to the races. I will do hour blocks instead of my previous play by play for simplicity.
9AM: Slow start, the show is spread out across TWO buildings so they route people into the other side and it takes them about 30 minutes to make their way into the big room. First sale of the day is my last Sig 365. For $700. It takes an hour and a half to get his background check back.
10AM: Guy points at an FNS 40C and wants a deal. I make him a deal at $525 cash out the door. He says he'll come back and think about it a bit.
I sell a shield for $500.
I sell a Glock 43X for $775.
I sell a Glock 43 for $700.
For some reason everyone is calling me Daniel. It takes me an hour to realize it's because I'm wearing a gray Daniel Defense polo.
11AM: FNS40 guy is back. He says it's a deal. I hand him a clipboard. he hands me an already filled out 4473 like another dealer rejected his sale. It's folded over on the long side and I tell him to fill out my form in front of me.
10 minutes later he hands me the pre filled out folded form thinking that I'm stupid.
You gotta be shitting me. I park his ass in a chair hand him a pen and tell him to start writing.
He fills it out. I enter in his background check and it does not come back right away. He gets antsy.
12PM: FNS 40 guy wants his money back. I refund it and keep $100 for me. I grab my tablet and someone has swiped right on my bumble. We begin chatting and I ask her if she wants to go to dinner. She's a little older, in her 40's and works for a bank. What the hell, why not.
Someone asks me what it takes to suppress his beretta 92. I tell him he needs a threaded barrel. They run $250. Someone overhears me and brings by his S&W 5906 and expects me to get a threaded barrel for $250.
Guy asks me to bring the threaded barrel tomorrow. I say sure.
1PM: Lady comes by and asks me if I have any 5.7's. She's on the phone reading down my inventory. I ask her if the gun is for her or her friend. She says for her. I show her the 5.7 on the table and roll my eyes a bit.
2PM: 5.7 lady comes by with her butch lesbian lover. She tells me its a deal and I hand her the clipboard. She fills everything out with lots of errors. I get her background check in and I tell her $1375
Her jaw drops. She was looking at the FNS 9mm for $575 next to it and didn't think that 5.7 pistols were $1375. She coughs reeking of weed. I void the sale.
Guy walks up asking me for 70% silencers. I just laugh.
3PM: Another guy comes over asking me if I got a 5.7. I tell him yes. He says he's got $1000 right now for a 5.7. I tell him I'll take $1000 as a down payment. He laughs and is adamant that I take this $1000 for a 5.7 tagged at $1375.
I ask him if he's got cash and all his ID and everything. He's on the phone it's actually for a friend of his. I ask him if his friend can get here before the show closes at 5. His friend has no CWL so his wife has to buy it but he's going to pay for it.
This guy is barking up the wrong tree. I go back and help someone else. He's looking at a Springfield XD I've brought and asks me if I'm making any deals. I tell him we're not doing a lot of discounting at the show. He shrugs and says he tried.
Another guy asks me for a Glock 43X. I walk him over to the stack and show him the tag at $775. He scoffs at me and walks away.
4PM: Show starts slowing down. I write up a Sig P238 Tribal and a P938 BRG for some customers at $700 each. I write up a S&W M&P15 sport for $900 as my last sale of the day. The lady was super nice and understanding when I pointed out the errors on her 4473.
5PM: Time to go home! I dump off some transfers to another dealer and hit the road. It's an hour to get back home.
6PM: I take a shower, shave and get to the restaurant for dinner.
7PM: I'm at the restaurant waiting at the table and I discover that the woman that said she was in her 40's is actually a 58 year old grandma of 2. Someone shoot me. She says she's not that hungry and proceeds to order soup, salad, a martini, an espresso and dessert. She's ordered $65 in F&B to my $35 steak. This was a complete waste of an evening.
My depression worsens and not even a bowl of mint chocolate chip can break me out of this funk. My will to live is eroding by the minute. I fall asleep at midnight and set my alarm for 747AM. I make a mental note to move up my therapist.
Sunday August 16th
747AM. Wake up, take a swig of orange juice and run down to the deli and grab a sandwich and get down to the show. I grab a threaded barrel for a Beretta 92 on my way down. Note: The guy never shows up for that barre.
10AM: Get to the show and uncover my tables and get cranking. It's a slow start to the day. My first sale is a Springfield XD. The show goes on and I write up an FNS for someone. The customer writes the check out payable to HK NO COMPROMISE.
I look at them confused.
FC: Why is this check made out to HK?
1: That's what it says on your shirt, HK NO COMPROMISE - that's the name of your company, right?
FC: sigh
11AM: Guy wants a can without a tax stamp. 5
12PM: Someone walks over. Points at my stack of silencers
1: I can't pick one of those up here!
FC: You got two arms don't you?
1: I mean I can't buy one here!
FC: If you got money you can buy one!
1: You're a real smartass you know that!
FC: Beats being a dumbass!
The peanut gallery laughs at our exchange.
1PM: Guy wants to buy a Walther P22. Fills out the front sheet of the 4473. Satisfied with his answer, he turns the page along the perforation, rips it off and proudly hands the top sheet to me.
I die a little bit inside.
2PM: 7 different husband/wife combos ask me for shield EZ pistols. I write up my last M&P 15 sport I brought to the show for $900. It's a good day! I debated bringing another but I figured selling two for the weekend would be plenty.
3PM: The lady that bought that S&W M&P15 yesterday? She wants another one. I have three left on the shelf. I take her money and tell her I'll meet her at the show next week and she says no problem and does all her paperwork. u/throwawayfire343 's coronavirus infected ass shows up and needles me on a gun.
1: How much do you want for this $150 gun?
FC: About 350
1: really
FC: Gimme $200 and fill the goddamn form right
1: deal!
I take his money and wrap up a few other folks and get ready to pack up and head home. He does the form right much to my chagrin.
4PM: Show is closed. I start packing up. I snag 500 rds of 9mm off the dealer across the show. He started with a full pallet. Most of it is gone. Price? $500/thousand. I am packed up and on the road in a little under an hour.
5PM: Homeward bound........I wish I was........HOMEWARD BOUND..............
I hit the truck stop for some diesel and a cold fountain drink.
630PM: I get back to my desk and dump off a fucking STACK of 4473's. I make a bank drop for the cash and I unload and head back home. I'm starving, I go grocery shopping and grab some comestibles. I cook myself dinner and head home.
Monday September 14th
10AM: My back is out and my depression is worse than ever. I don't know what hurts more, my back or my brain. I head in and get my 4473's worked on from the show.
11AM: Guy asks me to get some 9mm ammo for him held until after work. No problem. He says he'll be here at 445 after he gets out off at 430. He works around the corner.
12PM: Lunchtime. It's Chicken Bacon Ranch day at the market. I'm starving. I grab my keys and get ready to leave when I get a call from a lady from the gun club. She wants one of my last Sig 938's. I tell her to come by, I'll delay lunch for her.
1PM: Laura shows up and spends 45 minutes with me trying to decide on which 938 she wants. She has no intention of shooting this gun she just wants one in case antifa shows up. She leaves and says she will come back in 45 minutes. Great, I can go to lunch now.
2PM: It try to go to lunch. I am not successful. Laura calls me asking me more questions and tells me she has another friend wanting the same gun. I tell her I will put my lunch on hold and she can come on by.
She and her friend debate Sig 938's for a while and each of them buy a gun. I got a twofer! Woo! This calls for a celebration called lunch.
3PM: I get a call from a semi regular. This guy buys a gun or two a year. He's getting his concealed license and does not want the government to know he's buying guns. So he's sending his wife in to do the 4473 for his birthday present, a Wilson CQB 1911 they've purchased off gunbroker. I tell him great, send her over and I'll get her paperwork done. I get ready to go to lunch. The phone rings, Laura and her friend want more of my time. Fine. I will put my lunch on hold. Come on over.
4PM: Laura and her friend come over and Laura suggests that I give each of them a few Sig 938 7 rd pinky extension mags for free since they just bought two guns. I look at them in great pain.
Women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. I'm sorta in a woman hating mood after this week but I don't want to take it out on them. I explain politely that NOBODY is getting free goods right now. if you want mags, I have three left. They spent 25 minutes arguing with me and then they decide to buy all three mags. Great. Terrific. I'm going to lunch now. Your business is appreciated now GTFO. The guy that wanted me to reserve 9mm ammo for him? Yeah he no showed.
5PM: ~~Beef jerky~~ lunch time. I get my keys and get ready to walk out the door. The wife of Wilson Combat buyer is running errands and can be over here. Sure, come on down. I'll be here. She does all her paperwork and we talk for 2 hours about how autistic you all say I am and how not autistic she says I am. Nice lady. She brought me gummy bears. I tell her I am clearly on the spectrum because I behave and think exactly like her autistic son. She fails to believe me.
7PM: I can finally go have lunch! I go to the Olive Garden for lunch.
815PM: I get home from the OG. This is not going well. My colon does not like the pasta and breadsticks. I spend the next hour and a half making three trips to the throne. This fucking week. And it's only sunday. God damn.
I take a tylenol PM and sleep it off.
Tuesday September 15th
10AM: I get in and start catching up on vendor calls and paperwork.
11AM: UPS rolls in with a wilson and some piece of shit suppressor from some company. I call Lisa and tell her that the package is here and she can pick it up anytime. She says she will be right over.
12PM: Lisa gets her gun and thanks me with some things she got at walgreens. Red hots, and pens. I laugh. I tell her it's fine. She's confused. Her autistic son always liked Red Hots and pens.
1PM: I swing over to the deli and it's Monday. They have hot browns today. I love a hot brown. I grab one and check in on facebook telling the world of my discovery. So many great job poopin memes and comments ensue.
2PM: I call the guy who's got the el cheapo 556 can. He's pissed. That can was supposed to be sent to another dealer across town. I tell him his options.
A: I can do his form 4 and charge him my hourly.
B: I can ship it back to the vendor and charge him my hourly.
C: I can ship it to the dealer across town and charge him my hourly.
He's PISSED and tells me to do the forms for him. I tell him email me all the info and I'll get it done. I get an email in GMAIL CONFIDENTIAL MODE.
What's CONFIDENTIAL MODE? It's a self destructing email you can't reply to, forward or cut and paste from - which makes this useless since I have to cut and paste all the info he's given me. I tell him I need the data in a different format. He yells at me about PII and stuff and I offer to do the form 4 in front of him. He relents and emails me what I need. It's missing a birthday. No biggie. I email him a draft and he says it looks lfine.
3PM: The guy comes by and he's pissed at the vendor and takes it out on me. I tell him if he does not want to do the forms from me, I can send it to the dealer across town. He's mad as hell and I've discounted my rate to $100 as a goodwill gesture.
1: You're charging me $100?
FC: Yes
1: But you're not doing anything.
FC: Here's the checklist.
1: The other place did my photos, fingerprints and everything and charged me $100.
FC: Great. I'm not spending $8000 on a fingerprint scanner to make it back $100 at a time.
1: So you're not doing anything.
FC: I did these forms correctly as you asked.
1: But you didn't even do my fingerprints! Or my passport photos! What the hell am I paying you for?
FC: Why'd they send the item here/
1: Hell if I know! You should call them and find out!
FC: You want me to call them?
1: Well you dealers have a special phone number and email. They won't answer my calls or my emails.
FC: What makes you think they're going to answer mine?
1: You're a dealer! You have a special back office phone number to reach them that I don't have, right?
FC: Are you kidding me?
1: No! You all have that special communication system that the public has no access to!
FC: Gimme your $100 and get these forms reviewed, I've got another customer to help in a bit.
1: You mean I gotta mail it out too! The other place did that for me!
FC: You want me to mail it? I'll mail it. Get the prints done, get the photos taken and get the form filled out and I'll mail it.
1: The other place answered all the questions for me!
FC: I. DON'T. CARE.
1: I am really upset about all this you're charging me the same money and you're doing no work!
FC: You want this can?
1: Yeah
FC: Then follow my instructions.
He pulls out three credit cards with damaged magnetic stripes that won't work. I manually key the card and I'm now working for $96.50 dealing with the biggest pain in the ass I've seen since operation machinegun salvage in 2019.
4PM: I have to go to fedex to drop off today's orders. 1000 rds of 22 leave the building for $189.48. A bunch of mags to the west coast and a Sig P220 are leaving.
5PM: Make it to Fedex where I say hi to Cathy and the gang. I swing by the market on the way home and grab some shredded romaine and a thin cut top sirloin.
545PM: Now I told you this story was a tale of TWO grandmas. Here's the second. I get a call from my attorney buddy Eddie, my partner at the consulting company. He got a call from a lady needing help with some ATF Forms. He knew it wasn't his area of expertise and wanted to know if I could do it. I said send the details my way. He tells me it's an older lady and to expect an email. Moments later I get an email from him.
Subject: Forms for Karen Witherspoon
Message: Will, attached is ATF correspondence from ATF to Karen, I think you can fix this. Thanks!
I look at the attachment.
NOTICE OF TAKING DEPOSITION DUCES TECUM - State of Louisiana vs Billy Bob Ray Thibodeaux
FC: Eddie, I got your deposition notice not the ATF forms
Eddie: Whoops
FC: If that's the worst thing that happens this week it's not a bad week.
Eddie: She knows you're charging her I didn't give her a price.
FC: Lemme look at it and see what we got.
6PM: I call Karen and ask her some details. Her husband was a former licensee/SOT and left a machinegun behind when he died. She did ATF Form 5 and got some errors and needs help fixing it. Just as I'm on the phone with her Eddie emails me the packet.
It's bad and riddled with errors. Out of 20 fields that all need to be filled out correctly, 12 are wrong. And not a little wrong. A LOT wrong.
I won't get into it here but I might in a separate post.
ATF wants the forms back at their facility in 30 days. The mailing date was 2 weeks ago. Which means these forms need to be corrected RIGHT THE FUCK NOW and sent out. Oh and she's got no fingerprint cards.
I tell her that I can drop everything I'm doing this evening, go over everything with a fine tooth comb and have this done in a few hours and I can drop them off tomorrow. She says if I can make a house call that would be good since she has furniture movers coming to empty their house in the morning. I tell her no problem. $350 and I'll see her tomorrow.
I run down all the forms and fix everything. I do a public records search and pull court filings for the probate and print them off and enclose them as ATF requested.
$350 for basically an hour's worth of work isn't bad. There's a steak/bottle of wine split for Eddie in there since it was his lead.
8PM: I call Karen back and tell her I've got everything done but ATF needs a copy of the will. She says she has it. I got everything else they asked off the clerk's website. She's super impressed. I tell her there's a reason Eddie called me.
9PM: Time to cook dinner. My phone is about to die. Just as I plug it in I get a call from u/fat_italian_stallion
He NEVER calls me unless something's up.
We had a quick chat over the weekend at the gun show that went something like this
FC: So that's how I got catfished by a grandma on bumble
FIS: LOL that is epic bad. I'm in New Orleans for a week on vacation with the gf
FC: The psycho one?
FIS: You know it.
FC: If you need bail money let me know
FIS: I just might!
That was Sunday morning. It's tuesday night. My phone dies as I try talking to him. I switch to my landline and call him.
FC: What up?
FIS: I need a solid
FC: How bad is it this time?
FIS: Can I sleep at your house tonight? She went nuts again and attacked me.
FC: I told you not to get invovled with her didn't I?
FIS: She's hot!
FC: You know I'm like 3 hours away from you right?
FIS: Yeah I got a half tank of gas.
FC: Go fill it, here's the address. See you around midnight. You hungry?
FIS: Starving.
FC: I was getting ready to fix dinner. I'll see you at midnight. Get here when you get here.
9PM-1145PM: I fix up the guest suite and prepare dinner. I run to the Target near my house since they close at 10 and grab a few more things. I get back just before 10 and I prepare to fire up the grill and get a steak going, salad and a fresh ravioli dish drowned in Rao's tomato basil sauce is on the menu. Steak hits the fire at 1130 and is resting by 1145. I plate everything and have it on the table at midnight.
1145PM: I get some spare towels and hotel soaps and shampoos. I head out to the driveway and turn on all my lights and leave the garage door open. I set a lawn chair up and crack open a large bag of boom chicka pop poprcorn and await the arrival of one u/fat_italian_stallion
1204AM: u/fat_italian_stallion rolls up. I've got guns and roses "Used to love her" playing on the ipad
FC: sup?
FIS: Long day.
FC: Dinner's on the table. Lets eat.
Wednesday September 16th
We eat and go to sleep. fat_italian_stallion does not know I have slid my spare ipad into the guest suite on the nightstand.
Did you know you can set an alarm on an ipad to instead of making a noise to play a song?
757AM: The ipad alarm wakes up fat_italian_stallion. The song? A little band called Confederate Railroad blasting "I like my women a little on the trashy side." He'll have to tell you the rest of the story.
9AM: I chat with fat italian and we chat a bit skipping breakfast. He has decided to leave this godforsaken state and put some miles between him and the psycho. I don't blame him one bit.
10AM: Breakfast! I throw on a charcoal canali and hit the chickfila drive thru for some breakfast chicken biscuits. I head to my desk and get some paperwork and some calls done.
11AM: I get a call from my attorney buddy Sam. He wants to know how many laws his client who has sent in a Form 1 and not notified the CLEO has broken. I explain I was just having that debate with someone on the internet! It's not a big deal but still kinda a big deal. Our consensus is that it's not count one on the indictment but it could be count five or six.
12PM: Lunchtime. I'm not hungry so I skip lunch. I head to meet with the grandma with the MG and I go over all her new forms that she needs to get fixed with fingeprint cards and my notes. She's super appreciative and gives me $350 in cash. She can't find the will. I call her attorney that I know and he's not picking up. I tell her see if she can get an original copy of the will from the clerks office or from the attorneys office, they normally have a copy.
I ask her what plans she has for the gun. I mean, what's a grandma supposed to do with a registered Colt M16?
All her husbands friends wanted it and they all offered her the same amount so she didn't need it and decided to sell it. She's taking the $5000 she's getting and going on an Alaskan cruise with the grandkids after the world calms down. I shrug. She should have called me.
2PM: Back at my desk, I call the judge's chambers that's doing the probate. Judge Smith LOVES the 308 that I got him a few years ago and is super pleased with my services since he didn't tell the wife about his purchase and I had just gotten a damaged case of 308 PMC Bronze that I made him a hell of a deal on that UPS wrote off. I tell the JA that ATF probably isn't going to call but in case they do just be ready. She's super glad that I told her ahead of time so she can be ready.
Judge Smith is retiring in a few months and he's got some time in the schedule so she patches me through and we catch up for a little bit. I am told that they're going to try to do a COVID compliant socially distanced retirement disrobing party but it's all up in the air. I say if you all need someone to bring potato salad to let me know. As a stalwart of the legal community for many years, lots of folks know the judge so it's well deserved after 20+ years on the bench. As I am also well known in the legal communty the least I can do is show up with a bottle of red for the guy that's signed hundreds of form 4's for me over the years.
3PM: I ship out a few more pistols and sell an M1A scout squad to a guy in California. Not a bad day.
4PM: I'm done for this week. Between the gun show and getting catfished and everything I've earned some time off. I think I'm gonna take the rest of the week off. The phone rings and a guy wants some 9mm ammo. I sell him 500 rds at $375 plus shipping.
Thursday September 17th to Friday September 18th: I wrote this for you all to read.
PS - and this is how you do a "week in the life" thread, you fucking imposter. https://www.reddit.com/guns/comments/i759qj/a_week_in_the_life_of_your_favorite_firearm/

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My father is dead, but something in his basement is very much alive.

[Displaced] - Chapter 8 Part 1

Desperately need help with suicidal thoughts. I've been chronically ill for 2 years & I'm bipolar. Been trying hard to find the spiritual meaning but I'm so tired of being broken :(

My first experience with Uncle Bens tek - Full Grow Report.

Old Trip Report - May-June 2016 - 24 days

A week in your favorite firearm dealer's not-so erotic life or FC's tale of two grandmas! 9/18/2020

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