Getting scooped.

Lately I’ve been living in dread of getting scooped on some of my research ideas about the one ancient language that I’ve been studying for quite some time now and have been making myself into quite the expert in.

Over the past couple of years, there’s been a few articles whose titles have made my heart stop when I came across them, although once I actually read them they turned out to be largely misguided takes on real issues that I’d already solved in more-thorough ways.

Lately, though, it’s been clear that this one guy who does good work has put his finger on some major long-term resystematizations that I also arrived at through another avenue. Like, I got one of his articles via interlibrary loan and it’s different/compatible with what I’ve been doing and had started to stake out, but he also has an upcoming “research results” conference and it really makes me wonder if he’s doing anything new.

I have definitely made sure to claim my different ideas through embedding them in conference talk titles and slides and whatnot, so I can always point to that – like, worse-case scenario we did the same thing separately and we acknowledge each other’s work – but, it would be better if I had the articles already published.

Only, they are so intensively time-consuming to write, that they’re just draining and they just take forever to write up…

Sigh.

All these past 10-15 years, I wouldn’t have had someone breathing down my neck, but now I do, when I’m finally hitting my stride.

Some food at my new job.

At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of the historic hotel where I now work at, it’s been interesting to try out all the different food on the menu.

One day after a reception, they had some chicken tenders and cheese curds left over, so they put them out in this staff area back behind the kitchen, and I found myself making detours to get them, although the cool chicken tenders were a heck of a lot better than the cold cheese curds, which were kind of gummy with breading on the bottom that was starting to get all soggy and greasy when the oil in everything cooled and settled downward, I’m assuming.

They have this one dessert drink that’s also very awesome.  It’s not my typical kind of cocktail – I’m not big on the sweet ones – but it’s creamy and coconut-y and citrus-y and it’s just good, and I can see now why my one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook coworker gets them all the time after work for himself… In fact, it was so good that I was telling my mom about it on the phone, and she says that she thinks she’d like it, and it’s not her type of drink, either, she usually goes for amber beers!

Their salads are also really good, although they tend to be heavy on rich ingredients like cheese and fatty dressings (nothing there is too healthy, someone told me when I first started there).

The burgers also tend to be the “thick meat patty and lots of toppings” kind of burger, which isn’t my favorite, to be honest, as I tend to go for the thin patty ones with simple lettuce, onion, pickles and mustard – a “smashburger,” as people annoyingly call them, now – but still, I’ve managed to find at least one burger that I genuinely like on the menu from the 2 that I’ve tried, so I can speak about the burgers authentically with any customers who ask about what’s good or what’s my favorite or whatnot, or so I can merely comment on how good their one particular burger looks when I serve it or so I can say “good choice!” or whatever when they order the one that I like, to like bond with them over the food and stuff.

Two recent misfires:

1) As a study routine for that one notoriously difficult language that I’ve been studying intensively lately, I was doing DuoLingo at home and then flashcards on the bus on the way to work, but all too often I just wouldn’t get through all the flashcards in time, and I’d want to look at them on-shift or have a lot of work to do after work when I was tired.

2) I get a special letter from my bank with a check that was returned as already cashed, and I realize that I had decided to try remote deposit at my national bank using this app that I’d recently downloaded, and then I’d kept the check that I'd deposited that way out by my records to check against my statement when it came in, only I’d forgotten that I’d cashed it that way and so I discovered it later and I went to deposit it at my local bank along with my paycheck from that week.

(Oops.)

(I’m just glad that there wasn’t a fee.)

A game you can play:

When you turn on classical music on the radio and it’s in the middle of a piece, you try to guess the composer and you try to articulate to yourself what’s the reasoning behind your guesses, so you become more in-tune with what you hear.

A few months ago, I got Prokofiev, and it made me so happy…

The piece had odd harmonies but it was obviously popular music-influenced with a bit of saxophone, so it reminded me of the Soviets trying to incorporate jazz, only it didn’t quite sound as angular and intellectual and self-distanced as Shostakovich, so I was thinking Prokofiev, by process of elimination.

And, I was right!

More Saint Patrick’s Day…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:

1) For work, my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker wears a short black skirt and fishnets over dark emerald green tights.

2) When I go to dress a pan cheesecake for some people, I try to make the chocolate sauce into a clover on top, but you can’t really tell that it’s that, so I make sure to point it out to them when I serve it.

3) When the food starts coming out to a big table in one of the lounges – this table of like 6 or 7 people, with a(n elderly) (white) grandmother next to a “cool” (trans man) who talks of bringing leftovers home for “the boys” (cats?) – the (Irish) specials happen to be up first and I’m sent out with them, so when I deliver them to the appropriate people at the table, I’m like, “Luck of the Irish! You get served first.”

4) This (quiet) (heavyset) (late 50s) (moustachioed) (black) federal employer sits at the end of the bar and wants to know if we have Jameson and Guinness.

Saint Patrick’s Day or thereabouts:

1) I make sure to get like four heads of cabbage to keep in my fridge for soup and for sauerkraut later, since why let a good sale go to waste.

2) At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I now work, we have shepherd’s pie and corned beef and cabbage as our specials, and my one (skinny) (balded and bearding) (pun-loving) coworker says the shepherd’s pie is really good because he worked lunch and they had samples out for staff, and we discuss getting one each to-go at the end of the night and splitting them half-and-half so we each get some of each, but the shepherd’s pie sells out really quickly and so I just get corned beef and cabbage for myself to eat at the restaurant, when the night ends.

3) Also at work, a big table of (well-dressed) business-people request the lounge table by the front window, and so I compliment them on how “swanky” they look and I also remind them that they’re advertisements for us and so they should smile widely and rub and pat their bellies when they eat so that anyone going by outside can see that, and that if they do that well enough, they’ll get a 10% discount off their bill.

And, one lady there thinks that’s hilarious, whereas the others seem neutral, or even mildly confused.

4) Also also at work, there’s a state-level high school sports tournament in town, and one group of 40 from the south part of the state that’s in at the restaurant ends up winning their division – I had wished them good luck, saying that they ate with us and so I’d be rooting for them – and also the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner has to turn down another, even bigger reservation for a hundred people since it’s contingent on a game outcome, and they can let her know by noon whether it will be for that evening or for the next day, but she says that’s just too short notice to get staff and all of the extra food together necessary for such a big group like that, so what can you do, but no.

Some other randoms tidbits…

…of late:

1) One night after work as I’m getting off the bus I thank the bus driver as I always do as I pass by them, and I see it’s a (late middle-aged) (done-up) (Latina) woman, and I recognize her from a local human-interest newspaper story about her and her family’s immigration story from (Latin Amercia), and so I do a double-take and am like, “Are you the celebrity?”, and I add, “From the newspaper?”, and she’s like, “Exactly!”, and she seems a bit happy to be recognized, probably since it’s a late night and it's a repetitive job and it’s something different and fun that happened, to be recognized, when she sits practically all day long every workday (something also mentioned in the newspaper story).

2) My one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried mom) coworker says that her and her boyfriend’s cat is out-of-control, and he’ll not only get outside, but actually go into other people’s houses.

3) Besides the typical homelessness set-up on the front porch of the township building, there’s now a tent pitched alongside the left wall, when you look at it from the street.