The 250 runic characters carved into the rock spell out the Lord’s Prayer. It’s believed it was carved in the early 1800s and then buried, only to be exposed when a tree fell in 2018.
Found carved into the bedrock, not far from the town of Wawa, were 255 symbols arranged in a square about 1.2 metres by 1.5 metres, and next to it, there is carved a picture of a boat with 16 people on it, as well as 14 Xs.
Erick White, Journalist.
The Lord’s prayer was in Swedish and it traced back to 1611 runic version of the prayer, which was republished in the 19th century.
The Cruel Irony of Sobriety: When Great Beer Deals Are Everywhere You Look
There’s a special kind of cosmic joke that reveals itself the moment you decide to quit drinking. Suddenly, everywhere you turn, there’s alcohol. Not just any alcohol—cheap alcohol. Good alcohol on sale. The kind of deals that would have made your drinking self do a little victory dance in the grocery store aisle.
Take this picture I snapped at my local grocery store yesterday: a full case of quality beer, marked down to what can only be described as an almost offensive bargain. The bright white sale tag practically glowing under the fluorescent lights, beckoning to anyone with a pulse and four twenty-dollar bills. Six months ago, I would have grabbed two cases without thinking twice. Today, I stood there for a solid thirty seconds, marveling at the universe’s timing.
When Did Alcohol Colonize Every Corner Store?
It’s not just The Beer Stores anymore—though they’ve certainly upped their game. Walk into any gas station, and there’s an entire wall dedicated to beer, wine, and spirits. The corner convenience store that used to primarily sell lottery tickets and energy drinks now has a craft beer section that would make some liquor stores jealous.
The availability is relentless. You can’t buy milk without walking past a beer cooler. You can’t grab emergency toilet paper without navigating through a maze of wine endcaps featuring deals that make your sober brain do unwanted calculations about hypothetical savings.
The Psychology of Suddenly Noticing Everything
When you’re drinking regularly, alcohol becomes background noise. It’s just there, part of the landscape, unremarkable as wallpaper. But the moment you quit, it’s like someone turned up the contrast on every beer sign, every wine display, every happy hour advertisement. The world transforms into one giant, flashing neon reminder of what you’re not doing anymore.
And the deals! My god, the deals. It’s as if retailers sensed my sobriety and decided to launch the most aggressive alcohol marketing campaign in history. “Flash Sale: 30 X Can 355 ml $45.99* Save: $5.00!” “Weekend Special: Local Craft Brewery Mix-and-Match!” “Manager’s Special: Import Beer by the Case!” Each sign might as well include a personal note: “Hey, remember when you would have loved this?”
The Economics of Temptation
The financial aspect adds another layer of complexity to early sobriety. When you quit drinking, you suddenly have extra money—sometimes a shocking amount of extra money. That case of beer in the photo, priced at what I used to spend on a single night out, starts to look like monopoly money. The rational part of your brain knows you’re saving hundreds of dollars a month, but the addicted part starts doing its own math: “Just one case wouldn’t hurt the budget.”
It’s particularly cruel how the best deals seem to appear during your most vulnerable moments. Stressful day at work? There’s a wine sale. Celebrating a personal milestone? Beer promotion. Feeling nostalgic about “the good old days” of drinking? Suddenly every store in a five-mile radius is practically giving away your former favorite beverages.
Learning to Navigate the New Normal
The truth is, alcohol isn’t going anywhere. It’s woven into the fabric of our retail landscape, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Learning to exist in this environment without constant temptation requires rewiring decades of associations and impulses.
Some days are easier than others. Some days you can walk past that screaming sale tag without a second thought, focused on your shopping list and your new life priorities. Other days, you find yourself taking the long way around the store to avoid the alcohol section entirely, and that’s okay too.
Recovery isn’t about finding a world without alcohol—it’s about finding yourself in a world full of it and choosing differently.
That case of beer will still be there tomorrow, probably at an even better price. But so will I, still sober, still making the choice that serves my life rather than sabotages it. And that, I’m learning, is worth more than any deal I’ll ever pass up.
Sometimes the smallest victories bring the greatest relief. After spending an entire day yesterday turning my house upside down searching for a single RCA cable, I had almost given up hope. Little did I know that my missing item was waiting for me in the most unexpected place: the parking lot at work.
The Search Begins
It started as most tech quests do – with a simple need and growing frustration. I needed that specific RCA cable for a project, and what should have been a five-minute “where did I put that thing?” turned into an all-day archaeological expedition through drawers, boxes, and forgotten corners of my home.
I checked the usual suspects: the floor in the kitchen and living room, my jacket, all my pockets. I even ventured into the garage, hoping it might be lurking in some storage bin, I thought maybe I dropped it somewhere by accident.
Hours passed. The cable remained elusive.
The Moment of Discovery
This morning, as I walked across the parking lot to start another day at work, something caught my eye near my usual parking spot. There, in perfect condition, was my missing RCA cable. It must have been sitting in my car or pocket and somehow found its way onto the asphalt, waiting patiently for our reunion.
The relief was immediate and disproportionate to the object’s modest value. This wasn’t just about finding a cable – it was about solving a puzzle that had consumed my previous day, about the satisfaction of completing a quest that had seemed impossible just hours earlier.
The Joy of Small Victories
There’s something uniquely satisfying about finding something you’ve lost, especially after an exhaustive search. That RCA cable represented more than just a cable; it was the missing piece that would allow me to complete my project, the end to a frustrating mystery, and proof that persistence sometimes pays off in unexpected ways.
The morning sun seemed a little brighter as I picked up that cable, dusted it off, and finally headed into work with a sense of accomplishment that would carry me through the day.
Sometimes the things we’re looking for are right where we least expect them, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves. Today, that moment was 4 AM in a parking lot, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
The mower sat silent in the back yard as I prepared for the afternoon’s work. The May sunshine felt warm and promising on my shoulders, and my sister’s flower beds were bursting with the full glory of late spring blooms.
When they’d asked if I could help with the lawn, I’d said yes immediately. Family helps family—that’s how we were raised. But when my brother-in-law pressed three folded twenty dollar bills into my hand afterward, something twisted in my stomach. The gratitude in his eyes was genuine, and I knew they appreciated the help, but taking money from family felt wrong somehow. Like I was crossing an invisible line that had always existed between us.
“You don’t have to—” I started to say, but he waved me off.
“You earned it,” he said simply. “Besides, didn’t you say you were saving up for something?”
He was right. I am saving up, scraping together every dollar I can for a goal that feels both urgent and distant. The rational part of my brain knew there was nothing wrong with accepting fair payment for fair work. I’d spent six hours under the sun, wrestling with their temperamental mower and edging around the flower beds with the precision my sister always insisted upon. But the other part of me—the part that remembered countless family barbecues and holidays, the part that knew these were the people who’d always had my back—that part wanted to hand the money right back.
I kept it, though. I needed it more than my pride needed protecting.
Before I started the mower, something caught my eye near the flower bed. A bee, heavy with pollen, was working methodically through my sister’s vibrant spring blooms—sunflowers, tulips, daffodils, and early roses that had exploded into color over the past few weeks. There was something both beautiful and heartbreaking about watching it move from flower to flower, completely absorbed in its work.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture, knowing that in a few minutes, I’d fire up the mower and this peaceful moment would be shattered. The bee would be forced to flee, its workday cut short by the roar of machinery and the disruption of human maintenance. Later, when I posted the photo, I found myself writing something that felt profoundly true: “The bee’s last day pollinating.” At least here, at least today.
There was something poignant about the timing. Here was this creature, doing exactly what it was meant to do in the perfect conditions of a May afternoon, surrounded by the abundance of spring flowers. And I was about to destroy that peace, not out of malice, but out of necessity. The lawn needed cutting, the edges needed trimming, and suburban order needed to be restored.
I stood there for a moment longer, watching the bee work with single-minded purpose. Then I walked back to the mower, pressed the starter button, and let the mower roar to life. The bee, startled by the sudden noise, lifted off and disappeared into the neighbor’s yard where it could continue its work in peace.
As I began making my passes across the lawn, I thought about interruption and adaptation. The bee would find other flowers, other gardens where it could do what nature had designed it to do. But for just a moment, I had witnessed it in perfect harmony with its purpose, before the demands of human life required its displacement.
The work took about six hours, cutting neat lines across the green expanse while spring continued to bloom around the edges. When I finished, I also cleaned the rest of the backyard then went to accompany my brother-in-law to a Shoppers Drug Mart where he pressed three folded twenty-dollar bills into my hand, and I felt that same complex mixture of gratitude and discomfort.
Later, driving home with grass clippings still stuck to my shoes and those twenties carefully tucked away toward my savings goal, I kept thinking about that bee. How it had been perfectly content in its work until I came along with my human obligations and mechanical disruptions. There was something both humbling and enlightening about being the agent of interruption in someone else’s perfect day.
Sometimes the most ordinary moments teach us the most about the delicate balance of coexistence—the balance between our needs and nature’s rhythms, between accepting help and maintaining independence, between the work we must do and the work we want to do. That bee found other flowers, I’m sure. And I found my way to a goal I’m working toward, one lawn at a time, one small disruption at a time.
I boldly declare that I am protected from bad foods or fatal substances! When I sit down to eat, I take a few minutes to bless my food. I call it sanctified; I speak nutrition and health into it; and then I eat it, believing that it will only bless and strengthen my body. Jesus has provided supernatural protection from disasters, calamities, snakes, scorpions, and all the works of the enemy. He promised me traveling mercies and protection from acts of injustice. God isn’t going to send me somewhere so I can die! I rebuke the spirit of fear — and I press forward into the divine life of Jesus Christ!
It’s Friday, April 11th, 2025 and I’ve decided to start writing a blog. I guess first of all I am going to introduce myself, my name is José Luis and I’m a 41-year-old tech enthusiast taking online Networking and Cyber Security courses, I am almost going to finish two online courses; one on Wireless Networking and another about Understanding the Cloud.
Today was a good day, I got to chill with my brother and got to work early in the morning. I don’t even think I slept for more than 3 hours.
