Friday, April 4, 2025

Precautions against local homelessness.

Like a month ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I had noticed out the front window like mid-way through dinner shift that this (very tall) (erratically-loping) (young) (dark black) man was across the street in a parking lot there, like cutting through a part of the parking lot that no-one ever goes through, and just moving kind of funny, before he rounded the corner of the building and then went down the sidewalk and disappeared heading out west from town-center.

And, that's that, and I don't see him again for the rest of the shift, out of sight, out of mind.

And then, that night when we close, I leave before my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones and my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker, and I cross the street and go on my way home, and as I'm like half a block away, who do I see but that same guy, rounding a curve on the opposite side of the street and walking up towards the restaurant.

So, I pause and turn and watch, and he goes past the entrance and is like half a block up past there, and then my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker steps out and steps to the curb and looks at her phone, just oblivious, and luckily the guy keeps going, and then a moment later my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones steps out and joins my other (Thai) coworker, and then they walk across the street together to the parking lot that's there, probably to the one's car since she's giving our older coworker a ride home.

And, I just paused and watched up the street even though those two had stepped out of sight behind the building that was there between me and the parking lot, to make sure that the guy didn't stop and loop back and cross the street and go towards them or go after them or anything like that.

And, as I was waiting, a (middle-aged) (pear-shaped) (black) woman with shaved head-sides and a dreaded top was walking up towards me on the sidewalk, and she looked quizzical at why I was standing there turned back and watching like that, and so I said that I had just got off work and was walking home and had noticed a strange guy, and I was waiting and watching to make sure that my coworkers got to their cars, and that she should be careful since he was up there somewhere walking ahead.

"Thanks," she was like, and kept going.

And, I waited just ten or twenty seconds more, at which point it was clear enough that the guy was way away from my coworkers and they had had more than enough time to get to their car.

So, I went home, but I promised myself to talk to both of them to let them know about that guy, the next time that I worked with them, about how something maybe could have happened, and how they should be more careful when they leave the restaurant at night.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

A comment of my mother from a couple of months ago...

...as we are talking on the phone and some topic comes up and she wants to go look something up about it right away, and she says she's going to go on the internet and do it right then, even while I sit there on the phone and wait for her to do it:

"I know you don't like doing this, but you have to, because I'm your mother."

 . . .

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

A dream...

...that I dreamnt last month:

The front neighbor from the first floor of the front house is out doing gardening, and I am out in that same yard while she works, and I am inside my cottage again, and I am thinking of asking her to weed the bush-beds besides my cottage, and I look up, and tall sunflowers with small blossoms are suddenly there outside my windows, transplanted among freshly-weeded bush-beds, and I go out into the yard, and large plants that she's been growing inside all winter are put in here and there on the lawn, and then we're standing by the backsteps that go up to the backdoor to the front house that leads to her first-floor apartment, and she is very angry about the mud there at the foot of the steps and how it's a mess and how nothing will grow there, and I raise the possibility, gingerly, that I gather pebbles from the alley and put them there in the dirt-patch that's the mud, and that will fill the space there and make it less messy, and she seems genuinely appreciative of my idea and my offer and affirms it, and then I'm back inside my cottage, and I hear from my bedroom the sound of someone like knocking on the glass door of a patio-door, and I walk into my bedroom and there's a large door there in the wall by where my bed was and it leads out onto a large flat cement-block porch with a straight simple roof but no railings and it all looks out across some fields and towards a distant house, and somehow I sense it's Kentucky, and a woman is there and she's the neighbor and she says that she walked over and that she's glad that she finally caught me at home since there's some nesting raccoons there that will cause me some problems and she wants to show them to me so that I know how bad the problem is...

 ...and then something wakes me up, and I come to too much to go back to sleep and slip into the same dream, to find out where the raccoons are and how bad the problem is.

. . .

(. . .)

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

More signs of increasing local homelessness.

1) A(n old) (black) (homeless) guy comes in the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now and approaches one table and then turns away when they apparently refuse his request for money and then he starts walking down the aisle, and me and my (Thai) coworkers notice, and right away I go up to him to ask him if I can help him and he asks for water and I say that that's for customers only, so he leaves, nicely, and just after he does that the (male) owner comes out of the back since someone had run back and gotten him from the back office, since I guess this same guy had come in twice recently on recent shifts and on one of the times that he came in, he really really messed up the restroom, and, anyhow, the second time that he came in, the (male) owner had told him that if he ever came in there again, they would call the cops on him.

2) A (younger) (black) (homeless) guy slips in the front door of the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now and sits down at a front-window table of a(n older) (white) woman whose husband had just gotten up at the end of the meal and gone to use the restroom, and he talks to her to ask her for money, which she apparently refuses, and when I go up as he gets up to go find another table, I ask him if I can help him, and he doesn't say much, and just heads out the front door.

3) At the one lake-park north of my house, as I jog one early evening when it's still light out, this (middle-aged) (light-skinned) (black) man wrapped up in a winter coat and wrapped up in a blanket on top of that is just sitting up on the fishing area of a bridge where a small platform flares out, sitting on the corner where two railings meet with his leg stuck up on the one railing, just staring off into space, while two (younger) (white) kids with fishing poles are creeping through some nearby woods trying to find a way down to a nearby creek that's there, since apparently the standard fishing space was taken up by this (homeless) guy.

Monday, March 31, 2025

A new workshoe strategy, and a problem that ensues.

I've now started rotating out workshoes between waiter shifts at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now -- taking one pair in for one shift and then another in for the next -- since I hear that that helps with the wear-and-tear, and that actually helps them to last longer, if they rest more in between usage, even though you think that that wouldn't matter all that much.

Only, I had been wearing the one pair constantly and keeping the second pair in reserve, so it's hard to get a sense of how they wear now, since the one was so worn when I first started doing this.

I'm not sure if I'll come out of this, knowing whether this really works or not.

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Some random happenings, lately:

1) The one (local) (young) (white) (female) bartender at the local brewery, the one with the (knit) (pussy-hat) vibes, says that a lot of times when she's talking with people and the subject of the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now comes up, people out of nowhere are all like, "And I love that guy...!", and they then go on to describe me, and apparently there's all these people who are fans of me, as a server, which she says in part is from how so many people who go in there are (white) and they don't know sh*t about (Thai) food, and how I always explain things to everyone and point new stuff out on the menu and explain it, and how people are genuinely appreciative of that, in addition to me always being so nice.

She also says that she tells them that I'm a regular at that local brewery, and come in there sometimes.

(I didn't ask her then, but I should have, if anyone had said that I was good-looking.)

2) My new neighbors from upstairs at the front house have adopted a new cat, since I guess one morning they came out into the backyard and they saw a cat on the roof of my cottage and they lured it down with food and they took it in and then they went on Facebook and were able to find out that the cat does indeed have an owner but that owner was thinking of re-homing it, anyways, so now they have this new cat, and it all started from that cat being on my cottage's roof one morning and them luring it down etc., all of which was happening as I was in that cottage, asleep, with no idea that all that was going on around me.

3) My (newer) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now shows me a Facebook post where her one (neighbor) in (Guatemala) just turned 104, and then she shows me a livestream where that same neighbor is in a (tasteful) (black) cocktail dress with a banner over her chest like a homecoming queen, as she sits in the back of a truck and is being driven around the streets of that town there in (Guatemala) as a celebration, while someone follows in a car or truck and films it from the rear, for the livestream.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

A new philosophy of scholarship: "Running up the score."

With the one ancient language that I've been studying up on for a number of years, now, and have made myself quite the expert in, I've recently decided to adopt a new philosophy of scholarship --

From here on out, I'll be trying to "run up the score."

Basically, it's like when you're in a basketball game and you're creaming the other team, but you don't pull your strongest players and let the weak ones have some game-time, but rather you just keep going full force, and you just relentlessly drive the opposing team into the ground.

For one thing, although I have ways to claim ideas and I have some very marginal access to journals and conferences, it's become pretty clear to me that they'll never "let me in," or at least not on any predictable timeframe.

There's just not any jobs, and people horde any opportunities and exposure for their "own people" or to flatter those who are already plugged in, beyond any dynamics where the tenure system has produced that common malfunction where instead of being vetting *for* quality, it's become vetting *against* competition, and has effectively created cartels of enforced stupidity.

I mean, there's exceptions, like, there's some current scholars who seem nice enough and who do some good enough work, but overall, that area of research is a relatively collapsed one, which is both why I can do such good work, but also why I can't get any toeholds to launch further through acquisition of a paid research position or a slot at a plum paid international conference or the like.

Like, if people were truly appreciative with what I did, they would have let me in after my first two-and-a-half projects where I made notable progress, because those were on topics that were just peripheral enough that they wouldn't necessarily be automatically threatening to everyone since it didn't seem like I was rocking the boat of "established" findings all *that* much, for it was more like I was clarifying long-standing problems that were known problems or I was tidying up some unexpected stuff, but only around the edges of the linguistic system, not at its center.

Since then, though, I've gone straight to the heart of major analytic flaws that are just deeply, deeply embedded in the field, which now makes it much much much much harder for the people who are "there" to accept me, since not only did they not find those fundamental findings like I did, but I found those fundamental findings as a hobbyist outsider, with almost no connections whatsoever to their rigid and highly overestimated training and employment structures.

Furthermore, I'm increasingly realizing that some of my recent work opens up new vistas onto other major findings...  It's like a linguist friend who I consulted in late winter said, over time I should start noticing that I'm producing a set of interlocking hypotheses, where there's suddenly an unexpected explanation in a different area, or my positions or progress on some new and seemingly unrelated topic actually stems from or depends on what I've already done.

So, it's like I'm cracking open this tough nut where stuff has been f*cked and people have been floundering for a while -- over a century, to  be exact -- and I now have not only caught that field flat-footed on that first finding of a major analytic flaw, but there's work that logically follows upon that, that they're not even aware of yet, so it's like they're even more flat-footed than in the first case, if that's even possible.

So, given that I haven't been accepted yet and it's increasingly unlikely that that will happen now, why *wouldn't* I just try to plough ahead and sort through material and "get there first" and rack up major findings for posterity?

I somehow feel like me and this field are just locked in this death-grip, where I just keep doing better and better and better and it's just increasingly worse for them that they haven't let me in, but with each new finding of mine, it makes it harder for them to "swallow the crow" and do so.

It's all faintly ridiculous, but I really do wonder at what point people will have to start to reckon with what I'm doing.

Friday, March 28, 2025

Back problems.

My lower-right back right above my buttock began hurting on Valentine's Day, when I was working at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now and we were moving around tables to prepare for the onslaught of  "two-tops" aka couples and I must have done something with picking up tables or turning or both, to somehow re-injure my back from when I injured it years ago on a multi-day canoe trip, which is easily going on twenty years, now.

Anyhow, since Valentine's Day, sitting on my low 1950s ("mid-century") style couch has occasionally made the pain flare up again, as has sitting in my one arm-chair, though less often, and as has lying on my right side when I try to go to sleep, or lying on my back in the exact center of my mattress where it's dipped down a little bit in the middle, permanently, since I haven't bought a new mattress in like forever, specifically, never.

So, at night, often, I slide my body down in the middle of my mattress, so I'm positioned below center and my feet are almost sticking off the end of the bed, so my lower back doesn't lie in that dip in the mattress that makes my pain flare up again.

I wonder how long I'll have to do this - - - What a life.

Thursday, March 27, 2025

In-demand jigsaw puzzles, locally.

When I've left them there, the two jigsaw puzzles that have gone the quickest on the local library's "take one, leave one" honor-system jigsaw puzzle exchange table were a jigsaw puzzle of a hand-drawn "Americana" scene of winter ice-skaters in a quaint snow-covered town with horse-drawn carriages and nary an automobile or (black) person in sight, and another jigsaw puzzle that's a photograph of multiple 1990s Hallmark figurines called "Snow Babies." 

Both were gone in less than a day, since I returned the very next day at approximately the same time that I had left them there to see if they were still there, and they were both gone by then.

If I'm not mistaken, my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature would call both puzzles, "Kitsch."

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

A big life decision -- further "checking out," professionally, and from thinking about the future.

A few months ago I was thinking more and more that I should just stop looking at LinkedIn and actively keeping my ear to the ground about the health of different sectors, like actively asking around with people I know or with people I meet, how things are going in their sectors and what they're seeing, etc.

Like, I've been doing that for 15 years, and it's produced no career trajectory for me, and the information has been useful but it's also increasingly showing wage compression and wage growth from the bottom, with no solution in sight, so, like, why pay attention anymore, what else will that be able to tell me, and it just makes me focus on how I've had like 15 years of bad luck with me being misaligned with opportunities and careers as sectors etc. have unexpectedly shifted and radically declined, to the point where the overall economy and my overall chances are both worse than before the pandemic (apart from my being comfortable in a so-called 'low-end job,' which has an hourly pay level that increasingly looks like that of so many so-called 'professional' jobs).

And, just like my life, I don't say I'm "dropping out," I say I'm "checking out," a distinction that people like my one (white) colleague from (Mississippi) likes, since, as he says, if you're "checking out," you can always "check right back in," should something arise.

And, alongside this, I was thinking more and more that apart from professionalization efforts that don't take much time and money, like quickie trainings that fall in my lap or whatnot, I just stop thinking about the future beyond a horizon of like 1-2 years, since it's even further beyond my ability to meaningfully plan for, anymore.

So, I surveyed different people I know whose perspectives I value, and absolutely no-one advocated for me to continue to keep doing what I've been doing, with proactively monitoring and thinking ahead so much.

And, the only three people to give me lengthy feedback, all said to just stop and let go.

The one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) said it's important to monitor sources of negative energy in your life.

And, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said it's important to keep away from things that make you unhappy, and it makes a person happier to not overly plan or think about the future.

And, my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's) clothes, besides saying that my one (Thai) coworker's advice is kind of (Buddhist), said that it's like Alice in Wonderland, sometimes the only way out is to go in deeper.

So, I think I'm doing it. No more LinkedIn, and no more planning for the future besides knowing that I'll probably be where I am for a year or two more, at least.

Somehow this feels like a huge thing, like my giving up somehow. I don't know why.

Somehow it's like an admission of defeat.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Checking yourself.

One thing I've learned is to trust your impressions of situations and trends -- if you're seeing something, it's probably there, on some level.

On the other hand, it's also nice to have statistical confirmation that you're not off-base or paranoid or anything like that.

Like, a few months ago I was reading an article about local homelessness in the college town that I now live in, and it said that it's **doubled** in a two-year period during which I've lived in the town, and the next round of statistics are coming in soon, and they'll likely show that it's since become even higher.

Like, it's like I'm not on crack, and I truly have been seeing a big change here, even for during the relatively short time that I've been living here!

It's just like how I was saying drivers had become crazy in the city that I used to live in -- I actually stopped taking long-distance bike rides for leisure, because of that -- and then years later someone crunches numbers, and yep, some valid data showed a huge jump-up in crazy driving behavior like right around the time that I had noticed that and had changed my behavior, it wasn't just me being dramatic.

I've also had people suggest that my perceptions of crime in the city that I used to live in might have been biased because of increasingly dramatic news coverage, but I always push back, and say how I worked in the same areas for a period of years,and there was an increase of crime in those immediate areas, that just wasn't there before, and that's something happening, even if it's not captured in whatever statistics have you about overall crime levels.

Monday, March 24, 2025

Avocado sneeze

A few months ago in my little cottage in the college town that I now live in, I had turned on the radio to catch the early afternoon broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, as I was making some coffee and toasting toast for my raw onion and avocado on toast thing that I eat for breakfast, most mornings.

And, the preceding radio show was on, with some historic recording of Schubert's ninth symphony, and as it ended, the host was saying something about the unusual tempo in that recording, and how usually the work lasts fifty to fifty-five minutes, and, just as he was saying that, I not only popped a bit of avocado into my mouth and was chewing it, but I also suddenly somehow needed to sneeze, only, I was afraid to sneeze and not hear how many minutes this unusual recording was, so I tried to do like a half sneeze while I held the avocado in my cheeks, but, as soon as I sneezed and tried to choke the force of the sneeze down in order to decrease its volume, the repressed and tightly-channeled airstream somehow created in my mouth like funneled bits of avocado out through my mouth and out through my teeth and like flecks of avocado bits rained down all over onto the sink-edge and stove, like a big burst of little green lines here and there, all going in the same direction.

. . .

(The unusual recording was an hour and five minutes.)

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Four events at one day at work...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker texts that she's late and on her way, and she and I are replacing my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones and our one (tall) (young) (Latino-American) coworker, so I text her back something like "Okay," and then I send another text saying that our one (tall) (young) (Latino-American) coworker is getting angry, and I have him do a theatrical angry face and he puts both his fists up and I take a picture of him like that, and I text her that picture of him, too.

2) When I come table-side to refill water for two (older) (demure) (nerdy) (white) women, the one is just picking up her water to take a sip, which she does as I stand there waiting with my water-pitcher, and then, she holds out her glass for me and is like, "That sip was badly timed."

3)  When a (younger) (Chinese) guy comes up to the front counter to pay his like $90 bill, I see him sign and leave no tip, so I ask him if everything was okay with the food and service, and he looks at my one (taller) (Chinese from China) coworker who happens to be standing there and he says okay, he'll leave some tip, but he told his friends that this place was a nice place and a bowl was dirty, and at that my one coworker says that line about the boss seeing no tip and wondering what went wrong with the food or service, etc., a completely non-coordinated reaction between the two of us, as the customer puts down a $10 tip.

And, after the customer leaves to go back to his table, my coworker says that one of the soup bowls that they brought to the table for the group of four wasn't clean, and so the group sent it back and asked for a clean bowl.

(That was it! And, for that, no tip on a $90 bill?!?)

Later, I mention this to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she just shakes her head and sighs, and I said it was reminiscent of some other (also presumably rich) (similarly young) (Chinese from China) students who were in like half a year ago, and one girl called us over and was upset because the ice cream for dessert had begun to melt in the bowl that we brought out (?!?!?!?!), and, just like this customer, that group blew it all out of proportion and left a low tip, and yes, she agreed, it was probably a rich Chinese thing.

I also wonder, too, if it's a cultural thing, where they don't know how to appropriately adjust the tip for (mild) dissatisfaction, or what (mild) dissatisfaction is.

4) When I call to the one (younger) (male) (Lao) cook and say his first name with (English) question intonation -- that is, the kind of intonation where you'd be like, "John?" -- my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker overhears, and she's very insistent that I use the proper tone when I say his name, and she repeats it for me and I can't do it, and as we're repeating it back and forth, the one (older) (female) (Thai Chinese) cook hears and starts tittering at what I'm saying, and finally I can say the name right, so we go back to what we were doing, but later I ask my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker what what I was saying meant, and she says she won't tell me, and then I ask her if it's a bad word, and she says yes, and so I tell her that she has to tell me, and then she holds her hand out and says it means something that's lying down and then stands up, and she raises her hand up, and I'm like, "Like 'erection'?', and immediately at that she starts laughing, and is like yes, when you said his name with that tone, that's what you were saying.

Saturday, March 22, 2025

My mother is reading Agatha Christie, again.

My mother is reading Agatha Christie, again.

She said that she had picked up a book of hers like she hadn't in ages, and it was good, so she got some short stories, which "are good because they're short stories," and then she started another book, and then what do you know, she caught the end of a TV special on PBS about the life of Agatha Christie, although it gave away the plot of the very book that she was reading (it was the doctor).

She also said that she read Christie years ago, before her and my father moved north and started "a new life" and had kids.

Somehow, I feel like my mother is lost, and unsure what to do with her remaining time, especially in the absence of any grandchildren and that role that she could step into.

What is it all for?

Several times in the past year, she has said something to that effect, that life is hard, and that that's life.

Her and my father's life is ending, and both of their children are still very unsettled with no clear futures, even as they age.

What is it all for?

Friday, March 21, 2025

Results of a jogging experiment from this winter.

During the worst and coldest part of this winter, I postponed my weekly jog for 3 weeks running because of the temperature and also because of snow and ice on the roads.

For like over a week, too, I didn't do my six-times-a-week high intensity workout, replacing it with ten minutes of stretching instead, since the air was so dry that I was fighting off a mild sinus infection and trying to keep it from turning into anything worse.

Then, one week the weather began to lift, and so I wanted to squeeze in two jogs that week, somehow, to begin to make up for the jobs that I had missed.

And, the only way that I could really do that with the days with the high-enough temps that allowed for jogging, was to jog on one afternoon before a dinner shift at work.

As it turned out at that dinner shift, then, I had more energy but I moved more slowly, and I was also a bit more out of it, and at one point I wasn't holding a tray with a few dirty dishes like I usually would, and the half-empty cup of crab rangoon sauce slid on a plate and over its mild rim and then spilled over onto the tray and down onto my shirt and pants.

The top of my upper leg muscles were also noticeably sore, too, though that might have been compounded by how on the previous day I had returned to my high intensity workout, which includes two forms of squats.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Three sets of recent (South Asian) customers...

 ...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) There's these repeat customers of this (South Asian from South Asia) mom and dad and their two (Americanized) kids who are both (dark skinned) like the (dad) -- a (younger) (quieter) (quite passive personality-ed) (pre-teen) boy and a (teenage) girl who has big "roll her eyes" energy at her parents -- and, especially in comparison to the (quiet) and (passive) (dark-skinned) dad, the mom is just this (lighter-skinned) and perky and vivacious thing who's just sharp and quick, and after they try out a new appetizer that I'd recommended to them before, I come to the table to check on them, and after I ask them "How's the summer roll?", the mom throws out her hands and gestures to to all of their empty dishes and is like, "What summer roll?!", as she beams a mischievous smile (i.e., we ate it so quickly, it doesn't even exist anymore).

2) There's this gigantic group of (college-age) (South Asian-American) students who make a reservation for a farewell party for one of their friends, and we have two long tables set up, and it turns out that the women sit separately from the men, the way they trickle in.

And, I hear them commenting on how the tables are separated by gender, so, the next time I'm over by the women's table, I'm like, "How are things at the adult table?".

The guys's table is also very loud, and you can tell when their food is finally served, since they suddenly quiet down, since suddenly they're chowing down and they all have food in their mouths and can't talk anymore.

3) Two (younger) (college student age?) (South Asian from South Asia) customers come in and order three entrees -- including two more expensive ones -- and have a couple of Thai iced teas and have a long and leisurely meal, and the one who pays sets the credit card receipt tray over at the far edge of the table, so we can't see it as they sit there and we drop by to clear dishes.

(A $2 tip, on an $89 bill.)

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

A recent dream.

Recently I dreamnt -

I'm standing between slim boxy off-white pedestals with glass-tops like you see at museums as artifact cases, in a bare-ish space with highly-varnished light wood floors, and there's different ceramic and indistinct things inside of all them in that row of museum cases where I'm standing in between two of them with an off-white wall in back of me, and standing in front of me is this (short) (slim) (short-haired) (ashy-brown) woman who looks (Ethiopian) or (vaguely Caribbean) and who is in her (late 30s) and looks good for her age but who also looks older from her eyes and presence and also this like deep and unspoken intelligence that's the core of her character, and I know that she is the woman who deciphered the Indus Valley script from reading a five-character sequence as VOVEA through realizing that an old ethnonym became a later regional name for generic enemies, and I'm suggesting to her that maybe she should start working on Linear A, and you can tell from the look in her eyes that she's interested and might start and there's even a small chance that she may in fact have already started, but she is not saying anything either way...

And then I wake up.

. . .

(. . .)

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Some stories of my parents, from when they were young

1) When they first met, my father was over 21 but my mom was underage, and my father's friend was playing drums at a bar, so he told my mother to keep her head down when they walked in and she'd be fine -- and she was!

2) During summers in college, three or four times my father worked in steel mills to make money, loading and unloading boxcars, and wearing gigantic protective gear when he was near the burning vats.

3) When he was like 7 or 8, my father found out at school that he could never be President because he wasn't born here, and it made him cry.

Monday, March 17, 2025

Three things that I do to help me wake up...

...if I can't get out of bed in the morning, because I just feel too sleepy:

1) I take off my sleepmask and put it in the drawer in the night-stand beside my bed (at first I thought that that was just a signal to myself and my mind, that it was time to start my day, but now I think that it makes my eye area less warm and comfortable, especially during the winter, and it's a goad to get me out of sleepiness);

2) I kind of stare at the curtain at the window to the side of my bed, to look at the light that manages to come through it, since that's typically the brightest part of the room (sometimes, though, with the way the sun shines in, I can look out my bedroom door into my living room, and it's very bright out there); and

3) I lie flat on my back and I stretch out my legs, and not only that, but I also stretch out my feet and turn my toes up as far as I can towards my ankles (there's just something about stretching those particular leg muscles, that makes me wake up, always).

Sunday, March 16, 2025

[A new system for blogging.]

[I keep a page in my pocket planner with lists for blogposts, and then every 8 to 10 weeks I take like 2 or 3 afternoons to type the remaining ones up all at once, that I didn't feel compelled to dash off originally or in close proximity to actual time of occurrence.]

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Addendum.

A behavioral pattern that I've now noticed among three different sets of (young) (South Asian from South Asia) customers is:

Wanting special dish creations, even if it's very late at night, and even if they have no idea what the menu is or what they're talking about.

Like, with two sets of (young) (South Asian from South Asia) customers who at different times came in pretty late and we tried to get them to order right away, they both stalled in ordering, and then when it was time to order, they wanted something special made up in a way that wasn't listed on the menu, and that was just plausible enough where it might be doable, but it was also just complicated enough where you had to go back to the kitchen to even see if it was possible (something that is "meh" to deal with when it's typical dining hours, very occasionally there's requests like that, but something that just kind of blindsides you as a request that a customer might make when you've already let them know that it's getting late, it's just such loopy behavior).

And, slicing that set of customers a different way, too, two others also didn't know the menu at all, they were first time customers, and yet within this very voluminous restaurant menu, they somehow ended up wanting something special made up in very involved ways that just didn't make sense.

Like, for one, from a full 6-7 options for fried rice, they honed in on 1 of the 2 fried rices that *only* come with multiple meats, and they wanted to know if the sauce was vegetarian, so they could have a vegetarian version of this dish that is pretty much only really noteworthy for being the one fried rice that comes with multiple meats.

And, for another, once during normal dining hours in this big group of (South Asian from South Asia) people, this one guy said he wanted this one vegetarian dish with its listed ingredients, but with the listed sauce of another dish -- and then, when I went back to ask about that, it turns out that both dishes had the same sauce!

One of the things that I've learned in my life is that if you ever meet people from a group like a religious group and their behavior seems illogical, it probably isn't, but rather it has some deeper logic that makes sense within their originating ideological system, and it's only weird to you because you're just not getting that context.

And, as far as I can tell, the only reason someone would make a request like switching one sauce with another when they don't know the menu at all and the sauces are in fact identical is that it's not in fact about the sauce; it's about their ability to make that demand, and to have others hop when they say "jump!".

Part of me thinks that's also behind why these hyper-special orders are prone to come in late at night, or super last-minute orders are made right when the kitchen is closing, or why they order something after they've been told it's too late -- yes, there's probably something there with the underlying desire, but my intuition is that they *like* being the people who make other people stand around and serve them, by keeping a place open just for them, or by keeping the kitchen open just for them, or by bending or breaking the rules and having something done just for them like having that order made for them after that one type of food station was supposed to be closed.

Some of this might be youth out late and flexing muscles or newness to culture where they haven't been checked and taught yet, but fundamentally it's just very class-based behavior, and then on top of that, the very boorish and un-self-aware people who are probably most prone to engage in this type of behavior, are also probably the ones most prone to not pick up on the tipping practices of another culture (or at least they choose not to know, in the behavioral interpretation of several of my [Thai] coworkers).

I really do think it gets into deep stuff like my (Thai) coworkers have been saying for a while now, that all of this stuff from this portion of (South Asian from South Asia) customers is like this refraction of the historic (Indian) caste system.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Two problem (South Asian) customers.

So, mid-winter this past winter, two (grad student-age) (casually-dressed but well-dressed) (South Asian) customers came in at like 9:12pm to the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and I was just getting ready to clean the bathrooms, and so I hustled over to the table and let them know that if they wanted curry, we needed their order for curry right then, and the (shrimpy) (darker-skinned) guy with glasses is like, "Oh no, we only want fried rice," as his (lighter-skinned) (blank-eyed) (nicely-coiffed) girl looks up at me, blankly, and that's cool, so I go to clean the bathroom and do whatever, because there's plenty of time for them to order and eat fried rice, but not something like curry, it's already getting a little late for curry.

And, they dally a bit -- again, no big deal, they're just ordering fried rice -- and it's like almost 9:20pm, and I see out of the corner of my eye that my one (Chinese from China) coworker is going back into the kitchen about something, and then he goes back to the table, and then he places the order, and then they call him over, and then he goes to place another order, and it's getting to be like 9:22pm or 9:23pm or so, if not a few minutes later.

And, as it turns out, the (blank-eyed) woman had decided that she wanted curry, and she put the order in very late, as the last thing she did, like a full 15 minutes after I had asked if they had wanted curry, and they had said no, and even a number of minutes after they had placed their full and long-intended order of fried rice.

And, like right around then, they call my (Chinese from China) coworker over again, and he brings them a couple of beers.

And, shortly after that, I stop by and ask them if they will be wanting a dessert order, since "the kitchen is closing soon and we are closing that station," and they each say no.

Then, a few minutes later, when their water is getting a bit low, I bring some over, and I (nicely) apologize for badgering them as customers, but "it's getting late," and really, we are open, but we recommend that if people want a typical full meal experience, that they come in and place their orders by around 9pm, except on Sundays, when it's 8pm, because we close an hour earlier.

And, they nod, and the guy says "Thank you," pleasantly enough.

And, when their food comes out -- we hustle their two fried rices over -- they just pick at it and lollygag around and eat very slowly, and at one point she pulls out her phone and props it up and they watch a video together, and at another point he pulls out his phone and makes some call on speakerphone some, pausing every once in a while to take a bite, as they poke at their three entrees for two people -- we hustled that curry out as soon as we could, too! -- and it's getting late, and it's like almost 9:45pm and we're going to close the doors as soon as the last take-out order is picked up, and so I print out the bill, bring it to the table, and set it there, and I say very apologetically that the bill is ready and we need to close it up so we can close out the register, since it's the end of the night.

And, the guy nods, and they just continue to eat slowly, and he never makes any move towards his credit card, though at some point he does talk with my one (Chinese from China) coworker.

And, at some point right around then, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker goes over, and she comes back and says they don't want boxes, and then she goes over a few minutes later and talks to them again, and finally he goes to pay the bill, and he gives her cash, being like, "Keep the change," as he hands her $62 for a bill that's like just over $61.

"He tipped us ninety cents," she was like, as she comes back to the back counter to cash out the bill.

And, the neon sign was already off and the ambient music was already off, and it was like right around then that the final take-out order person came and paid up, and we were five or ten minutes past the point where the kitchen was closed and the staff was coming out of the kitchen and gathering at the back before leaving and these two people were the only table left, so, I calmed myself, and I went over there, and I was like, "Hi, I'm very sorry, but the restaurant is now closed. Would you two like take-out boxes?".

 And, the guy was like, "Oh no, can we have five more minutes?".

And, I was like, "I'm very sorry, but the restaurant is now closed. Would you two like take-out boxes?"

And, the guy was like, "This is our first time here and we are enjoying the food, can we have five more minutes?"

And, I was like, firmly, "I'm sorry, sir, but the entire staff is waiting on your table. We told you multiple times in multiple ways throughout the night that it is getting late. We told you that you needed to order curry right away, and somehow a curry order got placed later. We also told you that we needed your dessert order because it was late, and that you need to come earlier in the night for a typical full meal experience. The restaurant is now closed. Would you like take-out boxes?".

And, they looked at each other and said no, and they got up to go and I walked back to where we were all gathered, and we could see them chug their beers before they left.

And, I was talking with my coworkers, and I learned two more things about their visit from my one (Chinese from China) coworker.

First, after they had said that they only wanted fried rice and had spent like ten to twelve minutes looking at the 6 or 7 fried rice options, they had asked him if they could take the rice with 3 meats in it and make it vegetarian.

(Like, what the fuck -- you've never been to this restaurant before and you don't know any of the items, and you've already been effectively told that it's late, and yet you try to get a special dish ordered up that makes no sense, combining some sauce with other stuff in a way that would not even have clear pricing on the menu, and where you're not even sure if the sauce is vegetarian, and you need that to get checked?)

Second, at some point someone must have told them that the kitchen closes at 9:45pm, because at 9:44pm or 9:45pm they called him over to put in a to-go order for more fried rice (he said no, it was too late).

"It is a cultural thing," my one (Chinese from China) coworker said, when we talked afterwards, and he explained that some restaurants in China are so desperate for money and the people who run the restaurant live right there, so they will stay open for anyone and take any late orders like that, just to make a little more money.

"Probably," I was like, "But what do you do with people when you explicitly tell them something about the way the restaurant operates here like we need curry orders now, and they explicitly say that they understand, and then ten minutes later they turn around and do something different from what they had explicitly said that they they had understood, just ten minutes before?"

And, I didn't say that then, but I should have, "Because something like that is truly fucked behavior."

Later that night, I was texting a(n Indian-American) friend about this, and he said his hunch was that it was a class and cultural thing as well, and then he asked if it ever manifested in like first generation people born here (no, it does not -- sometimes they are sh*tty tippers maybe because all they've ever seen is their parent tipping, presumably, but the only people who want us to hold the entire restaurant open for them are [younger] [South Asian from South Asia] people, any [South Asian-American] college students who come in late at night get the signals and menu restrictions and try to work with them).

I think my new strategy in the future is to be even more hyper-explicit about this stuff in the future, with this type of late customer -- that is, I'll be like, "You still have some time to order and eat, but there have been misunderstandings in the past, and if you want a long and leisurely meal, it's already too late for that..."

I mean, I had already been incorporating in my spiel with this type of late customer that it's too late for a long and leisurely meal and some stuff like curry has to be ordered right away, etc., but, even then, I may have been a little too polite and indirect about it, in a way that perhaps did not get picked up on (especially if the customers are used to class dynamics where they can just do whatever they want and other people are forced to just eat it up and tolerate it)...  Like, I think a way that I could be even more explicit is to flag the potential for misunderstandings, and say that they have occurred in the past, when I give that type of spiel.

That way, even if the customers say they understand but then still want to keep the restaurant open, you can apologize and say that there must have been a misunderstanding again, which is why we tell people that misunderstandings can occur at this time of night, etc. etc. etc.

Thursday, March 13, 2025

An early summer visit with my parents, from last year:

1) At one point we are talking, and in a pause during the conversation, my father looks at my hands, and says that they are exactly like my grandfather's.

2) In our traveling, we go to this one regional brewery that is known for good beer but is also reputed to give you a special kind of the shits, and when I wake up in the morning after that, I immediately have to take just the biggest dump ever, and it turns out to be pretty huge and very dark and kind of diarrhea-like with lumps of flaky chunk piles that alternate with pure liquid, and all of it has this overpowering kind of smell that's like exactly like fermenting grain, and then when I go to crawl back into my hotel bed, I see that I must have sharted during the night, for there's like this small strip of hardened blackish-brown shit that is on the sheets where my ass crack seems to have been at some point when I was lying on my back, and then as I'm looking at that in amazement, something catches my eye and I look over, and like two-and-a-half feet over to the side, there's like a faint ghost version of that same shit mark from where I must have rolled over and lied on my back again, after my main shart and most of the shit coming out and sticking to the sheets the first time that I had done that, when I was lying a few feet over from where I was then.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Solstice ~ the day before Christmas Eve ~ New Year's Eve:

1) This year on Solstice, I read poetry in the morning, and did my best to avoid my phone and email all day long. 

When I worked the lunch shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I drew a little Santa Claus head on a receipt, next to one speech balloon that said "HO HO HO" and another one that said "JO JO JO," and then I'd ask my (Guatemalan) coworkers if they wanted to see the gringo Santa, and I'd fold the paper so that the speech balloon saying "HO HO HO" was coming out of his mouth, and then I'd ask them if they wanted to see the Latino Santa, and then I'd fold the paper so that the speech balloon saying "JO JO JO" was coming out of his mouth.

The one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about was also working that day, too, so I'd remind him that he had be nice if he wanted presents for Christmas, emphatically alternating to him at various points that day two different statements: "Si hay problemas, no hay regalos" ("If there are problems, there are no presents"), and "Si no hay problemas, hay regalos" ("If there are no problems, there are presents").

2) At the one (Thai) restaurant where we work now, our annual party on the day before Christmas Eve featured bingo, and we had like three tables full of all types of food, more than enough for everyone, and with all the leftovers sent home.

In fact, the (male) owner said that not everyone liked the seafood like the crab legs and the lobster he got, and so that's why he got some other stuff, too, like some catering from a nearby Mexican restaurant, with a big metal tray of spicy-rubbed chicken wings and rice and beans and sauteed onions and peppers.

When we were leaving, too, there was a lot of the chicken left over, so I took it home and ended up eating it all little by little for like ten days straight, saving the skin and bones and joint-cartilage in containers in my freezer, to make broth with later, to boil that along with vegetable scraps that I always save from my cooking in my kitchen.

"Merry Christmas!", everyone said to each other as we all left, to which I would always be like, "No, it is not a Merry Christmas; Luigi is in prison," just like all through the night whenever we were having a good time with glasses of wine and bingo and everything and everyone was just losing themselves in the jubilation, I'd turn to someone and be like, "You know that Luigi is in solitary confinement right now," and then when they'd protest, I'd simply say that that's a fact, and I was merely observing.

3) On New Year's Eve, I stopped by the local public library to see what was up with a book that I had returned earlier that week but hadn't been checked in yet -- they were short-staffed and returns were high and so it probably would just need a few more days to get checked in, they said (they were right) -- and then I went to work dinner shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

With my (newer) (Guatemalan) coworkers who weren't around last year, I would ask them "Como se dice 'Happy New Year' in espanol?" ('How do you say 'Happy New Year' in Spanish?"), and they'd tell me, and then I'd pretend to have trouble saying the word "year" in (Spanish), just saying the word "anus" instead, and they'd try to correct me repeatedly, until they realized that I knew what I was doing and I was just saying "anus" to mess with them.

Business was on the higher side, too, but there were still some slower spots, and so we did this special kind of word search thing that I had brought in in a puzzle magazine behind the counter, and some customers sitting near there heard us and even asked us what we were doing since the (husband) of the (middle-aged) (white) couple likes doing puzzles -- his family did a crossword together last Christmas!, the (wife) said -- which resulted in them helping us with the puzzle, a little bit -- I brought it over table-side to them -- and also, at the end of the night, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker insisted that we had to order a shift meal with woonsen noodle, since it's a (Chinese) (Thai) tradition that you eat something long and thin on New Year's, so you have a long life, and, so we did.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

A resurfacing of a person once known.

On New Year's Day this year, me and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones met at a local bar to play a boardgame together that we all wanted to play, since if we didn't do it then when the restaurant was closed, we would never be able to, since otherwise one of us was always working, and we'd never be able to be off, all three of us at the same time so we could all play a boardgame together.

And, the one local brewery that would have been the best venue was closed -- it's quiet and with nice lighting -- and so I asked ahead of time at the one local bar with musical acts if it was cool if we met to play a boardgame in there in a booth since everything else would be closed that day, and the one (taller) (bearded) (hairy-chested) (tattooed) (white) bartender said it was cool, people play cards in there all the time, and then when we met again there that day in the late afternoon, I checked again, and the bartender on shift at that time said it was fine, and we all got drinks and coffee and sat down to play the boardgame in a booth at the far edge of the bar.

Only, after like forty minutes, the opening act that's usually an acoustic singer-songwriter turned out to be this jazz trio, and -- and I've never seen this before! -- the entire bar got all perfectly quiet whenever the music started, like we were all at some mega-serious upscale jazz bar, instead of a raucous bar with constant musical acts.

Like, it was just a bad time to be chatting and playing a boardgame, although no-one had ever clued us in that there was a chance that we might be encountering something like that.

And, when the head of the jazz trio was introducing a song -- he was this (old) (white) man, with glasses and wrinkles, who was talking in a highly complimentary but also mildly "I'm up here and they're down there" way about how good these two (young) musicians were who were on stage with him -- he paused after his commentary, and I look up, and he's getting ready to play, but he's just shooting us this incredibly direct and mean glare that just reeks of disdain, since he's waiting for us to stop talking so he can begin playing his (quiet) number, and the way we're sitting, only I can see it and my (Thai) coworkers have their backs to him and so they can't see it, and it's just this very nasty glance from an old man, since we're interfering with what he's doing and especially from all the attention being on him, it's more about that than about anything with the music, although he would say it's about the music, I'm sure.

And, later, I'm taking a piss in the bathroom and looking up at the monthly music calendar above the urinal, and what do I see, but I see his name, and it's a music performance professor whose daughter I used to tutor like a decade-and-a-half ago in the city that I used to live in, and who I met once or twice but who I didn't recognize now at all, since he had been relatively affable when I had met him, but now he was old, and I had encountered him and a deep-seated nasty side of him in a space where he was accustomed to reign imperiously.

So, I didn't say anything to my (Thai) coworkers, although the next time that I worked with my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, I mentioned to her that I had a secret to tell her, and I told her the secret of how I knew the old man on-stage, although he didn't recognize me and I chose not to say hello to him and unveil who I was.

"Why say hi?", she was like. "That is fifteen years ago, that is a long time."

. . .

(I wonder if he was always like this and I just wasn't in a situation to see that side of him, or if his character changed. I've noticed that a lot of the people I know in tenured jobs have acquired progressively worse character over the years, so maybe that happened with him, too.)

Monday, March 10, 2025

Birthday.

My birthday this year was very low-key, and I ended up working on it at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, as I did last year and as I often have done in years past, at various other places that I have worked.

My one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker asked me if I had gotten any gifts, and I said no, and I added that I usually never do, since my birthday is so close to Christmas, and then she asked me if I wanted any gifts.

"No," I was like, "I don't want any gifts; I only want freedom for Luigi."

Later, too, there was some order mix-up where a box of crab rangoons didn't get packed with a delivery order, and then the customer accepted a credit for a free crab rangoons another time rather than have someone make a whole second delivery trip just for a single box of crab rangoons right then,

So -- and I don't know how this was decided -- somehow the crab rangoons got funneled to my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker, who ate most of them right away.

But, she did offer me one.

"Want a crab rangoon?', she was like.

"Yes," I was like, "But not as much as I want freedom for Luigi."

Later, too, everyone at the restaurant brought out a cake, and I could order anything off the menu for my shift meal, though when I went to order prig khing, it turns out that we were running low on greenbeans, so I couldn't have it, although that was the only special thing that I wanted.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Declining speakerphone manners.

It's really something how people have just started speaking on speakerphone anywhere, at any time and anywhere. It's like socialization and social permission for this behavior has just exploded, in ways that were possible for years and years since everyone got smartphones, but it hasn't just happened until now, like, for some reason, it's just one of those things that some people started doing and then other people started doing it too, and then it just took off from there.

Like, I was kind of surprised twice over, on the last trip that I took to the city that I used to live in.

In the breakfast area of the place that I've been staying at and where I've never seen it before, suddenly there was a (young) (French) guy who had his speakerphone propped up as he Facetimed someone and ate his morning cereal, and then there was this (eccentric) (older) (tattooed) (bald) guy who was lingering over coffee after he had had his breakfast, just talking out very loud to his speakerphone about some very personal things with a close friend, including some homosexual experience that someone's husband had (?).

On my last day in town, too, I was on the subway to go meet a (scholarly) friend for lunch and project advice, and there was this (middle-aged) (Latino) man with his phone out Facetiming people in (Spanish) as the noise of children spilled out of his phone and filled the car, and then there was a (well-dressed) (hipster-ish) (black) guy sitting next to me who pulled out his phone and put it on speaker to deal with being late for some meeting, and then on my subway ride back from meeting my one (scholarly) friend, another (Latino) guy pulled out his phone to do speaker, and then, when I was on the train home that night, the guy sitting next to me did it, too, briefly.

I mean, it's like everywhere, it all just exploded.

Facetiming seems a bit prominent in this type of behavior, too...  That makes me wonder if some of this has to do with how people connected via Zoom during the pandemic, and brought some of that behavior forward, where video feeds have now replaced many phonecalls.

It might also have to do with that 5G shit that everyone talks about, where maybe processing times have increased and technologically enabled smooth Facetiming, whereas it wasn't a possibility on your smartphone, before?

Saturday, March 8, 2025

Another sign of increasing local homelessness.

At the beginning of this winter at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, when it was the very dark part of winter and it's super dark when you open the restaurant for dinner, this (wild-eyed) (unshaven) (mid-60s) (white) (man) with a battered brown coat and knit cap comes into the restaurant walking a bit too fast, and as he walks back towards the back counter and I'm walking up front to go do something, he turns and asks me if we have Taiwanese beer.

And, I immediately see he's off, so I'm like, "I'm sorry, Sir, but we don't carry that," and then as I'm up towards the front of the restaurant, I see him waiting behind some customers waiting to get their take-out, and then as I'm moving back towards there, suddenly he's having words with one, and he's like, "I spit on your grave!", and I keep my eye on him as I keep doing what I'm doing and I go back up front to take an order of a table by the window, but as I do so, I feel in my back pocket to see where my pepper spray is and if it'd be ready for him should he try anything, and I also make sure to stand at a cross-angle as I take the order so I can watch him out of the corner of my eye wherever he is in the restaurant, so there'd be no surprises like suddenly somehow he comes up to me from behind and he's on top of me before I know it.

And, his voice raised, he says two more angry comments at that customer where he said that he'd spit on their grave, and then he begins walking fast again and heads out the door of the restaurant, as I keep my body positioned at that angle so I can rapidly get my pepper spray and turn towards him face-to-face, should he try anything, though he doesn't, he just ups and leaves, after all that.

. . .

Never seen him before, and never seen him again -- it's just something that happened.

Friday, March 7, 2025

Addendum.

The kids of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) really liked this one lemon poppy seed bread that I brought them once, so I've made sure to try to bring it for them every visit, and they've even taken to calling it "[my first name] bread," though as my friend says, "I don't know why they call it bread, it's all sugar, they should really just call it 'cake.'"

Anyhow, when I arrived for my last visit, I had two small loaves of that for them, but the kids weren't home yet, and she didn't want them to see it and eat it and ruin their dinner, because she knew that they would want some right away, so she said that she was going to hide it and say that I forgot it but I'd drop it off early tomorrow morning for them (they like to have it at breakfast, I guess, and she was okay with that for them, then).

And, she did say that to them in front of me, and the kids totally bought it.

"Aren't parents creative?", my mother was like, when I told her that story over the phone, afterwards.

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Genre and vomit humor.

On my last trip to the city that I used to live in, I caught up with the family of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair), and her husband was asking me what I did over the holidays.

And when I said not much of anything, and I added that I've never been much of a holiday person, he was like, "This is exactly like the first scene of a Hallmark Christmas movie."

Also, their young son showed me the spot on the dining-room floor where he had vomited a month ago when he had the flu, and I think I said something like that's okay, but I hope that he didn't vomit on anyone, and somehow that started a game where he and his older sister would run up to me at random times and make vomiting noises and pretend to vomit all over me.

My friend's husband also said that at his son's pre-school, they have an activity where they talk about one thing they did that past weekend, and they list it on the board, and the list was something like so-and-so went Christmas shopping and so-and-so went to the park with their parents, and when it got to his son's name, it said that he got sick and vomited.

It seems to have been something very big and memorable, for him.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

A new relatively unsuccessful schtick in (Spanish).

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, this (younger) (quieter) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker seems a little bit reserved, even if I try to interact with her.

(I wonder how much she even speaks [Spanish]; something tells me that she might only be fully comfortable in her [indigenous] language.)

Anyhow, when it started getting cold out this winter, she started wearing this knit headband to work, that covers her ears.

And, the way it wrapped around her head, it made it look like some kind of martial arts thing.

So, I would say "Hola" ('Hello') to her, and then I'd point at the headband and smile, and then I'd strike a karate pose and shift my hands back in forth in chop-motions and be like, "La luchadora!" ('the fighter').

Which, left like no apparent impression on her.

So, a few times I asked her some variation of "Quieres ensenarme karate?" ('Do you want to teach me karate?'), which got a smile out of her, but also a shake of her head, no.

So, once, when she said that, I was like, "No quieres ensenarme karate, porque cuando luchamos, tu quieres ganar siempre" ('You don't want to teach me karate, because when we fight, you want to win, always').

And, that got a laugh out of her, but only once.

And that, my friends, is the definition of a "tough audience."

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

A slower evening at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

So, like over a month ago at the one (Thai) restaurant I work now, I was working a double, and during the morning shift I made sure to take all of the quarters that I'd brought in for my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and I put them inside an old receipt and I folded it and stapled it around the edges and I put on it --

GIVE

ME 

$5, [her first name]

-- since she always takes quarters from me and gives me back bills in return, so she has them to do laundry with since I guess wherever she goes to do laundry, it's a coin-operated place, she doesn't have access to her own non-pay washing machine, and so she needs quarters all the time for that.

And, I did that on the lunch shift and left the little packet out on the counter in our work area, so she would see it when she came in for dinner shift; quite a few times when I've brought in quarters for her, I forget that I have them, and I haul them all the way in and then all the way home, which isn't that big of a deal, it's just a big lump in your pocket, but still, it's a pain, so, that's why I did that.

And, she saw them, and she didn't have five dollars on her, but we negotiated so that she'd remember to give that to me next time, and then later that night, I look at the coin-packet, and there's a little tear towards the center that must have come from somewhere (maybe even from picking up the packet and having the coin-edges shift and slide around)..

"What?!", I was like, taking her and showing her the little tear towards the center of the coin-packet. "What is this?! You don't trust me, and you have to tear it open to make sure that I'm not giving you pennies or nickels?!"

Then, I was like, "You are one of the most creative people I know -- you always find new ways of breaking my heart."

And, I also took a pen and added to the words on the little coin-packet, "(and trust)", so it was like telling her, "Give me $5 (and trust)".

 Later, too, she was saying that she was watching this social media video about gay marriage in (Thailand), and it made her cry...  There was this lesbian couple that had been together 30 years in this one village and they ran a restaurant together in their village and everything, and no-one knew they were a couple, everyone just thought they were friends who ran a restaurant together, and then they got married and everyone found out and all the village came together and celebrated.

So, I said what I have said a few times over the past number of months since (Thailand) passed its gay marriage law, that our restaurant should put up a (pride) flag and a (Thai) flag together in the window along with a sign that says something like, "Come celebrate gay marriage in Thailand," and then as a special dessert we sell pieces of wedding cake, or maybe some kind of cake with rainbow frosting.

"People here would love that," I was like. "Everyone around here is so liberal, they'd think, 'Awwww, that's so nice, let's go eat there!'"

"People around here are always looking for something to do," too, I added.

Monday, March 3, 2025

Some banter with customers...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, after there's a large group and I check on beverage orders and one guy orders a Singha beer and another orders a Thai iced coffee:

"Okay, so that's one Singha and one iced coffee" -- a pause like I always do, for order confirmation, to minimize mistakes -- "So, okay, so that makes one upper, and one downer..."

Sunday, March 2, 2025

An occasional WTF restaurant occurrence...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

After they're done eating, (white) people ask if we have fortune cookies.

. . .

(Once, in fact, a [loud-voiced] [round-faced] [old] [white] man with [coke-bottle glasses] and a big [eccentric] group actually pulled out a box for his entire big [eccentric] group he was in with, to give each of them a fortune cookie, after they had finished enjoying their [Thai] meal cooked by us, he must have felt so strongly that everyone needed to finish their meal in that way.)

. . .

(Though, to be fair, maybe I'm being ungenerous here, some Thai places do do pan-Asian cuisine, and there's also that whole [Thai] [Chinese] thing with historic [Chinese] immigrant communities in [Thailand], so maybe some [Thai] restaurants really do hand out fortune cookies after meals, for all I know. I mean, my coworkers say that our restaurant does green curry in a way that just doesn't happen in [Thailand], and the red curry and cashew nut stirfry are things that don't happen there either, they've said, so who knows, maybe some [Thai] restaurants elsewhere take that same liberty and bend the cuisine to include the distribution of fortune cookies.)

Saturday, March 1, 2025

Three restaurant happenings over two days...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, like over a month ago:

1) The temp is very cold outside and I wipe the front door glass for smudges from the inside and then go outside to do the same thing, only I can't wipe off the Windex on the outside, it's like smearing, and suddenly I realize that it's so cold, that the Windex is freezing in small misted sheets onto the glass.

(I then go back inside and get a wholly fresh paper towel to make sure that it was not some residual moisture in the used paper towel that we keep upfront and use and reuse until it's tattered away, to wipe small smudges off the glass whenever we realize that that's happened, and what do you know, the same thing happens with the new paper towel, too, it is indeed so cold that the Windex is freezing on the glass if you try to clean the front-door glass from the outside.)

2) After a particularly busy Sunday lunch rush with many individual checks -- 21 across three big groups, of 11 and 5 and 5! -- and many low and bad tippers who are mostly (foreign), the entire restaurant is like decimated after suddenly everyone ups and leaves, and there's like a table here and a table there and everything else is vacant but dirty and we just manage to to clear one single table when a (white) mom and her (teenage) (white) daughter come in and we sit them down at that one clear table, and I immediately apologize for how wrecked the restaurant is looking since every other table in the entire restaurant is full of dirty dishes, apart from the like two other tables where parties are still present, and I say that we just happened to have a big lunch rush and everyone all left at once, too, and we hadn't had a chance to clean anything up, so, sorry, we do apologize for the mess.

"Don't worry, it's okay," she was like. "It looks like my house. In fact, it makes me feel at home."

3) When my one (newer) (tall) (young) (Chinese from China) coworker is talking about how the H-mart in town had a delayed opening after a number of years, and he thinks it took five years to open, he turns and asks me in front of all of my other coworkers if it was five years like he thought it was.

"At least that," I was like. "Originally they were going to call it A-mart, and then it got delayed a year, so they called it B-mart, and then it got delayed another year, so they called it C-mart, and what is it now, H-mart? Yeah, so it must have been at least five years, probably more."

(I feel like my making family-friendly jokes at  table-side with customers is influencing my everyday behavior more and more -- I'm like becoming this purveyor of "gee wilkers" cornpone comedy that people of all ages can laugh at, though they often choose not to.)

Friday, February 28, 2025

Local jigsaw puzzle donation notoriety.

Like a month or so ago after Christmas I went to the local church-run charity resale shop to donate some unwanted presents and to re-donate some stop-gap scarves that I had bought from them when I couldn't find mine for the winter, originally, when I was taking out my winter clothes for the year, and also to give them some high-quality jigsaw puzzles that I had kept for them, that they could presumably sell quickly and make some money off of, since I save the better ones with all the pieces there for them, instead of putting them at the local public library's "take one, leave one" honor-system jigsaw puzzle exchange table in their foyer, there, since I leave just any old jigsaw puzzle there, since anything will do, there, but the resale shop would benefit from having the better kind of jigsaw puzzle.

And, "Are all the pieces there?", the (old) (white) lady at the counter-desk at the resale shop asked me.

And, I told her that they were, and I showed her how I had carefully masking-taped a small slip of paper so it stuck out of the edge of each box, and how it said for whoever was looking that all the pieces were there as of such-and-such a date.

"Thank you," that lady said, and then, another (old) (white) lady who was standing by there looked closely at me and then was like, "So you're the one who does that."

She then said that that is helpful, and that one of their workers used to count the pieces before selling each puzzle, but that takes so much time, that that just doesn't make much sense.

She also said that she gets some of the puzzles there for her family, and that her little grandson likes them and does them with his family, and she always takes out the pieces for him and lines them up, and one day he was like, "Mama is good at puzzles and Papa is good at puzzles but you're not good at puzzles, Grandma," since she would do that for him but she would never actually work at the actual puzzles like her daughter and her son-in-law would do, so you know what she told him, she told him, "Why, who do you think gathers the pieces for you," and that's what she told her little grandson, since he didn't think that she was any good at doing jigsaw puzzles.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Security incident.

On my last trip back from the city that I used to live in, they had just started to board the train and the line was moving forward, when people in uniforms pulled me aside and said that I had been randomly selected for a security check and took out a small stiff strip of paper and wiped it on my backpack and put it in some machine, and then they had me wait there as the one guy with the machine looked at the reading and perked up and then started excitedly showing it to everyone else, before they told me that I would have to wait there some more, and they began to radio for a dog, only to wait a few minutes and radio for the dog again, since it was at the far other end of the station and it wasn't coming, and they needed the dog there to check something out.

"I'm really sorry," I was like, "But will they hold the train for me?"

And, I explained to them that the last train of the night had been cancelled and I had already moved to this one, and there was no other way I could get home that night, and I was scheduled for work the next morning.

"We'll see," the one said, and the conductor was there, and I kind of looked to him, and he looked sympathetic, and I mentioned that I hoped that I could still get a seat facing forward, since I get carsick easily and it's hard on me if I have one of those train seats facing backward for the entire ride home.

And, the one security guy started asking me if I had cosmetics in there, and I said that yes, I did, I had some face cleanser and face cream in my toiletries, and they said that that was probably what it was, there's chemical overlap with military-grade explosives, and they showed me their machine and the readout said something about detecting military-grade explosives, and then they asked me for permission to search my bag, so I gave it to them, and they looked through it, and everything was fine, and then they asked me for my ticket and a form of identification like a driver's license, which I gave to them, specifying that the ticket printout was for the later cancelled train but the QR code for the conductor would link to the rescheduled ticket for the current train, and they wrote all of that information down with great care, and then they set me off to board the train with only five minutes until it left, and I was good.

And, the next day at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I told my coworkers the story, about how my skincare routine cosmetics made the train station police think that I was a terrorist.

"See how good my skincare routine is," I was like. "It makes me a sex bomb!"

And, they all kind of rolled their eyes at that, and I mentioned something again about me being a sex bomb, it's official, they even have a test for that, and the police test said that I'm dangerous, I'm a sex bomb, that's how good my new skincare routine is.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

On buckwheat.

Last month at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I asked the (wife) owner with the tired face if I could buy like 6-8 small mushrooms off them for a one-time recipe that I was making -- I just don't cook with mushrooms, I said, and she said yes, I could buy them for two dollars, as she also said that if I ever bought a lot at the supermarket I could use the leftovers to make an omelette, at which I made a face, since that recipe is just unappealing to me, though I do eat mushrooms in things like pizzas that I don't cook at home -- and, anyways, she asked me what the recipe was for, and I said buckwheat, and she didn't know what that was, so I showed her a picture on my phone and she said that it looked like "comfort food" and that buckwheat looks like a grain, and I explained that it's actually a pseudo-grain like quinoa and it only looks like a grain, but it's actually more of a seed, and then she asked me where you get it, and I said that I got mine at the local co-op grocery store.

And, at that, she paused.

Then, "Sounds healthy," she was like. "We just eat rice."

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

A dream from a few months ago.

A few months ago I dreamnt --

My mother is speaking of travels when she was young, and her trip to the Galapagos, and there is a large map of Central Asia into India but somehow California is where Africa is, and there's multiple small seas in it, and it turns out that she's been to Iran, and she was doing a trip and in one place the doctors wore two-cornered hats, if you can believe that, two-cornered hats, and it's only the map that is there in my mind as she says this, and some of these travels were with her brother, back then, when she was young, but not all of them, and my eyes wander to the southeast to the areas where she had not been to...

And then I wake up.

. . .

(Her brother is my dead uncle.)

Monday, February 24, 2025

Incident on a trip to the mall a few months ago...

...when I was on the bus going home:

A group of like six or seven (black) kids who are all like eight, ten, twelve years old get on the bus at once at the outskirt of the mall area where it's degenerating into randomly-placed minimalls, and suddenly the (black) bus driver is like, "Hey man, don't you try and go by," and he calls out a (younger) boy who tried to get on the bus for free, and he says something that if he needs to use the bus and doesn't have the money, that's okay, just tell him, but don't try to pull something like that and go by, and then he lets him on the bus for free, and then the kids go and sit down, but they kind of walk around the bus some too, and you can see people quietly arrange their bags so they're safe, and then a (slightly older) girl comes up and asks me if she can use my phone to call someone and I say no, and then she goes to the other side of the bus opposite me to ask the same thing of two (younger) (Asian) women and a(n older) (Asian) woman who's separate from them, and they all pretend like they don't speak (English) and just stare straight ahead with on-guard postures and pretend not to pay attention, and then I can hear from the back that the (slightly older) girl is finally on the phone somehow and she says something about letting someone know something and they'll try to be somewhere by some time, and it's like 7pm at this point and the youngest kid is honestly like eight and there's no adults in sight, and then a bit after that we're back at the main station, and the driver gives all of them free transfers, including the (younger) boy who didn't have enough money for the bus in the first place.

. . .

Sunday, February 23, 2025

More restaurant tidbits...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker and my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker really do wonder what business and tipping was like there before COVID; supposedly, the restaurant used to be pretty packed many nights of the week, but now a lot of people have shifted to take-out, and have just never returned to in-person dining like they used to.

2) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker asks me what my favorite color is, and I'm immediately like, "The color of your eyes."

And, she's like, "Whoooooooooooooaaaa," appreciatively.

3) A (recent immigrant?) (slim) (jittery) (highly black) (African?) app delivery driver without much (English) just kind of hovers weirdly when it's time to pick up his order, and he even sits for a while in the prime window area where the customers sit and not at a table in the back, and then he disappears, and then the next thing you know, a man is waiting outside of the (women's) restroom to go in -- everyone is using the (women's) restroom, since the (men's) restroom is closed for some fixture repairs -- and then another table comes in and sits but they leave right away since a man there needs to use the restroom and goes up and sees the line, and he needs to go so bad that they can't wait, so they leave and we lose three customers, and then like five minutes after that, the first man still isn't in the restroom, he's still waiting, and then suddenly the (African?) app delivery driver comes out and grabs his order and hustles out the door, and water with a mild sewage stench is just streaming out from the bathroom door in a thin sheet over the floor, and it's a fairly busy Sunday lunch shift, and the (male) restaurant owner and a (Guatemalan) kitchen worker have to come out and unclog the toilet and mop up all the sewage-water, since it seems that the (African?) app delivery driver was doing something in there, including putting paper towels down the toilet and flushing.

"What the fuck," I was like, to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, who was working that shift with me.

And, I pointed out that we had signage about the paper towel thing, and he never asked to use the restroom like a lot of drivers do, and beyond that he took so long in the bathroom that he made us lose that one three-top and about $4 or more in tips each, and then who knows what effect that had on the other tips, to have sewage-water coming out into the center of the restaurant like that, even though we took care of it as quickly as we could and that whole thing maybe only lasted five minutes or so.

And, my coworker reported the driver to the app company, and I said she should block the driver so he never returned, but she wouldn't, she just put the like "Needs improvement" option and marked something about professionalism, which was pretty nice and speaks well of her, I think, though in this rare instance I do think we should have just blocked the guy, you don't need all that stuff like that in your restaurant.

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Random restaurant happenings...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) As I finish explaining things table-side one evening on a slow-ish night, a customer just turns to me and looks up at me and states out of nowhere, "You really enjoy your job here."

2) Upon return from the Christmas break when we were closed for a few days, the ornamental gourd that we've had on the front counter since before Thanksgiving has collapsed from internal rot that manifested while we were closed, and the entire ice holder up front under the soda fountain is empty since all of the ice melted away while we were closed, and I'm excited to fill it up and see how many buckets it holds, and it's either five or six, I'm not sure because I lose count as I fill it, I'm so sleepy that morning when I come in after break and am working again and am doing my opening duties again after so many days off.

Friday, February 21, 2025

A new restaurant policy, because of a notorious problem customer.

So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we recently started the policy where if a pick-up order comes in after 9:30pm, we have to take payment over the phone, otherwise we can't accept the order.

Like, the kitchen closes at 9:45pm (an hour earlier on Sundays), and sometimes we're open a bit later if there's multiple late pick-ups or some late tables in the restaurant, but most times, we want to close the door right away and be out of there at like 9:45pm straight, it's just not worth it to hang around for one order or for one table, especially with multiple employees sitting there and twiddling their thumbs and just waiting all that time.

So, anyhow, there's this one (late middle-aged) (scrawny) (weird-eyed) (black) woman who pretty much always orders the same (vegan) dish, and is just a source of chaos, and no tips.

Like, I think there was something happening at some point where she got blacklisted from delivery, since she lives way the heck far away -- I think like a twenty minute drive in one direction, to a far side of town? -- but would never tip on a late last-minute delivery, or ever.

So, anyhow, that night that we worked, she called in her (vegan) order at like 9:30pm, and we reminded her that the doors close at 9:45pm and she said she knew, and she was like, "I'm on my way," and then like we often do with late customers whose take-out is ready, we called her at like 9:42pm to tell her that her food was now ready for pick-up and that doors close at 9:45pm, at which she was like, "I said I know, I'm on my way," and then she didn't show up, so like after 9:50pm, I'm like, "I'm clocking out," and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones stayed along with a few other people to stay safe in the restaurant until this customer showed up, and I asked her to note when she finally came because I was curious about that, and then, I left.

And, the next shift I worked, I asked, and it turned out to be like after 10:10pm, a full 40 minutes after she placed the order, and they couldn't even cash out the register all that time, since the order went unpaid until finally that customer showed up.

Hence, the new policy.

When we were all talking about that, too, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was just shaking her head, and she said once during the summer they had already closed up the patio and chained up the patio furniture, and this customer showed up late and wanted to dine in and she wanted to eat outside, so my coworker opened up the patio for her, and, even after doing all that, no tip.

"She is like that," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.

She also said that like a month or two previously, this customer had showed up during the day to pick up an order and didn't have enough money -- she was something like twenty cents short -- and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker told her to go back to her car and look for change there in the cushions or in the cup-holders or wherever, because she needed to pay the full amount for the order in order to get the food, and if she didn't have the full amount of money, she couldn't get the food

"Another customer, it's okay, I pay, it happens," she was like. "But not her. She is not a good customer." 

As she said that, too, she seemed a little proud of herself, that she had stood her ground and made the customer comply, this customer who so often took advantage and abused the trust of so many people who served her. It was like a mark of pride.

"Yes, I saw that," my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said, nodding and smiling, when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker related that story.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

Another feat of environmental neuroticism.

Whenever I make sauerkraut, you're supposed to keep a few whole outer leaves to push on top of the shredded cabbage and tuck down around the outer edges, to keep it submerged during the fermentation process, since if any cabbage floats up and breaks the water and stays there, it can allow bad bacteria to thrive and bridge down into all of the underlying cabbage that is only apparently submerged and separated from the ambient air, but is not in actuality.

Only, you have to be careful that there's no dirt on those outer leaves or even like weird slightly-discolored abrasions that might harbor residual dirt, since that can introduce big amounts of bad bacteria into the cabbage at large, and it can then take root in all of it and go on to spoil the whole entire batch.

So, lately, what I've been doing is keeping any of those big outer leaves with slightly weird spots, and carving out the weird spots, and then keeping the remaining cabbage leaves to eat in salads.

I mean, I wouldn't risk it for fermentation, but there's still perfectly good leaf there, that you can use for other things and eat in different ways.

Why waste it?

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Mysteries of life.

Whenever I drop off a jigsaw puzzle at the "take one, leave one" honor-system jigsaw puzzle exchange table in the foyer of the local library in the one college town that I now live in, I try to stop by there around the same time that I dropped it off on successive days, to see how long it took for my one newly-introduced jigsaw puzzle to go.

And, a few months ago, I dropped one off on a Saturday morning, and each day it wasn't going, and then on Tuesday I forgot to go back and check, and then when I went there to go check on Wednesday, it was gone.

Now, I'll never know exactly how long it took for it to go, and whether it went from Monday into Tuesday, or from Tuesday into Wednesday.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Colonoscopy!

People say that colonoscopy preparation is a bitch, but the all-liquid diet really doesn't bother me all that much, it's more the not having food or liquid for much of the day of the actual colonoscopy, more than the liquid diet itself on the day preceding it.

In fact, I rarely buy highly-processed foods or even go down those grocery store aisles, so it's something different for me to even stroll down the big grocery aisle of soda-pop, or to look at all of the types of juices that I might buy... It's all like, "'White grape mango cran-apple'? What in heavens is this?!", and I just bask in the array of consumer choices, as I look at all of the labels and I just want to try them all, each and every one of them (which, incidentally, is *exactly* the response that all those companies want you to have, when you walk down that grocery aisle and begin looking at all of those products).

It was also fun to buy the Jellos of all the types that I don't usually buy, since I usually buy off-brand sugarless Jellos that come in just four flavors (strawberry, raspberry, orange and cherry).

"Yes, let me get 'Island Pineapple'!"

The person who accompanied me to the appointment was the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities), too, since I've helped her out with a similar type of appointment that she had before, too.

And, since she has a particularly filthy sense of humor, I prepared a joke for when I first came out from under anesthesia and saw her, like I'd pretend to be super groggy, and I'd be like talking to myself and be all like, "I had this dream, that I had the most marvelous husband...", and then I'd pretend to slowly come to and be like, "Hey, [her name], what are you doing here, where am I...?", only, unfortunately, the anesthesia really did a number on me and I can't quite remember if I did that, when I first came to.

Oh well, you have to try.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Some more Luigi happenings.

During the height of the whole Luigi craze that has now died down, it first came out that he went to (Thailand) for a bit on his "trip to the East."

So, I told my one (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker that it's her fault that he's a criminal, he likes (Asian) women, and that if she was still in (Thailand), she could have met him and saved him.

"You're in your head too much, let's go play basketball and swim," I was like, pretending to be her meeting Luigi.

(She's very athletic.)

"You could have saved him," I was like.

I also asked two (younger) (HAPA) (grad student) (STEM) people who are regular customers what they thought of Luigi, and to rate what they thought about the health insurance CEO assassination on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 was full disapproval, 5 was neutral, and 10 was full approval.

The one immediately said 7 or 8, and then the other was like, "Officially, zero," but I pressed him, and he wouldn't say, but I pressed him some more, and we went back and forth, etc., and finally he gave in and was like, "I feel bad," and then he said it was probably like a 6 -- which fact makes me think that public opinion surveys may be underestimating popular support of Luigi's targeted killing, since social desirability effects will lead at least some portion of people to say that they strongly disapprove of his actions (when actually in fact they mildly approve, or more).

Sunday, February 16, 2025

A Luigi joke of several months ago...

...because one of the (presumably independent contractors) who lives nearby and does deliveries during slow periods is this (young) (African) (immigrant) guy named "Luigi," and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones had written the groupchat for the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now this short message for record-keeping, that Luigi had come by and taken X amount of money:

Like, the next time I worked, I was like, "Oh my god oh my god oh my god, Luigi was here? Why didn't you call me?!?! I thought you were my friend! If he needed money, I would have given him money, he didn't need to take it, he could even stay with me if he needs to, I would hide him!"

. . .

(At that, everyone rolled their eyes, but I was like, "I know that they say he's a criminal, but honestly, when you met him, what was he like, did he seem nice? Tell me, I want to know.")

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Fleas, not bedbugs.

So, I have been realizing more and more that the bites that I was getting that began this summer probably weren't bedbugs, but were rather fleas (perhaps via a cat that the former upstairs neighbors secretly had before they moved out, the fleas being transferred via the laundry room or when I did a walk-around in their apartment just to see the space, before they moved out).

For one, the bites didn't swell like bedbug bites, and they were towards my legs, and not up towards my buttocks and back and all of the large warm muscles that bedbugs prefer.

For another, whatever it was came back after the cycle for bedbugs should have been broken -- it's usually two months for bedbugs -- and it was beyond that when whatever this was reappeared, and that would have been in the timeframe for a delayed hatch for flea eggs.

Really, it's just very annoying... I have next to no fibers in my apartment, but eggs can lay dormant for a very long time, and you just have to catch the newly hatched eggs or the adults and kill them every time right away, until over time all the eggs are hatched and everything is gone and there's nothing left to lay any new ones.

Right now my strategy is not to worry, and if I get a bite -- something that happens every six to ten weeks -- at that point I do my laundry intensively, spray down my bed and much of my apartment with rubbing alcohol, and lay out diatomaceous earth everywhere, to kill those active adults, which (it seems) usually happens right away, since no bites recur right then like if adults were around and feeding.

At some point if I keep doing that, I'll have worn them down, and they'll be gone and it all will stop.

What a pain.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Some occurrences from several months ago:

1) At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (newer) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker pulls something out of her pocket, and gives me a (round) (gold) coin from (Guatemala), as a gift for me to have. 

2) Later, at a very rare weekday lunch-shift because I just don't work those anymore, I see a(n older) (nerdy) (white) man and his (older) (Asian) wife who are regular lunch customers -- pad thai chicken and beef noodle soup, usually! -- and we haven't seen each other since right before I headed out of town to the city that I used to live in to go see a concert and that was almost a year ago, now, and we talk some, including about my changing shifts because there's new staff with different schedule demands that displaced me from what I used to work, and also about child-appropriate music and role models with pop and rock (like, they don't let their [middle school-age] daughter listen to a lot of music where the singer has highly questionable content and behavior, children are just too suggestible at that age, and I have to agree with them, that that's a good decision).

3) My shit one morning was just one of the widest shits that I simply have ever seen in my life, it was like round and curvy and also just incredibly incredibly wide, like so wide it's amazing that something like that could even come out of your asshole unhindered (perhaps this was related to all the fiber from sweet potato soup that I was eating at the time, and like maybe that gave the shit a certain amount of "give" coming out that got it out of my asshole, but it also kept it together as one piece with a rough shape and let it re-expand and sprawl out a bit, once it came out of my bowels and sat there some in the toilet?).

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Computer scare:

One day out of nowhere when I was sitting at my kitchen table in my little cottage, the screen on my laptop suddenly went black, and when I did word-processing, every time that you tapped down, there was like this pause of pixels and no gentle scrolling, and it was just freaky and jenky beyond belief.

Immediately, I got frightened that my computer was breaking down, and I'd maybe lose a recent version of a doc or some recent downloads, and that I'd have to go through the whole rigamarole of buying a computer again, and besides that, Word now has (I think) this price-gouging monthly subscription model that they lock you into, you can't just get it once-and-for-all anymore like you used to, and stuff like that is just very unpleasant to deal with, in life.

Thankfully, though, I saved some files on my thumbdrive and emailed them to myself, and I also was googling on my phone, and it all seemed to *maybe* have been a temporary graphics file overload that was doing that, it probably was nothing fatal with the motherboard or the screen wiring or anything like that.

Phew.

(I think.)