Category Archives: cannabis

kitcheny witchery

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A life of leisure is surprisingly boring, so I’ve been passing the time with science.

Making tinctures is great fun and I love sharing the fruits of my labour, but the anxious weasel in my head had a lot of angst over math and philosophy (my calculations of potency were derived using some reeeeally sketchy math, the kind after school PSAs warned us about). To give the anxious weasel a rest, I splurged and spent my stock payout (lol) on a tCheck, a small device that connects to your phone via Bluetooth, runs some tests on the sample you provide, and spits out the potency. It is super neat.

Armed with science, I started two more batches of tincture. ANA-001 is 250ml of Everclear infused with 14g of Ancient Freezer Weed, provided by the divine MizAnna. She wasn’t sure if the weed was any good, so I didn’t really know what (if anything) to expect – and while I stripped out all the literal sticks, there were a lot of leaves and stems and it looked far different than the stuff I usually worked with.

dried cannabis leaves
#bulkfoodbingo, ditch weed edition

The final yield of the plant matter was around 45g. I only used 250ml of Everclear in this batch, so after weighing out 14g, I soaked it all in the dark. I tested every two days to see how the longer soak time affected the potency.

Verdict: Most of the action happens within the first day of infusing, but a longer soak does increase the potency (albeit by very small amounts).

The very first test I did was after two days of undisturbed soaking. It tested at a girthy 10.7mg/ml right out of the gate, meaning I should have started testing a LOT earlier. Still, not bad.

Here, have some data:

  • 48 hours: 10.7mg/ml
  • 72h: 10.9mg/ml
  • 96h: 10.9
  • 120: 11.3
  • 144h (harvest): 11.9mg/ml

The final yield after straining the tincture twice through a coffee filter was 170ml of ANA-001, which is 11.9mg/ml. It’s a dark, evil green and it is entirely awesome. I think. I haven’t actually tried it yet – I don’t really consume my science, the fun is in the testing. If I ever get a job, I’m thinking about saving up for an entire Science Laboratory so I can make potions of an exact nature all day long. I’ll need a lab coat.

The second experiment was far more humbling, and I did an additional learn. Batch SCP-001 started out as 17.44g of Cherry Pie, a hybrid I bought on sale. Then I got lazy: I find hand-grinding the flower to take a really long time and it makes me uncomfortably sticky, so I found a small coffee grinder to try and speed the process up. This may have been my undoing, because the coffee grinder is insanely powerful and it essentially turned the dried flower into dust. I think this destroyed most of the trichomes, because 12g of weed dust has been soaking in 500ml of Everclear for 4 days now, and it’s clocking in at 3.9mg/ml – and that’s only after I gave up on the original method (Ikea teapot), dumped it all into a mason jar, and added the remaining 5.44g of pulverized Cherry Pie.

a tea pot with a built-in tea infuser. the pot is two-thirds full with an olive green liquid (Everclear and cannabis)
this was supposed to be such an awesome infusion method. gotta try it again with not-destroyed weed.

Lesson learned. I’ll let this batch soak for another day, and then strain out the mulch. I didn’t bother reducing the alcohol content of ANA-001 because there was so little of it to begin with, but I’ll strain and reduce SPC-001 before I report a final potency. I’m not expecting any miracles, so I’ll reserve this batch for anyone who wants to dip their toes (not literally please) into THC tinctures – it’ll be super mild and mostly guaranteed (not a legal statement) not to destroy your weekend.

Beyond the science: I’m still unemployed, I officially turned down a position with a company based out of Texas for at least 3 reasons, and I’m 5 interviews deep with another company that I’m really hopeful about. I still miss my former team terribly, and I’m glad-but-sad that I finally got to meet them – the Vancouver work trip we had been planning when we got laid off actually happened, and I had dinner with the crew. So many faces were missing, but I hugged the hell out of the faces I got to meet and then sniffled all the way home.

some of the most awesome people i’ve ever worked with 💖💔😢

On the whole, things are good. I’m trying to be calm and patient and understanding, but I usually end up on anxious and pacing and kinda lost. I also miss working, and not only because Everclear is really expensive but a) I need to be occupied at all times or I get into trouble doing SCIENCE and b) all this sitting around being useless is starting to affect my mental state.

SCIENCE

.. okay bye.

round 2

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By now, the first round of Delicious Juice Pot Balm samples have made it to their new homes. I’ve had a few bits of feedback and a request to actually purchase some, but I haven’t thought that far ahead. I did screw up, though: the last-minute addition of a new recipe – Multi Purpose Tingle Juice – had me so focused on the fun of packaging that I forgot to include the actual THC content in the printout I wrote up. It never actually crossed my mind at all, because the lip balm and salve, while potent, would require you to swim in it to get blasted – you don’t really absorb that much THC from topicals. The MPTJ, on the other hand, is a straight-up buttload (metric) of weed infused into an oil, and depending on how you use it, could get you seriously high. We eventually remembered math, and calculated the MPTJ to contain 32mg of THC per 5ml vial. I also didn’t think to count the number of sprays you get out of the vial, and I shipped out every one I had so I can’t even count squirts. I AM BAD AT DETAILS.

Except I’m actually really GOOD at details, and I’m annoyed with myself that I didn’t think of this stuff before I sent the packages out. I’m designing new labels – my original ones are great, but they’re too big for the packaging I settled on – and I will make sure to at least include the product strength in the handout.

So, Round 2! Yes, there’s gonna be a Round 2. I have an idea for a fun THC-infused kit – the working name is the Halfwack Harlot Weekender Kit, please feel free to suggest something better – that I’m working on. I’m going to make up a new batch of things later this week and I am SUPER EXCITED about all the messes I’m going to make and the potential for fun sexy times (which will lead to messes of an entirely different sort).

I also realized something about this entire thing: basically, I’m playing shop. I’m creating a product line and labels and packaging and I am having a grand old time. Actually selling this stuff? Ehhhh if it happens, it happens. If not, there will still be pot balms in cute tins with adorable labels and questionable inserts, because I still want to MAKE things but .. y’know, give it away to people. Here, try these things I made! They are silly! I made STICKERS!

It’s a weird, expensive hobby that I am not entirely certain is legal – yes, cannabis is legal in Canada, but there’s an entire .. thing around making products for bodies with controlled substances that I know nothing about, and my brain is too full of things to want to go down that rabbit hole. I want to play with weed and oil and butter and Photoshop, not do legal paperwork stuff. That’s boring. I don’t want a boring, paperwork hobby. I just want to make people high and moist.

So, the signup sheet will be open again soon. I still don’t want to take money for these things, but I might open a tip jar or something to help cover the cost of packaging and postage. I am not good at this part. I just want to make stickers and messes.

mess; stickers

delicious juice pot balm: it’s dot com

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So, I’ve done a thing:

i hope you like being high and moist

I’ve been using my large stores of weed to experiment with making lip balm and salve. It’s super fun and messy and I like playing with ingredients to come up with new smells and flavours. It’s science! WEED SCIENCE!

That being said, I am only one person with one body. I cannot possibly use all the balm and salve I’ve been making by myself. That’s where you guys come in!

Starting in a week or so, I’ll have sample jars of the stuff I’m making (lip balms, a salve, hopefully a lotion-type-thing) available for anyone who wants to be my guinea pig. The jars are pretty tiny, but I’ll also have a few normal-sized things for people to try.

The main thing to note is that I am NOT SELLING THIS STUFF. I’m making it for fun, and sharing the excess with my friends. I’m happy to mail you some balm or salve (or both!) if you’d like to try it (within Canada only, I’m afraid – I really don’t want to get busted for international mail crimes). Everything is hand made in my kitchen using BC weed, organic ingredients, and probably a bit of cat hair. Not everything includes all of the ingredients on the list – for example, the salve doesn’t contain mica – but it’s all listed. I can even take pictures of the ingredients I’m using, if you’re curious.

I’ll make a post when I’m able to start sending out samples. If you have any allergy concerns, maybe sit this one out (or ask, and I can attempt a different flavour essential oil or some shit). Again, I’m not selling these and I’m not certified as anything beyond “hobbyist who likes making messes”, so don’t treat this as a product you’re buying. It’s a sample! A free sample, because I love you!

The first batches of stuff I made are hilariously potent, and the salve makes an incredible nipple balm. Just sayin’.

Stay tuned!

operation overkill

Posted in cannabis, everyday kimli by

This may be the dumbest thing I’ve set up yet.

So, some backstory. As you might know, I spend most of my free time on my balcony, cultivating my new lifestyle as a cannabis aficionado. While the actual weed part is all fine and good, I find I’m far more excited about all the collecting and categorizing and displaying I get to do: tiny jars are absolutely my jam, and there are a lot of them. Not every provider labels products the same way, so I’m left with a disorganized assortment missing the important information that goes into making an informed choice about the strain you’re about to enjoy. This lessens my fun a little, because I like order. Organized order, with shelves and codes and coloured jars, and shit.

I also like electronics, and needlessly complicated solutions to problems that aren’t really problems at all.

Yeah, you know where this is going.

Over the past week, I’ve been wracking my brain to think of how I can display information about what strains are currently being smoked, which bong they’re in, and what’s in the grinders, in addition to knowing what is in each unlabelled stash jar, and what’s on hand as part of our (Ed started it, I’m just here to complicate things) collection.

I have the Raspberry Pi and Hyperpixel display I set up as a Sonos album cover display last summer, but I couldn’t find any projects online that would do what I want. I thought about making a Twitter account that just tweeted the weed information I sent to the account, but nothing seemed quite right. The following list of ideas were tried and discarded:

  • Setting up the Raspberry Pi as a Twitter board
  • Setting up an Android tablet as a Twitter board
  • Using iPhone widgets to display a single Twitter account
  • Use a whiteboard
  • Set up a wall iPad that displayed a Google Doc

.. none of those worked. The Twitter account idea seemed solid, but when I tried it I didn’t like the character limits – and I’d have to mentally remember which tweets were out of date and which were still valid. Using a whiteboard was probably the easiest solution, but I don’t like easy and I have ridiculously large handwriting so I’d have to basically make a chalk wall that Ed would just draw dicks all over so that idea was out. Also, it turns out there ARE no iPhone widgets for Twitter, and the ones I tried (Aviary and Twidget) weren’t great: one wants to show a random selection of your entire timeline, and the other made me log into the separate account I made (@halfwackhoots, although I’m probably going to delete it soon) every day. Using Twitter as a public message board would technically work, but it wasn’t the most attractive application of my idea.

I needed to think bigger.

Like, digital signage bigger.

Obviously I don’t want a billboard for my balcony, but what about a small screen? All I really need is something that can play a slideshow of images, and accept them from a wireless source. Something like .. a digital picture frame.

Welcome to my cafe, apparently.

I found a small, wireless digital photo frame that I can send pictures to with an app. I’ve been spending most of my free balcony time not smoking cannabis, but making little posters of our collection and what we’ve been using, so there’s no more guess work about what you set up last night but can’t remember in the light of day. I have minimal graphic design skills, but I have another app that provides me with thousands of templates so I just pick something that looks cute and then waste an evening making dumb little signs:

  • sorry, billy idol
  • sushi jerry
  • ed likes cars, so ..
  • a diner menu of weed
  • this one is exceptionally bad

It’s not a perfect system. These cards have a limited shelf life in that the text expires, so when we’ve finished with a particular strain or bowl and change to another, I need a new poster. I can’t imagine I’ll be doing this every single time, but for now that’s exactly what I’m doing and it’s the stupidest thing ever but it makes me laugh every time.

Stop on by the Halfwack Smoke Shack! We have a great selection, no prices, and many cats to pet!

I really need to teach myself Swift so I can make the organization apps I want but don’t exist. I’d like an app that allows you to track the strains you’ve tried and how you liked them, then suggest other strains you might enjoy based on your list. This exists for craft beer and wine, but not for cannabis. I’d also love an app that I could insert some text and have it generate me a poster and automatically send it to the frame. I can’t control the contents of the frame remotely, so when it’s time to hide a poster because it’s no longer in use, it’s a manual process to hide it via the frame’s UI.

I’m still working on a poster that shows the contents of the unlabeled stash jars, and one for the No Fun Box (we don’t often find strains that are a no-go but there are some. they’re kept in the “polite company” airtight container.) At this rate, I’m going to get really good at early Web 2.0 graphic design. If this whole tech writing thing doesn’t work out, maybe I can fall back on posters.

I’d say I need a new hobby, but that’s what led to this. At least it’s not a spreadsheet.

insufferable? stereotypical? completely valid?

Posted in angst, cannabis, everyday kimli, medical anomaly by

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have problems with anxiety.

*snort*

No, really. I know I’ve had major anxiety episodes in the past, but in my head I had equated “anxiety” specifically with those actual, textbook panic attacks. I think there was even a paper bag involved, once.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized I’ve suffered from some significant anxiety this ENTIRE TIME – like, if I thought I’d been going from 0 – 10 to rate those attacks at a 6 or 7, but I’d actually been going from 5 – 14 the entire time – and I’m just starting to understand how and why I’ve been feeling so .. introspective lately. This is going to sound exactly how it sounds, but I’ve been figuring out the insanely buried truths behind some fundamental aspects of who I am, and it. is. fucked.

Two specific examples from the last 3 months sort of kicked this all off. I have had full-on sobbing in a heap ugly cries borderline hysterics that were really unusual even for me lately, and I’d been thinking about them: a) when my bloodwork came back from a routine checkup was so bad that I was sent to Every Specialist including a cardiologist and had to do multiple overnight tests and my upcoming echocardiogram, and when I received the letter from BC Health saying I qualified for an early COVID vaccine because I’m extremely clinically vulnerable. Both times, I melted the fuck down entirely. I sobbed so long and hard I gave myself the hiccups. I was a snotty, horrible, mess for hours. It sucked.

It wasn’t until I read this article that it dawned on me that my extreme reactions to potentially unsettling – like, not even actually unsettling, but something that might turn out that way later – medical things isn’t just a run of the mill worried about the spectre of death sort of thing, but actual PTSD from my 2.5 Major Medical Issues in the last several years.

I know I pretend to be a smart person, but I am really quite dumb. The article and existence of medical trauma make perfect sense to me, but I legit thought I was having some sort of psychotic break. I was scared by and of my reaction, which was to a reaction in the first place, so this was like Inception-levels of meta brain shit.

That stunned epiphany has actually changed how I handle these things. I can tell when I’m about to lose my shit, and either calm myself down knowing that I am not actually this scared, or warn Ed I’m about to erupt in a totally non-pornographic way and to please help me cope.

It’s not always successful, of course. Right now, I’m worried and anxious af because I’ve had NO reaction to the second Pfizer dose I received on Friday afternoon. Everything I’ve heard from friends and internet strangers alike is that the first Pfizer dose is pretty mild but the second one knocks you on your ass. I didn’t have much of a reaction to my first dose, so I prepared for a thorough ass-knocking – like, did groceries, got my affairs in order (look, it’s a work in progress), made sure Ed had enough things to eat over the weekend, stored up an ample supply of Diet Coke and chicken noodle soup – and yet I’m fine. Went out yesterday afternoon, did a bunch of errands, made neighbourhood queso. Okay, maybe day two is the worst and I’ll really feel it tomorrow? So far today I’ve made blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast, cleaned out two kitchen cabinets and two drawers, ate some queso leftovers in my balconic oasis to the tune of a Broadway showstopper, wrote up some self-serving psychobabble, and made several smaller, less life-changing epiphanies about Greek yogurt and Tupperware lids. I’m supposed to be sick and miserable. Why am I not sick and miserable?!

What if I didn’t actually get the vaccine at all? What if I’m not actually protected from covid?

What if my slight headache and extreme weariness ARE my symptoms, and I’ve been having them all along?

That doesn’t seem right, as I’m not suffering all that much so I must have done something wrong and I’m still vulnerable.

.. and why am I worrying about whether I’m suffering enough to be deserving of the label of “having symptoms”, anyway? This is one of the reasons I also didn’t think I “deserved” to think I was suffering from PTSD, I’m just a stupid broken baby who can’t handle minor life stuff.

Yeah, it’s been an interesting few months.

Did I say interesting? I meant exhausting.

I honestly can’t tell if I’m just being good ol’ Insufferable Kimli, if this is a stereotypical stoner line of thinking, or if it’s a valid realization.

Up next: why I can’t watch TV, and why I hate sharing my age!

suspicious minds

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I need to preface this story with a confession: we were both high. THAT BEING SAID, this was super weird.

Last night we were hungry, but I had forgotten to take anything out of the freezer and none of the other in-house options were exciting, so we decided to order in. We were also bored of our usual suspects, so we went through our delivery options to find anything that looked universally appealing.

Way, way down on the list of restaurants, we found a place we hadn’t tried before. It was highly rated (9.8/10), had reasonable prices, and offered free delivery. Great! From that moment on, though, everything was .. suspicious:

  • The place had a very generic name, like “Good Food” – something hard to Google
  • There was no address for the place listed, just a street name
  • The menu was huge, which always makes me suspicious of a place
  • The food they sold was unusual – not that the available items were weird, but that everything was described oddly:
    • “Breaded munchies”, with no description of what a “munchie” is
    • Each pizza listing started with “popular pizza sauce” as an ingredient
    • “Hand-sliced mushrooms”
    • “Spaghetti noodles mixed with ..”
    • “Popular veggie sandwich”
  • You could add toppings to your pizza. In addition to toppings you’d normally find on pizza, you could add:
    • Sour cream
    • Ricotta
    • Spinach
    • Ginger
    • Garlic
    • Cilantro
    • Chili flakes

We decided we were just high enough to be adventurous, so we ordered some food. The weirdness did not stop there:

  • The ordered arrived quickly, but there was absolutely zero identifying details on the packaging. The food came in a plain paper bag, a plain container, and completely blank pizza boxes. No logo, store name, menu, receipt – nothing but generic, blank containers and the food itself.
  • Speaking of the food, it was eerily perfect: three identical pizza bases with evenly spaced, totally uniform toppings. Honestly, it looked like what you’d get if you worked on the Enterprise and asked your food replicator for a 10″ Margherita pizza, warm.
  • We did, in fact, order the “breaded munchies” because we couldn’t imagine what they could possibly be. They were parmesan-garlic bread bites – not breaded, but actual bread.
  • The food tasted fine! Nothing to write a big blog post about, but perfectly edible and quite good – we’ve absolutely had far, far worse food delivered. If it wasn’t for the fact that a) we were evidently Conspiracy Theory High and b) all the things listed above, it would have been a routine, run-of-the-mill dinner order from a place we hadn’t tried before.

My current theory is that we stumbled upon a mid-range catering outfit doing pandemic business as a pop-up pizza place. Fake restaurants were all over the news a few years ago when food delivery started outpacing dine-in service, but mostly in big cities like New York and San Francisco – definitely not on the outer edge of suburbia, a stone’s throw from another country.

It was fucking weird, and it just kept getting weirder.

DINNER WAS SUS, Y’ALL.

i tried to tell roary my concerns but he did not care

call me, hollywood. i got more of these.

Posted in cannabis, everyday kimli by

A Sunday afternoon in the middle of a stay home order called for a trifecta of Lilac OG (a new favourite from Mota Cannabis), 10th Planet (heavy hitter also from Mota), and a smidge of Sky Cake (an excellent AAA Strain from Budmail).

I spent the afternoon as the clumsy, quirky, loveable, and perpetually single best friend of Paul Rudd’s wife (TBD, but probably Leslie Mann because why mess with a working formula) in a Judd Apatow coming-of-middle-age comedy, in the scene where the couple (who’ve been having marriage issues), find their teen kid’s weed stash and decide to smoke it in a montage set to an album Paul Rudd puts on and dances around the room to. I really hope I’m Margaret Cho. I love her.

.. wat

swed: the live blog

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I am very concerned about what modern Mickey Mouse looks like. Is he the round flat, or the retro modern pointy nose?

It took me an inordinate amount of time to calculate the modern equivalent of future time LMM’s writing about you today – this some no math bullshit.

Too high to say sausage roll. Very sad day.

Trifecta high for 4/20: Lilac OG+Dutch Crunch+Sky Cake.

Being very confused at how to explain my Future Hamilton timeline starring your life right now
What will the rousing statement in the big opening number introducing you be?

PSA: this is not a regular Tuesday high I think I 420’d too hard

TITULAR.