1.23.2026, 16:36. Time to burn. Strain of the day? Crazy Hazy, grown by Island, purchased in Sauget, Illinois.
It’s five degrees outside. Not quite sativa weather! I keep going outside to knock the skin of ice off the dish of bird bath water, adding hot water from the tap. Freezing cold, and no end in sight. It’ll be just as cold or colder throughout the next 48-72 hours. Seriously cold weather these days—hell, so far this century—for the St. Louis region. What is this, Minnesota?
If I somehow got stuck outside I would freeze to death out there, at least get frostbite. It’s frigid but I don’t smoke in the house so where else am I going to burn one? I haven’t smoked in the garage but it might come to that.
The flavor is there on this Crazy Hazy. It’s got that terpinolene citrus tang. Pseudo-citrus, quasi-citrus, citrus-esque. It reminds me of how Sunny Delight used to taste. If they still make it. It’s been years since I had any Sunny D.
The flavor was there especially toward the end of the joint. When you get down to the end, there’s all the tar and resin produced by burning the first eighty percent of the roll. The end is the most potent portion of the joint, which makes sense. It’s a magnification, an inverted pyramid.
This Crazy Hazy is from the Beyond/Hello in Sauget, IL. The Mississippi Avenue location. Think: Pop’s, the Oz, the Diamond Cabaret, or was it Roxy’s. Maybe both. The grower is Island. It was nice looking bud, and the flavor is there even though I opened the eighth something like ten days ago. Rolled the joint that many days ago. I went out of town, to New Orleans. I smoked a couple of Crazy Hazies there but I never made any notes.
Weed reviews are like dreams. If you remember them at all you had better right down your thoughts right away. Otherwise it gets lost in this blurry parade we call life, the way life rolls through our consciousness like an un-dammed river. There’s no stopping it. Only when the rain stops, when the springs run dry. Then you arrive at that empty river—that wash—and once you get to the other side? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. Crazy Hazy!
This was the only purchase of Island bud I have made. They shorted me. I weighed it out to 3.4 grams. I haven’t avoided Island; they just weren’t on the Beyond/Hello menu that much in 2025. I haven’t ventured out to any other Illinois dispensaries but I know they are out there (Shiloh, Collinsville, Troy). I also buy in Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona, so I am trying here and there throughout the year.
The Crazy Hazy was nice looking bud. It was a strain that I found pleasant to grind up. It had that feel of being “right.” So I’ll see how the effects are on this, my last or penultimate joint from the eighth. I will try to use the effects as motivation to do something useful. Crazy Hazy was dubbed a sativa on the dispensary menu but my sources for lineage online indicate it as an indica. For what that is worth! The breeder is Archive Seed Bank (link to Seedfinder page here). They spell the Hazy with another “e” i.e. “Crazy Hazey.”
The lineage is unusual. One parent is an unknown strain called Big Sur Holy Weed. I have an image of the 1970s in my mind, VW buses and the West Coast. The other parent is Face Off OG x Moonbow #75. I have tended to like Face Off crosses/descendants. Animal Face being one, Do-Si-Dos being another.
Anyway, I am feeling the need to get up and make some preparations for the continuing cold and the oncoming snow. It is going to snow tonight, tomorrow, and on into Sunday. Only five inches if we are lucky.
I will fill some empty water containers. Main breaks are a legitimate concern. I’ll also power up a mobile battery pack. I have plenty of AAAs for my headlamp, should it come to that. The rectangular hard-plastic water jugs are excellent for re-use. They are sturdy and durable. I dry them out between uses; travel with them. I put a little bit of rope caulk/putty on the slit you have to make to break the vacuum that would otherwise keep the water from flowing out of the spigot.
You gotta love a good pen-to-paper strain, which Crazy Hazy so far seems to be. Sip a little vodka soda, brace for the storm. In the backyard is what I believe is a “foraging flock” of a few dozen birds of various species visiting our feeders and water stations. These flocks are led by Black-capped Chickadees but in this case the flock is highlighted by what must be six pairs of Northern Cardinals. The red males are so striking.
I brought in one of the water stations for the night. It’ll just be a frozen block in an hour or so, then it would be useless in the morning until I brought it in and thawed it out. This dish was marketed at a big-box hardware store as a saucer to set a potted plant on. My wife bought it. What’s unusual is that it’s not just the basic terra cotta. Instead, it has a glaze on it which makes it algae resistant. That doesn’t matter at all in the winter but it makes for much cleaner water, and less maintenance during the summer when green algae would otherwise start to grow on the terra cotta. Plastic is also good this time of year because if it does freeze or begin to freeze, you can give it a slight twist and break the ice. Can’t do that with ceramics.
The birds seem to like the relative shallow depth of the thin ceramic saucer. We’ve had Chickadees, White-throated Sparrows, Cardinals, and Blue Jays all stopping by for a drink. Seeing them eat and drink is one of the only pastimes I know that makes these frigid days feel fuller, more complete with some consolation, some offset and recompense. Crazy Hazy!
18:06. And you got-to keep on movin, movin on. My wife and I will watch a movie we started last night. It’s called “JFK.” It’s about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. An Oliver Stone film. It’s aged remarkably well. The cast is ensemble, led by Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones. Wayne Knight and John Candy have smaller roles. Gary Oldman plays Lee Harvey Oswald. Joe Pesci plays a defrocked priest who probably worked for the CIA as a liaison to Cuban anti-Castro fighters. Kevin Bacon has some of the most memorable lines in the film including his admonition to Costner’s character (the New Orleans DA investigating Kennedy’s killing). Bacon’s character warns Costner that, “Fascism’s coming back in a big fuckin way!” That was in 1964. The film was made in 1994. It still echoes.
I had seen “JFK” a few times. Used to have it on cassette (a double-wide). My wife and I started a “rando” movie list where we put movies on a list and assign them a number. We use a random number generator to decide which movie to watch. It’s sorta fun.
I still feel the Crazy Hazy at 18:11. That’s a solid hour and a half during which I’ve written this and gotten a few other things done. I’ll probably burn another one before we settle in to watch the rest of the movie.
Weeds of Grass 