knock knock "ah, hey, sorry, I am a little early today, can I still get a drink? yeah, I take some Tripel Karmeliet please, thanks :)" I sit down at the table with the "Reserved for Hubski" sign on it, the barman gets me my beer to the table (how nice of him!) and I start to write a note to the hubskiteers across the lake. By the time they pass by I will either be drunk, sleeping, or drunksleeping. How are you doing guys? The past few weeks were good. Some turbulence mainly taking things higher up the mood scale. About a month ago I met a girl. I found her interesting. She was self confident, playful and calm. After meeting twice we ended up hooking up. It was fun, it was exciting but I was not falling for her. I wasn't blown away, I did not have a crush. In a situation like this I usually end things up, right there. I don't want us to invest into something that was only one sided. This time though I felt like I want it to continue. I noticed that she wanted to spend time with me, more than I was comfortable with, but still respected my choices when I wanted to have an evening alone, and that without having the feeling that she didn't like my choice. Slowly over the weeks I got to know her a little better and got surprised more and more. Now we got to the point where we spend 4 evenings a week together and it just feels good. I am still worried and somehow afraid of the "definitions talk" where she asks me "what are we?" and I don't know how to answer her and she then gives me an ultimatum to decide whether we are in a relationship or not and and.... here goes my brain too far again. Fact is, I like her and I am enjoying getting to know her slowly. It is different to any interaction I had before because I was either full on in love or not interested. I am not sure what to do next but maybe I don't have to be sure. All I know is that it feels good. Last weekend we threw a leggings party. It was my birthday and somehow we use that as an excuse to throw a big party and celebrate life. Somehow, I was able to get about 100 people to put on fancy leggins and have their asses slapped on the stage during a spanking contest. It was a hell of a night and probably one of this year's highlights. I also found out that I am surrounded by excellent, wonderful and beautiful people. It warmed my heart. Two weeks ago, I had a small MDMA session with three of my friends. Two of them never tried MDMA before. The main reason for doing it was due to one of them having a hard year and feeling that he is "blocked" inside. He kept asking me to do mushrooms with him but I was worried to go to psychedelics before he experienced something somewhere in between. This lead to this session where we all took a normal dose on a Sunday afternoon. We spend the time indoors, in my room, listening to music, dancing and talking. One of them spend the 5 hours drawing without having much of an interaction with us. It was very weird for the first times, of course, but both enjoyed the experience. The best was the afterglow. Somehow, the friend with the "blockade" had a short "Aha!" moment where he realized that his day to day worries are just that, worries. Deep inside he was still a kid enjoying life. For the past two weeks, he is changed. Smiling, dancing, cooking, interacting. I did not expect that, but damn I am happy for him :) Next summer we might try some low dose of mushrooms... I mentioned the last time I was here that I started a small Psychedelic Research group at uni. I gave my first talk to the group, an audience of 12, about the pharmacology of psychedelics. Starting from basics about ligand binding and receptor types up to explaining a recent serotonin receptor crystal structure paper (http://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31749-4). They all seemed to understand the shamanic language I was talking and we had fun discussions. Overall it took us 2 hours to go through 15 slides which felt like a good sign. Really looking forward to the next meeting where one member will introduce us to the works of Stanislav Grof! brm brm brm... I am talking a lot today, my beer is getting warm! Edit: That was the flyer for the party :)