Hashers in the house! That house being Red Bar for the Hash On-Home festivities. Getting there involved a long slog up into the hills and back down again on the other side. Well, it did for me. The actual Hash trail had another down and another up, which I chose to avoid. Why? Because I like to keep it fun, and I just wasn’t feeling it. That’s the way I roll these days.
As is the custom, the after-Hash gathering was at It Doesn’t Matter. We packed the place last night. Swan invited another Hasher (Beth, our Wet Spot friend) to join us at IDM for food and drinks. We stayed later and drank more than usual but had a nice time.
It was a good Hash Monday. Here’s where the money went:
- Alcohol: 640 pesos
- Dinner: 1310 pesos
- Lady Drinks: 200 pesos
- Tips: 130 pesos
- Charity: 3850 pesos
- Hash Fees: 8500 pesos
- Trike: 200 pesos
- Total for October 7: 14,830 pesos
Those big-ticket items are pretty much one-offs. The student I sponsor in Bohol needed money for his monthly transport to school while his mother is working in Cebu, so I wired the requested 2700 pesos. My peanut vendor friend Emmanuel has been ill and unable to work recently. He messaged me that there was no food for his family and asked if I could help him. So, I told him he could meet me at IDM. When he arrived, I slipped him a thousand pesos. Seven thousand nine hundred of the Hash fees are for the Haggis Bash in La Union coming up this December. That includes our hotel for two nights and two days of Hashing. I’m looking forward to taking Cums Alone on her first out-of-town Hash event.
In the memory department, Facebook reminds me that seven years ago, my trip to Boracay continued and featured the discovery of an aptly named bar:
Ah, well. It all turned out okay. I’m still alive and kicking, and that’s the important thing. Which is a nice segue for today’s YouTube video. This gent, whom I watched for the first time, is also sixty-nine years old and offers some good advice and insights on growing older.
WTF? I guess he doesn’t allow embedding his videos. Go ahead and watch it here if you like. I won’t be linking him in the future. Blogs were a thing before there were vlogs.
And now for some humor:
I’m going to take Swan to her foot spa, and I need a haircut. That sounds pretty exciting, eh? I saw the Cheap Charlies bartender at IDM last night and she said they have wine in stock, so maybe I’ll end my boycott and pay them a visit later today. So many options, so little time!
And the “hearing it for the first time” take:
Different strokes for different folks. Purple is the long trail, green is the short version, and blue is my way.
Quite a short cut!
The Hares did a nice job, even if I only did a portion of the trail they so diligently marked.
Do Hares ever get offended when someone skips parts of their trail? How big is the skipping problem? And why bother tracing out a trail if a portion of the people are going to ignore it, anyway? Just set the starting and ending points.
This damn thing reminded me of those streets in San Francisco
Yeah, when such roads go on and on, they’re tiring. And then you discover that you’d walked only a few hundred meters, not the millions of kilometers you thought you’d walked.
I’ve lost my sense of smell, but I still enjoy the flowers
I think we’ve talked about this before, but usually, if you can’t smell, you also can’t taste. So you’ll be down to a toothpick, soon, ja?
“The Best Ladie’s In Town
Spot the… you know, the thing!
Those big-ticket items are pretty much one-offs. The student I sponsor in Bohol needed money for his monthly transport to school while his mother is working in Cebu, so I wired the requested 2700 pesos. My peanut vendor friend Emmanuel has been ill and unable to work recently. He messaged me that there was no food for his family and asked if I could help him.
Excuses, excuses. But for a good cause, right?
I understand it makes it hard to swallow
Never use hyphens in place of colons.
I will if I write about them here!
“I will if I [remember to] write about them here!” Fixed it for you.
Alcohol: who says happy and stupid can’t mix? Problem is, it’s hard to remember the happiness afterward.
I did not realize that your sense of smell was still gone. On a 0-100 (where 100 is perfect smell), where do you think you stand? Following up on @Kevin, you dont mention it affecting your taste too much. I have a buddy whose daughter (late 20’s) has long COVID and pretty much lost both smell and taste. A significant loss of taste and what remains is really screwed – certain things taste like rotten meat, etc. Really is struggling to eat as nothing tastes good.
Silver lining I guess is that yours is not as bad and hopefully will improve over time.
I do not see a figure in your tally of the day’s spending for Beth’s EWR? Did your partner pay that fee for her friend to leave work early from Wet Spot Bar to enjoy the evening with you both at the other bar?
I appreciate Wet Spot must not be a “whore bar” becuase I notice you often remind readers you do not frequent those types of venues anymore. However, I cannot imagine the proprietor of Wet Spot who, judging from one of your blogs a week or two ago, seems to be so tight-fisted they stoop as low as actually begrudging staff (who I understand from reading your blog earn only a pittance anyway) getting some extra toilet paper, would now be so generous to let staff go off drinking in another bar without some sort of financial recompense for Wet Spot bar. Or was Wet Spot simply closed that evening owing to the lack of custom you have also reported, which might explain why the owner has to be so frugal.
It is great to see you can afford to not have to peso-pinch each month and worry about the cost of toilet paper. Long may it continue.
Digory, Wet Spot is closed on Monday and Beth is a regular Hasher, so she was on her own time. As far as bar compensation goes, Wet Spot and Green Room are above average. The aspect about bargirl pay that I very much disagree with is the drink quota thing–If a girl doesn’t make her drink quota for the week, her already low salary is reduced. Almost all the girly bars use this system.
“Whore bar” seems harsh when you say it. Most of the girls will go with a customer for an agreed upon price between them. If the girl chooses to leave work early, she has to pay a fine to the bar for doing so. The bar is not directly involved in the transaction.
Wet Spot opens at 6 p.m. and when I visit there, I arrive soon after opening. The girly bars generally don’t get busy until later in the evening (past my bedtime).
Brian, I really don’t notice the lack of smell that much. In some ways, that’s a blessing, like when I fart. I still have some taste and still enjoy eating (obviously!). Maybe I just remember how things taste. Damn, I feel sorry for the friend’s daughter…what a nightmare that must be!
Kev, yeah, my shortcut made the trail a tad too short, but I only had one climb in me, so I did what I had to do.
I’ve not noticed any Hare get upset when folks choose alternate paths. Some of them refer to us as “lame” but they seem to understand our desire to do a trail we are comfortable with. Most Hares mark a long and short (or easy and hard) version. The majority of Hashers will do one or the other without modification. Just designating a start and finish wouldn’t be feasible, especially for people from out of town or who are unfamiliar with the area. The system we have seems to work to everyone’s satisfaction.
Nope, the smell issues haven’t impacted my appetite. I still have some sense of taste and still enjoy eating my favorite foods.
I’ve gotten better at picking deserving recipients of my generosity. I’ve been helping out with Ethan’s school expenses for years, and the mother only asks for small amounts occasionally. Emmanuel is well thought of around town. He works hard when he is healthy enough to do so and only tends to ask for help when he has no other option. I haven’t violated Rule #1 for quite some time now.
“Beer is the answer, but I can’t remember the question.”