More fluctuation in recent homelessness, as of this spring:

1) As I enter the local library near downtown a few blocks from where I live, there’s a couple policeman and EMTs in the foyer by the restrooms standing around talking, and they’re saying something about how he’s gone now, but one of them had seen him nearby recently at some other place, and they’re having this very serious conversation about that as I pass through their midst and go into the library to take care of my library business.

2) As I go to the local brewery, there’s a tent in the small city park right by there and like 3 men out by it, though to be fair, I only see it that once, and then never again.

A disorganized Wednesday at my new job…

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

1) Napkin holders are in weird places and chairs aren’t pushed in and in one of the lounges there’s a cardboard box in the corner and two tables are shoved together and another one is missing and a sideboard is missing as well, and I think it’s from the wedding that previous weekend, but then I find out that there was a small reception the previous night, too.

The front door has smudges like knee-height and below, and I check with my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military), and he confirms that yeah, there were some toddlers at the wedding and they were really running around.

Later, too, he points out that they were even by this other glass pane that forms like a wind-shelter inside the front entrance, since you could see smudges there, too, and not just on the front doors.

2) Like twenty-five minutes before we close two (late college or early graduate school) (South Asian from South Asia) girls with (princess) vibes come in, and the one orders one thing and then the other one isn’t sure and I am confused and I say that I can put the first order in if the first customer is hungry, or should I wait for the other person, and she says to put it in now, and then I tell them that the kitchen is closing and we need the other order soon and I will check back, and I check back after like three to four minutes and the other girl says she’s ready, and she starts giving me her hamburger order but substitutes mock chicken and I start to clarify toppings with her and she says she likes it hot and I’m in the middle of taking her order and the other is like, “ – and I’d like a diet Pepsi – “, and I turn to her and am like, “Excuse me, I am not finished taking her order yet,” and I’m still taking the ingredients when the other one is like, “Can we move tables? These chairs are uncomfortable,” and again I politely but firmly tell her that I can assist her with that, but I need to finish taking the other order first, and the other girl has all of these questions about some sauce that she remembers that came with a different dish and I figure out what it is and I say it’s fifty cents extra because it’s complementary with that other dish but not with this one, and she says she wants it but then she doesn’t, and then the other girl points out that the burger she's ordering has jalapenos and she doesn’t like jalapenos, so she looks at the menu and switches to something else, so I have to delete everything that I just entered, and then she wants a black bean patty and not mock chicken, and I finish taking that order and confirm it and I ask them to please listen because once I send it to the kitchen there will be no more changes and it’s okay so I send it, then I tell the one to try to go to the bar and try a seat there and see if it’s more comfortable and if it is I can move them, and she asks about the other rooms, and I say that some are usually available but not late at night, it would be different if they had arrived at seven, and I go get the Diet Pepsi and bring it back and they want to move and so I help them move, then when I’m in the kitchen the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook reminds me that that special sauce automatically comes with the black bean patty and so I have to go get a manager to take that fifty cents off the bill because I had inputted it as an extra sauce before the one girl changed her order, and then I bring out the first dish to the one girl and she says they need plates to split it because apparently they’re splitting it, and they want the sauce from the second dish with the first dish and not the second, and so I go get that, and overall by this point I’ve spent like twelve-to-fifteen minutes on a two-top where they just ordered two entrees and 1 drink, and plus when the first dish comes the one says that it’s not plated like it was in the past with a range of sauces and sides and I say it’s always been plated like that and it’s a new special this month so maybe she’s thinking of some other dish and she says no, it was that dish, they ordered it here several weeks ago, so I just kind of shrug and then I go off and do other things because I don’t want to deal with them, though I do check with the cook and yes, it’s always been plated like that and those girls are wrong, and at some point some time later the (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager calls out to me and asks if I have aspirin and I say that I don’t and she speaks to them and the one girl who was interrupting me leaves, and then the other one packs up stuff in one to-go box and leaves the other one unused and then she asks if I have ApplePay while she’s on the phone and I say yes and I can meet her at the front and she doesn’t respond and so I ask if she is ready to pay now because I can help her now, and she is and so we go there, and I think maybe at that point I help her take her to-go box up to the front because her one hand is full with her to-go cup and her other hand is busy with her phone at her ear, and then she gets the check and it’s $58 and leaves a $3 tip, and I notice that her cup is on the box and it looks like a lot to carry so I’m nice anyways and I ask if she needs a bag and she says yes and so I get one from the cupboard behind me and lay it on the counter and right away she asks me to put the things inside it, and I speak to her firmly but I also mis-choose my words because it’s late and I’m tired and I’m like, “That is not a typical service provided at a restaurant in America,” and she seems a little shocked, and she then says that she is having trouble with her arm as she continues to hold her left hand up by her ear, and so I don’t know what’s going on and who knows maybe she’s handicapped somehow and so I pack her bag for her, and then her hand emerges from behind her ear and she puts her phone in her pocket and her other arm is moving normally and she takes her things to go meet her friend wherever her friend went.

. . .

(I do not miss the high number of [South Asian from South Asia] customers from the one [Thai] restaurant that I used to work at… It’s not “all of them,” but it’s certainly a noticeable amount of them, and it’s just a pain to deal with, even more than “those white ladies” that we get at my current workplace… It also makes me think of what my one [chubby] [Thai] ex-coworker would say a lot, she’d just shake her head and be like, “I don’t know why Indian people are like that,” and sometimes she'd add, "Picky.")

. . .

(I will have to prepare for students like this in the future who ask me to bag stuff imperiously, and be nice and say that they didn’t intend it like that, but they should be careful with that behavior towards staff in the future, if they ever behave that way like at a meal at their place of employment or internship or whatever, they will be judged harshly for it, like set it up like I’m doing them a favor to clue them in like that.)

Ethiopian food.

I've had (Ethiopian) food a few times, and it's never bad, but I'm never in love with it, either.

Like, maybe it's just the dishes that I've had, but somehow it just never works for me, although it's not like I'd actively avoid going to a(n Ethiopian) restaurant.

It's like always six out of ten, to put it like that.

A (programmer) friend said maybe I just have to find the right dishes, but I'm not so sure about that...

Either way, I guess I'll find out, since  I do hope to patronize the new (Ethiopian) restaurant in town a few times, to give the small business owners some more business and support them, which is something that I do believe in.

Two out-of-place animals...

...back in later June:

1) One afternoon a gold finch flits into some tiger lilies and sits on the stalk of one of them, creating a clash of colors against the blossoms.

2) Another afternoon on a long strip of campus business-district sidewalk where the buildings come up flush against the sidewalk and even the little barren plant beds by the curb are fenced in with small little fences on top of the large blocks of the raised beds, a thin brown juvenile rabbit tentatively hops down the sidewalk even in the face of occasional pedestrians, as it stops now and then to cower against the small running wall of the concrete of the raised plant beds.

A conversation with my mother on her 80th birthday.

After seeing mention of them in the news, she tells me about once seeing the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found, although they didn’t get up close, they just saw them from afar.

She also says that 80 isn’t just a big birthday in terms of a nice big round number, she’s also glad to have just made it this far, and she says that when my great-grandmother turned 80 I wasn’t quite born yet but she traveled downstate to be with her, and they brought her a cake to her house, probably store-bought.

Three neighborhood happenings…

…this spring:

1) Looking out my cottage window, something catches my eye in the yard, and it’s a squirrel turning himself around over and over again in the dust in the bare space beneath the outdoor table that sits out in the middle of the front house’s backyard, and there’s like grooves in the ground there where he’s doing it, perhaps from so many dust-baths, or perhaps from some natural phenomenon conducive to creating grooves in the ground in which a squirrel can take a dust-bath.

2) As I leave the one local brewery with a plate of like three cupcakes left over from a birthday party there, I see from afar some people gathered outside the local music bar to smoke and gather before leaving in a group or whatnot, so I cross the street to go offer food to them, and the group by the curb is like six-to-eight (dressed up for a night out) (college-age) females who are out celebrating one’s twenty-first birthday – “I just had my first legal drink!”, the (white) (blonde) birthday celebrant is like, over-exuberantly – and anyhow they are stoked to take the cupcakes that I offer, and when they ask and I explain to them where they came from, the one (Asian-American) one just smiles and nods her head in satisfaction and is like, “I love that,” and she then explains that they’re all in this environmental-focused major, so it’s great, they all hate food waste, and like two of them who seem decently drunk are already grabbing the cupcakes and unwrapping the paper from around their bases in order to devour them when their Uber arrives, and they continue to do that as they all start stepping into the Uber, like both unwrapping the cupcakes and trying to step into a car at the same time, all while in short skirts and wearing high heels.

3) In the yard of the new-ish neighbors on the corner who turned their backyard into an open-air kennel where they keep up to 3 dogs at a time who are sometimes barking nuisances to the point where I’ve kept records and truthfully reported them to animal control twice over the course of one year for noise violations, there’s now like heavy black plastic tarps covering most of the wire fence, so that the animals cannot easily see passer-bys or other dogs as they pass by, so they bark less.

Some odd customers all in one day…

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

1) When I deliver a salad to a(n older) (white) couple, the lady looks at her salad and immediately asks me to bring out a side of ranch dressing, after saying dryly but somehow in-your-face, “There’s not much ranch on the salad.”

2) At a three-top of two (white) moms and their (developmentally disabled kid), the one mom requests more ice for her drink, and then adds, “This drink isn’t cold,” and later they ask me for two to-go boxes but don’t use the one, and when I give my spiel about how we can’t reuse it so do they want to take it with them or do they want me to throw it out, she’s like, “Oh, just throw it out.”

3) From these four (late 20s) (white) women sitting in the lounge area, including one in short short jean shorts and a t-shirt that’s too tight on her, one of them wants to know if we have this one cocktail with crème de menthe like she once had somewhere, only she can’t remember what it was, and so she asks me if I could get the bartender to put together those ingredients, and when I go to ask that of my one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried) mom coworker who’s the bartender on duty that night, she’s just bluntly like, “No,” and then she explains and says, “Because that would taste like toothpaste.”

Work…

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

1) At a big chaotic table of (white) women and their (white) daughters, my one (white) (young) (gay-ish) (ponytailed) coworker steps in to help them when they need to-go boxes, and he asks them how many, and the one (mom) says “Oh, just bring a stack,” and so he brings a stack of 6 for the like 8-10 of them at the table, and they end up using just one.

So, when I clear the table, I’m asking them if I can clear food, and when it’s clear that they’re not taking any more food with them, I’m like, “Because these were on the table, we can’t reuse them now. Would you like to take them with you, or would you like me to throw them out?”

(Some people... That was at least a few bucks worth of stuff, which really cuts into the profit margin from the table, besides being so wasteful.)

2) At  a small chaotic table of like four people, the one (Asian-American) girlfriend who picks up the tab slips a giftcard behind her credit card without telling me when she hands me the bill, and so I run the bill on the credit card and it’s only then that I see the giftcard, so I have to go get a manager to void the transaction so I can re-run the bill with the giftcard.

And, when I bring it to the table along with the receipt showing the voided transaction, she says she knows, since credit card transactions show up on her space-age internetted watch and she got notices for both times that I ran it, and she says this a little bit suspiciuosly, like wondering why I wasn’t on top of my job to see that giftcard there in the first place.

3) Everyone is kind of mopey at work from how the local university lost in the big recent athletic tournament, so I’m like, “You know, we should really call it March Sadness,” and multiple coworkers comment to me that that’s a joke like my one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker would make, and he does in fact love that joke when I get around to telling it to him.

A recent-ish dream:

A number of months ago I dreamnt –

I’m opening this container of leftover aglio-et-olio spaghetti or whatever the f*ck you call it, some that I’d kept in a glass container for serving and then for keeping in my fridge for reheating later, and as I wash out the stray pieces of spaghetti from the side of the container, it becomes clear that there’s entire layers of spoiled spaghetti still left at the bottom, somehow, and it’s like spaghetti that had stuck together in the pot during boiling since I didn’t stir it up enough or add enough oil to the water or whatever when I boiled it, and as I go to get it out it becomes clear that there’s more and more of it just there at the bottom of the container, just wasted, and somehow I never knew that that much of it had gone bad.

 . . .

(. . .)

A problem worker…

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

Digging through my work bag, I find a menu that had been given to me so I could look through and memorize it somewhat, as well as some tax withholding paperwork in the center of it that I had filled out and never returned.

So, the next time that I work, I ask about the paperwork and they tell me to duck into the office where liquor is kept and put it on the desk of the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager, and then I hand over the menu to the one (introverted) (white) (tattooed) manager since the menu by now is slightly different in the salads section and needs a new sheet, and she just sighs and gets this exasperated look on her face and is like, “Ugghhh, I already swapped out eighty of these!”

A problem customer…

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

This one (darker-skinned) (Jewish?) (Latin American) (Latina) is known from a past table where we had brought out the two (smaller) plates of french fries and the requested number of ketchups only to be informed that the ketchup wasn’t enough, and when we ask how many more they need, she’s like, “Bring one for everyone!”, which would be 18 cups of ketchup since they had a huge group, and so we check who still wants some from the people who are eating the two (smaller) plates of fries which are only sitting at one end of the big long table, and it ends up being that they only need 2 more cups of ketchup.

And, this time around she’s there as part of another large group although not quite as large, and it’s her birthday, and people are drifting in and drifting in, and when I go to fill water and pre-bus and ask if they need anything, she says imperiously that someone hasn’t ordered yet, and so I go and take their order right away, and then I check with the point-person for the table and I find out that that person had just only gotten there a few minutes ago.

And, when I return with other stuff for the table, that lady makes a point of pointing out that this person never received any water, even though I had just been at the table checking if people needed anything else and had even gone so far as to take the dinner order for that particular person right away, at which point I could have gotten a water for her, too.

(It was one of those tables that was so big and with so many waters sitting around that you just didn't know which one was whose, especially because in situations like that friends tend to get waters for their other friends before they arrive and they just sit out there for them.) 

Later, too, she sends back her burger, and since she’s full on salad, she has the new one boxed up to take home with her.

“Please can you take over this table,” my one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried) mom coworker asks me with just tiredness in her eyes, since she was the point-person for that table.

And, I tell her that our one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker had helped them last time when the ketchup thing happened, and he had said it was a table where you just “smile and say yes," a phrase he said with this big put-on shit-eating grin on his face.

(The next time I work with him I mention that table and I tell him that "that ketchup lady was in here again," and he’s like, “Oh yes, I remember her!”.)

During the last part of the night, too, I am back at their table to refill water, and I reach out to get a glass and one long curly wisp of her hair that was sticking out way way away from her head gets caught between my fingers as I reach out to get the glass of the person sitting next to her, and she kind of startles and looks but doesn’t say anything and I just keep doing what I’m doing and try to ignore it, hoping that it doesn’t turn into “a thing.”

(It doesn’t, fortunately.)

Addendum.

I've had customers ask me if we make the pre-made desserts there.

"Actually not," I'm like, with a small and discreet side-grimace of my mouth,"We get them from a bakery," judiciously finding a word for whatever factory they came out of, since that factory indubitably involves baking at some level and thus I'm not really lying, I don't think, am I?

Some work food…

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

1) Pretty much all our desserts are premade food-service things that we plate up and maybe dress up a bit, but we don’t really make them there in any real sense of the word, and they’re all in this little side fridge in “the server alley” with saran wrap over them and stickers with freshness dates and bright red "USE FIRST" warnings that we must obey or we have to throw them out.

2) The breaded and deep-fried brussel sprouts have this blue cheese dipping sauce, but they’re also served over greens onto which house vinaigrette is poured, so you can try dipping the fried brussel sprouts in there, too – it’s the better sauce, in my opinion – and plus you get like a free third of a side salad at the bottom of your plate, if you choose to eat it.

The bigger ones also have more interior texture, too, since they probably don’t cook all the way through and get mushy like the smaller ones do, although the breading is always crisp and the taste is always good and so the mushy texture of some is more a neutral fact about the dish than a deal-breaker.

3) For some big birthday party where they had a special cake and leftover slices were later brought back and divvied up among all the workers, the one (quiet) (introverted) (tatted) (white) manager asks me what I think of it, and I say the frosting is amazing but the cake is a bit dry, and then she tells me that the cake was made special in-house – which I did not know – and that the one (short) (perky) (daytime) manager made the frosting, while the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner made the cake.

“Oh damn,” I was like. “I didn’t realize this was a test.”

Addendum:

At the t-shirt place, I wanted just the classic logo in the color scheme that would look good on me, but even though they had a gazillion shirts, of course they didn’t have that one, the closest they had was the classic logo in the inverse color scheme where the color that would make look like sh*t predominated.

It also isn’t a surprise that I made that mistake with the …MOM t-shirt, because it was one of those days when I was tired… I also stopped by a Target near there to pick some stuff up and use my $25 and $50 giftcards that I had gotten for being part of a follow-up health study to some research study that I had done years ago in college, and even though my purchase was like $40 and I wanted to use up the $25 card first so I could throw it out and then get into the $50 one, somehow I used the $50 card first, and it was too late in the transaction to go back and so there I was, still with two cards and unable to throw one out.

Happenings at my new job…

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

1) We’re encouraged to wear gear from the local university if we’re working the night of this big tournament game, and I don’t have it and I don’t feel like running out and getting it, but they win that game and the same thing is set for the next shift overlapping with their next game, and since I’m scheduled again then, I find the time to go get some t-shirts, and I stop by this campus store and there’s a buy-one-get-one-free sale and I go through all of the shirts that are a good color for me only they’re a b*tch to refold if they fall open, so after I find a good one and see how they’re sized and know that large is my size, I look at one more with a cool home-y kind of gingham pattern saying the school’s name and then some small, faint type underneath that with the team name, and it’s only when I get it home and go to start taking tags off that I realize that the far far edge of the small, faint type had been folded in underneath, and the very bottom of the T-shirt design didn’t just say [LONG TEAM NAME]”, but rather “[LONG TEAM NAME] MOM,” like it was a shirt for mothers whose kids go to that school.

And, I tell this story to everyone since I think it’s funny, and the one (big personality) (redheaded) (Irish-American) owner says I should just go ahead and wear it anyways to work, it’s hysterical.

2) Wiping off menus is tough unless the sun is shining in the front window onto the host stand or it’s darker and the lightbulbs hit them just right; otherwise, you can't see where they’re smudged, you need a light coming in at just the right angle to do that.

App stupidity.

The campus grocery store that’s kind of on my way home from work that I stop through now a lot for like fresh lettuce and stuff has this strange multi-tiered sale system, where like some are sales for everyone, but others are if you are in their rewards system where you have to punch in your phone number when you go through checkout -- some kind of data-sale thing going on, probably? -- but there's also still others where they're only if you’ve downloaded their app, although I find out that there’s also a touchscreen nearby where you enter the store and you can log in and punch in the deals you want there, if you don’t want to or can’t get the app.

I discover this when I bring up a couple bags of tangerines that were on sale and they ring up as more expensive, but when I go to use the touchscreen, it’s frozen and broken, and although the cashier says they’ve never seen that before, they also say that there’s nothing that they can do for me, and there’s no way that I can get the lower price, then.

More new job happenings…

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

1) My one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) is talking with the one (bearded) (bleary-eyed) (goateed) bartender with (mental health problems), and they're both commiserating about how the direct deposit program that the restaurant is using is malfunctioning, since paper checks take longer to clear through their “get your cash now” banking app that both of them use.

2) The one (younger) (blonde) (bespectacled) (art school grad) dishwasher tells me how he was in the movie business and felt a recession was coming, so he got out of LA and moved home and then COVID hit, and now he feels all art is local and he bought a big printing press and he’s working as a dishwasher so he can pay that off, although he’s also looking into substitute teaching.

3) The one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook has a hard time remembering the fight cheer for the local university when everyone is going around saying it because of their getting far in a big tournament, so I try to teach it to him.

4) When a five- or six-top of (younger graduate school age?) (South Asians) come in, I ask them if they’re paying separately or together because if it’s separately we need to keep their tabs in order, and they’re like, “We’ll let you know.”

A day at my new job…

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

1) A (late 30s) (brusque but pleasant) (Russian) couple and their (fatter) (kind of nerdy) (female) (American) friend are in, and when I go to the table and the (Russian) guy goes to re-order his beer from me, he makes a remark that he would like “a well-dressed Jesus,” perhaps, riffing off of the “Casual Jesus” name of the beer that the brewery must have given it in one of those shallow sacrilegious gestures that people who think they’re cool often make whenever they’re trying to be cool, and then I respond that there’s also a “Casual John the Baptist,” and when I return with the actual beer, I make a more-elaborate joke that we should really have an expensive John the Baptist cocktail, where it’s served out of a large cup that’s shaped like his head and a woman dances out and gives it to you.

And, their (American) friend was quite amused at this, and I was like, “If you’re going to be sacrilegious, at least go in-depth and be a little more creative.”

At the end of the meal, too, I said that we could serve a Buddha drink, where it’s like $80 and it’s never served and you must remain in a state of perfect indifference to that fact when you start to realize that it will never be served.

2) These (older) (well-dressed) (kind of boozy) customers who I recognize are in with another couple, and when it comes time for last call, they each order one more drink, and then decide to get a second one as well, and they have the drinks lined up on the table in front of them besides their food that they’re finishing.

3) My one (short) (young) (bearded) (vaguely Jewish) (local) coworker with a stud earring in each ear says that he’s only been on a plane once in his life.

He was also in a children’s choir where he grew up, and they once sang in the governor’s mansion.

A new habit of my mother:

After she realized that there was one, checking the webcam of the local university, to see what’s happening there on the main quad.

After recent storms, she said there were big puddles, and then the next time she checked, they had disappeared.

. . .

(. . .)

A recent-ish dream:

A number of months ago, I dreamnt –

I’m at a production of the rarely-produced L’Arlesienne, and as the play ends it's night-time and two women advance back up stage left between small buildings raked to make them look larger, as they proceed to the background and talk and then turn to the right to go down the street there, as the music plays.

. . .

(. . .) 

Animals around my house:

1) Across the street at the house of the old (hippie) who passed, with its green siding and green lawn where the bushes were taken out by the new owners, a bright red cardinal flits and sometimes sits, including on this small tree in the front yard that has purple flowers in spring, so it’s this backdrop of green and grey and grey-ish green, and bright purple, and a spot of red.

2) On the front house’s back lawn by my cottage in the late afternoon, in the mid-spring grass that’s getting tall, a fat brown rabbit that’s on the young side, calmly eating and not seeming all too bothered, even as I go to my front door and then stop and watch him.

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.