So odd! - Bar job scheduling.

For 2 weeks in a row, I didn't get scheduled at my bar job, so so far I've only worked Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

I wonder what's up with that.

I had emailed the scheduler to make sure that she blocked off M - T - W b/c of my other jobs, but otherwise I was open and was hoping for 1-2 shifts a week.

The 1st week someone else had that happen too, but the 2nd week it was just me.

I wonder if it was a fluke, or if everyone else is begging for hours and I sound like I just want a few shifts, so she put me to the bottom of the pile (which I don't mind).

I've decided not to care about this.

B/c that library job came through, I'm not desperate for the money, though it'd be nice to have a few shifts a week by the time June or July roles around.

Even if I never get any for whatever reason, that's fine too, I've now updated my service resume and am trained on current software and have both of the necessary state certifications, for food-handling and serving alcohol.

Then, I can just apply for other service jobs if I need them, and if they ask why I wasn't there for too long, I can say that they are overstaffed and I couldn't get shifts consistently.

Odd coincidences (2)...

So, like the weekend after this one class that I TA writing for where the prof mentioned that there's so much stuff that happens, it'd be odd if weird coincidences *didn't* happen, 2 things happened:

1) I never get double yolks in my eggs, and I crack the 1st egg for my omelette on a Sunday, and there's a double yolk, and then I go to crack the 2nd egg for my omelette, and there's a double yolk too, and I think, that's just crazy, and I remember what he said.  Then, I crack the 3rd egg for my omelette, and *THAT* one also has a double yolk!

2) That same day I also text my one friend who I saw a David Bowie exhibit with, b/c I had seen Ridley Scott's The Martian ages ago, and ever since then, pretty much whenever I see a reference to the film, I start humming Bowie's "Starman".  Then, the next morning, he texts me to ask if I had heard about Bowie when I texted him that previous day, b/c that was the day Bowie died of cancer, though I didn't know it at the time.

Sunday morning coffee check.

On Sunday mornings when I cook myself an omelette, I have so much stuff to cart over to the table (omelette, toast, water, coffee), that I sometimes forget if I took everything over.

I've noticed that I glance over to the mugs sitting out on the table, to look for steam coming out of one.

If it's there, I took the coffee out already, but if it's not, then I have to go get the empty cup and come back and pour out the coffee from the metal stovetop coffee maker.

Library job happenings: Another person.

The other week at my library job, I come out of an aisle with a cart full of books to go take them downstairs, and an undergrad comes out of another aisle a bit ahead of me with an empty cart, and turns and starts walking away from me, without seeing me.

After walking about ten feet, he starts up a light jog, then hops onto a little ledge at the bottom of the cart and rides it down the long aisle for a bit.

I was surprised that the cart didn't flip, but it must be well-weighted.

I didn't try that myself, the next time I had an empty cart.

Re-hash - New Year's Eve at my bar job.

The memories:

1) With a(n interracial) couple (white husband, black wife), the (older) (black) wife had one party hat with gold trim and another with silver, and since she was wearing the silver to match her jewelry, she later took the gold and gave it to another lady in deep blue across the room.

"I just had to do that," she was like.  "It looks like it was made for her!".

2) This (late 30s) (black) couple ask me to take a picture, and when the guy takes off his floppy eared winter hat for it, I tell him to put it back on, since it'd be cute, and he does that for the second picture, and his girlfriend tugs the ears for the camera...

"That is a cute picture!", the girl was like.  "They both are."

"The one with the hat is the one I'd Facebook," I was like.

The guy also turns out to like sweet drinks, and I recommended a specialty fruit sangria that he likes so much, he has three, and I make sure to get a fourth to him right before open bar closes through punching his order in on one of my other tickets (the table technically had a different server, so I couldn't access their check through the seating software).

3) This (young) (Indian) couple comes in like forty minutes before New Year's and wanted to make the most out of the open bar deal, so I made sure to get them their drinks ASAP, flag down the bartender to get them Long Islands at the first possible chance to get their next drinks, and then I reminded them to get a drink order in 5 min. before open bar closed.

"This bar is awesome," the guy of the couple told me when he left.

After that, I made sure to thank the bartender who stopped what he was doing to make the Long Islands, and he didn't even remember it, he had been so inundated with drink orders.

He was still happy to hear he made some customers nights, though.

4) Post-midnight after the open bar deadline expired and the drink rush ended, this one (younger) (chubby) (Latina) waitress told all of us servers by the drink station, "Huddle!", and then when we did, she chugged a half finished martini she was clearing from one of the tables.

5) After we had closed up like 2:30am and the manager told everyone they could get a free bottle of  beer from the bar, some of us were sitting around a booth drinking and out of nowhere this one (middle-aged) (Latino) busser who I assumed was pretty much monolingual Spanish was like, "Some of these servers just don't know how to bust their ass."

. . .

I find it so refreshing to be around my bar job coworkers.  Even their worries seem taken less seriously.  The (younger) (chubby) (Latina) waitress who chugged the leftover martini was saying that she didn't have quite enough money to pay her rent the next day, and she seemed so calm about it.

I can learn from people like her.

Cleaning post-bed bugs.

I'm so happy to be finally cleaning my apartment post-bed bugs...

I scrubbed off the Dawn dish soap-and-bed-bug-powder mix caking my bed room floor and even a bit of my dining room too, and then there's my sheets, which have some blood stains on them from the bugs that I rolled over and crushed during the night and from the loose scabs from the places where I itched too much.

The sheets are particular disgusting, since I didn't want to remove them since I had the duct tape perfectly set around the edges to keep bed bugs from crawling onto me while I slept, and that work honestly takes like over an hour an attempt and many attempts to do well (! - you have to put the uct tape sticky side out, and then set other tape onto it so it sticks it to the sheet and won't come off when you shift at night; my mattress covering had too much Dawn dish soap on it at various points for the tape to be able to tape to that).

I haven't washed those sheets since October, I think...

Library job anger...

The other week when I was in the music section, I was pulling score after score after score of music composed by men across all these different centuries, and all I could think of is how much fine music was never composed since women were never given as many chances to develop those talents.

It's sick when you start to think like that, both for the talented composers who could have been, and how culturally impoverished our society is now, and then the concordant lack of female role models to boot.