Bar conversation.

The other week I was at the brewery and ended up staying late a bit -- there was an informal lecture there and I watched masked in the back, occasionally removing my mask to take a sip from my beer -- and then after it cleared out, I ended up hanging out at the bar and talking with the one (young) (cooler) bartender who wears thigh-high boots and likes anime.

And, this other bartender came in, this (older) (bald) (white) guy with a long beard and "music guy" vibes, who bartends at a few music bars around town, and has for years.

He and the brewery's bartender talked a bit, too, about working in bars and restaurants, and he got to reminiscing about the time a few years ago a (Mexican) guy who worked back in the kitchen pulled out his phone and showed him a picture of a vagina that looked like a Big Mac.

"Well damn, boy!", he roared, "You just ruined two of my favorite things to eat!"

He also said that he listens to music so much at work, that when he gets home at night, he just sits there in the dark and the quiet a lot and hangs out with his cat, who'd gotten pregnant recently and "she'd walk around on the lawn with her little titties hanging out."

"Getting time to go," he was like then, and he bought me a beer before he left.

Property taxes in the city that I used to live in.

So, my one (Romanian) colleague was passing through town on his way back to the city that I used to live in, and he stopped by and brought some food that his mom made and we went to the local brewery and got some beer and ate stuffed cabbage and this addictive little salad made up from roast eggplant and maybe olive oil too or something like that.

And, he was saying that he got his second property tax installment for the year, and it leapt it from like $1600 to like $4200.

And, he lives on the edge of a bleh neighborhood in a good apartment, but no-where that's particularly convenient or attractive.

He said that a number of neighborhoods have been like that, including my old neighborhood that I used to live in and an adjoining neighborhood to that and a portion of a (black) neigborhood way on the other side of the city, and it's been in all of the papers.

First of all, I can't imagine what those valuations will do, when they trickle down and reach renters; renters just don't have the money to spend, especially given how gas and electric and food inflation has been squeezing everyone this year.

Second of all, his monthly cost including the assessment on his building is still what I was paying in rent every month!

So, on the one hand I feel bad, but at least he has equity, unlike all the money I was burning a month, and that in a 1BR that had been a good deal, at that.

It's like my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) observed to me earlier this year; his rent and heating at a really really shitty multi-person apartment way at the far edge of London are more than an old coworker's of his who had stayed in the same job and moved up a little bit on the career ladder and who had boughten a condo in a good neighborhood way back when, where the property value went up sky high, but at least he has that asset, and he's paying less in taxes and heat to boot than low-end renters who are barely scraping by.

I was texting about this with my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, and she was astounded by how much property taxes went up, but she also thinks the world's gone mad, with how that compares to rent.

All I can say is, I made a very wise decision to move. I can't imagine having to deal with all of this financial chaos, and right when the recent minimum wages increases in the city had petered out, too, with all of the politicians claiming that it's all okay because minimum wage is finally $15 an hour and indexed to inflation. Just super out of touch.

Pad thai fervency.

A few weeks ago my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker was saying that she always tends to eat the same things for our staff meal, like a lot of fried rice, but the previous week she had actually eaten pad thai three days in a row.

"It's better when [name of one of the Guatemalan cooks] cooks it," she was like. "He adds more sauce and stirs it."

I wasn't sure what to think about that, but then the next time I got pad thai, it had more sauce and it was more integrated into the dish, and it was so so much better tasting than it had been before.

The extra lime I added helped a lot, too; it was one that's been in my refrigerator since late summer that I had boughten for the watermelon that had spoiled, and the rind was getting a bit brown in a big spot or two, but otherwise it was still good, so I use it now, to add more lime juice to the pad thai whenever I bring some home (it's cut open and just sitting out on the rack in my refrigerator, up on the top right).

It's actually to the point now where I'd go and order pad thai if that one cook was cooking, whereas I wasn't opposed before, though it wasn't something that I necessarily sought out.

Endearing restaurant detail.

Sometimes when I open up the (Thai) restaurant for the day, the kitchen workers turned on the miso soup warmer too warm, and when I get there, the little kettle is shaking and quivering and making a metallic ring in its container, while hot water bubble ups around the edge and spills over the sides.

So, I turn down the heat level to 5.

An insightful customer the other day.

Like 3 or 4 weeks ago at the (Thai) restaurant, these two (older) (white) (business-suited) men who seemed like lawyers came in -- we get a lot of business from the local courthouse -- and then when I was repeating their order back to them to make sure that I got it right, the one (fatter) and (older) one was like, "You are very, very detailed," and he left that comment just hanging, to show me that he saw who I was, somehow, as he looked deeply at me.

And, I told him that I had a Ph.D. and just kind of worked part-time at the (Thai) restaurant and lived in a cottage and did what I wanted in my time off, since the economy had been suffering a multi-sectoral collapse this past decade in areas where I'd been professionally s trying to set myself up, and it was kind of a trend, and other people my age I knew who were in a similar position were kind of arriving at the same place and doing the same thing.

"Living the dream," he was like.

And, he said that the economy had recently been unfair to a lot of people.

Then, the other guy asked me what I studied, and, I told him.

Coffee mystery.

Like three weeks ago at the (Thai) restaurant, one of the (Guatemalans), the very thin one with a very long face and BO, the one who washes dishes a lot, he kept coming out of the back to drink coffee a lot, and I was worried that there wouldn't be any coffee left for the customers who we made up the pot for, and then my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker said that there weren't any customers we made it up for, she made it up for the kitchen since they had asked for it.

And, that made sense to me because it was damp and it had gotten very cold out -- it was perfect coffee weather! -- but, that also made me wonder, why was it only a one-time thing that we did it then, and why weren't we doing it at other times during other similar weather? Did they not want coffee then, too?

I kind of want to know, but not enough to ask them; they might think I'm weird, or they might ask for coffee more often.

Mysterious blogging list fragments...

 ...that I can no longer remember what they meant:

- trade coffee + tea

- ch[an]g[e] wh[e]n second jelly bean

. . .