New culinary discovery:

A cut-up raw tomato laid on top of my morning sauerkraut makes it amazing, since even though I don't eat them together in the same bite, the juices drip down onto the sauerkraut and somehow make it a lot better, like less biting and like somehow just giving it a more robust taste, somehow.

Coworker backstory:

The other night at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was saying hello to the one (younger) (Lao) cook and asked him how he was doing, and he said good, that he had just finished a hard test that afternoon, and that made me a bit surprised since I didn't know that he was in school, and it turns out that he's in a nursing program at the one local community college.

I really have no idea how long this has been going on.

English translation of a conversational Thai phrase?

Twice now when I've been discussing mild interpersonal drama stuff -- once with my (chubby) (Thai) coworker and once with my (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker -- each have at some point said to me (in English) some variant of "it's going to be okay."

My hunch is that this is a translation of a common (Thai) conversational response.

Like, the first time was when I got back from my conference/vacation, and I didn't have a very good present for my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones -- she's so hard to shop for! -- and she was a little mad at her (small) gift, in comparison to the coffee beans and bottle of sweet white wine I'd gotten my other coworkers.

So, when we were texting about that situation, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker at one point said to me not to worry, and she said that line about how everything was going to be okay.

More recently, too, my one (tall) (young) (Latino-American) coworker had brought in his laptop to work for some reason, and he was using it at the back counter when it was slow (community college homework?).

And, when he had it closed, I noticed that the back of it was covered with all of these rockband stickers, and also this one sticker that said --

FUCKING AWESOME 

-- which made me take out some masking tape and write on it --

PLEASE, NO PROFANITY AT [name of the Thai restaurant where we work]!

-- and, I put that piece of masking tape over the offensive sticker on the back of his laptop, pointed it out to my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker, and we waited for him to discover it.

When he found it, she was already gone for the night and I was at the front of the restaurant doing my closing duty of sweeping the floor, and I heard him read it out loud to the (white) (female) (townie) (liar) delivery driver, and he wasn't sure if it was funny, and he almost seemed confused, like maybe the owners or someone had seen that sticker and put that masking tape over the profanity on his laptop.

So, I was texting my one (taller) (new) (Thai) coworker about this entire situation, and when I mentioned that he seemed confused and maybe thought that it was the owners who had done that, that was when she texted me the variant of how everything will be okay.

I can't remember ever hearing something like that from a native (English) speaker in a equivalent low-stakes conversation, so it almost certainly must be them translating something from (Thai).

Rotten potatoes.

When I returned from my recent conference/vacation, my cottage smelled like rotten potatoes.

As it turns out, I had an eight-pound untouched bag up in the cupboard above my fridge where I keep my wine and whiskey, and it had gone bad, like where several or more had rotted, and there was this thick molasses-like slime accumulating at the bottom from where they'd molded and leaked out from in between the potato-bag's plastic net-meshing and started to change into something else, as the slime gradually settled and dehydrated and left this thick caking of mold on the fake wood, staining it.

Usually I'd be motivated to pick out the good ones, but there were small gnats flying around from where they'd started breeding, so no, I just picked it up and ran it outside and ran and hurled it into a dumpster in the back alley.

THONK, it rang metallically, as the eight pounds of rotting potatoes hit the dumpster-side.

I then washed the bottom of the cupboard with rubbing alcohol and then Dawn dish-soap in turn, and I lit a scented candle in there to try to burn away the rotten potato smell.

(I don't do candles, but I had been given one as a gift as part of a small going-away present giftbag from my one [very short-term] [Chinese-American] ex-coworker at the one [Thai] restaurant where I work now, when she was moving on to her HR job and wanted to thank everyone for her chill job that got her through graduation... I have to admit, it was a nice gesture, but it was even more nice to finally have a use for that candle!)

Basically, I hadn't been drinking any whiskey in a while, and I had gotten those potatoes I think back in June with the intention to make potato salad during the summer, only I had forgotten about them.

Sigh.

I really do hate food waste.

Inquiry into the local healthcare staffing situation.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, two (younger) (white) women in scrubs were in for lunch, so I chit-chatted with them a bit, and it turns out that they were on lunchbreak from the nearby major hospital system.

And, I asked them if they were still having short-staffing with CNAs, and I mentioned how several years ago someone from there told me that it was so bad, that they were having to substitute in LPNs for CNA work.

And, they didn't know.

"We do more clinical stuff," the one was like, "So we really don't see that."

Two economic musings:

1) What with the discussion of home prices starting to make its way into presidential campaign talk, I was thinking back to a number of friends around my age who've gotten recently screwed or have just gotten by by the skin of their teeth, with home ownership.

Like, they had a post-pandemic divorce and were forced to split with their spouse and look for a home but prices have now forced them to rent instead -- though, admittedly, one of those people did find an affordable house, because someone had committed suicide in it -- or, like how someone I know picked up stakes and sold their house and moved to North Carolina and then when that area didn't work out professionally like they had thought they moved back to my homestate, only for them to find out that the general rise in housing prices combined with AirBNB tourist area buy-ups had excluded them from the very market where they'd just owned before!

It really is something, to know like 3-5 people like this, just from my narrow social circle.

2) Overall, it's astonishing to me how it's been "always something" generationally, where it's just blow after blow after blow that you can't foresee economically, like (in roughly chronological order):

- the brewing student debt millstone;

- the 2008-9 economic crisis;

- the internet really coming into its prime and hastening deprofessionalization and precarious work;

- the internet really coming into its prime and increasing the amount of job applications and the intensity with which you have to detail them, including to circumvent resume-screening software;

- wage compression;

- lost years to the chaos of the pandemic; and

- rise in housing prices.

Conversely, there are some bright spots, like the Affordable Care Act, and the current strong market and higher wage floor for everyday jobs, currently.

Overall, though, you really do look back, and it's been like 15 years-ish of the ground shifting beneath your feet in ways that are very hard to anticipate and that are hard to cumulatively compensate for, if you've experienced multiple setbacks.  Like, one or maybe two would be doable, but multiple multiple ones?

I really do feel like the vibes are shifting and the way to go nowadays for a certain type of person who's had a certain type of trajectory is to "check out" and just not deal with the bullsh*t anymore.

Too much lost time and too little to gain with any decent chance of certainty -- why bother putting the effort in?

There's more to life than sinking ungodly amounts of time and energy into the mere hope of indefinite rewards.

Weakening of Linguistic Strengthening.

This whole new linguistic trend of saying "I appreciate you" to convey true thanks vs. the rote "thank you" seems to be spreading a little bit more but also conventionalizing and weakening.

Like, the other weak this (big) (bulky) (body-building) (Arab-American) (medical resident?) customer got a crap-ton of takeout (his daily calories and protein?), and he made sure to say "I appreciate you," but when I went to go cash him out and file the receipt, the bill was like sixty dollars, and the tip was zero.

Unless he's one of those mentalities where they think profuse words substitute for cold hard cash!

You do see that type, sometimes.