Humming, Yellow and Tetris

Wow.. Haha, you are reading my posts.. Do you feel stupid? I do..

Well, I hope you are OK. I am. My family have deserted me and I am here in an empty house with an empty stomach.

I finished at work early, mostly because there wasn't any. I did 15 minutes of work all evening. It was awesome. Modern dish washing I have come to notice, is basically a greasy smelly game of tetris that nobody wins.. On the other hand, it is like a party; I get to hang out in a kitchen with some cool people, I get free food and drinks, I learn skills that will no doubt be useful in life and like all the best parties I am paid to attend.. I am very pleased that I will no longer have to work my least favorite morning shift. I found a housekeeper to fill in for me on Tuesday mornings when I am in my Brazilian music class. He jumped at the chance, because he makes $3.00 an hour less than I do.

Lately I have been trying to go to church almost every day.. Because I can. It gives me a reason to get up early instead of sleeping until 2, which I will not be able to do for the rest of the year. The only negative side effect I obtain from my regular religious observance, is that I feel 50 years older than I am for doing so... Only without the maturity and hopefully common sense that such an age would afford me.

Well, I just made myself some spaghetti. Nothing fancy, just with a light sauce of some home grown onions, peppers, tomatoes, some not home grown bacon and some home grown basil and parsley.. It was good. I may do it again some time.

Well.. What else? In all honesty, I do not enjoy playing the mandolin any more. It hurts, even through my heavily calloused fingers.. I can't seem to get the sounds I want either, and it doesn't stay in tune, even when I ask nicely. My fingers do not seem to find the notes like they did only weeks ago, and I do not like playing it even with other people.. It just seems to shout at me for no reason. Perhaps we are in need of couples counselling.. Or maybe I should change the strings. Part of it is that I am a chemically challenged musician.. By this I mean that the grease my fingers emit is more corrosive to metal strings than the grease the majority of the population emit, and even with the specially coated (and thus more expensive) strings that I buy, they seem to rust out quickly.. Oh well.

At my 6 night a week party, I noticed something. The problem with male public conveniences is that they seem to attract a great deal of an ammonia based fluid on the floor around them. This is no ones fault but the urinal manufacturers, who design them in such a way as to make half of the fluid they are built to absorb splash itself on to the originator of said fluid's clothing. The problem of a urine splashed front can be remedied in 3 of the 4 following ways..1, Stand back.. This approach has it's problems. Namely that there will no doubt be a suspicious yellow trail leading from the initiator of the process to the device meant for the disposal of it's main bi product. There is also the problem of said person inadvertently exposing himself gratuitously in a public bathroom, and such behavior is often not well received. 2, Stand to the side. This has it's problems too. Unwelcome liquids can and will be splashed onto those in the immediate vicinity, which is typically frowned upon. This also carries the problem of unwanted exposure, as a careless glance from an unsuspecting passer by can cause the owner of a weakened constitution to spew a half digested meal onto the floor, adding to the mess of bodily fluids already present. 3, Squat in the stall.. A gentleman would never do such a thing when wall mounted pottery is present and available. It simply is not an acceptable alternative. The solution; abide by the gentleman's unwritten code of behavior for visiting a public convenience, which will now be written down. Part 1. Never, never never never avail one's self of the convenience next to one currently in use. To do so is completely unacceptable, and any private club would be perfectly within their rights to expel a member caught engaged in such an activity. A gentleman must exhibit self control in all matters, and would rather ruin his trousers than break the cardinal rule. Part 2. Eyes forward. To do otherwise cannot be pardoned. Take time to enjoy the beautifully printed copies of renaissance artworks/news paper clippings/ graffiti questioning the sexual preferences of an acquaintance. Part 3. As in golf, learn over time to find the sweet spot on the convenience in question. Practice should enable perfect shooting for life, or until such time as a gentleman may require a dignified personal convenience disposal unit. Before perfection is achieved, it may become necessary for one to carry a small bottle of eau de cologne for the olfactory satisfaction of those whose immediate vicinity he must enter....

That should do it.

Puss, Rig and Steam..

Oh hey, didn't see you come in.

well, here I am with my ukulele.. I started playing it again after a brief hiatus, and I am glad that I did. I almost forgot how fun they are. I also heard something interesting on NPR.. It was about someone who had discovered how to read the musical notes that are above all the words in the Hebrew bible.. It was interesting, and I spent 20 minutes sitting in a parking space on main street listening to it.

I am looking forward to 2:00 tomorrow, because after that I will have no work until Thursday.. After work, I am going over to Nicola's Trattoria to apply for a job I saw advertised.. It is essentially the one I have now, with less to do and with better pay..

Today I washed dishes, prepped and portioned calamari, pasta and chicken wings, took stinky revenge on house keeping, covered for the cook, forgot to eat dinner and found something interesting in my nose..

It is probably time for sleep.. It would be a good idea. Perhaps I should bike to my breakfast shift tomorrow.

Horns, Radar and Spacing..

Hey there.

What I am confused about is something funny. Some of the newest and most heavily democratic voters in NH are former MA residents.. The greatest reason for people to move here is because of the NH advantage. Somewhat strangely, they will take their voting habits from their old home and bring them here. That sucks.. If you vote for someone who thinks you are not paying enough, then the odds somewhat favor them telling you to pay more. As that influential idiot Bill O'Reilly likes to say "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome" It may not be a definition of insanity, but it does define those who move to escape oppressive taxes, and then vote for those same oppressive taxes in their new home..

Well whatever.. True or not, it does explain why upon finding out that I am not from these parts, many people ask me to describe my political persuasions, perhaps almost hoping to have their suspicion confirmed that all out of staters are retarded.

I had some time on my hands today.. Not really, I just didn't put my shoes on so my dad would not be able to ask me to help him saw up the piano on the front porch. My point is that I found myself on the computer watching a lecture given by a gentleman called Evan Sayet, who spent one hour explaining why people who think that the films of Michael Moore are honest, hope for the world to be like the John Lennon song Imagine.. His reasoning was that because nothing man has ever created has been able to stop war and suffering, and because all of our institutions so far have failed to do this, they must be torn down and replaced with a socialist utopia, where everything we hold dear is devalued to the point where there is nothing to kill or die for, no religions, no families and of course no possessions. It was very interesting indeed, but I did not buy it, at least not in full because his position requires that there must be absolute truth that is not questioned.. However, if you cannot judge the truths you hold dear by the same standard you would judge Sicko, then you will be making the same mistake as those who believe that it is an honest look at our health care system. You should try to disprove your own theories, or you will never eat at Applebee's again.. Seriously, don't eat at Applebee's.. I know things.

Interestingly enough, inside that old piano we found some British coins from 1914... Some half crowns, haypennies and schillings and wonderfully imperialistic sounding stuff like that.

Fuse, Spikes and Heads

Hey. Nothing excellent to report.

Today I woke up at 1:00 pm because I am on restaurant time. I then went to the golf course with my brother and some people from work. We then hit golf balls for an hour or so. It was fun.

I do not think that a good way to spread your religion is to shout at people and say things like "THE END IS NEAR!!!", but I do think that if someone asks what you believe and why you believe it, you should be able to tell them, and tell them wicked good, or say nothing.. Somehow I was able to do the former, in of all places a busy kitchen to someone my age and of the opposite sex without getting laughed at. A year or so I could not have done this, and that is because I did not know what I believed or why I believed it. What I thought I believed, I would have been embarrassed to tell anyone, but it is strange how a year of learning stuff can change how you see your religion in relation to the world, and just how seriously you take the whole idea.

It is weird, but in all my previous forays into the food and beverage industry, I came away with the notion that I could do just as well without it. However, now I am not so sure. There is something about it that I like.. Food is somewhat of a hobby of mine, and I would be quite stuck without it. Even in a crappy job like washing dishes and cleaning floors and other surfaces, there is a philosophical edge.. To see dirty things made clean again is good for the soul. It gives hope to a world full of Russians and Georgians that everything, no matter how covered in cheese and BBQ sauce can be good again... That no matter how gross a floor may be, there is not only the hope that it will be shiny and sanitary again, but the certainty. Also, no matter how much value Putin may place on human life, or how much value a busy cook may place on a rusty baking tray; with a little elbow grease, both things can be as they should..


On a somewhat lighter note, aren't world politics tragically funny? I am speaking of Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, who according to legend got the job through the offer of free pies. In protest of China's treatment of Tibet, he boycotted the opening ceremony of the Olympics.. However, he made it quite clear that he would be attending the closing ceremony.. The only pleasure I get from the Olympics is the funny international drama, or should I say draMao.......... Oh dear.. Oh dear. I am really really sorry for that..There is no excuse, and if we were living somewhere less free, I really would deserve some sort of public electroshock treatment.

Virtue, Ribs and Ozone........

Well, I just posted a long crappy thing about work... I am sure you do not want to read it, and I really did not want to write it, and this showed. I should be providing you with something more useful than descriptions of the various duties of a dishwasher, or how I smell nice at every hour of the day... Be prepared for something much better...... It will be so awesome I can't even tell you what it is.

Lemons, Mars and Tang...

Oh hey, I do apologize for not posting yesterday. You see, I fell asleep around 8:00, which was quite surprising.

Tomorrow I have some plans. I shall wake up at 7:00, sit on the edge of my mattress and rub my face for a few minutes.. I will then reset the alarm clock and go back to sleep until 9:00. I will then get up, shower and dress myself in clothes. Several minutes later, I will go outside and perform an oil change before collecting and depositing my paycheck. When this is completed, I will ride the bicycle over to Keene State to try my luck at the job fair. Later depending on the clemency of the weather, I will either mow the lawn or play music before showing up for work.

Well, a change in my hours has allowed me to practice with my elderly musician friends again, which is nice. We had a good practice today, and good practices are always a reason to play more music. I noticed that my mandolin skills have really deteriorated over the last few weeks, and so I will attempt to fix this imbalance in my small but assorted collection of things I do well.

Again, I am really looking forward to college. Last year it seemed that I was the only person who called out my professors on anything, or showed any interest in what was being taught. Hopefully this year, there will be more people who express their opinions.. Even if they are wrong.. That is something environmentalists do very well indeed. In my kitchen, opinions are often expressed about various issues such as taxes, people taking the flag in vain, the Indians we work with, gays, hippies, massholes, moonbats and whatever WKBK has to say. How are so many of my fellow students unable to express anything, apart from grunts, the word "like" and how much they can drink? I guess that with age comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes more things that annoy you, until you become wrinkly and like to shout at the ducks you are feeding about the economy..

Desert, Dessert and Berlin..

So I nearly got mugged. No joke.. As I left work, I approached my vehicle and noticed that two short people were drinking out of paper bags and sitting on the curb. As I drew near, they jumped to their feet, and I heard the click of a switchblade. I first intended to jump into my car and speed away, but for some reason I gathered up all the testicular fortitude I could muster and ventured a "How are ya?" which was met by an Irish sounding "Fine mate, and yourself?".. Oh great. We have Pikeys at the Best Western.. Well, I bid good night to the Pikeys, and went home..

It is often the case when working in an any environment that you will develop a dislike for some of the people in it. This is not the case in my kitchen, but there is an animosity between kitchen people and the house keepers. In the pecking order, they are below us. Many do not speak English, and the ones that do are not the sort of people you would feel comfortable letting into your home. My main complaint is that they are required to bring a cart of plates, cups and utensils back to the kitchen after their shift.. Plates cups and utensils which I am responsible for. They consistently fail to do this, and either I or one of the cooks is forced to do it for them. I therefor thought it would be a good idea to remind them of their duty, so I penned a short note for the purpose, with the illustration you see above. In fact, I penned several of them and stuck them all over their little room. Problem solved.

Well. here I am. In 6 hours I get to work the breakfast shift.. I am not looking forward to it. Although I am happy with my current employment, I am going to a job fair at Keene State on Thursday to see if I can do better than groundskeeper there. I think with a little charm and cunning, I could wrangle a cook position. Unfortunately as I possess neither quality, I may be stuck. However dish washing jobs are available and I will see if they pay better then what I currently make.

"Do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life".. I once complained about this statement, but I would rather never work a day in my life than something I was told today by an aspiring philosopher I work with, who noted that "You should see work as a break from life, and life as a break from work." This way of thinking can be used to cover up the fact that you hate your job, or your life. I do not aspire to hate either. It is perhaps time that I took more of an example from my own family.. My father, like his father was born into being a factory worker, and for a while he was. However, as I am sitting in his huge house and typing on his expensive computer, it is clear that he no longer is. My mother was born to be a seamstress in Jersey City, but instead followed her dream and went to college to become a highschool teacher and even now continues to study education. With parents like mine, how can I do anything but love what I do, and do what I love? All I need to do is find exactly how to do what I love, learn to do it better, fail, start again and do it even better. Something I would love to do right now is sleep, so I will see you tomorrow.

Samarkand, Cocktails and Ice..

It seems that I use up a lot of these posts talking about work. This is perhaps because I do not do much else. I recently watched an episode of No Reservations, where Anthony Bourdain told me that the kitchen has always been a refuge for the socially awkward, and this is probably true. There was nothing to do tonight, apart from learn to be a line cook, so that is what I did. I learned that the cook I am usually on with actually prefers dish washing to cooking.. You see a restaurant cook is not a creative creature. Cooking for a living is not the creative process that TV would have you believe. In fact, it is more of a formula that must be followed to avoid being shouted at. A creative line cook is not a line cook that would last long. Well, there was so little to do that for a while I pulled up some milk crates and took a doze in my dish pit. I was awakened by the sound of orders being shouted into the kitchen, and of the cook being woken from a situation similar to my own. Until closing, I had to work hard.. When you are not prepared, hard work is harder to get used to, but I finally did and settled into the almost hypnotic trance that any sort of repetitive labor tends to induce.

I have found that I am able to take pride in my work as a dishwasher. Maybe it is a gift that I have how I am able to do this; that I can repeatedly give my best to a job where corners can easily be cut and no one would know, at least for a while. It really is satisfying to punch the clock at the end of the day knowing that you gave your very best, no matter how crappy the job is.

Isn't it funny how a vigorous morning bike ride sounds great now, yet come tomorrow will seem like a less favorable alternative to motor transportation?

Isn't bread cool? You can do so much with it, such as placing meat and cheese between two slices of it. Every culture in the world has a version of it, and in many it is given a reverent status. When I was very young and in Athens Greece, an old man told me I needed to finish my sandwich, because it represented Jesus. My elderly Italian relatives do the same thing, with my grandmother refusing to throw bread away, and wincing as if in pain when my father throws away the last mouldy hunk of a week old loaf. In my religion, certain bread is what our lives are built on. In Judaism, Islam and many other religions, bread is also viewed as sacred. In Germany, Britain, Ireland and NH, Liquid bread has an almost religious following. I don't like whole wheat bread. It doesn't appeal to me. I would rather not eat any bread at all then something that looks like it came out of a wood chipper. In my house, we are quite elitist when it comes to bread. Everyone will complain and groan at what is available locally. We are fond of bread that originates in New Jersey, and even prefer it stale over New Hampshire bread. I like Tortillas, preferably when wrapped around something fatty and spicy and deep fried. I also like wheat thins and cookies........ Snack time.

Plecticles, Membership and Stretch..

My brother and I just got back from a kick around with some old MC2 students. I found out that I hate wet feet and mosquitoes, that I will be taking a management class with Nate Hardy and that your chances of kicking a ball accurately are greatly diminished by darkness.

Right now I am on restaurant time, which means that I finish work at 11, I get home by 1 and I am asleep by 3:30. Unfortunately this also means that I wake up around noon. I have found that if I do not maintain this schedule, I must complete my shift in a daze and run the risk of driving into a tree. I like trees, yet my interaction with them these days consists of nothing more than a casual glance or possibly a makeshift urinal. I do not wish to become part of one.

I have not touched my mandolin all week, preferring to dabble in the arts of the 12 string or ukulele. I have noticed that my style of mandolin playing does not lend it self well to solo performance at all. For me to play and enjoy it, there have to be other musicians about. I suppose it is a bit like drinking: Cool when there are others doing it, but pretty sad if you are on your own.

I may post music I record to this page in future. It could be fun. Well, it is time for me to press the post button again.

Sevillia, Windows and Seatbelts........

Today my family and I rented a boat, and went sailing on Spofford lake. It was not so much sailing, as to sail you need wind. Instead it was rowing.. Me rowing. If it were not for the paddle that we found before boarding, we would still be there.

After a day of paddling my family around Spofford lake, I went to work. It was tiring, but besides damaging my gentleman's area on a glass rack and not getting any free steak, it was not bad. I did manage to use my excellent problem solving skills to create a mop out of some rags, a sponge and another mop. My workplace is doing badly. If it were a real restaurant, instead of a hotel restaurant, it would have closed down a while ago. If the owners used a little common and business sense, they could make so much more.

Goodnight to you all. May your dreams not include mopping.

Politic, Scrubbie and Okapi

Hey.. Speaking of politics, yesterday I took the Nolan survey, and I found out that I am a conservative libertarian. I also met the congresswoman for Swanzey, Marlborough and some other towns that don't matter. Susan B. Johnson is a jolly funny lady, and not at all like the politicians I see on CSPAN. We joked about Brattleboro, and complained about John McCain.

Today at work was fun. I worked hard and had fun with my co workers. Unlike almost everywhere else, when there is a customer behaving badly, it is an advantage. We get at least an hour of entertainment from mocking the offending person, and plotting revenge.. Today we had a crowd of young Massachusetts residents in a room, who ordered room service. In my short experience, it is usually the worst type of people who order room service. They were not happy with anything, and the third time our poor waitress had to suffer their abuse, my help was requested. I practiced my best threatening stare, took off my shirt and shouldered the tray. Perhaps seeing a fat wild eyed Italian in a tank top set them straight, but apparently not, as they shouted down the hall after us for ketchup. However, we thought it would only be fair to report them for smoking in their room, which carries a $100 fine. I think the chef may have scared away the guy who repeatedly orders a 24 oz. rib eye 5 minutes before closing, by standing in the dining room and sharpening his knives.

That is what I did today.. What did you do?