Well, what do you know?

Read it and weep, you defenders of ugly.

i must be a jinx

tuesday was my oldest daughter’s birthday, and she wanted to go eat out

unfortunately the restaurant she chose is closed on tuesdays, so we went last nite instead

we got there about 5 after 7

we ordered our drinks and told the waitress we needed a few minutes to look at the menu

daughter #1 (b’day girl) ordered the crawfish fettucine, son ordered the seafood platter, i ordered the blackened redfish, and daughter #2 ordered a hamburger steak, which i said we wanted not just well done, but very well done

i mention what the rest of us ordered only to show that what daughter #2 ordered should have been the easiest and fastest to prepare

it was almost 8 before we got our food (and the place was practically empty, so WTF?!?) – my food and the two oldest kiddies’ food looked fine, but little SG cut into her HB steak and…ok, if i told you it was rare i’d be less than accurate

the ground meat was RAW, i kid you not

raw ground meat covered in a burnt outside and gravy that looked like it had just been poured out of the can…kinda jelled looking, ya know? like when you’re a kid in elementary school and for some reason the cafeteria insists upon serving cranberry sauce for their thanksgiving dinner, and you can still see the rings on that nasty stuff, as it had just been dumped from the can, which we all know it had been

little SG looked sick but said she’d try it and before i could stop her she’d picked up her fork, poked at a piece of meat, then put the fork down with a sick look on her face and said no way, she couldn’t even attempt

i said hell no you won’t!

looked around and didn’t see the waitress, or a cook, or ANYBODY

so i went directly up to the front register with the food (the girl behind the counter had a somewhat nervous look on her face when i started walking up,  and i showed it to her

told her we’d waited almost an hour, and yet this was still RAW and i wanted them to fix it

so the waitress came to our table and asked if we wanted them to fix another one

well duh, my girl couldn’t just have fries for her supper

so she brings the food back to the kitchen, then walks back up to our table – she rolled her eyes and said ‘the cook said to tell you that it’s the ground meat, that sometimes some batches just don’t turn brown, but that’s not true! i told her i didn’t want to tell you that but she made me!’

i told her it wasn’t her fault, but i wanted the next one fully cooked and that daughter was allergic to spit so we’d better not find any in there

later she came back and asked if i wanted to talk to the person in charge – while i was thinking about it, she said she thought it would be a good idea, and that if i did, could i please let them know that she did tell me what they said (they didn’t believe she had) so i said ok

meantime another waitress at the next table had heard all this and she rolled her eyes too and told me that she (the cook) was always like that and always bitching at the waitresses

so finally this GINORMOUS woman (i said she looked like 2 people with one head, but daughter said she looked more like 5 people with one head) came over and asked how we were doing

um…so i told her

told her how long we’d be there (at which point she said she hadn’t looked at the time the order was put in…not the point!) and how the steak could practically have gotten up off the table and walked away on its own)

so she started with the BS about how the ground meat (cept she called it “grind” meat) sometimes doesn’t turn brown, depending on the batch, blah blah blah

nuh uh

i basically told her that was BS, that i’ve been cooking ground meat for many years, have had it in other restaurants, and not only that has that never happened but that i’d never even heard of such crap, cuz it’s not true

she kept trying to say that she was right, and i kept cutting her off and telling her she was WRONG (son was muttering under his breath at this point for me to ‘let it go’) but um, no

so right then the waitress comes back with the second steak (the rest of us were finished eating by this point, of course) so right in front of her i cut open the steak

it was cooked, so i said ‘imagine that…same batch of meat, but amazingly, this one browned!’

she didn’t say anything after that so i told her i expected to not be charged for the meal (little SG’s part, of course, not all of it) and she said she’d take it off the bill

which they did

but the night certainly did not go as expected, and it’ll be a looooong time before i ever go back there

Mmm… kibbles…

When I got out of work today and started walking to the train, the city smelled like dog food.

UPDATE:  Apparently there’s a dog food factory nearby.  How come I’ve been working here more than a year and never smelled it before?

How low can we go?

The gods of weather are a competitive bunch.  Word got out that the nigh-impossible happened:  snow fell in the warm southern lands from which I came.  Even more amazing, the snow actually accumulated and remained on the ground in snow form!  I can remember that before I left to conquer the northlands with naught but a battered sword, an extra-soft loincloth, and a six-pack of root beer, I experienced snowfall maybe a half-dozen times, but only half of those had enough to do anything with.  One year we wiped out the snow from half of the large backyard to make a snowchild about 2 feet tall.

So the local weather god sat on his golden throne and considered.  How could he show that he was truly the most powerful and jerk-like of them all?  At last he stood.  “If cold weather impressed them, I’ll give them a dose of cold they won’t forget until their children’s children are old and grey.  And even then they’ll have newspaper clippings.  Bwah-ha-ha!”

We broke the record the last two nights.  Last night it got down to 6 below.  Not 6 below freezing, 6 below zero.  The previous night?  -19.  About 50 degrees below the freezing point of water.  Now that’s just ridiculous.  Once the water freezes, the rest is just overkill.

Well done, local weather god.  You truly proved that you’re number 1.

How about a non-Poke today?

I have a boring job, but it has its perks from time to time.  Not that I’m tooting my own tuba, but in the last 6 months I’ve received an award about 7 times (although twice it was 2 in one month).  I mostly care about this because I get to go to the awards lunch and eat vastly better food than the usual cafeteria goop.

This most recent time, however, was even better.  The person who gave me the award didn’t leave her name, but I figured who it likely was.  To verify, I went to the lady’s contact here, who agreed with me.  But then she said that the lady had also left envelopes for several people, and after shuffling through them a couple of times, pulled out one for me.

Every once in a while a group will leave me a small amount of cash, 5 or 10 bucks maybe.  Once I got a bottle of wine and a backpack.  I opened the envelope expecting another 10 bucks or so.  Well, I did see a ten.  But I also saw twenties.  It totaled $90.

Now, I know in the scheme of things 90 bucks isn’t much.  But considering I usually get nothing, and considering I’ve got birthdays and holidays coming up, and considering what it costs these days for marshmallows, I’ll take it.

coping

COPING

it’s such an innocuous word, or at least it’s a word that made sense when i first wrote it, but now not so much…

(cuz when ya say “innocuous” a few times, it sounds funny, and ya don’t know if yer using it right)

(or maybe that’s just me)

(and, we were talking about “coping”, not “innocuous”, anyway)

BOT, if there ever was one…

cuz actually coping? for real?

well, that’s a whole ‘nother story

i ain’t coping so well right now

oh, i try to…and every now and again i convince myself that maybe…just maybe…i’m succeeding*

*that’s just another term for “avoidance”

but i have to be honest with myself, and admit that i’m not

coping so well, with RL, that is

not at all

(cuz the “avoidance” thing only lasts for so long, ya know?)

all i really wanna do is curl up into a little ball, and let life pass me by

and take a nap

a really really long nap

a nap which after, if i wake up, and things are better, then….YAY!

and if not, then…who gives a f*ck, cuz it’ll all be the same, right?

i feel myself heading for a breakdown, and the only question is…

will it be now, or will it be later?

(place your bets now, peoples)

i’m betting that it’s coming…cuz i can feel it…the question is only when

and when i’m locked in the quiet room, will y’all come visit me?!?

me dum dum, part deux

or, me dum dum, too, if you prefer.

on the last nite of a very enjoyable visit with MEH and his family, and also with our younger brother, i screwed up.

i rode with our brother to have supper together on the last nite before we left, and as it was raining when we got there, we made a mad dash for the doorway.

it never occurred to me that my camera was in his car, and it didn’t occur to me till after we got back to our hotel, when i was looking for my phone charger.

which was in my camera bag.

our flight left at 8:00 am, so i had no way to retrieve the camera (or the charger) before we left.

so as i type this, i am awaiting the arrival of the fed ex truck, which will be delivering both to me at some point today.

what a maroon, heh?

An obedient son

I was directed, so I went.  Someone suggested, so I did.  A finger was pointed, so I headed out.  I was told that WordPress is the blog manager to the stars, and I figured, “Hey, I hate celebrities, but I love astronomy, so why not?!”  And here I am.

Do you need me to hold the tissue while you blow your nose?

Working in this office is like being a college nerd, where people pay you to do the work they don’t really feel like doing.  Undesirable tasks get sent straight to me, so they don’t have to do them.  Yep, it’s just like that.  Oh, wait, except I don’t get paid anything extra to do their work.

Laziness rules here.  There is a file anyone can access.  It’s in a shared folder.  This file gets updated all day long.  At night, I’m supposed to e-mail this file to several people.  I thought to myself, “Luke [because I randomly select names to call myself, and besides, I'm a Jedi], why the hell do you need to e-mail this file when they can easily open it themselves? It’s in a shared folder!”  So, before I e-mailed the stupid file, I inquired about whether that was necessary, trying to save myself a few minutes of unnecessary work.  Later, after e-mailing the stupid file, I mumbled and grumbled my way through the rest of the day.

Another annoying task involves going through a lengthy report; picking out certain reservations, checking to see if they were cancelled within a certain amount of time; determining what the penalty (if any) will be, which involves going into individual reservations, reading extended comments and calculating the rate; entering this information into a spreadsheet so that the penalties can be charged; and presenting it to Reservations.  What do they do?  Oh, just the charging part.  Thanks, guys.  I love taking on long, monotonous chores that other people should be doing and getting absolutely zilch for it.  High five!

As you were poked, so shall ye poke

One thing that amazes me is when people start off pretty low in life, manage to succeed through hard work and perseverance, and use their success to make life better for others stuck in the same place they began.  I truly admire that. What amazes me even more is when someone succeeds in life and they end up an overpaid, annoying jerk.

We have in the hotel a professional athlete (as I said, overpaid) who apparently spoke to someone in the hotel to arrange for a limo to pick him up at a casino.  When the limo didn’t show, he called here, swearing profusely, as though the guy who answers the phone (me) has anything to do with whether or not an arranged limo shows up.  I found out later that when I transferred him to the front desk, hoping they might be able to find a record of the limo booking or provide some other option, he continued to swear at the front desk agent, proving himself to be, without a doubt, a jerk.  But just to make sure we knew, he called from his room tonight to order from room service… 5 minutes before closing.  Yes, I know, it wasn’t actually closed yet, but 5 minutes?  Jerk!

I actually see a pattern here of people complaining to–or even yelling or swearing at–totally innocent people, people who have no say whatsoever in what happens behind the scenes.  I also had someone call wanting to make a reservation on the phone.  Problem was, it was 12:30 am, and reservations was closed until 4 am.  Well, she lit into me about how the hotel was “archaic” for not having 24-hour reservations and how we were inconveniencing her because this was the only time she was up.  When I pointed out that we do have online reservations, she retorted that the phone was easier for her, that’s why she wasn’t using the online system.  So I told her she was “archaic” for using the phone instead of the internet, and she exploded into millions of tiny frowning pieces.

Well, OK, I didn’t say that.  Mostly because I’m nice.  But also because I didn’t think of it until later.

This sort of thing makes me wonder if people without a sense of humor can be adversely affected by too many pokes in the eye.  Maybe that athlete lived a tough life, with many a red eye, so now he inflicts his past pain on others.  Maybe that lady had her eye in a sling when she called and decided that what’s good for her is good for everyone else.

Or maybe they’re just jerks.