10.02.2022
What I’ve got here is some OG #18. I taste meat, grease, gas, incense. Not fruit. Bong rip. No cough but a little tenderness in the throat. Harvest was June ninth, twenty-twenty-two. The THC comes in at 26.1 per cent.
Creeping high. I’m on my first drink, which is not usually the case. Usually I’ve had a couple of drinks by the time I’m craving a smoke but we’ve been driving all day.
It’s Braves 5, Mets 3. An urge to write is a good early side effect but this urge might not be due to the weed. It could be the driving. It’s happened before. It’s the movement, my body through the gravity-controlled space of this planet, the vibration of traveling seventy miles an hour, backward in time, against the spin, in a car.
(A few moments pass)
I’m a bit mixed up in the head. Getting into all kinds of different things. Trying to find a description of this weed online, what strain, and supposedly where did it come from, who are its parents?
I see it described as having a diesel flavor so I guess that’s what I tasted. Grease on asphalt? Taste of a fast food parking lot, sitting in a drive through, diesel exhaust. It’s not the greatest taste but I’m enjoying the buzz.
This OG #18 is also known as Private Reserve. It’s a hybrid strain. If you were to follow the genetics of current cannabis plants back to the beginning, you might learn that it all started with two basic strains of cannabis. One is sativa, the other is indica. If you cross the two together, you get a hybrid. Sativa is supposed to give you more of an uplifting, energetic mind rush while indica is supposed to be more of a chill-down, lounge clothes kind of a high.
OG #18 is indica-leaning, if I had to say. It’s a kind of OG Kush, which according to weed legend was first produced in Florida by crossing a northern Californian landrace with: the strain called Chemdawg, Lemon Thai (another landrace), and a Hindu Kush plant from Amsterdam. The further back or the further up you go on the genetic tree, the closer you get to the original genetic strains of what I like to think of as wild marijuana. To call something a landrace is to say it is indigenous, native to some particular place. Hindu Kush came from the high altitude mountain valleys of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thai Stick came from Thailand. Acapulco Gold from Mexico. Durban Poison from South Africa. Then northern California has strains that also fit this description. They are the plants that people grew for weed in places hidden away in Humboldt, among other locales. The land imparts its own terroir onto the weed grown there, much the way it works with wine.
I confess to developing a sudden, intense weed fetish. An obsession. We went out to Tucson to visit B’s parents. We were on our way out there and upon getting a(nother) rejection letter email somewhere southwest of Amarillo I decided fuck it I was going to hit up one of the dispensaries in the great state of New Mexico, which legalized so-called recreational or adult-use of cannabis sometime earlier this year.
I went into a strange den of a place in Roswell and bought a couple of grams of flower and a pack of gummies. That was like Pandora’s weed stash being opened up and over the course of the rest of the trip I would go on to visit other dispensaries in New Mexico as well as in Arizona, two places in each state. It’s been a wild, weed-buying jag. I’m buying single grams at a time, giving them all a try, eventually.
Braves still lead 5-3, bottom of the eighth in Atlanta. My throat is a little sore, and I’ve got some cottonmouth, but damn I’m high.
//
10.03.2022
New day, new entry, let’s go!
This time I will fire up some of the Alien OG. I bought this nug at that strange, cave-like dispensary in Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell was larger than B and I imagined it would be. It was nice. There was some sort of college campus tucked into the middle of it, and there was a charming town square that had a farmer’s market operating at full speed. Lots of red chili peppers on the string.
The first thing we did in Roswell was fill up the gas tank. Coming out of the gas station a bizarre scene unfolded as before our eyes a car fell out of the sky and landed atop a median separating the two directions of the street from one another. I am only joking when I say the car fell out of the sky but ask B and she’ll tell you the same thing. Neither one of us could say where that car came from. I guess the other side of the street, and the driver didn’t know the median was there.
The car was totaled, hung up on the median between the front and back wheels, steaming and broken. It was with this strange sense of foreboding that I went into the cantina-like dispensary that was nothing like the ones I have been to in other states, most recently Illinois.
The security was much more relaxed in the Roswell dispensary, a branch of Pecos Valley Productions. I was standing in line when a clerk pulled me over to a side room. On the way I could see a straight up lounge pad with cushy pleather couches and aquariums, a room I am sure sees its share of smoke after-hours. In the side room hung bags and bags of edibles, right there within arms’ reach. In the Illinois dispensaries, you are never in the same room as the product. In Roswell, it was like you were visiting your buddy’s apartment to pick up a quarter bag and hang out for a bit. When I was offered a free pre-roll as a first time customer the clerk went to a plastic filing cabinet, pulled out a drawer and selected a joint. Again, it was all right there. Very laid back, very first hand, a welcome departure from the uptight yet disorganized business model I’ve seen in Sauget, IL.
Alien OG aka Alien OG Kush also traces some of its lineage to the original Kush strain hailing from the Hindu Kush mountain valleys. The site leafly.com—where I’m getting much of this information—identifies Alien OG as a hybrid strain made from crossing Tahoe OG and Alien Kush. Tahoe is supposed to be a pretty heavy indica, meaning it might make a person a little sleepy, or at least comfortable on the couch with the TV going.
Burning some, I taste ash, flint, not a whole lot. Innocuous taste. I’m still feeling my way along the taste front. No fruit, no pine. A little gas, funk, tube, rind. The bud itself is tight, with noticeable red hairs. It smells good.
The high is a gentle wave. I am podcast listening. A pod about planets. Venus has super powerful lighting. Hard lightning versus soft lightning. Uranus has frigid methane clouds. Saturn rains liquid methane.
I realize now that there was originally life on every planet. That’s what makes a planet a planet. Flowing liquid methane, where did it all come from? I am scrolling podcast episode catalogs. Attention to phone is not good. Is this grass a downer or is it the drinks I had?
(moments pass)
That weed made me horny. Now I’m thinking about a cigarette. Feeling cold but putting on a shirt-jacket is a comfortable feeling. Fleece jacket and flip flops, the Fall.
I’m alright, feeling alright with it, pleasant moments, at ease. Hugo just trotted in here and jumped up onto the couch. I might need to put pants on. My plantar fasciitis was bad today, a stabbing pain where the arch meets the heel, not going away.
(moments pass)
Second strain of the day, of the night. Jack Herer, a sativa that I bought in Illinois back in August. I taste spice, limestone, unused room, nothing unpleasant, chalk, dust….
The Jack held its own, it got me high again. Yes. The Jack Herer really made me hungry. I ate a bunch of chocolate, then chips and hummus. After all of that I was still hungry but couldn’t decide what else to eat. We had already eaten a dinner of pad thai, which B made. I decided it was just the pot giving me the munchies so I stood down. Incredibly, after all of that food, I had no acid reflux or heartburn.
But I did get tired soon after. We watched some British Baking during which I dozed and really wanted to just nod away.
//
10.04.2022
On a full-of-fried-food-why-did-I-eat-that stomach, I will smoke some MAC-1. This bud is from The Prime Leaf dispensary on Speedway in Tucson. I gather MAC is an acronym for Miracle Alien Cookies. Another hybrid, this one is made from crossing Alien Cookies with Starfighter and the Colombian landrace.
I taste asphalt and candy. It’s a little harsh. Dreamsicle orange? Rocky trail….
Scratchy throat afterward but I got pretty high. Now a nightcap of Modified Root Beer, a hybrid also from The Prime Leaf in Tucson. I’ve liked the effects of this one. There is spice in the flavor of the smoke.
//
10.05.2022
Popped the Grape Kush half-joint (aka a roach) I had left over from the Roswell dispensary. This stuff hit me between the eyes when I sparked it while in the passenger seat of our Honda as B drove us west along Interstate 10 in Arizona somewhere just west of the state line.
Once I lit this joint in the car I was eager to tuck into it and I’m pretty sure I smoked a bunch of burning rolling paper fumes before the weed caught and became the smoke. After a few puffs, I realized I was in a car in the desert and I had a burning joint I didn’t want to smoke any more of so what was I going to do with it? I couldn’t throw it out the window, into that dry desert landscape. I had no ashtray, no pliers to pinch the end with. I ended up putting it down on the foot mat and pouring a little water on it to put it out. It was a pathetic scene, a sad re-entry into the world of smoking joints but I was pretty piqued on the weed and enjoyed watching the clouds and the varied landscape that is southeast Arizona.
Now in the basement of my house, in the room that houses the furnace, I am glassy eyed and reminiscent. My dad has a saying. He is in his human decline phase. He’ll have a moment where he’ll lament, “My body, my body.” In a recent LCD Soundsystem song the singer croons, “I need a new body, I need a new body.” I hear that. The song takes a U-2 turn at the end, “Into the sky, into the stars, leaving the ground.” I get a weird vibe from that song but it makes me think.
I’m not sure where I was going with that. Weed, LOL. That Grape Kush is powerful. Knocked me for a loop again. Maybe smoking cannabis, any cannabis, in joint form has something to do with it. Multiple, repeated hits in close succession. I am standing outside the back bottom door of my house in University City, MO. There is a retaining wall ledge here that is the perfect height for me to stand along and write. Mosquitoes swarm me as I put pen to paper, the only known negative.
(…moments pass…)
Smoke some White Truffle and it hit me pretty good. I like that stuff. Bought just a gram when I was in Tucson. It’s a hybrid but to me it leans indica. It does have an earthy, fungal sort of taste. With a little mint thrown in and no throat irritation. It’s been one of my favorite among the dozen or so nugs I purchased in Tucson.
I’ve been drinking a little and taking drags off of cigarettes. These are my high writings. I had banished them but now they’re back again. I might actually put these Chronicles on my blog. What do I have to lose? The stigma that has strangled and enveloped marijuana use for the entirety of my smoking life has been lifting away. I don’t feel like such a criminal any more when I smoke, when I write about it, when I research all of these strains. I am coming out, seeking relief.
//
10.06.2022
Woke up in the middle of the night, early morning. Ended up puffing some more of that White Truffle before finally going back to sleep. I caught a buzz, read for a while, went back to sleep. Still sleepy but awake for the day at 6:54. I’ll be getting Hugo out for his morning walk in moments.
16:39 in the afternoon. Packing a strain from Tucson called Half Pint into my green plastic bong. Leafly lists it as a hybrid but provides no more information than that. Neatly conical bud. I fire it up but don’t taste much. Pine? The taste of unsmoked weed? Now I taste corner, wax, surf.
I have a hole in the little mesh metal screen I put in the bottom of the bowl that slides in and out of the bong. I went and cleaned the screen but now I can’t get the screen back in. I need a new screen I guess. I have one, somewhere. Close by, I think. Yes, found them in an old Eckert’s berry carrier. Had them in a little bag with some very old marijuana seeds. From Jamaica maybe. Four screens, nine seeds. Now I want a cigarette. This is how it goes.
(…moments pass…)
What do I want to smoke next? The field is open, dealer’s choice, my call. Sour Diesel, fine. Put up or shut up time. This is a classic sativa strain. Nice smoke. It’s supposed to have a taste of diesel fuel, or diesel exhaust, not sure which. But I’m dancing around, getting picky. Next up, the MAC-1. Lemony, nice—
//
10.7.2022, morning
Not sure what the hell happened along the way through there but I had a scare during dinner when the spaghetti I was eating became lodged in my throat, not seeming to move. A grinding in my esophagus, a tightness. I had to get up from the table; said I was not well; something was not at all right. Was I having a panic attack as a result of my throat being jammed full of spaghetti?
I told B I was very high. I guess that was true. I was suddenly sweating. I drank some water. The moment passed. It was not a heart attack but something had gone wrong. I was piling on myself. I was in some kind of hurry. Are the Miracle Alien Cookies really that strong or had I just mentally manufactured myself into that mess?
//
Three weeks go by…
//
10.28.2022
It’s been a while since I added an entry to this record. It’s a Friday, Game One of the World Series, Phillies at Astros, 5-5 in the bottom of the sixth.
I smoked some Sun Queen OG, from the Beyond-Hello dispensary in Sauget, IL. There are actually two Beyond-Hello locations in Sauget. For those of you who don’t know Illinois east of St. Louis, Sauget is an industrial area home to massive amounts of petrochemical infrastructure. Refineries, holding tanks, pipeline nodes, railroad spurs, all-night clubs, and now a couple of weed stores.
One of the dispensaries is along the main drag in Sauget, next to Pop’s Night Club. I’ve been to that dispensary once or twice but I’ve favored the location on Goose Lake Road, next to the independent-league ballpark. They had a sale and I picked up a few items.
I meant to bring a bowl along with me—a bowl is a glass pipe—but I forgot. I’m in Belleville at my parents’ house. I have a so-called one-ee here, a small metal fake-cigarette-looking pipe, which I used. I’m feeling the effects, a highness, a sort of tingly, marshmallow-like feeling.
A stink bug flicks its wings against the blinds, a rapid shudder. This is a good pen, the mint green Signo 207, from Uni-ball. The ink is bold yet restrained, not too wet, not runny or blotty. I just ordered some more of their pens but after I pressed send I realized I wanted another two or three of these and two more also of the blue. The colors remind me of ink shades from Micron, a line of pens I like but which are capped. I don’t like to mess around with caps, I just want to grab a pen, click it on and put it to paper, boom.
Beyond-Hello ran well today. There have been times before when the operation seems to be on the verge of total disarray. They switch back and forth over which room they send you into, depending on what type of customer you are: medical or recreational. I could get a medical card in Missouri and not even have to mess with Sauget but I have held off getting the card because I don’t really see my cannabis use as medical in nature. Getting a card would be a bit of a farce, for me anyway. I believe there are medical applications for cannabis, all the cannabinoids present in the plant, which science has only begun to understand. I’m in it for the buzz, for the places it takes my mind. And, besides, it is possible Missouri voters will approve the recreational use of cannabis in the upcoming election so I won’t have to wait too much longer before I can walk out my front door and legally buy weed over a counter somewhere on The Delmar Loop.
Today I bought five-and-a-half grams of weed, five different kinds. Four single grams and one jar that held a gram and a half. That’s what I had tonight, the Sun Queen OG from Revolution. Harvest was May/June. I don’t know what to make of the harvest dates listed on the package. Pot plants need time to cure once they’re yanked out of the soil. Weed has to be dried out enough to be smokable. But you don’t want it to get too dry. If the bud gets too dry the smoke gets a little too bitter, too harsh, too hot. You’re smoking dust at that point, and who wants to smoke dust?
Realmuto takes one off the mask. That stunned him. I think he was unconscious for a moment, his face was totally placid, then he came to and grimaced. The Astros have two men on. Two out, Eflin pitching. The Sun Queen was the priciest of the bunch, not a very good deal but the store was selling everything at a 30 per cent discount so I bit. I want to try some of the grass from Revolution without having to buy an entire eighth (that’s an eighth of one ounce, equivalent to three-and-a-half grams). That’s why I like buying the single grams. I’m in a stage of wanting to try every single strain I can get my hands on. If I’m buying eighths or even quarters at a time I’ll have a big pile of weed sitting on my shelf that I could never conceivably smoke, not before it dried out and went brown-frown on me.
Bohm wrangles a grounder headed down the line and whips a throw over to first. Good arm, Maldonado running, out by a mile, nice play.
I haven’t had much to drink tonight; nothing at all in the last three or four hours. My brother and I played a game of Magic, the first time we’ve played in years. Much credit is due to my friend Billy whose sudden interest in the card game rekindled mine. I started playing back in high school, in the nineties. The card game is a strange mix of nerdiness and the occult. One style of magic versus another, summoning the energy of the land. Forests, plains, islands, mountains, and swamps. Close reading of the text on each card is required. You have to be strategic, you have to think clearly, you have to be able to focus. It’s reminiscent of chess. Lately it has served as a welcome diversion from spending another night just drinking and smoking. Magic is something I actually want to be sober for, or relatively sober. But I’m thinking about a whiskey now, bourbon on the rocks, cold and chilly, that frost on the glass.
Damn, Schwarber just stole second. He’s got a bum knee but he had a running lead, had it stolen easily. I put that steal in the Yadi and Pujols style of baserunning. Some slow guys can do it, they learn to pick their spots. Now it’s Harper with two guys on, two down, top seven. Ball one, Bryan Abreu on the hill. Ball two in the dirt. Neris warms. Toothpick sighting. Ball three. Harper walks.
//
Another three weeks go by…
//
11.18.2022
A Friday, quarter to ten at night. I ate a 5 mg gummy earlier. Beboes brand. Hadn’t tried them before. Strong effect, waves, played Magic with my brother then he and I sat down and played some pinochle with mom and dad for the first time in over a year. I had thought that our pinochle-playing days were over and done. Time machine.
Had a bad allergy attack, though, which I hope was not related to the gummy. It’s possible but I have allergy attacks just about every day. The pills take care of the attacks but the pills take a while to kick in.
Moments ago I smoked my first grass of the evening. It was a pinch of something I bought today, some weed I wanted but did not need. What the hell. I continue my tour.
What I smoked just now was Chem de la Chem from Bedford Grow. Nice little glass container with a stay-fresh peel-and-seal under the screw-off cap. One gram which in this case means one big nug and one other small piece. The bud smells of pine and lemon. It burnt fine as I huddled outside in the cold wind, burning my thumb a little, the first time I’ve done that in years. I blame the wind. The stars are good tonight. It’s clear but cold and very, very windy.
The high on this bud is straight and strong. My jaw is clenched a little. But here I am writing, coherently. I’m content. There’s a college football game on TV. Earlier I watched a 2-hour premiere for the new season of The Curse of Oak Island. Watched it with my dad. We’ve both been fans of the show for years. He and my brother started watching it before I did. My brother watched the first half of the show with us but went home after that. We didn’t realize it was a two-hour special. As usual, the guys on the show didn’t find much but I like the show, I’ll keep watching.
The gist of the show is there’s this island off the coast of Nova Scotia that supposedly holds a treasure buried somewhere on the island. These guys have used metal detecting and a variety of experimental bore-holes and other cursory digging to try to find the treasure. They have found bits and bobs but not a big, hidden cache of fortune.
In tonight’s show, they had a camera down a well, then ran some sonar, which was cool. Elsewhere, they found a flake of old metal with a high amount of arsenic in it, which indicates it is very old. From the 1500s perhaps? Perhaps. Even if it was made in the 1500s that doesn’t tell us anything about when it got to the island or who dropped it there or why. The guy who does the metal detecting, Gary, said he thought it was a coin. It didn’t look like a coin to me.
I’ve taken two allergy pills. The attack is lifting. It was full-on, stuffing me up while at the same time my nose was running and I was sneezing like mad. I know of no way to get rid of the congestion other than drugs and time. I’m gonna pour a little bourbon, not my first.
I’m still feeling the Chem de la Chem, half an hour in, my buzz mitigated a bit because I’m at my parents’ house and I still feel a little awkward and goofy when I smoke here. Some of the smoke found its way inside. I could smell it when I went toward the back of the house, where my bedroom is at. I’ve taken a turn toward the apprehensive. My mom is down here, she smells it. Last time she asked me if I had burned the pile of brush outside. No, I hadn’t burned that pile but I had burned a much smaller one in the bowl of my glass pipe.
In addition to the Chem I also bought some small joints called Dogwalkers. In each tin come five .35-gram pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes. The particular strain in the pack I got is called Grape Stomper. The value seems to be there, for Illinois recreational pricing. I’d be paying less if I were buying large amounts of weed but I’m like a mouse wanting to nibble here and there. The prices are much better in Arizona and throughout New Mexico. It’s about $20 for a single gram in Sauget. I was buying eight- and ten-dollar grams in the desert. Alas. Every place is different, that’s part of my fascination with the weed scene right now, part of my pleasure. There are different ways to go about it. I can remember being in college and taking any crusty bag of weed me and my friends could find. Now there is a staggering menu of choice, and I am in a mood to sample.
Riding even-keel, still awake here at 10:30 pm on the Chem de la Chem. Leafly lists it as a sativa. My wheels are spinning. After drinks, later at night, if I want to keep going: that’s when I want to light some sativa. I have tended to avoid straight sativa strains. They are often too much to handle, making me jittery, a little paranoid, edgy. But if I have taken on some insulation in the way of drinks and sleepiness, a sativa could be the perfect choice. I had not considered this tack.
Leafly indicates Chem de la Chem is a cross between Chemdawg and I-95, producing a “head high” that will “help you focus and get on with your daily tasks.” Maybe so but I’m the kind of smoker who wants to get the daily tasks done and then light up. I like my sativa with a side of bourbon, I guess.
The top flavor listed for Chem is ammonia. I’m not even sure what that would taste like but I didn’t taste much of anything when I burned it. The top effect listed is “hungry.” Nah, not me. I’m thirsty. Thirsty for a puff of the little green cig I’ve got tucked away in what used to be called the maid’s room of this house, though we never had a maid.
//
11.27.2022
Dateline Farm. Another month is slipping and sliding by. Getting away. Fleeing. If time goes, where does it go to? Where does time retire? To the land of clocks or to the opposite of such a place? What time is it? We have no use here for time. Even if we could measure it, why would we want to? To speak here of time is a crime.
A breeze is building in the kitchen of this old farmhouse in the middle of Missouri. Spotify serves up a song I like. Planet Caravan by Psychic Temple and Jeff Parker. It’s jazzy. Sax, drums, clarinet. Effects thereunder. It’s a long damn song. I don’t know where I got it from. Helm or Adam or the algorithm, hard to say.
I have smoked. I reminded myself that I was still supposed to be writing something called The Weed Chronicles. I had the little notebook I’ve been writing this all down in in the pocket of my bookbag, which sits here on a chair beside the table. I’m alone, and that’s alright. If I had some company, that’d be fine, too.
I am cleaning the glass bowl I leave stashed here. It’s a bowl I bought in Tucson a couple of years ago. I needed a back-up but then my late friend Phil sent me a glass bowl via UPS so I suddenly had an extra extra. I’ve been leaving this bowl here rolled up in a square dishrag that was here in the house before I took it home to wash it before bringing it back to enlist it as a shroud of sorts.
The house leaks with rain. Before it was worse, and the kitchen had been especially bad. There were a bunch of washcloths and hand towels populating a drawer that was already musty before mice made a nest inside, back and to the left. I took the cloths home for washing and brought them back, making two stacks of them on a table in the first back bedroom. It’s dry enough back there for them to stay. For years I kept a plastic bag holding a little bit of weed underneath one of the stacks. It was the strain Helm identified as African Pepper, one we both liked, an indica most likely.
One time I opened one of the stacks to a random midpoint, surprising a brown recluse that stared back at me. Not in the cloths, dude. That’s not the only stash of weed in this house. We’ve kept a stash here over the years, Helm and me. The stash used to hold some hash. That he bought from a guy in the Metrolink parking lot, not once but twice.
I digress. I said I had smoked just now but I never said what. Northern Lights Haze. Which sends me down another story path. Northern Lights was one of the first strains I had ever heard of, one of the first strains I had ever heard identified, given a name. The very idea of a particular strain was unheard of back in the college days when we smoked what was called “brick.” It was hard-packed, having been compressed. It had traveled a ways. Maybe from Mexico, maybe from California, who could say? There were seeds in that weed, and it had probably been grown outside.
Besides the usual brick there was sometimes talk of a mythical weed called KB. Kind bud. People would get excited about the KB. Someone would say, “I smoked some KB last night” or there would be rumors of someone being able to get their hands on some KB.
I had another freshman-floor friend named Phil who somehow came up with the first couple of strain-specific weeds I ever knew. One was called Trinity. It’s listed yet today on Leafly (twenty-something years later) as being hard to find. Who knows. I’ll say this. It had not been vacuum-packed, like the brick always was. Sometime after the Trinity he scored some Northern Lights. I’ve been obsessed with the actual northern lights aka the aurora borealis ever since. I’ve never seen the auroras but I’ve now bought Northern Lights weed in Sauget a couple of times.
I wonder if this modern weed, all these strains, I wonder if it’s really better than the Mexican brick we used to get back in the day. That brick would have been a landrace, I assume. That’s what I’m trying to get my hands on now! I love all the different names, though. That’s what I’m in it for. The sight, the look, the whiff, the package, the touch, the weight of a nug in my palm, the placement of a pinch in a bowl, the flick, the flame, the burn, the inhale, and the now.
//
11.30.2022
It’s that old question. What does it all come down to? “What it all comes down to is….” I keep coming back to that line, from a song I don’t have on any playlist and would otherwise be content to forget. But that line, that idea.
It’s 4:19 in the morning. I’ve been awake for two hours stewing, hemming, hewing, drinking, and smoking. Is this pre-dentist anxiety? I’ve had a classic post-Farm allergy attack. I am about to finish/fill this little notebook. One of a pack I got, from who, from when, from where, my riches abound.
Right now I ride the ride of Skywalker, an indica-leaning hybrid from Nature’s Grace & Wellness. This might be their best bud.
For me it comes down to this. I am awake and alive in America. And there is no place else I’d rather be.