A sign of increasing local homelessness:

On a late afternoon in early spring when I go to the nearby bus-stop to take it in to go to work, at the edge of the apartment building parking lot just north of there there’s a(n older) (fat) white homeless person laying on a mattress-like mat towards the back of a parking space on the far edge of the lot right by some bushes, with a sleeping bag pulled up around him, in this otherwise residential neighborhood with maybe a few churches here and there but nothing with a shelter or soup kitchen or whatever.

Work tidbits from my new-ish job…

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

1) My one (white) (young) (gay-ish) (ponytailed) coworker who grew up a town over says that he will never eat at this one major national pizza chain, because in high school he worked in that particular pizza chain back in the town that he grew up in and it was filthy there, and though it’s probably a “there” thing and not representative of the larger chain, it still left such a bad impression on him that he just doesn’t want to eat there anymore.

2) When there’s reception leftovers and I don’t want to overclaim but I also will take anything that’s left over that people truly don’t want, I explain that in so many words, and then my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker tells me not to worry, *nothing* like that ever gets thrown out where we work, “because we’re all trash pandas here.”

3) When I go behind the bar for a soda refill very late at night after the standard soda machine is shut down like I was taught to do during training, I go to the one not by where the one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender with (mental health problems) is making some cocktail, but then he comes back by there and tells me to get out of his way, although he later apologizes, and he says why didn’t I see the stuff out on the mat there – like some shot glasses laid out and stuff – but I say that I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve never tended bar in my life, maybe that’s end-of-night stuff when they’re breaking everything down, I don't know.

Lamp fixture trouble…

…on the bulb-lamp in my dining room:

After an evening jog I get home and it’s dark now, so I flick it on and it’s like half-dim, so I flick on the kitchen light to see if I’m at half power, but I’m not at half-power there, it’s full power, so I go to remove the bulb and water sloshes out of the side of the rim as I take it down, and you look up into the LED part and like half are shorted out and portions of the board look damp there.

. . .

(My landlord came and looked at it and replaced it… I had screwed the bulb-lamp back on but it fell off and broke, probably from the water wettening the grooves that would usually hold it in place, and I laid towels on my kitchen table underneath the lamp-less fixture in case any more water dripped out from the continuing rain before he was able to come, but that never got wet, and between that and the rust that seemed to be mounting in the LED panels, we came to the conclusion that this is old accumulated water from before he got the roof replaced last year, it’s not like some new leak or something.)

Addendum.

Is word spreading around town that there’s two brothers who are waiters in 2 different restaurants?

When I began my new job, I had prepared for people from the last restaurant recognizing me, and then in like my first month at my new job a (trans) (STEM) customer asked me when I was serving their table if they could “ask me a weird question,” and when I said yes, they asked me if I used to work at a (Thai) restaurant, and I was like, “No, that’s my brother, he’s the hippie vegan one.,” and then they were like, “Oh,” and it seemed like they really didn't know what to think.

In retrospect, I should have asked that guy if my brother was a good waiter, or if he was “judge-y” when people ordered meat.

Tidibits…

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

1) “That’s not enough protein!”, a (white) mother says to her (late middle school or early high school age) son who just wants to get like french fries and a grilled cheese for his food.

2) When it’s slow at the beginning of shift and I wash the huge front doors and windows, I make sure to open the door for any customers going in or out, and later I go help one of those entering groups by stopping by and getting someone a refill or whatever.

“I’ll do this for you,” I was like, “because you were nice and didn’t smudge my windows.”

3) After I finish the windows, I’m just full of myself about how good they look, and so I not only (selectively) show them off, but I also comment to people how I’m showing them off after I show them off.

And, when I say that latter bit, the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager tells me that you should have seen her after she de-limed the dishwasher, you couldn’t shut her up for days.

4) When this one big and chaotic group in the back dining room that was handled by someone else and who had some of their separate checks already cashed out gets the rest of their checks, a few items are misplaced, but since the POS is a POS, the task of reassigning things which is already hard to do is somehow made even harder because you can’t unmerge the separate checks due to how some have already been paid.

And, the one (athletic) (Asian-American) (semi-manager) tries to help me, but after spending like 5 to 8 minutes and realizing that one check that was already cashed out already included some misassigned item, she says it’s good, just run the credit cards that we have and give them back their bills, but don’t include the itemized receipt with the stuff that you hand back to them unless they ask for it… The one bill in particular was the problem, but the amount we were charging her was less than she should have paid, so it was just better all around to have her pay less and pretend like everything was resolved properly.

So, I did that.

5) One (young) (hiply-dressed) (black) (male) customer who’s in with a (mixed) group of friends makes a joke about one of our salads that has a name like Ghislaine Maxwell and calls it the Ghislaine Maxwell salad when he finds some reason to talk about it, like, asking people if they had tried it, and I hear him doing this, so I tell him that it’s “criminally good.”

6) Back in one lounge there’s a group of young people, including one (fatter) (white) (young) (gay) guy who seems vaguely familiar from my last job, and when I’m by there he asks me if I have a brother who works at the one (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at.

Afterwork chill.

After work since I’m cut early, I order a grilled chicken sandwich and then add in a side salad to boot, only the grilled chicken breast is absolutely enormous like to the point where you could slice it in half and it’d still be two full meals, and also the side salad was a pasta salad and I didn’t realize our side pasta salads are also pretty big, like bigger than our salads with greens and whatnot, like so substantial that they could really be a meal in themselves if you were hungry but not hungry-hungry, if you know what I mean.

And, somehow I ate all of it, and it was like my stomach distended outward and rested uncomfortably in front of me, like I was pregnant, with my solar plexus pushed upward and outward as well, just really really quite the sight.

Also, the one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender with (mental health problems) was around, at times sniffing and wiping his nose with his wrist and maybe his hand, and at one point eating nacho chips and chewing with his mouth open.

He also apologized for his shortness with me earlier, about something.

New workout results.

I truly am in love with resistance bands.

The workouts are short and sweet, they’re not hard on your joints, and you can really see results super fast, and that’s besides how cheap they are to buy and how they really don’t take up any space in your apartment.

When I’m at work now and holding out plates in each arm as I'm bussing, I can feel the muscles in my forearms through my shoulder and especially into my back, and I’m just like, GRRRR.

I also notice in my forearms, how they’re a bit wider and they tense up now and look bigger, when I grab things.

I was discussing this with my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military), and I even flexed a bicep for him.

“I see shadows, man,” he was like.

I think he was referring to how muscles get so big in their curvature that they actually start casting shadows?

A very disconcerting experience at my new job…

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

I start like at 4pm and so a little bit before that I stroll in the front doors and it’s bright and sunny and quiet with large beams of light streaming through all the windows and no staff are around and there’s just a lone man at the dining room corner table, eating, and since I need hot water for my tea I just walk up to the espresso machine and take it from there like I usually do, and the entire time that I’m in there for minutes and minutes, there’s just no-one around, so it’s like I’m someone who just walked off the street and decided to use the espresso machine, and I only finally see staff when I wend my way through the restaurant and go through “the server alley” on my way to go dump my stuff in the breakroom/changing room that we have downstairs with lockers where we can go throw our stuff before work.

And, before I finally see someone, it’s totally like the beginning of a zombie movie, where life is breaking down and everything is empty and nothing is normal but lone scattered people are in denial and are still trying to force themselves into normality as a coping mechanism, while other people are going into spaces and claiming things because the social boundaries that used to be in place that they’d be violating are no longer there.

A story from a (gay) (Colombian) grad student…

…who knows the one (gay) (Colombian) (STEM) student who I know from around town and who recently finished his degree:

Neither Madonna nor Lady Gaga had ever been to Colombia, and then they announced their first tours there within a very short time of each other, one going to Bogota and the other to Medellin, and so it created this crisis for all these (young) (Colombian) (gays) because most people only had money for one concert but not the other, so if they wanted to go see both they’d have to not only buy a second concert ticket but also travel, and so it was like this big huge crisis for a lot of people and he was in college and he didn't have money, either, and he actually had to go ask his parents to borrow money so he could go see both concerts.

Some recent-ish offness:

1) Already twice in like three months I’ve gotten mild sinus infections at my new job, where the air is dry and I’m always unmasked the entire shift.

2) One day going to work, I keep checking my pockets and it feels like something is missing but I’m not sure what, and then I’m outside the door and I realize that I don’t have my wallet, so I have to hustle back inside to get it, since it has my bus-pass in there and I couldn’t get on the bus to go to work without it and it has my money in it, too, which is what I’d need to get on the bus if I didn’t have my bus-pass, so, like, without it, either way I’d be f*cked.

Addendum addendum.

At a library trip this spring to the library at the local university, I had my KN95 mask on like I always do on public transportation and the supermarket and the university – I’m not exposing myself to unnecessary COVID infections in highly crowded places that are a mix of people, still, especially when undergrads are so unhygienic and gross– and I also had a backpack and 2 bags full of books because I had discovered that my auto-renewals had reached their limit and ceased for like a dozen books and if just a few more reached that my entire account would be shut down, and then on top of that I was checking out some new books and looking up even more stuff on an incredibly esoteric topic.

Like, masking and oodles of books and a disheveled appearance and weird shit that I’m studying, it was like I was a local eccentric and possibly a kook.

I’ve reached that level.

Addendum.

It’s interesting to see hits on my personal website. I get hits from like Germany and Japan, including after article submissions to journals. I can only assume that the editors are seeing who I am, or maybe the reviewers if the submissions got sent out quickly and the readers could immediately suss out my identity?

I also had a weird experience where my article that squarely fit into a new journal’s topic area was refused as off-topic and I got a mildly condescending refusal from a corresponding editor where he dropped in a hyperlink to accepted topics, to which I gently pushed back by pointing out how my article directly matched in multiple regards with what they explicitly said they accepted but his verbiage that was grounds for refusal wasn’t represented in public-facing documents so maybe their editorial board should discuss including some of that in there if these are indeed regnant criteria that they’ll be continuing to use in the future etc. etc. and I wish their new endeavor the best etc. etc. etc., to which he then replied back and “dropped the mask” and basically said that I did too much linguistics for people to understand (and that’s even though their journal flags linguistics as something that they do!).

Anyhow, like a week after that, a curator at a major international museum who sits on that journal’s editorial board looked up my LinkedIn. I can only assume that the corresponding editor circulated my email or concerns and this person wanted to know who I was?

The worst part of all of this is that these people’s current positions and training represents a global panorama of “the best” in this field, and they don’t know what to do with my contributions due to widespread gaps in training. 

It really is just shameful…  

Sometimes I really do wonder what these people do all day, if they’re not addressing major field problems or trying to find ways to do so.

Getting scooped.

Lately I’ve been living in dread of getting scooped on some of my research ideas about the one ancient language that I’ve been studying for quite some time now and have been making myself into quite the expert in.

Over the past couple of years, there’s been a few articles whose titles have made my heart stop when I came across them, although once I actually read them they turned out to be largely misguided takes on real issues that I’d already solved in more-thorough ways.

Lately, though, it’s been clear that this one guy who does good work has put his finger on some major long-term resystematizations that I also arrived at through another avenue. Like, I got one of his articles via interlibrary loan and it’s different/compatible with what I’ve been doing and had started to stake out, but he also has an upcoming “research results” conference and it really makes me wonder if he’s doing anything new.

I have definitely made sure to claim my different ideas through embedding them in conference talk titles and slides and whatnot, so I can always point to that – like, worse-case scenario we did the same thing separately and we acknowledge each other’s work – but, it would be better if I had the articles already published.

Only, they are so intensively time-consuming to write, that they’re just draining and they just take forever to write up…

Sigh.

All these past 10-15 years, I wouldn’t have had someone breathing down my neck, but now I do, when I’m finally hitting my stride.

Some food at my new job.

At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of the historic hotel where I now work at, it’s been interesting to try out all the different food on the menu.

One day after a reception, they had some chicken tenders and cheese curds left over, so they put them out in this staff area back behind the kitchen, and I found myself making detours to get them, although the cool chicken tenders were a heck of a lot better than the cold cheese curds, which were kind of gummy with breading on the bottom that was starting to get all soggy and greasy when the oil in everything cooled and settled downward, I’m assuming.

They have this one dessert drink that’s also very awesome.  It’s not my typical kind of cocktail – I’m not big on the sweet ones – but it’s creamy and coconut-y and citrus-y and it’s just good, and I can see now why my one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook coworker gets them all the time after work for himself… In fact, it was so good that I was telling my mom about it on the phone, and she says that she thinks she’d like it, and it’s not her type of drink, either, she usually goes for amber beers!

Their salads are also really good, although they tend to be heavy on rich ingredients like cheese and fatty dressings (nothing there is too healthy, someone told me when I first started there).

The burgers also tend to be the “thick meat patty and lots of toppings” kind of burger, which isn’t my favorite, to be honest, as I tend to go for the thin patty ones with simple lettuce, onion, pickles and mustard – a “smashburger,” as people annoyingly call them, now – but still, I’ve managed to find at least one burger that I genuinely like on the menu from the 2 that I’ve tried, so I can speak about the burgers authentically with any customers who ask about what’s good or what’s my favorite or whatnot, or so I can merely comment on how good their one particular burger looks when I serve it or so I can say “good choice!” or whatever when they order the one that I like, to like bond with them over the food and stuff.

Two recent misfires:

1) As a study routine for that one notoriously difficult language that I’ve been studying intensively lately, I was doing DuoLingo at home and then flashcards on the bus on the way to work, but all too often I just wouldn’t get through all the flashcards in time, and I’d want to look at them on-shift or have a lot of work to do after work when I was tired.

2) I get a special letter from my bank with a check that was returned as already cashed, and I realize that I had decided to try remote deposit at my national bank using this app that I’d recently downloaded, and then I’d kept the check that I'd deposited that way out by my records to check against my statement when it came in, only I’d forgotten that I’d cashed it that way and so I discovered it later and I went to deposit it at my local bank along with my paycheck from that week.

(Oops.)

(I’m just glad that there wasn’t a fee.)

A game you can play:

When you turn on classical music on the radio and it’s in the middle of a piece, you try to guess the composer and you try to articulate to yourself what’s the reasoning behind your guesses, so you become more in-tune with what you hear.

A few months ago, I got Prokofiev, and it made me so happy…

The piece had odd harmonies but it was obviously popular music-influenced with a bit of saxophone, so it reminded me of the Soviets trying to incorporate jazz, only it didn’t quite sound as angular and intellectual and self-distanced as Shostakovich, so I was thinking Prokofiev, by process of elimination.

And, I was right!

More Saint Patrick’s Day…

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

1) For work, my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manger) coworker wears a short black skirt and fishnets over dark emerald green tights.

2) When I go to dress a pan cheesecake for some people, I try to make the chocolate sauce into a clover on top, but you can’t really tell that it’s that, so I make sure to point it out to them when I serve it.

3) When the food starts coming out to a big table in one of the lounges – this table of like 6 or 7 people, with a(n elderly) (white) grandmother next to a “cool” (trans man) who talks of bringing leftovers home for “the boys” (cats?) – the (Irish) specials happen to be up first and I’m sent out with them, so when I deliver them to the appropriate people at the table, I’m like, “Luck of the Irish! You get served first.”

4) This (quiet) (heavyset) (late 50s) (moustachioed) (black) federal employer sits at the end of the bar and wants to know if we have Jameson and Guinness.

Saint Patrick’s Day or thereabouts:

1) I make sure to get like four heads of cabbage to keep in my fridge for soup and for sauerkraut later, since why let a good sale go to waste.

2) At the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel where I now work, we have shepherd’s pie and corned beef and cabbage as our specials, and my one (skinny) (balded and bearding) (pun-loving) coworker says the shepherd’s pie is really good because he worked lunch and they had samples out for staff, and we discuss getting one each to-go at the end of the night and splitting them half-and-half so we each get some of each, but the shepherd’s pie sells out really quickly and so I just get corned beef and cabbage for myself to eat at the restaurant, when the night ends.

3) Also at work, a big table of (well-dressed) business-people request the lounge table by the front window, and so I compliment them on how “swanky” they look and I also remind them that they’re advertisements for us and so they should smile widely and rub and pat their bellies when they eat so that anyone going by outside can see that, and that if they do that well enough, they’ll get a 10% discount off their bill.

And, one lady there thinks that’s hilarious, whereas the others seem neutral, or even mildly confused.

4) Also also at work, there’s a state-level high school sports tournament in town, and one group of 40 from the south part of the state that’s in at the restaurant ends up winning their division – I had wished them good luck, saying that they ate with us and so I’d be rooting for them – and also the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner has to turn down another, even bigger reservation for a hundred people since it’s contingent on a game outcome, and they can let her know by noon whether it will be for that evening or for the next day, but she says that’s just too short notice to get staff and all of the extra food together necessary for such a big group like that, so what can you do, but no.

Some other randoms tidbits…

…of late:

1) One night after work as I’m getting off the bus I thank the bus driver as I always do as I pass by them, and I see it’s a (late middle-aged) (done-up) (Latina) woman, and I recognize her from a local human-interest newspaper story about her and her family’s immigration story from (Latin Amercia), and so I do a double-take and am like, “Are you the celebrity?”, and I add, “From the newspaper?”, and she’s like, “Exactly!”, and she seems a bit happy to be recognized, probably since it’s a late night and it's a repetitive job and it’s something different and fun that happened, to be recognized, when she sits practically all day long every workday (something also mentioned in the newspaper story).

2) My one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried mom) coworker says that her and her boyfriend’s cat is out-of-control, and he’ll not only get outside, but actually go into other people’s houses.

3) Besides the typical homelessness set-up on the front porch of the township building, there’s now a tent pitched alongside the left wall, when you look at it from the street.

New job tidbits…

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

1) When my one (skinny) (balded and bearding) (pun-loving) coworker is mentioning how he didn’t file taxes for like five years straight because of something with medical insurance and repeat care needed for a chronic medical condition – something that I didn’t really understand – I then am like, casually, “So, what do you think about Luigi?”.

And, he immediately lights up and a bit enthusiastically is like, “Man, don’t even get my started, we’ll be here all day!”.

2) At a larger table of like five or six (white) (thirty-somethings), two (fat) (nerded-out) (black-wearing) (FTMs) one of which is (balding) are sitting beside each other, and in between courses they just hold each other’s hands.

. . .

(Two women on testosterone who found each other, but now with odd body hair and probably permanently swollen clitori and possibly long-term heart conditions or whatnot too from being constantly pumped full of those hormones.)

A dream:

The other month I dreamnt –

It’s late evening or even night and I’m in a car being driven by my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker from the (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at, and we’re passing up the street by the historic hotel where I now work at and a lot of my (new) coworkers are outside on the sidewalk and I turn my head away from them and I try not to look at them as I hope that none of them can see me and that if they do he doesn’t notice or they don’t call out to me or anything like that since the car-window is open, and also because no-one from my old job knows where my new one is at and it's a contest and I don’t want him to find out that way and win, it’s so sloppy of me.

. . .

(. . .)

A third day at my new job…

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

1) As I pass through a lounge, I hear my one (eccentric) (blonde) (semi-manager) coworker begin to explain some aspect of the beerlist to some guests in response to some question that they had asked, and she begins by prefacing everything with the caveat that she doesn’t know a lot about what’s on the list except for the lagers, “because I like beer-flavored beer.”

2) After my one (blonde) (make-upped) (college-age) coworker warns us that her family is coming in, her (heavier) (blonde) mom and her two (blonde) sisters and her mom’s (blonde) friend all come in, and they ask to be seated in her section, with her mom immediately starting to joke that we better have good service here.

So, we’re busy and I’m based in a different section, but as that one closes down and I move out there, I’m clearing a few plates from their table and I can see out of the corner of my eye that my coworker is approaching, so I say to the table loudly and theatrically, “Here, let me get this for you, it seems that your waitress isn’t pre-bussing your dirty plates,” and the mom finds that really funny, but my coworker is a little offput.

Then, later later, I’m going around with water to all of the tables, and I’m at their table and she is approaching again, so I do the same thing and rapidly go to fill up any glass I see, and I make a similar comment about them not getting water, and she just looks at me with the glass I’m filling and is like, “[my first name], that’s Starry” (the renamed, Sprite-like Sierra Mist drink).

“Oh,” I was like, and then I began laughing at myself. “I deserve that!”

3) Throughout the night, they’re setting up the entire restaurant to be set up for a wedding the next day – a Sunday, when the restaurant is typically closed – and as I’m running around helping people, I heard the the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner talking with a customer about what event they’re doing and how they’re setting up, and after she mentions about the open bar, the customer is saying he wonders how much they’ll drink on a Sunday, and she was immediately like, “Yeah, when they said that, I was thought, ‘That’ll kill the liquor bill!’”, and he kind of made a mug and rolled her eyes a bit, too.

4) As the night is ending, the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook offers me a full Greek salad, since it’s a mistake since he put onions on it and the customer said no onions.

“Thanks!”, I was like, and I took a leftover blue-cheese dressing that someone had poured and dumped it on there, and I clarified to him that I’d eat it here and finish it before the last dishes from customers were put through (i.e., I wouldn’t leave a dirty plate behind in dish), and if I was getting close and couldn’t finish, I’d pack it up to-go then, but don’t throw it out.

And, he was cool with that, and every once in a while I’d run back and wolf down huge bites as the kitchen cleaned up around me.

And, as I was doing that, I took a too-large bite, and as I bit into a yellow cherry tomato my mouth wasn’t quite closed, and this giant spray of yellow cherry tomato juice and seeds that was inside it sprayed out across the counter there where I was eating, which someone had already wiped down.

5) On the bus ride home, two (white) (STEM) undergraduates behind me are talking about how they have a big bottle of vodka and are debating what to do with it for their party.

“We could get an eighty-nine cent Coke from Circle K,” the one was like, floating the idea of getting a gas station fountain drink in a huge styrofoam cup for the mixer.

Another day at my new job…

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

1) The one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender who has said in the past that such-and-such wasn’t good for his mental health gets on me again for using one of two nozzles behind the bar to refill soda water like I was told was okay during training, and he was like, “I thought I told you not to do that!”, very aggressively.

2) A (plump) (perky) (eyeshadowed) (middle-aged) (Latina?) woman is in with her family after she was just there the previous day with a friend, and she’s drinking the same thing and I recommend another drink on the menu and she immediately reminds me that we had briefly talked about this yesterday and she’d like to but she can’t because she’s allergic to pineapple juice, and I say that the one manager who knows the bar program is there and I can ask her about if the drink can be adjusted, so I run out to the one (introverted) (tattooed) (white) manager and ask her what would work, and she said that sub that the customer mentioned would, so I go tell the customer and I also tell her to specify that she has an allergy, and to keep in mind that if the drink just doesn’t work, she should return it and go back to what she knows she likes, that can happen and we checked it out as much as possible and it seems like it would work, but if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, and we do that for people, so she shouldn’t hesitate to send it back if she does end up trying that cocktail mod and doesn’t like it.

Later, then, my one (built) (jacked) (marathon-running) coworker comes out with the bill, and she’s like, “What did you do with this table?!” and she points to a 35% tip.

3) This one (perky) (middle-aged) (round-faced) (Asian-American) customer who I recognize from the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at is in with some friends and one of their sons, and she looks at me and asks me where she knows me from, and I tell her, and she’s like, “That’s it!”, and she says that she always gets pad thai woonsen now after I recommended that to her, and I ask her if she gets it spicy because I only eat that spicy because I think it works well with the sugar and the noodle even though I don’t like spicy food, and she says no, she just gets it regular, she never likes spicy food.

One day at my new job…

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

1) After the previous afternoon when I was walking to the local salon to schedule a hair appoint and suddenly I felt something on my forehead and I smash it and it’s a little clumpy dot of blood and mosquito legs, I’m sitting out on the front porch of the front house doing language study and I see a mosquito there, too.

And, on the phone that same day, my mother says that she just saw the first mosquito there, too, and when I’m surprised because they’re that much farther north than I am, she says that they’re also around more water, don't forget.

2) This (older) (white) couple is in and the (dyed-hair blonde) wife is chatty but also very prickly, like, when she orders a cocktail and I identify that it’s a variant of a common cocktail but smoky because of this one smoky ingredient that's in it, which is something I do because sometimes customers don't pay attention and then order it and taste it and are surprised and unhappy, she’s like, “Yes, I imagine, I thought that when I read [the ingredient name],” and she says that as she picks up the menu and reads the ingredient name back out loud to me.

And, later, when I go to clear appetizer plates, she says that she would like a to-go box, and when I ask her if she wants the sauces too, she says yes, and I ask her if she wants one or both, and she says both, so I bring out the box and the appropriate number of cup-tops (since the sauces already come in little black plastic cups that you can easily take home with you, if someone brings out a lid for you).

And, my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker mostly dealt with them after that, but at the end of the meal they wave me over, and the lady picks up the last portion of her burger – it’s like smaller than a matchbox – and she says there isn’t any cheese on there, although you can see it’s grilled into the patty, and she also says that the sauce had onions in it and she doesn’t like onions.

“I said no onions when they asked if I wanted onions on my burger,” she was like. “You think someone would have mentioned that the sauce has onions, that that would have been a good idea…”

And, I say sometimes that happens, if there’s strong preferences always ask about sauces, and then she starts talking about the cheese again, and so I go get the (athletic) (Asian-American) (semi-manager) who’s on duty and tell her that the lady is eccentric and what complaints she has, and she goes over there and ends up comping her the burger, and I ask her why and if there’s a policy and she says that other people like the owner and the one (introverted) (tattooed) (white) manager wouldn’t comp her the burger probably because she ate so much of it, but that wouldn’t work with her because she’s too young and the customer wouldn’t take her seriously.

And, later, after I close out that table’s check, I go to clear leftover plates and there on the appetizer plate is one of the lids for the to-go sauces, unused.

“Did you need this top for the to-go sauce?”, I was like, and the lady is like imperiously, “No,” so I’m like, “Well, I asked specifically and you said that you wanted both cups, so I’m just going to leave this here for you,” and I pick up the sauce and the top and place them on the table more towards her, at which she’s like, “Well, you’re right,” and then she starts to shamefacedly put the lid on the cup and then goes to put both of them in her to-go box.

3) At a table of three (white) businesswomen with separate checks for reimbursement and separate alcohol checks on top of that since the company that they work for won’t pay for their alcohol, one lady decides at the end of the meal to take up my recommendation of a dessert cocktail, and then since it has a common dessert name and is like $12, she asks me how it would be itemized on the bill, and I tell her that I can check on that for her, and it comes out not listed as a cocktail and there’s no separate alcohol tax and the items just reads with the common dessert name with no indication whatsoever that it's actually a cocktail, and so she says to put that on her main bill, she’ll submit it and they’ll never know.

4) When I’m busy in the lounges and keep pre-bussing empty plates into a bus-tub cart nearby but not clearing it since I’m doing triage and there’s more important things to do with customers, my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker sees it stacked high and says that I should take it in and to be careful, if it gets too high or stuff stays there too long and the owner sees it, she’ll get mad, she thinks it looks bad for customers.

Earlier, too, after the eccentric lady complaining about the onions in the sauce, he says that that’s on him, he should have mentioned the onions in the sauce, and I said not really, I had no idea that there were even onions in that sauce, and I’ve eaten of those d*mn burgers.

5) When I bus a few plates back to dish, the one (younger) (blonde) (bespectacled) (art school grad) dishwasher sees some uneaten cod fillets on an uneaten pile of French fries and he points and is like, “Do you mind?”, and when I say no, he just grabs one and starts munching on it in front of me, as he stands there in his dish-apron between cleansing racks of glasses and dishes and whatnot.

6) At a nearby new industrial-area bar after work that’s on my way home, I’m on my second beer and I go to go to the restroom and I put my napkin on my glass, and when I come back there’s this (giantly fat) (kind of ghetto) (Gen Z) black girl on my stool with my drink in front of her, she came in with friends and was meeting some people a few seats over from me at the bar, and I am just befuddled and say “Excuse me” and go to get my drink from in front of her, and she doesn’t even register what’s happening and that she stole my seat, and after I move to a nearby table because I don’t want to start something, I see her get a drink and set up her phone on the counter and stream herself the entire time she’s there.

“The entire world is a soundstage to them” is the comment of my one (art school) colleague who wears (women’s) clothes when I text him about how odd that was and how I’ve noticed very weird behavior from Gen Z people.

New development at my old job…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at:

Two new globe lamps hang over the tables in the front windows, you can see from the street.

. . .

(The two old lamps had like a dried leaf-pattern paper wrapped around them in an upward circle for texture and atmosphere, but on the righthand one when you're looking in the paper had become unrolled in a strip and hung down from the lamp like a spiral, with a piece of tape stuck on there towards the outermost layer, as they presumably had tried to fix it once by taping the outermost layer to the next innermost, but they couldn’t get that to work, probably, and perhaps that taping even pulled more loops down and made the lamp even worse, perhaps.)

. . .

(Working close to where you live is great when you work there, but not so much when you quit and then you have to pass by a lot that place that you used to work.)

Restaurant drama…

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

A (white) man with a(n odd) voice calls up and wants to speak with the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner, and she says that she’s busy, and when I say his name, she gives this exasperated groan and becomes tense, and after they talk on the phone, she writes this guy’s name up on a note that says to double- and triple-check all of his orders before sending them out, because she’s tired of buying him food, and then she sticks that note up on the food-line where everyone who grabs and bags food can see it.

And, the next night, I get this table of two (white) people, and the woman is quite (odd) and wants grapefruit juice to drink, and they order and eat and when I go to get them to-go stuff, I bring all of that back and the bill too and then I take care of the bill, and then they ask for two sauce-cup tops (?), and then well after the bill is closed out, the (odd) (non-descript) (middle-aged) (white) man says that he has a discount card waiting for him somewhere and he’d like to use it on the bill, and I say that I can find a manager to talk to him about the card, but unfortunately he’s already paid the bill and he’d need to provide the gift card before payment.

And, between the giftcard and all of that behavior, I realize that it’s HIM.

And, when I go and check and come back and tell him that a manager out front can help him with the gift card, he goes and waits at a very funny place at the bar, like down at the end, but also where his body is out in the little aisle that goes back behind the bar, where he’s causing problems for people entering and exiting it.

Just someone who is not aware of proper social behavior, at all... Just a very, very strange human being.

I’ve heard that there’s a trend on social media telling you how to order from restaurants and cancel and complain about your order in order to get your food for free, so, like I wonder if he’s a fundamentally unwell person who was inspired to do this, by that? Like, he’s inventing complaints, in order to get refunds, and he’s doing this repeatedly in a relatively small town?

A story of a(n Argentinian) woman.

On a recent trip to (Texas), I popped into the hostel breakfast room for free coffee before heading out to get something to eat and then move onto my tourism for the day -- the room was high-ceilinged with wooden butcher block tables, with a gigantic map on the far back wall with push-pins and photos and foreign currency banknotes all tacked up onto it, and around the edges of the room there was shelving and various kitchen contraptions and a stove and a sink, above which sat multiple humorous signs about doing your dishes -- and anyhow there was also like four people in there when I walked in, although the (bearded) (New Zealand) guy soon left, and the rest kept on talking and laughing as I got my coffee and sat there and caffeinated after introducing myself, but otherwise remaining quiet as I nursed the brew in my little metal thermos-top screw-off mug that's actually more the size of a cup for (Turkish) coffee rather than a full-blown coffee mug.

And anyhow, at one point, the one (chunky) (mid-30s) (white) (Texas) woman with (wild eyes) and a big floppy (Janis Joplin-type) hat and a short (earth-tone) top with hanging fabric that aired out her (mid-size) fat folds and who kept talking about how expensive parking was everywhere in the city we were in just stopped and gestured to the two other people there, this (bearded) (ratty-looking) (early 40s) (Mexican-American) guy in (all-black) and a(n open-necked) (collared shirt) with a (vague) accent, and this (talkative) (blonde) (frosted-hair) (late 40s) (Argentinian) woman who was there for World Cup tourism since it was cheaper to stay in a non-venue city near an airport hub and jet into elsewhere for games, and who was wearing a short (bright blue) top with hanging fabric kind of like the (fat) (crazy) (Texas) woman, only it wasn't to air out any fat of hers, but rather to feature her tight body.

 "I'm just going to say it, you two are so cute together, you should be a couple!", the (fat) (crazy) (Texas) woman was like, kind of moving her head back and forth and throwing up a finger like she was telling us it all, as she sat there, wide-eyed and putting it all out there.

"Oh no!", the (Argentinian) woman was like, pleasantly and vivaciously but also a bit surprised. "He has four children! And, I prefer more white. Mexicans are too dark. I like white."

Then, she paused, and was like, "But, Brazilians and Colombians are also hot."

And, it seemed to me that she meant that last part of "also hot" in the sense that Brazilians and Colombians aren't really always all that white, but their sexiness is usually sufficient to compensate for the darkness of their skin.

Like, she really said that, in front of everyone, just as part of normal everyday conversation with relative strangers at a hostel.

Quite oddly, no-one else seemed to notice, and they all just kept the light-and-fun conversation going from there.

But, like WTF, Argentina. That's no bueno! Just batshit crazy racist behavior, and so blithe.

I guess that's how normalized it is there?

It really makes you wonder if the late Pope Francis achieved sanctity in part from having to put with that shit, for just years. 

Some recent-ish customers…

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

1) A group of four (pretty dark-skinned) (late 20s / early 30s) (Africans from Africa), two (straight) couples each, where this one (short) woman has a very chic short dress on and high heels and a small hand-held purse and she also has this enormously large bottom and she wants to know if they can’t sit in the lounge with the windows (they can’t, it’s late and it was already shut down for the night), while the one man who has sunglasses on and a blue denim coat with broad synthetic sheep-wool collars wants to know if we serve steaks (we don’t).

2) Two (late middle-aged) women come in, one (white) and one (African), and when I go to seat them at a two-top, they ask to sit at a larger table for four – “Of course,” I was like, which is my typical response to customer requests like that, and then I also say that it’s nice to have more room in case they stick their elbows out when they eat their burgers -- and then later the one (African) lady wants hot tea, and when I bring out the tea selection, she chooses English breakfast, at which I pipe up theatrically that it’s dinner time, and then I immediately say no problem, and I bend over the teabag and pretend to cross out the wording on the wrapper and write something else and am like, “English DINNER tea,” to her great amusement.

3) A table of four (older) (white) (townie) folks are quite amused when I return with their beverages and ask them if they need anything else right now, like does anyone wants any “nibblers” (appetizers).

4) A major branded petroleum company is having a dinner for undergraduate STEM majors looking to enter that industry or who have done or who are doing internships with them or whatever, and it’s like 12 people, like 3-4 execs and the rest students.

And, my stomach sinks when the exec picking up the bill is (South Asian from South Asia).

$225 bill - $0 tip.

Like, wtf? No corporate expense account?

I only noticed it when I was cleaning up their table after they were gone, too…  We don’t do autograts for tables, no matter the size, though we used to autograt 6 or more at the (Thai) restaurant that I used to work at.

An endearing malapropism of my mother.

When she asks me about what exactly I’m studying so much with the one foreign language that I’m studying a lot for dual citizenship purposes – I honestly have been studying for more than an hour a day during certain stretches these past number of months – I tell her that it’s not really related to anything that anyone would know and that it also doesn’t have borrowings like from Latin, so almost all of the vocabulary is completely unrecognizable and unpredictable, and so I’m just memorizing thousands and thousands and thousands of new words, otherwise you can barely navigate texts or interactions at all, without that fundamental base of knowledge.

“So you’re really starting from Ground Zero, aren’t you?”, she’s like, trying to understand.

Spring habits (2 of 2): Sleeping.

As I’m getting ready to go to bed, there’s alerts on the radio about severe storms sweeping through the area, and it seems that they will be doing so all night.

So, when I go to bed, I don’t turn on my humming noise machine that I always have on.

Instead, the rain falling on my roof suffices for white noise to help me sleep, but also without that noise machine, I’ll be able to hear any tornado sirens all that much more easily.

Spring habits (1 of 2): Cleaning.

When the temperature first sharply gets warm, the concrete pad on which my cottage rests is still cold, and that difference in temperatures causes huge condensation on the white ceramic tile that is my floor throughout the entirety of my house, and you can see little pools of water by the corner of your bedroom at night, and behind the furniture you can see like how the settled dust there is now almost like a mild little muck, from how it united with the standing water.

So, as part of spring cleaning, I pull back all of the rugs and furniture, and mop everything up with rags wet with water and Dawn dish soap, to clean out the muck and any mold or whatever that might have started to grow there.

. . .

(“I hate that,” my one [younger] [plumpish] [hair streak-dyed] [mid-Southern] coworker is like, when I tell her about the sludge-formation at my apartment, and it turns out that she’s had places where that has happened, too.)

Daylight savings time.

At work at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel that I work at now, I’m passing through “the server alley” and overhear some coworkers chit-chatting as they stand by the ice machine, and they’re talking about adjusting to time switches and how hard it is on their bodies and how much they hate it.

The next day, then, I wake up and it seems super late from the time on my smartphone, and suddenly I realize that daylight savings time had happened overnight, only I wasn’t aware it was happening at all until that moment, and then I realize that the fact of it happening that night must have sparked my coworkers’ conversation on the previous day.

Addendum.

Sometimes, I feel so trashy.

“He has children in the room from fucking his wife’s pussy, and here he is turning around and looking at some random waiter guy?”.

But, that’s really what was going on there, and if you didn’t notice it, you have part of your brain left out, and if you don’t want to talk about it, you’re simply avoiding reality.

Sometimes life really is just genuinely trashy like that, for those who have eyes to see.

Like, he humped his wife and inseminated her and her pussy and her womb and that kid who came out of it are all just there in that room with him, but he’s thinking about some rando dick.

Like, that’s really the essence of that situation, to the point where no other description even seems possible.

Just so trashy.

A late winter day at work…

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

1) A gigantic group of people from a neighboring state is in the large-group dining room, and it’s a bunch of families with kids because a of huge all-weekend soccer tournament thing going on, like forty or fifty people or so all together.

And, as I go around the tables to refill waters and ask people if they want top-offs on sodas, it suddenly becomes apparent to me that a large number of them are (Bosnian), and at one round table full of dads, like a men’s table where the men have gathered and are drinking and talking apart from the kids’ table and this other mixed wives-and-kids table where one (skinny) (blonde) (middle school-age) (boy) is so tired that he’s actually resting his head on the table as if to go to sleep right there in the restaurant, anyhow, over at the men's table, this one (taller) (late 40s) (bearded) (slightly potbellied) (Bosnian) dad guy like visibly lights up whenever I come near the table, always staring directly at me and my eyes as if to try to catch them, and I also see him turning his head to look at me in the main dining room as everyone from their huge party is leaving in spurts and drabs, processing out from their back dining room to the main door of the restaurant.

And you can just feel it, like, (Bosnian) (dad)-guy wanted me, that much.

And, of course, my first thought was, “Still got it.”

Then, my second thought was that he was checking me out not only when he was there with his man-friends at their man-table, but when his wife and one or more of his young children were physically present in the room, too, he was that into me.

You could just feel the hunger radiating off of him… Just an unbelievably filthy dirty and intense experience, like, he had children in that room from fucking his wife’s pussy, and now he’s turning around and looking at some random waiter guy?

I wonder if he thought of me later, when he masturbated… I really do think that I clicked for him on that level, who knows, maybe my pheromones turned him on or something, I was only a few people away from him at his table, that can happen sometimes in those cases, where someone sparks immediate attraction in someone else like that.

That guy was just that hungry, that (Bosnian) (dad)-guy.

2) After I clock out, I say something to a coworker, and my one (make-upped) (Eastern European last-named) (master’s student) coworker, who always seems to be examining me because I don’t fit in in some way, though she doesn’t quite know how, anyways, she immediately and in a somewhat patronizing tone of voice is like, “Weird,” and then she’s like, “[My first name], did I just hear you swear?!”.

(I have folksy G-rated language that I use a lot with customers, and sometimes that carries over into my interactions with coworkers.)

And, I pause a bit at first because the interaction was offputting, then I’m like, “Me, swear? F*ck no!”

3) When coworkers are off work because everyone got cut early and a few are down at the other end of the bar having (half-price) cocktails and chatting, I too get a (half-price) cocktail, and they invite me down, but I politely decline in order to go sit by myself at the other end of the bar because I need to do my daily vocabulary flashcard study for the one language that I’m learning for dual citizenship purposes, and I say that I have to do it then, because I didn’t have a chance to do it before work, and if I don’t do it then I’ll get home and I'll be lazy and I won’t do it at all.

4) I chit-chat with the one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook, and he tells me that he just speaks (Spanish), he doesn’t speak any “dialect.”

5) As he comes out through the main dining room to leave for the night and pick up his (half-price) cocktail in a Pepsi to-go cup, the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook has an incredibly nice green jacket on, and I compliment him on it, and he then starts showing me all the details of its fine workmanship and even its label, and it turns out to be some (Italian designer) jacket that someone had left in the coatroom at the last location of the restaurant and it was there for months and month and months, and so finally he just grabbed it, because it was clear that whoever’s it was, they weren’t coming back for it.

“It fits you like a glove,” I was like. “Nice find.”

A warm-weather spring day at work:

1) Somehow the bus flies through campus and I get to work like 20 minutes early, so I go to sit on the bench outside across the street from the employee entrance, where a thick health insurance company plan booklet sits splayed out, and I move it over as I plop down my workbag and pull out a magazine to do crosswords.

And, I’m doing that for only a few minutes, when this (thin) (early 50s) (wild-eyed) (black) man in dark pants and a heavier leather jacket comes to sit down next to me, right beside my big bag of stuff.

So, I gather it up to move on.

“Hey man,” he was like in a surprisngly normal voice. “I was just here first, but you can sit here too.”

“Thanks but I need some quiet time,” I was like, and I moved away, circling the building to look for a good bench that was out of the sun… 

And, as I came out around on the other side of the building and went to cross the street, too, I see him getting up from the bench and heading across the street to pace a bit between some cars, before heading back towards the bench to linger there again.

2) When I’m making sure to adjust dessert stock so the numbers on our pads reflect actual availability, the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager walks by and we talk about that, and there’s a few things I don’t quite understand about dessert availability and presentation, so she offers to show me, including getting some out from a back fridge and plating them, which she does with me step-by-step so I can learn.

And, while doing that, she gets called away for setting up for a large university event, and my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker asks me what I’m doing and I tell him, and I mention how I don’t quite know why she’s doing that now if she has all the event prep stuff to attend to, and he’s like, “Yeah, she’s actually really stressed out about that now, but that’s just how nice she is.”

He then offers to take me downstairs to some storeroom that I didn’t know about, which we then do together.

“...and the tarts are there,” he’s like, at one point, gesturing inside the freezer.

“Like pies or women?”, I’m like.

3) Somehow the large-group dining room has a reservation of like 40 for a university event, only somehow it’s not on a department tab, but rather a bunch of individual bills, and then I hear my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker tell the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager that not only is the check situation that way, “But we need separate bills for separate bills,” because all the individual people also want to pay for their alcohol separately.

(Because they’re getting reimbursed for food, and not for liquor?)

“Fucking A,” the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is like.

4) As I cut through a small darkened lounge area to get to the area with windows to help a new table there, the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager is lingering in that empty lounge looking at her phone, and I startle her and she’s like, “Hi, [my name]!”, and that visibly startles me, and then, nicely, she's like, “I was just saying hello!”.

Then, because her top and pants match the color scheme of the walls and chairs, I say that she fits in like a chameleon and I didn’t see her, and she surprised me.

5) As I’m walking out of the area with windows where the new table is sitting – it's two (older) (white) couples catching up, one woman of which I help navigate the menu to find rieslings and moscatos and the one older man of which wears a navy hat and orders a summery berry cocktail that I had highlighted on the menu – I hear the one wife say to everyone, “He is so nice.”

6) At the end of the night, the one (tatted) (white) (teetotalling) cook pulls out a tray of cupcakes and pasta salad from the weekend that wasn’t used for some event and leaves it out on the kitchen island for everyone, and everyone attacks the cupcakes – “Carrot cake?!”, says my one (make-upped) (Eastern European last-named) (master’s student) coworker – but no-one seems to be caring about the pasta salad.

“If no-one wants this, I’ll grab it,” I was like, at which point the one (younger) (blonde) (bespectacled) (art school grad) dishwasher was like, “Hey, I’ll get some too, if you want to split it,” and I talk with him, and he says something about how he doesn’t have enough money for groceries this week, so I offer it all to him and say that if he wants it all, take it all, I just didn’t want it to go to waste, but he says he doesn’t want to take it from me, so I say that I’ll just have a bit of it, and he can have the rest, and so I go and grab an appetizer plate and a fork from “the server alley” and scoop a bit of pasta onto that and eat it, and then I dump the rest into a to-go box that I had brought back there for him, since he was right in the middle of doing dishes when the pasta salad became available.

He also mentions my standing invitation to different people to go to this new bar that opened up, and he says maybe this weekend, because that night he’s going over to another bar, to have some drinks and flirt with the bartender there.

Shopping with allergies.

For the yearly sale on bulk items at the local co-op – like the beans and the rice and the dried fruit and whatnot that's in these large rows of plastic bins with flip-tops and scoops attached to them, as well as jars of spices across the aisle that you screw the lids off of and scoop out with smaller heavy metal spoons that rest in “CLEAN” and “DIRTY” plastic industrial dishwasher-like containers sunk into the counter there – anyhow, for that yearly sale on bulk items at the local co-op, I laid out empty yogurt containers on my counter as a reminder for myself the previous day, to gather them up and go in the next day and use them for the sale.

(You get extra money off your bill if you bring in your own containers.)

So, I did that, and although I had stored all of my yogurt containers tucked into one another with the lids piled in a neat stack on top, I discover at the store that somehow I’m two lids short.

(When I get home, I discover them slid off to the side by some other tupperware in the tupperware cabinet above my stove-and-sink area, in the little cottage that I live in.)

When I unpack at home, too, I also discover that I forgot to buy a couple containers of (free-range) eggs that I had been meaning to pick up at the co-op when I was there for the bulk sale, too…

Ah, shopping with allergies… You really have more cognitive impairment than you realize, and it’s only after mistakes become apparent that you realize that you're like that.

Another day at work…

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

1) A (South Asian from South Asia) table of five (twenty-somethings) comes in, and as often occurs, they hop all over the place with their order, and one (curly and messy-haired) (lighter-skinned) (bespectacled) (girl) gives this order with her hamburger toppings – she’s substituting a black bean patty, and then has a number of other specifications, like most customers do – and then after I key this all in on the keypad, she’s like, “Oh yes, and I want some cheese,” which is a b*tch, since you can’t add cheese at that point without majorly upping the price, you’d have to originally key in the order as a cheeseburger in order to get a fair price for the customer, so I tell her that in so many (nice) words for next time, and I then delete that item and I have to enter everything in again, partially from memory and partially from re-inquiring with her about toppings.

And, one guy wants a milkshake, which is time-intensive and we have to make ourselves, and my coworker gives me guidance in conjunction with the posted instructions that are tacked onto the dessert cooler back in “the server alley,” but I make the 3 scoops of ice cream too large, and though there’s usually some left over for you to pour into a separate glass and sip, this time there was enough to make an entirely separate second milkshake, so I get to have that, which is kind of nice, just that once.

The bill is $72, paid by the (imperious) (darker-skinned) (male) shake-drinker, with $0 tip.

2) In that same area by the blender and milkshake instructions and dessert cooler in “the server alley,” there’s two tall quart containers filler with mixed nuts and cinnamon-and-sugar dusted cashews, left over from a recent wine tasting event in the reception room where our kitchen assembled the charcuterie boards and the event staff brought in the wines for the wine tasting.

At first I grab them directly with my hand, but then I realize that’s gross, and so I take two soup spoons and put one in each container, and I use the spoon to lift the nuts up and dump them into my hand, from which point I then raise them to my mouth to eat them.

After I’m done eating, too, I just leave the soup spoons in the containers, for anyone who wants some nuts in the future.

The madness of the first warm day of the year.

It is always very interesting how people just go crazy when the first warm day of the year arrives.

That day also happened to be a day when I began work at 4pm rather than 5pm as I had been for a while, and I didn’t realize that all day until I got my standard work-app phone notice at 3pm that I began work in an hour and I saw it and I was like WTF and I had to run around and get ready in a rush so I could be out the door in time to catch the bus in, which was unusually packed and warm and stuffy and the people were so weird and talking loud on the phone and stuff, including one (middle-aged) (black) guy who turned out not to be talking on the phone at all, but rather talking to himself.

Then, when I sat outside on a park bench to kill ten minutes before I walk in and start work, and also when I’m working a bit later and am by the doors, you can just hear cars revving and speeding up and down the street, like they’re revving so loudly and speeding so much that the sound actually travels into the restaurant.

Like, people seriously lose it when the first warm weather hits, and it’s like, just get me home and out of this, since when people get like that, you just don’t know what the f*ck is going to happen, and you don’t want to be in the middle of it or out and exposed when some asshole runs his car through an intersection or turns around a corner at too high a speed and loses control of it and it goes onto the sidewalk or something like that.

Just better to be inside; once people get it out of their system, the other, later warm days will be calmer, better to wait for that to be out and enjoy the weather.

A valid reflection that I saw on social media:

It's America 250 and also the World Cup, but the current occupant of the Oval Office so affects the national mood, that it's like these things that should be so big and so joyous just aren't registering at all with people at large.

It's like he just sucked the joy out of these pretty big national events, that's how bad he is.

Foreign language study for dual citizenship purposes.

The notoriously hard language that I’m intensively studying for dual citizenship purposes is such a little bitch.

There’s so few cognates that even most news articles are impossible to read. If you know a language with cognates, you can fill in the gaps if you don’t know one word or maybe two, but what happens if you don’t know four or five?

Like, that's the situation that I've been facing. 

So, basically I’m using an online flashcard app to memorize simply thousands of vocabulary words, and I can already see how much more I can understand when I come across a previously largely unintelligible sentence that I had read months ago, but still, it’s tremendously discouraging when you get a new text and you realize that you don’t even know a fairly standard, important word like “estimate” or “improvement” and you can’t even identify a part of speech because so many of the endings look alike and because so many of the words at play are unknown.

My father’s one cousin writes once or twice a year around Christmas or Easter to give “greetings from the whole family,” and I usually used to write her back a few short very ungrammatical lines in reply, but with this latest round of contact around Easter, I really rolled out the language study and I told her that I was studying it again.

She immediately replied back with a longer email, and it was good to have so much text from a native speaker in an authentic communicative situation.

(Unlike her kids, I think she never really studied [English] as her foreign language, she did something else like [German], I believe.)

She wanted to see family pictures, too, so I had to gather some together, and then it took me several weeks to write back, and this email of like 7-8 short paragraphs explaining the pictures and giving news took TWO HOURS to write and edit, including making sure that I had all of the right little accent marks over everything, since the keyboard on my laptop isn't set up for that.

Like, wtf.

I did tell her when I apologized for the delay, though, that I was not only gathering family pictures, but the language is hard, so for me this isn’t an easy, friendly email, but rather homework.

And, I inserted a “laughing with pinched eyes” emoji.

I do hope the humor came through with that.

Spring allergies.

My spring allergies are always horrendous now, in the college town that I now live in…

Once you get outside of the town, it’s pretty rural, and everything in town has nice vegetation that’s almost southern and pretty much comes into bloom all at once.

I juice up every year with a nasal spray so the steroids have taken effect by the time that stuff really gets going, but even then I have problems, especially with post-nasal drip that makes me cough, which is a big problem at work when I’m waiting tables... If a cough suddenly comes upon me, I have to make sure to cough into my elbow, and I also have to make sure to tell customers that I’m not sick, there’s no way that I would come into work if I was sick, I just have bad seasonal allergies that are hard to medicate for, I tell them.

(There’s nothing grosser in a restaurant than an obviously sick employee.)

This year, too, my post-nasal drip developed into a small sinus infection, and for like 3 nights in a row my coughing woke me up at like 4/5/6am in the morning, where I’d have this heavy cough that wouldn’t stop until I finally got up out of bed and went into the bathroom and bent over the sink there and the change in position and sharp snorting would cause this simply gigantic dark hunk of congealed phlegm to tip over from my nasal cavity into the back of my throat, often catching there at the edge and causing me to choke, though, until finally I could snort sharply enough to get it into my mouth and spit it out into this hunk that just hit the bottom of the sink and sat there as like this big brown thing surrounded by a small pool of clear saliva, it was always so weighty, and massive.

Finally I got another strategy, too, where I would put a cough drop in my mouth when I laid down in bed to go to sleep, and I just let it rest in the side of my cheek…  Basically it would slowly dissolve all night long and keep my salivary glands going, and that would help enough with the post-nasal drip to mask it or to wash it away or whatever it does to help me so that I don’t wake up at night.

What a mess, and your personal state of unwellness simply does not match the vibe of the springtime.