Odd coincidence: Don Quixote.

So, on my birthday that I share with a professor of Spanish literature, I was working at my library job and happened to be pulling books from the Romance Languages section of the library.

There, I came across a modern Spanish language edition of "Don Quixote", and since I'm actually reading a translation of that right now as one of my fun books I read before bed, I flipped it open to glance at the Spanish and actually managed to read a few brief bits of simple dialogue in the original Spanish (honestly, it wasn't much, it was mostly like, "Sancho friend, are you sleeping?").

But, I found that very cool, that I could read Cervantes' actual words.

It's almost like when they give bits of real Latin or Greek by famous authors in the intro textbooks of those languages, but this was so much cooler because I found the passage myself, and I'm older now and somehow that "great authors" thing appeals to me more.

Only after I did this, too, did I realize how cool it was that I did this on such an appropriate day, my co-celebrant's birthday!

I also found it very moving again, to be surrounded by all these books enclosing the words and thoughts of John of the Cross and Cervantes and everyone.

You sit there in the quiet working, and you're just surrounded by them all.

I'm not used to sitting in one place in library stacks like that, I've never really done that before, even for the other library jobs I've had in the past.

New trendy academic word for the time being:

"Sharpen".

A few weeks ago, a friend in a different state used that word when I was giving her feedback on her conference remarks draft over the phone, then the next day in class a professor I work with used that as well, in public feedback over student work...

I remember back when "flag" was new, and it sounded so fresh, though it's now just part of run-of-the-mill academic lingo.

Too, for a while recently, "gives purchase" was the thing  to say, but I think that that was too wordy to ever really catch on widely, and it already seems to be dying out.

I also was recently hearing academics say that "not my wheelhouse" thing, but never in academic contexts, really.

Whenever I hear that, too, I always want to say, "That's not my grindhouse."

I wonder what people would do if I said that really seriously, as if I was making a mistake.

Addendum.

In response to an email if his department ever offers any courses on Verga, my Spanish professor friend replied:

We teach a lot of verga stuff, but none [of] Giovanni's :)

. . .

(He must have been writing from a smartphone or very quickly, since he left out the word "of".)

You know what gives me great joy?

That there's a(n Italian) author whose name is "Verga" (= Spanish for 'dick').

The jokes write themselves, if you're in a Romance Languages dept. setting!

Developments at my Bar Job (4 of 4): The Heavy-hitting Moroccan.

One of my coworkers is this (heavyset) (middle-aged) Moroccan guy who used to be a Rai (sp.?) singer and has lived in the U.S. for like a decade or so.

Once during training on the day when we had a beer tasting and people were chugging the extra samples that had been set out but weren't drunk because some people had flaked and not come, we had divided doing closing duties and I was cleaning the men’s bathroom and he came in to take a piss.

Somehow, he changed the subject to how in Morocco people are more sophisticated and that though he doesn’t say it much here since people wouldn’t understand, he’s bisexual, though “always in the active role”, and that just like “it takes a woman to know how to eat pussy,” it can be hard for a guy to get a good blowjob.

Then, he stopped the conversation and looked me in the eye and gave a slow, purposeful wink.

I continued sweeping and tried to say G-dd-ss knows what else, and as soon as I could I exited the bathroom to go dump the dustpan.

On my first day working, too, he started talking about getting Christmas presents for his eight year old daughter and slid into bitching about his ex-wife, and then he said that to fuck with him she had been texting with his daughter and she had mentioned him to his daughter and had sent her a picture of a rainbow flag.

“What a bitch,” he was like.  “Though it’s true I’m bisexual.”

And, at that, he stopped the conversation and looked me in the eye and gave me a slow, purposeful wink.

I can’t figure out whether that last story is true, or it's just something that he pulled out of his ass to raise with me in order to try to get me to blow him (and if so was he so drunk off beer samples during the first conversation that he couldn’t remember that he used the same lines with me?).

In any case, I LOVE MY JOB.

My coworkers are so much more interesting than most academics and beat the hell out of them.

Developments at my Bar Job (3 of 4): The Mexican Machiavelli.

So, among the servers there’s this one (mid-40s) (fat) (gay) (Mexican-American) guy who’s very manipulative.

During the long week-plus of training he had people over after the brewery tour, but I couldn’t go since I had to be up early the next morning for my library job.

He invited me several times which I interpreted as nice, but then the next time I saw him he told me with an edge that I was “the only one not there”, which I believe simply isn’t true, and is my guess is what he is saving as something to say about me to people when he needs to.

That was the first hint I got of something that was wrong, and then on the last day of training, when everything broke up, a bunch of us went to another bar down the block and had multiple drinks.

At the time of the night when suddenly everyone both men and women were hovering around this (masculine) (slightly goateed) (ghetto-accented) (21 year old) (hispanic) busser in order to try to do him – I look over at one point, and honestly there were 2 people a man and a leggy woman touching him simultaneously and he was just oblivious since he’s so young – suddenly the Mexican Machiavelli comes over and tells me that I’m drunk and should go home, since I’m just standing there looking off and not talking to anyone.

I was a bit drunk but not like that, and I could immediately tell that he was taking one detail and trying to twist reality just plausibly enough where if I was drunk I would think he was true and leave, probably so there’d be less competition for the bus boy (I had noticed him trying to joke around and call out to him to get his attention and be the sexy life of the party for him, so it's obvious he wanted some of that).

He also might be gathering that detail as something to use against me later, along with me not coming to his party.

My first day, too, he tried to make it seem like he was helping everyone out by taking over the manager’s duty and carving up evening sections, but he gave himself 3 of the 5 booths that get the most diners (there’s no host usually but there are assigned sections, so it’s shaping up where people are fighting over the best sections).  I'm guessing he knew that people would call him out if he took all 5 booths, so he kept it at the most where he could to make it look natural.

I wonder how this is going to develop.

I’m interested and not that invested, since I have other work and just need a part-time minimum ten dollar an hour job to supplement my income.

I was telling my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend about this guy and the stuff that he was doing with the sections, and then he asked me more about the guy.

When I said that he was one of the full-time workers, he immediately was like, “That’s why he’s doing it, this isn’t a luxury to him like it is to you,” which I think is partially correct.

Somehow, though, I feel like this is not shaping up as smoothly as this guy thinks it is, if it’s already noticing.

When me and another server were standing in front of the map and she had asked about sections, I already rolled my eyes and briefly and neutrally mentioned that the Mexican Machiavelli had divided it up and a little bit in his own favor, though I promised myself I'd stay out of restaurant drama.

Developments at my Bar Job (2 of 4): Different perceptions of the Back of House.

One of my tough-as-brass-tacks (young) (female) (hispanic) coworkers said that she has to deal with stuff the (male) (Spanish-speaking) cooks say to her every time she goes in back, whereas I don’t, and I appreciate how sometimes out of nowhere they strike up songs and all sing together as they work.