Blueberry strain, a review

I am a completeist.

I am a guy who really likes to go through lists, see what it is that I am missing. Lists let me ponder what I need to be able to have the complete experience.  I like to gather before me the entire set of something, say that I have gone through the entire run of a series from A to Z. Most of the time this is damned near impossible to do. Nobody can have everything. And yet, trying to amass the whole shebang of something can be a whole heck of a lot of fun.

When I first started blogging I went by Accumulate Man; that in itself should say something about me. I gather things around me just to see what kinds of satisfaction I can get out of the experience. I love the thrill of the hunt, the research that goes into learning about the new, talking with folks about the goods I'm seeking out, marking the miles in the car just to see how lucky I can get further down the road. None of this is new to me or other people in my life as I've been doing this for years. I do it with music, with film, with art. Did for a while with cookbooks, with professional cooking gear, with costumes for Ren Faire. I still look for crystal champagne flutes, kaleidoscopes, folks masks, coffee table books and cool outsider art.

As a kid I first went nuts for Tonkas, then Matchbox cars, then Hot Wheels. I took that toy thing and replicated those feelings of completeness when my kids were little. Did my best to have all the Brio and Thomas the Tank Engine stuff, all the superhero figurines, all the Star Wars junk a person could amass. Even went back in time with a checkbook and started up again with toy soldiers. Got so bad and had so much stuff in that department that I started up an online business just to keep the household from rioting

Collecting can be fun but it takes up a lot of time and dedication, not to mention space. Moving that stuff costs a lot. When I get ready to take off to new destinations I tend to sell things at ridiculously low prices, dial up the phone numbers of second hands that are willing to pick things up at the house. I have gotten to know the ins and outs of selling on Craigslist and Ebay.

In some cases I have even left collections behind, a sure sign of accumulation mania. In fact I still have a storage space I pay on monthly in Washington State. Laser discs, old electronics, LP records, furniture that my ex insists the kids will use when they grow up. The only thing keeping me from just giving it all over to that reality tv show is an old trunk full of photos, old family stuff, that I can’t in my wildest nightmares picture being tossed onto a landfill heap. So I pay and know that someday I will open up that storage space door and wonder, as I look inside at all the junk moldering away, what the hell was I thinking.

Being a completeist is spendy, especially when you find yourself needing to own all the records that The Feelies put out or the complete run of all the films that Warren Oates starred in. Being a completeist means you get out a list and then do your best to get through it. I like to think that my bucket list is still out there, waiting for me to fill it out. I am sure that there are still plenty of other lists to make. I like to feel that my desire to ride all the best roller coasters, sip all the best beers in Colorado and travel to see all the state capitols is still in reach.

Now tackling Leafly, that is another thing entirely. Talk about a periodic table to make my way through! One thing I do know for certain and that is that I will never be able to get through all the strains of dope that are out there, considering all the hard work that the breeders are doing to prevent me from doing so. What I am doing, though, is doing my best to start from scratch. To go back to the beginning and round up the usual suspects. In this case, all the old school strains that have been platforms for the great strain revolutions of the last thirty some odd years.

I am thankful for the sativas of my early years that give me a place to start. The strains from my youth…Colombian Gold, Panama Red, Thai Stick, Oaxacan Gold, Maui Wowie…are still out there, occasionally found but mostly caught up and enmeshed in some really righteous, solid, building blocks of powerhouse weed. I am always pleased to find old school strains such as Original Cali Orange, for Skunk #1, for Northern Lights, for Haze, for they are reminiscent of the highs of my youth. Yesterday I got it in my head that I wanted to partake in a little bit of that Thai sky high feeling from the 70's. I certainly didn't have any of that old school Thai stick on hand but I looked into other flower arrangements that might do, instead. I decided that I would trot through the lineage of Blue Dream to get to that taste of Highland Thai that I craved, so I dug through my trunk and fished out a nice nug of Blueberry to get the game started.

There is nothing better than a well tooled grinder. It makes busting up a flower an pleasurable thing to do. I ground up a nice bud that I picked up from Nature’s Herbs and Wellness from Garden City earlier this summer. The scent of fruit and sweetness, all tropical, all hothouse country, wafted out of the top of my Mendo Mulcher when I opened it up. I took a pinch (not too much!) and placed it in my Magic Flight Launch Box and fired it up. What was nice about that Blueberry aroma was replicated and more in the vapor and in the after taste of the puff. A moment or two later the lift began. I felt it first around my shoulders, then it creeped up into my scalp. Somehow that scalp thing pulled up my facial muscles and there I sat, all smiles, and even giggled a bit to myself.

I couldn’t let that nice hybrid moment go away without pressing into service the sativa side of the plant. I love how the Thai side of the strain came through at the outset, all endless ceiling, all get up and go. I went downstairs and knocked out some busy work, feeling the joy of doing stuff that was necessary and mindless. But once that got done I said to myself, no sitting around today! I grabbed my towel and sunglasses and headed for the complex pool. All summer long I kept to my duties, never took a dip with my people out of the house but yesterday I felt high and just a bit decadent. With my head in the clouds and the skies cloudless I entered the pool gate and was given my grand treat for the day: the pool was empty and all mine. The day was finally sunny after a cloud filled morning. The pool was filled with dappled radiance. I threw my towel down on one of the many empty and available chairs and hit the water. 

I felt like landed gentry, a pool of my own. Asking for that was never on any of my lists but I had to wonder why it wasn’t. Yep, quite a treat, if only for a while. Like all good dreams that one had to end, too.  Before too long other dwellers of the Summer Park drifted in and began to fill up the space, something that I never minded before in the least. I said my hellos to folks that I knew, grabbed my stuff and left with my buzz intact. After an hour of dedicated water aerobics I felt worn and slightly giddy, ready for a snack and a bit of computer time before I ran out to fetch the family. I started supper, snacked like a mad animal and began the grand come down that the Afghani side of the house promised.

I loved that Blueberry strain so much so that I will gladly take on some Super Silver Haze later on today to see what the other side of Blue Dream is all about. The completeist in me will tackle that combo dope tomorrow.  But for today, I think that Haze to come will have me out walking. Save the pool for later on today, take a dip with the family. That is what a completeist does. Rounds things up and enjoys the pastime of things gathered together.

Salud!