2.2.2026, 21:25: First Session
Burned one a few minutes ago. It tasted pretty bad. Burned up barnyard. I thought, “The effects on this had better be good.”
Getting a rush. I’ll say no more yet. Feels rabbit hole-esque. Didn’t burn all of the joint. It was a spitter. Bitter, acrid. More so than a recent Do-Si-Dos I described the same way. Chem-y. But I can start to feel the body buzz. My ears are ringing. I’m lit.
They weren’t the best looking buds but the grind looked better than I thought it was going to. It had a coffee-like aroma when ground up. I’ve had Sunset Sherb before, in Arizona. It’s a classic strain but you don’t see it much anymore. Its offspring are all over the place, mainly through the Gelato line. Sunset Sherb is GSC x Pink Panties. (source: Seedfinder, link.) There’s Burma in the Pink Panties, which I theorize is where the quintessential Sherb “bite” comes from.
Not much alcohol in my system at the moment, which is not to say I have not had some sips today. I did, but earlier. I’m trying to enjoy some drier moments, and the night is a nice time to do that. I’d like my nights back! That’s a meme I am envisioning, a riff off what the BP oil executive said after the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Is that well still leaking? There was a time when you could watch a clip of it spewing from the floor of the gulf, someone had set up a video feed of it. When you think about it, crude oil comes from out of the Earth. It’s not man-made. Chemicals that we make, some of them derived from petroleum, are probably much worse when they get dumped into the environment, e.g. PCBs, TCE, etc. Crude oil is just dead stuff fermenting below the earth’s crust.
You don’t want crude in your water supply but it wouldn’t be as bad as the PFAS made by the paper mill in Wisconsin that ended up somehow being dumped or spread and which are now contaminating wells in the nearby town. I read about this recently. That paper mill was making a wax paper coating—greaseproof—to use as lining for the inside of microwave popcorn bags. I’ve eaten plenty of microwave popcorn in my time, but it’s been years since my last bag. I do miss freshly popped popcorn. I made it on the stove a few times. It wasn’t difficult but you’ve got to take the time, and who wants to do that? Hence the toxic microwave paper bag liner chemicals now contaminating drinking water in Wisconsin.
Sunset Sherb!
It’s a rush. Speed. I’ll crash soon or eventually; let’s see where it goes from here. How this strain could ever be considered an indica I don’t know. The classification might come down mostly to the shape, size, growth rate, and height of the plant. I’ve said it before about Sherbs and Sherb crosses like Gelato: these strains hit harder, faster, and quicker as any other strain or family of strains. Their effects—for me—are squarely sativa-leaning. Hat tip to the Burmese sativa.
I’m achy though. My neck aches as I write this. I’m hunched on one side of my bed. I need to get up. It’s like a sleep paralysis. The pen is glues like a magnet to the page. If I had to pick one strain for pen-to-paper effects it would be some sort of Sherb. 21:40.
It’s not freezing outside. I could hear snowmelt dripping down the gutter downspout. It’ll get colder later, probably will freeze eventually. Might get some freezing rain. Today was the warmest of the last ten. The next few days will take us back into the cold. Tomorrow is a high of 34° with a 30 percent chance of snow. Tomorrow night, low of 17°. Wednesday 30°/15° but it’s supposed to be sunny.
22:15. The Sunset Sherb is still fueling my night. There has not been much bite, surprisingly. I feel some headband effect, a tightening around the temples. I’ve sent out a few texts. I read up on a trade from the baseball world. I have not yet cracked the bird book I’ve slowly been working my way through. Kenn Kaufman’s The Birds Audubon Missed. It’s a history about not just the renowned bird artist/naturalist John James Audubon but it also tells the story of how birds acquired the common names we now know them by. It’s a little dry but I like the subject, and I like the writing.
I’m taking my time with the book. Kaufman’s first book, Kingbird Highway, is a nonfiction account of his so-called Big Year in 1973 when he hitchhiked around the country trying to see as many different species of birds as he could before the year was over. If you saw “Listers” on YouTube you can understand where its inspiration might have come from. I have not read Kingbird Highway but I want to get my hands on a copy ASAP. It sounds like my kind of book. 22:21.
Decent carry here with the Sunset Sherb. I won’t be awake too much longer. I’m not quite baked. I don’t have that “peanut butter rolled in oats and warmed by a fire” feeling but I’m several steps in that direction. Since smoking I have downed part of a Grolsch and taken a sip of vodka but that’s the only alcohol I’ve had in my system while I’ve had this Sherb session going.
Our new dog Nora barks at night when she hears me coming up the stairs. And she has got a set of pipes! Other than this quirk she is settling in and I am quite fond of her. 22:25.
2.17.2026, 16:48: Subsequent session notes.
Smoked a Sunset Sherb hours ago. Four hours. I still feel it. I had one good high-dea. I was looking at a problem from another angle. Body buzz now. I messed around with a leaky sink for an hour. Tinkering. I was in no rush. I had a shot at lunch and a beer. Then nothing again until now, a beer.
I never got a strong head rush from the Sherb, never got jones-y. I lied down to sleep at one point but I never really fell asleep. I dozed for just a moment but something woke me up. Nora, upstairs, doing something. Counter-surfing. I was still feeling the Sherb current and couldn’t sleep, or maybe once I was in bed I realized I didn’t want to sleep, didn’t need to. That’s when I got up and started to mess with the leaky sink. What it needed was a certain sized washer on the stem, to keep water from sliding down the stem and coming out around the spigot base. I had the washer in inventory. That was the only part that needed fixing.
Oh, I also took Nora out on a short walk, twenty minutes before I lied down.
This is a level-headed current. It’s optionable. The taste this time was not unpleasant but nothing stands out. You’re not buying this one for the taste. You’re buying it as fuel.
2.22.2026, 16:43, Third and Final Sunset Sherb Session Notes.
Smoked a Sunset Sherb joint. .4 grams. This time I felt the bite. Which is to say the smoke gets all up in my head and starts my mind going like a hamster on a wheel.
There is less alcohol in my system than what is normal for me for this time of day. The emotions are flooding. I am letting what annoys me take over my entire mindset and well-being. This is the bite. I have noticed recently that Group Texts are staging a social media coup of my phone. I am not on Facebook. I used to use Instagram but I quit it early 2024. I am not on Twitter or X or whatever they’re calling it these days. I’ve never used TikTok; never will.
I have this blog, and another blog (JBR.com) and I use Spotify, if that counts as social media. But now my Messages app seems like a backdoor means for sudden social media-like twisters to work their way into my awareness. Larger and larger groups of people. Reactions to this or that. Today, a poll. I’m not cut out for this kind of communication anymore. I’m just not interested. When it comes to texting I find myself ready to go back to the days of dumb phones.
Opting out of these conversations (even though I never opted in) seems harsh. But I also dislike feeling like I need to have a reason to “leave.” Now I’m feeling this textbook Sherb bite and the bite is taking me right into this confused, ambivalent headspace. Into the Complaint Zone. Rant and rave. Wasting time, wasting thoughts! Any more to have my peace it feels like I have to throw up walls and then I feel guilty.
My wife is headed out of town but I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m happy at home with Nora, who is otherwise partial to my wife, even shadows her. Now that I’ll have a chance to bond a bit with the dog, in my wife’s absence, I don’t imagine I’ll want to do anything else. Solitude, if and when I can get it, is a rarity. A scarcity. I won’t give it up so easily.
The Sunset Sherb once again has me putting pen to paper. I have finished a beer but I don’t have any vodka in me (yet). Perhaps this allows the bite to set harder, truer. So I try to write the bite away. Just putting this mini-diatribe on paper has me feeling better, calmer. I should try to move onto some other topic. And steer clear of the vodka for at least another hour. 17:01.
I went upstairs for a minute but I didn’t say anything to my wife. I didn’t want to do another version of my whiny rant. She had made banana bread and the whole first floor of the house smelled really good. I have navigated the bite. Have I navigated it well? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m making too much of my unwillingness to participate in group texting. Or my refusal to “go out” anymore. I go out a lot, just not for social purposes. Over the last 70 nights, I’ve spent 28 of them somewhere other than home. That’s two out of every five night the last ten weeks waking up somewhere other than my own bed. As much as anything I’m worn out, and I’m happy to say so.
This feels like a bit more of a downer post-bite run with the Sunset Sherbet. The context is weighing on me and I’m letting it. Context is content, for good or for ill. My body feels heavy. I lugged hundreds of pounds of wood down the hillside near my house, then up the other side of the next hill. I had sawed up a big downed oak and I wanted to get the wood to a place where I could split it and stack it, which I did. I split a lot of wood. My back and my shoulders are sore and heavy.
I have read a few pages of Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway, which I ordered online. My ears are ringing a little. Have they always done this when I’m feeling the effects of cannabis, or is this the early onset of the tinnitus that so plagues my mother?
I’m nearly through this notebook. The first entry was ten weeks ago. A lot of what’s in here is writing about weed. Writing while using weed. An excuse to sit down and put pen to paper, if I should need one. 17:34.
Weeds of Grass 