Poor sleep.

On Halloween night this year -- a Thursday night into Friday morning! -- there were some local (student) parties in my neighborhood in the (college town) that I now live in, and they petered out after midnight or maybe one like usual, but then like three-forty that morning, the music was up from somewhere close by my cottage and I could feel the bass when lying in bed, so I tried to ignore it, and then it just continued, so I got up and stuck my head out of my cottage-door and yeah, there was music that would be loud for any time of day happening somewhere in my neighborhood, and so I called the cops and gave them my address and the intersection they should go to, and made a noise complaint.

Like four-oh-five or four-ten the music suddenly cut down, and so I assume that that's when the cops showed up at the party-door.

Like two days later, too, when the subject of daylight savings time came up at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the (Thai) (wife) owner with the tired face was (in retrospect wrongly) saying that we'd lose an hour's sleep, and so I told her and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones that that was bad, since I just had bad sleep the other night.

And, I told them about the party, and they said someone was probably drunk, and I agreed, and I said that I had bad sleep for a while until I could get to sleep again, because "I called the cops."

And at that, the (Thai) (wife) owner with the tired face seemed surprised.

"You called the cops?!", she was like.

And, at that point, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker leapt into the conversation with some tonal interjection that probably means something in (Thai) like you're explaining something, and she was like, "Ahhhhhhhh, old people."

Lower back danger zone.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was finishing my end-of-dinner-shift task of cleaning the restrooms and taking out the trash, and I felt a twinge in my lower back.

It wasn't until the next time that I did those tasks that I figured out what was "the danger zone" -- when I go to change the bag in the tall plastic trash-bin behind the counter and it's exceptionally heavy, I lean over the bin as I pull it vertically out, and that posture and that weight combine to do something with my lower back.

In the future I must guard against that.

Jigsaw cheating.

My one jigsaw puzzle of a canyon is so miserable -- the pieces look so much alike, and the fits can be so poor -- that I've started to use the printed alphabet grid on the back to properly orient the pieces and sometimes figure out roughly what section of the image they go in, to go try them out there.

At first I thought it was cheating, and then I justified it to myself, that it was merely using an atypical source of information.

It's such a miserable puzzle, that I really want it to be over already, "by any means necessary."

"What's seitan?", the customer asked.

I replied, "He's the angel who fell from heaven, in certain systems of Christian dogma."

A joke with customers at work (2 of 2): Wine.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, two vivacious (white) (female) college students came in, and when they each went to order some merlot, I made sure to card them, since from the look of them there was a chance that they were underage.

(They were each 22.)

And, when I delivered their wine to the table, I was like, "There you go... And it looks like you guys can't get any mer-lower."

And, they loved that.

Later, too, I told them that I had come up with a joke, and I asked them what someone who smokes pot says to someone who drinks wine.

"Oh, I should know that," said the one, as the other one said, "Sounds like us."

And, they didn't know, so I replied --- "When you go mer-low, I go high!"

And, they also liked that one.

. . .

A joke with customers at work (1 of 2): Currants.

A few months ago, a table of four (tired-looking) grad student types came in to the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now in work clothes very late at night, and they all got beers right away, and then when they went to order their food, they mentioned that they had been harvesting currants all day, as part of one of their prof's projects.

"So do you have CURRANT RESEARCH on your CV?", I was like.

And, one (slim) (blonde) (mustachioed) guy said no, but that prof whose area it is always makes jokes like that, it's a thing he's known for.

Later, too, I came up with another joke as well:

Q: What's a currant harvester's favorite drink?

A: Busch Light.

. . .

("Bush light.")

Repeated joke at work.

A few weeks ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said out of nowhere that she's worried about me, that one day someone is going to kidnap me, because they opened a tomb and they need someone to read the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for quite a few years now.

And, the next time we worked together, she repeated that same comment again, and each time she said it, she just had this big mischievous smile on her face.

You could tell that she was quite taken with the scenario.