Trip happenings...

...on a recent short trip back to the city that I used to live in:

1) My one (Romanian) colleague asked me if as a server I ask people "Are you still working on that?".

"Only in America is having a meal work!", he was like.

(I do indeed ask people that.)

. . .

2) My one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) picked up a one-or-two-evenings a week job as a hostess at a local restaurant, and when I mentioned that that's a good way to get out of the house, she said that it was that, but it's also a way to make some spare money, since she did just finally pay off her student loans, but she had a few splurge vacations, and inflation is really upping her expenses and her income is flat.

She also said that people are afraid to go out at night more, and that there's a lot of people having close run-ins with crime, like her plumber was telling her that he was almost carjacked in this one (hipster) neighborhood that he was doing work in.

(Upon my return home to the college town that I now live in, I read that there was a major drug-and-guns bust like 4 blocks north of where my train arrived into town, right around the time I was there, and also the one night that I spent in the city, there was a reinauguration of one ultra-scary way to roll businesses that had been around a few months ago but had seemingly stopped.)

. . .

3) When I went out to eat sushi with my one art school colleague who wears (women's) clothes, he ordered gluten free because of his rheumatological condition, and when we were discussing the menu, he gestured to the mark "(GF)" after certain items like the chicken teriyaki and was like, "I noticed that they mark this and it's so nice, they have a lot to offer."

"Is that gluten-free though?", I was like. "'cause maybe you're getting the chicken teriyaki, girlfriend!"

And, he laughed and was like, "Yes, it's both of those things, I am one of those white b*tches."

. . .