New job personalities…

…at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:

1) A (blonde) (make-upped) (college-age) coworker introduces me to this one (younger) (white) customer who’s a friend of theirs who’s visiting from out-of-town from a town to the south of us, and that friend comments that she’s in the service industry, too, although she works at “a hillbilly country club.”

“You guys should serve moonshine cocktails,” I was like.

“Actually, we do,” she was like.

She also said that she sells a shit-ton of pickleback shots, since she tells everyone that it will help them with their golf-swing.

2) In the early part of the shift before any rush and people are chatting, someone asks me how I’m doing, and I say great because I just filed my taxes, and at that my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker says that it’s a great feeling to have that off your chest, he just filed multiple years of back taxes since he hadn’t paid his taxes for like five years, and when I raise an eyebrow at that, he vaguely says something about a medical condition and insurance and treatments, although he doesn’t say anything about not being able to manage paperwork, and he's just all very mysterious about it, even though he's the one who mentioned everything first.

Tidbits from my new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel:

1) Because we serve ranch dressing with several appetizers, customers comment now and then about how good the ranch dressing is, and I find myself often telling them about how former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had this like food fountain back at a family wedding in Michigan, only instead of serving like melted chocolate that you could elegantly dip strawberries into, it was filled with ranch dressing.

And, people think that’s awesome, by and large.

2) The POS tablets that we have to carry around are super-weighty and I would find them pulling down my apron halfway through the shift, often at inconvenient times, and I just couldn’t find a way to tie it right now matter how hard I tried, that is until my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker told me his tip he figured out, just loop it through the back loops on your pants before tying, that makes it more secure, that’s what worked for him before he got these like stretchy black hiking pants for his workpants that have these ginormous side pockets that can actually expand to fit the whole tablet, he said.

3) It's tough when customers order a hamburger and then say at some point later that they want cheese on it, since your first major choice on the menu is to classify something as a hamburger or a cheeseburger, and once they start off as a hamburger but then go the cheese route, you have to go back and delete everything you did and start it anew as a cheeseburger, since if you keep it as a hamburger and add cheese it’s a different, higher price, which is no good.

4) Quite surprisingly, the fried cauliflower has like a buffalo wing flavor somehow mixed into the breading, and so I find myself making sure to ask customers if they’ve had that dish before when they order, and if they haven’t, I let them know that in advance, so there’s no surprises. 

A good deal of the time, too, people end up changing their appetizer order, once they find that out.

5) Sometimes when (white) ladies who drink wine order cabernet sauvignon, I take it to the table and am like, “Who called a cab?”

Two recent cottage problems:

1) The sink in the bathroom backs up, and though I run my finger around the upper inside of the drain to dislodge any gunk, that makes it even worse, where no water will drain through it, even after sitting overnight.

(In the morning I find an old bread-knife that I never use in one of my lesser-used drawers in the kitchen, so I stick it down the drain and twirl it and voila, unclogged.)

(I then put Dawn dish soap all over that mother-effing bread knife, all up and down its blade, and just kind of leave it out in my sink.)

. . . 

2) A cluster of ants have swarmed on something that fell under my kitchen table -- a dropped piece of food? - and gradually I realize that there's ants here and there all around them, and extending all the way to the front door of my little cottage.

(I spray rubbing alcohol over all of them that I see, and I then get a rag and dump a ton of Dawn dish soap over it and wet it and rub everything down, going from the food to the front door.)

(I have to rinse out the rag multiple times since there's so many ant carcasses caught up in it, to the point that I even consider throwing it out, though I don't, I rinse it again and leave it to be laundered.) 

Tree-death.

With that one parasitic tree-of-heaven that was removed from outside my cottage a few years ago, I had been diligently picking up new shoots from its leftover root system, and this year it's clear that they're gone in like half the yard, since presumably the subterranean roots there finally totally died out over the winter.

The stump is also decomposing, now, and mushrooms appear on it in the rain. 

POS.

At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I work now, the POS (point-of-service) system on the tablets that we carry around with us is a real POS (piece of shit).

You have no idea how hard it is to move items from one check to another if they’re put on the wrong table or put on the wrong check when there’s a split check at the table… 

Once when a lady was unhappy with her cocktail and we went to delete it, I handed my tablet to a manager for her to punch in her code and take it off the bill, only, one of the beers further down off-screen must have been previously tapped and accidentally highlighted, too, so that also disappeared, and it was only because the customer noticed it at the end of the meal when they were looking at the receipt that we were able to go back and add it back onto the bill where it belonged.

It really makes you wonder what’s going on with software design, where a product isn’t easily usable on such a basic level with such a basic everyday task in the workplace.

An evening at the local music bar:

1) When I went to buy a pack of peanuts – they have those for sale for like fifty cents or a dollar, and I tend to get them when I’m drinking, since not only are they tasty, but they’re a heck of a lot more healthy than like Doritos or Cheetos or whatnot – I ask the (unaffable) (fish-faced) (early 50s) (white) bartender for “a well whiskey on the rocks, no straw, and a peanut,” and he’s like, “Just one?”.

2) Later, the one (large) (bearded) (sound engineer) who I know from around town is over by me, and I ask him to watch my study-stuff while I run to the restroom, and he does, and then later he asks me to watch his drink while he does the same.

“This would be the perfect time to roofie it,” I was like. “We’ve built up trust through the first exchange, and now I take advantage of it, for my own ends.”

And, he laughed, and then was like, “Just like I planned it.”

3) Some (older) (white) guys are also there at the bar – they’re in town from different states since they grew up in the area, and their dad is like in his 90s and needs help right now and their sibling who lives locally can’t handle everything – and when it gets late and a cloudburst happens and I mention to them that I want to go home but the rain is too heavy, the one gestures to this raincoat hanging from a hook underneath the bar between us that had led us initially to start talking since I had asked them if it was theirs or if someone was sitting there, and he’s like, “[My first name], take the raincoat and return it tomorrow.”

A childhood memory…

…of my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I work now:

Growing up back at her parents’ restaurant, she discovered that the bar nozzle for sodas had a short lag-time when the pop syrup was coming out but before the carbonated water kicked in, and so she’d tap the button repeatedly whenever she wanted a soda, and it was her just like drinking pure sugar water at eight years old without her parents having any idea that was going on, and she did that shit like all the time.

. . .

(. . .)

Two bits of customer banter at my new job…

…at the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel:

1) When I go to seat three (older) (gruff) (white) farmers at a table and the little cocktail lamp there is shut off because it’s either broken or its power has run out, I pick it up and I say that I’ll go get a new one, and without even looking at me or pausing from pulling out his chair, the one is like, “That’s fine, we don’t need no ambiance.”

2) When I deliver this one specialty burger with a chili sauce on top of it, I wish the (older) (white) lady who is talking intensely about home health care with her friend an enjoyable meal, and I remark how good the burger looks and I say how I’ve been meaning to try that specific burger because it always looks so good when I bring it out to tables, and she just looks at me and is like, “Not tonight, bud.”

Some recent phone oddities with my parents.

1) For a while, my mother would not say hello when she picked up the phone but instead waited for you to say hello first, since that was her method of trying to identify spam calls.

2) One time, my dad answers and then just hangs up when I’m done talking to him without passing the phone along to my mother, and when I call back and ask him to speak to her, he says that she’s in town.

An odd sight this year at the end of winter:

As I go around my yard and the front house to pick up stray trash, just beyond my kitchen window the ground is covered here and there in blue feathers, some covered by dead leaves, but none with bits of flesh attached to them like a bird that had been killed and eaten or something like that.

Bar tacos.

One Saturday after work after a big basketball game that the local university team ended up losing in a really disappointing way, I ended up heading across the street to this (old) (townie) dive bar, and a big group of people way down at the other end of the bar had this big aluminum catering tray of stuff out and so I assumed that they had brought in food for some party like maybe for a party around the game, and then when I was on my second beer, the (older) (short-haired) (dyed blonde) (fatter) (back-tatted) (female) bartender brings it down to our end of the bar and dumps it there and says that there’s tacos for anyone who wants them.

And, I grab one and unwrap it from the tin foil and it’s amazing, and so I ask her when she’s back over by me who brought it in and she says a regular, and later when a (young) (white) guy in (team) gear by the bar grabs a taco after I point them out to him and he asks who brought them in, I tell him that, and he just nods solemnly and is like, “They’re the real hero tonight.”

Later, too, since I’m still unclear on the situation, I ask that same bartender again when she’s back over by me if that regular works at a taqueria or has money to burn or what, and at that she just laughs and is like, “Both!”, and then she says that the regular is the owner of a regional taco chain that she names by name, he comes in here a lot and he does that every so often for people, he just brings in a huge thing of tacos for all the people who are hanging out drinking so they can have a good time.

. . .

(I end up eating two there and take one to go when no-one else is eating them, and then like at 3am or 4am that night I wake up with this just horrendous heartburn from the spicy red sauce that all the bits of steak were covered in, though luckily I have some Tums that were left me by the one [worked out] [STEM] [Brazilian] when he moved, and so I chew a few of those and am able to go back to sleep again right away, no problem.)

College application lingo.

The other week when I was texting a (Welsh-American) friend from college and the subject of his son's college applications came up, he mentioned that it seemed to them that Duke was "a high reach," to which I replied -

Not the change the subject, but "high reach" sounds like you're trying to jack someone off who's like 6'5"

- to which he replied -

It does seem a bit like that in practice.

. . .

(. . .) 

Bathroom sink sight...

...as I brush my teeth after breakfast, and prop up my smartphone on the against-the-wall high-and-tight elevated sink-ledge in order to watch some video as I brush:

Something falls out from behind the phone and lands in a small pool of water to the left of the faucet on the counter-top surrounding the basin where water tends to pool for some reason, probably because the counter-top has a backward slant that doesn't allow water to drain more easily into the basin, but instead directs it away from it, and anyhow there on the sink there is a very small light yellow centipede like the size of a fingernail clipping, only thinner, or at least there is one there until I cup my hands and put water in them and throw it on the bug in order to flush it down the sink into the drain, there.

Another line I've used at my new job...

 …at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, whenever I start expounding on how the house cocktails are not only well-mixed, but also very reasonably priced:

"And remember, the more you drink, the more you save."

A line I’ve used at my new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, whenever someone who seems chill enough orders a “Mick ultra” (Michelob Ultra):

Me: “Ahhh, a Mick ultra… The favorite drink of my friend’s ex-wife.”

. . .

(True story. They also usually don’t know what to say and I usually say this to the [macho] [white] guys who drink that shit, although once someone was like “Well, that’s something” and then said no more, which I guess is a lot like not saying anything at all in response, I guess.)

A mild joke at my new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, when the managers are finally cutting me for the night but also seem unsure about whether to do so, yet:

Me (in game show voice): “Is that your final answer?”

Addendum.

I've come across work by people who have major institutional positions, like curatorships and stuff, and it's like, ERP.

And, these are major well-known places, too!

It's like a colleague who works on a different language family and who's given me good advice has observed to me when I relate stuff to him about the field, "What is this backwater?". 

Supposedly anonymous peer reviews.

In the past half year, I got back some supposedly anonymous peer reviews for an article where a peer reviewer in the first round had tried to sabotage the project (probably because I'm obviously right, and they'd tried to put their hand to the notorious field-problem before, to no avail).

And, these new peer reviews you could work with, but they were still shocking. You could totally tell who wrote them, and although I’d previously categorized these people as better people in the field, there was still some pretty glaring eccentricities in thinking, as well as the use of widespread but poorly-grounded operative categories that they simply weren’t questioning, but instead rotely repeating as obvious touchpoints.

And, these are the good ones.

Like, what the f*ck is up with this field that I’ve been dabbling in, with the one ancient language that I’ve made myself into quite the expert in over the past number of years?

Honestly.

The quality of scholarship is just very bad, although I often charitably call it “uneven.”

I really don’t understand what these people do all day, since they certainly don’t seem to be solving major unresolved issues in scholarship.

Professional oddity.

After my one popular lecture a few years ago, people have been asking me to do another one, but the biggest stumbling block has been access to a portable projector for a PowerPoint.

I can understand why university tech resources wouldn’t want to loan them out to just anyone, but it’s just an odd position to be in, where I can access the libraries and maintain a larger practice with conference presentations and journal publications and whatnot, and yet I don’t have access to that basic tech.

It’s really like a dividing line putting me on the outside of the profession, separating the haves from the have-nots.

One of those days, a few months ago.

I wake up and am waiting for my coffee to brew, and then I realize that I forgot to turn it on.

And then, when I do turn it on, it’s the wrong burner and it starts singeing a pan that I had sitting out on top of it, which I only notice when the burning gets so bad that you can start smelling it.

It’s a rainier, greyer day, too, and I can’t read the footnote of an article that I had printed out in 4-on-1 format to save paper and make it so I save space in my hard files of marked-up articles, so I have to bring it to the window to look at it there, or use the bright light on my smartphone to illuminate it.

At the local brewery that night, the one (white) (young) (female) bartender with (pussy hat) energy is coughing up a storm and wiping her nose with the back of her hand, repeatedly, and it’s totally Typhoid Mary vibes.

. . .

(“Maybe she needed the money and couldn’t afford not to come into work,” my mom says later.)

A customer interaction at my new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, that I now work at:

When a (well-dressed) (vaguely foreign) (round-faced) (older) (white) lady who's (mildly chunky) and who had been getting wine and cocktails with two (educated) (white American) types goes to pay, she hands me the bill and cash, and is like, “That should take care of it,” to which I’m like, “The only problem is if there’s too little.”

And, at that, “Ha!”, she’s like, “Yes!”.

A strange nighttime event.

I’m shutting off lights in the kitchen and preparing to go enter my bedroom to read before bed, when suddenly my mild headache becomes a quick sharp pain in my right front lobe, just there and gone in a flash.

And, it really freaks me out, although there’s no effects on anything else like impaired motion or whatnot like I assume would happen from a burst blood vessel or a mild stroke or that kind of thing, so I just chalk it up as a manifestation of the mild headache that I was having, although I do consider writing a farewell note or something saying what happened to leave on my kitchen table, in case I don’t wake up, which in retrospect is odd since if I was feeling like that was a true possibility, I probably should have gone to the emergency room to figure out what happened and gotten it checked out.

A feat of envrionmental neuroticism:

After late spring ants start coming into my cupboard and crawling all over the (folded over and binder-clipped down) bag of brown sugar there, I pull out this damaged Glad plasticware bowl where I had accidentally put a knife through the side in a big slash since I had used it to freeze some broth and then was cutting portions off from the frozen ice-chunk inside that plastic bowl there and the knife slipped, only, now I just slapped duct tape over that part of the bowl, and I could use it to seal the sugar inside and keep it ant-proof, since the ants couldn't smell it anymore once it was inside the repaired container.

An advantage of my new job:

I can walk or bus to this one grocery store near campus, and then walk and catch another bus route home, and that store usually has *great* sales on Greek yogurt, not to mention avocados.

For me, Greek yogurt is like the perfect treat, especially when it’s non-fat, since it’s all savory and protein-rich and relatively low calorie – 1 gram of protein per every 10 calories is a good ratio, I’ve heard – and plus you can dress it up with like oats and brown sugar and stuff if you want to, as some sort of dessert/sweet thing that’s not too horrendously bad for you.

The only downside is all if the plastic containers that are left over afterwards, even if you buy it in bulk and not in the little individually-packaged thingies… Just so wasteful.

I wish they had some sort of more environmentally-friendly bulk yogurt containers that wasn’t plastic, to tell you the truth…  Right now I’m just washing them out and saving them in my cupboard so I can use them to store bulk beans and grains and whatnot when I buy that kind of thing down at the local co-op, although there’s only so much of that that you can do, to re-use containers.

A (Brazilian) surprise.

As I’m in bed sleeping until late like I always do because of my later work schedule, I hear my phone ringing with some calls like twice in 2 minutes, and when I get up later, I see that it’s WhatsApp calls from the one (worked out) (STEM) (Brazilian), who I had sent a message to there a day or 2 earlier to see how he was settling back down after his return home.

He was calling me to do Facetime-type stuff like I’ve seen (Brazilians) do incessantly with each other, like I was one of them!

It’s funny, because once when I was hanging out with him and the one (young) (heavyset) (blonde) artist who lives in the college town that I now live in, he got a call like that, and it was the (short) (elderly) (always elegantly-dressed) mother of the (vivacious) and (warm) (Brazilian) wife of the (older) couple who’ve lived around town for years…  She had talked with him a lot at their parties, and she was online and saw that he was on, and so she called him up to see how he was doing, even though she’s like decades and decades older than him!

It’s really funny how (Brazilians) use social media and technology so differently from us…  Just a lot of different norms and ways that they use things, like the way that they are always present with each other socially through them.

New routines at my new job..

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel:

1) Whenever no-one’s around and I'm dumping drinks into the bar’s sink, I not only set dirty glasses up in the rack there next to the small dishwasher for glassware like we’re supposed to do, but I reach into the sink and collect any straws garnishes etc. to throw out, and I also palm any unsqueezed lemons or limes, then after throwing the other stuff out, I furtively slip them into my back pocket as I walk away, so I can take them home and use the juice for that haircare highlighting thing that I've been doing for years now, where I squeeze the citrus into my hand and rub it in my hair before going outside into the sun.

If no-one's around or looking, I kind of do the same in the dishroom off the kitchen when I return plates with fish sandwiches or the cod platter and people didn’t use their giant lemon wedges.

2) When I get cut at the end of the night but a big basketball game is on TV for the local university, I stay around 4 or 5 minutes to watch, as do like 3-4 other staff people who are on or off shift, in the closing later-night restaurant with a handful of tables still in it.

Dissertation committees.

A bit ago on social media I saw a post from one scholar who I follow there about being on a dissertation committee, and then a few months later I saw another post like that from him again.

And, it made me just so glad that I don’t have to do that.

What a huge time commitment, and besides you have to be involved in recommendation letters, the advisee’s drama around the complete and utter collapse of traditional worthwhile careers paths, etc.

Just better not to be involved.

Events of a day…

…when I go to stay with the one (elderly) aunt of the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living client) with (disabilities), since the aunt had had surgery and needed someone there with her during the day every day for like 2-4 weeks afterwards, and her (lesbian) niece was getting burned out from doing that for so long:

2) My to-do list in the mudroom foyer off the garage include an item “SHRED” since she needed some paper-shredding done, and so I took a pen and drew a “rock on!” hand next to it alongside the words, “Yeah, man!”

2) Two (Latina) cleaning ladies come over and it turns out that one is from (Venezuela) and the other is from (Mexico), and when I remark in (Spanish) that I’m surprised that they’re not (Guatemalan), the latter says something about how there’s already bastantes (“enough”) around here.

3) When the aunt hobbles over to the fridge to get some cream for her coffee and then comes back and starts pouring it out, it like pours out in these great chunks, and I worry that the milk is spoiled until I look closer and I see that it’s a box of whipping cream, since she uses whipping cream in her coffee.

4) Twice I take her dog out to exercise and I keep playing fetch with her where I throw the balls far down the yard for her for her to pick up and bring back, and I do that until she gets so tired that she starts walking back instead of running. And, like at that point she’s so tired, that she forgets to drop the ball from her mouth like she usually does when she brings it back, but instead she just keeps strolling around the yard with it by me, just in a daze from all the exercise that she’s getting.

New approach to jigsaw puzzle donation.

From here on out, I’m going to put every jigsaw puzzle that I’m done with on the library’s “take one, leave one” jigsaw puzzle exchange table, and not take the better ones to the local resale shop.

I had been doing that so they could make some money and so shoppers would find “finds” there, but the last few times that I’ve been through there to donate other non-jigsaw puzzle stuff, I’ve seen pretty much the same jigsaw puzzles just sitting out there on their shelf, including two of the ones that I had singled out to donate there because they seemed better or more interesting than your other, standard jigsaw puzzles.

So, it seems like they’ve been starting to get low turnover there, and maybe also my taste in jigsaw puzzles doesn’t mesh with their shoppers’ tastes, too!

So, to the library they go. 

More tidbits from the new job…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) When some customers want to see all the different rooms in the restaurant, I’m showing them around, and then who comes up but another group of customers who I had also offered to show the different rooms to.

“My gosh, this is like [a relatively local historic site of national significance with tightly timed tours on every quarter hour]!”, I was like.

2) Someone wants to know if we salt and pepper the burgers before we grill them, because they don’t want that.

(We do do that, but we don’t for them.)

3) Since the business has been around for over 25 years and moved locations several times, a good number of customers like to say that they’ve been to all 3 locations, or that they remember the first one when we were just half a room and lines were out the door and you’d have to wind around this ramp that went down to the entrance since it was like a half-story basement location set in down beneath ground level, etc.

4) When I am assigned to be “floater” and hustle around all night to prebus, fill waters and get soda refills, take orders at tables where service is delayed, etc., people notice, and coworkers start saying that I am on top of the water, and the (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is like, “Good job tonight,” and I tell her that I’m fine to do that role all the time, just assign me to it if it makes sense for them.

(Pay is the same as a waiter, by the way.)

5) On Valentine’s Day, we have a huge number of cancellations, and someone comments that that’s how people do that around town here, they make multiple reservations and then see where they feel like going that night, and then cancel out on the rest.

6) A(n Iranian?) couple come in and the guy looks strangely like (Bad Bunny), and when I tell him that, he says that he gets that all the time, even before the Super Bowl halftime show, though of course more since then.

7) Milkshakes and readying desserts fall on us, and when I have to prepare a milkshake, I follow instructions that are taped to the side of the fridge by the blender but scoop too much ice cream into it, and I have practically a whole second one left over, so that’s for me to eat, as I discover that all the staff do with milkshake extras, although in this case it was excessive, of course, and I won’t do that again in the future.

New job tidbits..

…from the (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) A (late middle-aged) (black) lady has this cute little purse up on her table, and I compliment her on how cute it is.

“You’re the second person to say that today,” she’s like.

“Well, it must be something in the air!”, I was like.

“That’s okay,” she was like, “I’ll take it.”

2) Even though there’s managers on duty, you basically do your job all night and maybe at the end with clean-up and fills they’re like, “Okay, have you started bathrooms yet?”, otherwise it’s like you’re really there with no supervision and you just do what you need to do when you need to do it and everyone trusts you with everything…  

I like jobs like that.

3) When a veggie lasagna order that’s one of the specials comes in like a half hour before close, the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook with a gravelly voice is like, “Veggie lasagna, now?”, and then is all exasperated and is like, “The person who knows how to plate it is fucking gone!”

A memory of an alleged attempt at human trafficking…

…from a (young) (heavyset) (blonde) artist who lives in the college town that I now live in:

During early high school when her parents' marriage was rough, her mother and her went to New York City for a long weekend for their major yearly vacation and there they stayed at an out-of-the-way hotel, and when they were in the empty restaurant dining room, this (middle-aged) woman was like one of the only other people there, and she ended up joining them and spilling her guts out to them, and when the (artist-to-be) tried acting mature and told her mom that she was going to go outside for a cigarette, her mom was like, “Wait, I’ll go with you,” but this lady laid her hand across her mom’s wrist and forcefully was like, “No, let her go, she’ll be fine,” and so she went out to the drive to smoke, and while she was doing that her mom needed to run up to their room to do something, and as she went past the front desk she told the desk-clerk to keep an eye on her daughter outside for a minute and the guy said that they don’t do that, and as the mom rushed up to the room, she was outside, and this guy had parked a car outside and was calling to the (artist-to-be) and as she came up to him, he grabbed her hair and tried to force her into the back of the car and all the time he was like, “Come on, get in, you called this cab, you’re just drunk!”, and then the mom looked out the window and saw something and ran down, and as she called out to her, the (artist-to-be) was like able to break free and walked to her, it was like a trance but now it had been broken, and the guy hopped in the car and drove off, and the woman from the restaurant was nowhere to be found, and later she realized that even though it seemed like she hadn’t walked that far from the entrance, when her mom called to her, she was like most of the way up the U-shaped drive that led to the front door of the hotel, and she must have walked that far while smoking or while going out to the man while he called to her, he was like practically parked on the street out there that ran in front of the hotel’s drive.

. . .

(She said that she read later that human traffickers always work in twos, and I said that the man’s lines sounded rehearsed like if someone saw them and overhead what he was saying they would just think she was drunk and not try to intervene, and she said that she hadn’t thought of that, though I also said that I thought most human trafficking was like within family units or with vulnerable people and wasn’t like off-the-street abductions or whatever, to which she had nothing to say, in response.)

Other bought goods.

So, the one (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) had an ab wheel and also resistance bands, and he SWORE by resistance bands as a method of working out, he had gotten into them over the past 3-4 months that he had been here, and he said that after like 6-7 weeks of a simple workout, people were noticing the difference and asking him if he had lost weight, was going to the gym, etc.

So, I bought them off him at price, and I have to admit that I was very surprised that a decent set of resistance bands only sets you back like somewhere just less than $40, including shipping, which is insanely cheap and which also makes you wonder again why nobody talks about them all that much.

Anyhow, I am now one of the biggest evangelists ever for resistance bands.

I started off slow – he was doing like 4 sets of 15 reps 3 times a week, whereas I started out with like 2 sets of 10 reps 2-3 times a week – and already after like a week-and-a-half, I could see the difference in all these little muscles all over my body.

I gradually upped reps and weights, too, and now when I’m up to like 3 sets of 15 reps and I can do it with good form, I just go to a higher weight and less reps and start all over again from there, which is also more time-effective on my life, when you’re back at those relatively low numbers of reps.

I mean, I was originally thinking that anything would be better than what I have now, so why go nuts with it like he does?

And, even with that little albeit regular effort, I still showed results mad quick.

I’m like an addict now.

People should really talk about resistance bands more… They’re just amazing.

I wish that I had known about them years ago!  If I had, imagine where I’d be now!

In comparison though with the abs wheel, he just did that like once or twice a week, and he says don’t worry about forcing yourself to go down low, you will get lower with time as your abs build their strength up.

After-effects of some inherited food etc.

Pumpkin coffee makes me woozy, and the frozen fruit gives me squirting diarrhea.

And, the ginger-and-pumpkin bathroom spray sits unused on the top of my toilet, since at no point do I want to try to deodorize the bathroom by creating a mixed smell in there of ginger and pumpkin and shit, somehow that seems like you’d make a bad situation worse, like, it would be way more unappealing than your standard unadulterated shit smell.

Some inherited food etc. …

…from the one (worked out) (STEM) (Brazilian), when he gives me his groceries that he won’t use any more because he’s moving back home because his time here has finished:

An unopened can of pineapple, which he removes from his refrigerator and at which he shrugs when asked if canned pineapple needs to be refrigerated;

A container of vanilla frosting, and a container of chocolate frosting;

A bag of pumpkin spice coffee;

A ginger-and-pumpkin bathroom spray for deodorizing your bathroom;

Two cans of food pantry-brand cream-of-chicken soup;

Two small thick plastic bags of food pantry white rice; 

Two packs of heat-and-eat chicken chili;

Some dried garbanzo beans, and canned;

Several packs of spaghetti, one opened;

Some cocoa-and-coconut protein dessert balls, and some protein granola;

Frozen strawberry dessert cups; and

An opened bag of frozen blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries, that he had been using for smoothies with a small blender that he had boughten.

. . .

(He also had some various medications and toiletries like lotions and haircare; he seemed particularly attracted to grooming products branded at men.) 

Two eggs in a recent egg carton:

1) One egg seems stuck in and so I work it out from the cardboard carton and crack it, revealing a mostly empty shell and a small pool of white, gummy candy-like substance sitting at the bottom of it.

. . . 

(Apparently, it had subtly cracked somewhere farther up the eggshell, and the rest had drained out some time ago.)

. . . 

2) With another egg from that same carton, the top comes off it when I go to remove it, revealing a single yolk settled at the bottom, and no white around it whatsover.

. . . 

(Apparently, a sort of similar phenomenon had also happened to this egg, although its bottom half was also firmly stuck into the carton to the point where I had to tear out that section of the cardboard carton so I could remove it and throw out what was left of the egg, thus also ruining my chance for carton-reuse, which I do by bringing old cartons in to the university butcher shop so people can repack larger flats of eggs into something more manageable, which those patrons have requested and which the butcher shop managers facilitate by accepting donations of old reusable egg-cartons.)

. . .

 

. . . 

A reflection on (Brazilian) academic exchange.

Before he left, the one (worked out) (STEM) (Brazilian) was telling me more about the “sandwich” year that’s typical in Ph.D.s there, where you go abroad for a semester or two early in your dissertation to work with people in your field, and how it’s such a well-known thing that it’s even listed on your resumes, like where you did your Ph.D. and also where you spent your time during your “sandwich.”

And, he said it’s been typical for a while but Lula really took funding it more seriously, and there are exceptions like someone he knows spent time at a university in (India) and the topic and approach there ended up not being relevant at all to their project, although it seemed like it would be going in, but with his work, (Americans) use different types of mathematics and parameters in modelling the stuff that he models and they do it differently than the way that you’d learn it in (Brazil) from the schools of thought there, and so from his point of view, it’s just hugely worthwhile and he’s just a big, big believer in the system.

And, I can see why the program is effective, and also why it’s a good way for a country with a young university system to invest in its human capital and build up its home-grown knowledge base.

On another, related matter, he was also saying that I should try to teach or work in (Brazil), since “Brazilians love the U.S.”

Another day at work at my new job:

1) As I’m tapering off training, I get assigned a small table of a(n older) (white) couple in the quiet and dimly lit lounge that’s good for dates, and the lady seems high-strung, and she wants to get an Irish coffee, but she says that she’s had it here twice, and the one time was good and the other was not, and she wants to know if the bartender who made it last time is on and I run around and check and she is and so I go run back and tell her that I put the order through, but as soon as I say that she’s like, “Oh no, I don’t want her to make my coffee!”, and so then I have to run around and cancel the order although it’s already in progress, although the (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is making it, so they end up bringing it out to her anyways.

“Looks like you got a winner,” my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker is like, when I apprise her of the situation.

And, she says that we get a lot of “those kind of white ladies” in here.

The entire management team also remembered who this lady was from last time, too, because she kept insisting that they didn’t know how to make an Irish coffee since an Irish coffee always has cocoa sprinkled on the whipped cream on top, except it doesn’t, they were saying.

“That’s it, I don’t want to hear any more about this,” the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager was like, when a group of everyone was talking about this lady and her history and how you make an Irish coffee, just hashing out all the details.

2) Four (South Asian) students come in and end up getting individual meals, and when I collect receipts, it’s $0 tip, $0 tip, $1 tip, and $1 tip.

And, I really want to take a picture of all of those receipts and text it to my one (chubby) (Thai) ex-coworker and to my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) ex-coworker and be like, “See, Indian here too,” only, I don’t want to get caught doing that at my new job and lose my job, so I don’t.