just meh

Haven’t been in a bad mood, just a kinda ‘meh’ mood.  I’m tired of politicians and I’m sick to death of all the extremists that seem to be populating this country.  I’m sick of the media for only pushing the extremist points of view and ignoring the people that actually have their heads screwed on properly.  I’m sick of the way the politicians seem to believe what the media shows and only what the media is showing.  Politicians seem to be an either/or of late.  Either they have no spine or balls the size of China.  Because the media tends to only focus on the nutjobs of the country, these damned politicians seem to only cater to the nutjobs.  Then these nutjobs seem to fuel one another.  They cheer from Texas’s Nutjob in chief proclaims he loses no sleep at night at the thought that he might have allowed an innocent person to be executed, others cheer on the attitude espoused by Ron Paul and insurance (another Texas nutjob).  it just doesn’t give one a whole lot of hope for this nation.  I lost faith in my own state some time back (see nutjob 1 and 2 – not to mention many, many others that the citizens of my state feel deserve their votes).  Nation has been dumbed down and just when you think it can’t even further down the dumbass list, you turn on the news and see that, nope, haven’t hit rock bottom yet.

 

 

Harumph

Several times this week, I’ve had an idea for something to come here and ‘chat’ about.  Of course, the idea always comes to me at work or right after I crawl in bed and I say to myself, I’ll do it when I get home/in the morning.  Of course, when that time rolls around, I can’t for the life of me remember what that most wonderful idea was for anything.  I guess what I need to start doing is sending myself a textmail.  I do this frequently when I’m laying in bed watching something and something comes up that I want to research further.  I’ll grab my phone and send a text to my email so that the next time I am checking my email, it’s there for me and I can investigate whatever it was to satisfy whatever curiosity I have on said subject.

This happens quite frequently as I always fall asleep watching the tele and very often, it’s the history channel I’m watching so I can learn by hypnopedia.  I’m a firm believer in this because of high school.  History was always my best subject (favorite too) yet the teacher I had in the 10th grade was one boring woman.  I had her class at the lunch period.  We had 4 lunch periods; A, B, C, & D.  Our class that year had B lunch.  What that meant was that we went to class for 30 minutes which was just a study hall type thing, went to lunch for 30 minutes, then back to class for an hour.  All my friends had A lunch, so naturally, I skipped that first 30 minutes and ate lunch with my friends.  We had a smoking area and if we were in 10th-12th, we could smoke without parental approval.  9th graders had to have a permission slip.  I would go to the smoking area during our lunch and then go to class, with my ‘I wasn’t feeling good and was in the nurse’s office’ excuse.  I’m sure she didn’t believe me, but, I was always there for the actual hour of class and I had a 98, so she left me alone.  I’m not sure why she left me alone because the actual hour of class, I would open my book, put my head down and take an hour nap.  What’s funny is the guy that sat right in front of me would do the same during that hour and we had the best grades.

This is why I believe hypnopedia is true, well that and all the crazy earworms I get that I’ve figured out come from falling asleep with the tele on and then after the history channel or food network is finished for the night they play those Time-Life music infomercials.  That’s the only way to explain when I wake up with Tom T. Hall songs running through my brain and I haven’t actively listened to Tom T. Hall in more years than I can remember.  Of course, a couple of weeks later, I’ll wake up and that’s the damned infomercial that’s on and the light bulb goes ‘ding’, that’s why I was humming “I love little baby ducks, old pickup trucks, slow moving trains and rain” all freaking day long.  Not that I don’t love the ‘I Love’ song, but I don’t much care for it as an earworm.  It’s a far sight better than ‘Barbie World’ though, so that’s something to be thankful for….

Back to school, etc…

School starts on Monday.  I give it a yay and a nay.

Yay because, the kid gets bored.  Yay because back to school signals the end of summer.  I know, I’m likely in the minority in the world of people that hate summer, but I do, I really do.  Perhaps I’d love summer if I lived somewhere that it is cold during the winter, but I don’t.  This year, my hatred is multiplied by a few 1000.  It’s just been too damned hot.  I like rain and cloudy days.  Those are the days that make me feel like getting out and doing something.  On a hot summer day, I have no desire to move.  I don’t want to eat, don’t want to walk the dog, no desire to go to the store, and the mere thought of climbing into my car when the inside of it is hovering around 140F (60C) makes me want to throw a temper tantrum worthy of a 3 year old.  The fact that we are in a drought just makes it worse.  We don’t have what most people would call winter.  I don’t even own a coat.  I have a light jacket that I wear on a windy day when I’m walking the dog.   Cool air is invigorating and I don’t feel like a sloth, then of course is the added bonus of an electric bill that is only $50-80, not the almost $250 the last 2 have been.

Nay because I don’t like waking up early, especially if I closed the night before.  I like to call myself a vampire cause I come alive at night.  I’ve never been a morning person.  Sure, I might wake up kind of early without an alarm clock, but that’s the great part, no alarm clock.  Being jolted awake by an alarm clock sucks.  When I am closing the restaurant, Sun-Thur we close at 10, I finish about 11 and get home about 11:45.  Fri-Sat we close at 11, so I’m home about 12:45.  I’m not one of those that is able to go right to sleep.  Working in a restaurant gets the adrenaline pumping.  It usually takes me about 2 hours of wind down time before I can go to sleep.   I can be dead tired when I get home, but I won’t start dozing off until between 2-3am.  Once school starts back, I’ll have to wake up no later than 8 so I can make sure the girl is up and ready to go by 8:45.   I function with no problems, it’s just waking up by that alarm clock puts me in a pissy mood to start the day.  I usually get out of that mood within a couple of hours, but it really sucks to start the day in a yucky mood.  This is the last year of 9am start time for school.  Next year, when she goes to high school, they start at 7:30.  YUCK

Today, we headed out to get school supplies.  Those things are not cheap, perhaps I should say, daughter’s taste is not cheap.  Really, even if her tastes were cheap, the supplies, not so much.  $130 today.  That would be great if I didn’t have to get other stuff.  I got the stuff on the 8th grade list, but that’s just the general.  Each class is going to give a list of stuff they need for that class.  Last year, the stuff ran about another $100.  It’ll be more this year because she’s taking Algebra this year and I know there is some special calculator they need for that class.  Didn’t get it today because I don’t know which calculator it is, I have a good idea, but I’m sure that the requirement will be for ‘the latest and greatest’.  What kills me is why do they need a calculator.  Granted, school was a year or two ago for me, but we weren’t allowed to bring a calculator into any type of math class.  We had to use our brains, but these days, the calculator is a requirement.  Uggghhh.

 

Last night at work, one of my employees really pissed me off, to the point of not being able to see straight pissed off.   Once we close, I move my car so that I’m close to the restaurant.  Coming back inside, a couple of customers on the patio wanted to thank me for the great tea, dessert, food, etc.  I stood out there talking to them for about 15 minutes.  They are regulars.  Come in at least 5 times a week because I see them on those 5 days.  I’m not sure which country they are from, but it is somewhere Mid-Eastish.  I say ‘ish because while I have many accents down, I’ve yet to master Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Saudi, UAE, Turkey, Israel, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and the many other countries in that general region.  While I imagine they are Muslim, they could very well be Christian or Jewish or one of any other religions.  All I know is they are nice gentleman, always friendly and polite.   When I get back inside, this employee asks me, so, what did the terrorists want?  This employee is Mexican.  He was born here, but his parents are from Mexico.  Without answering his question, I asked him, so, you gonna try to steal my car or take my purse, I mean, you are Mexican.  He stood there rather shocked until it hit him what I was getting at with my comment.  I then told him there was no place in our restaurant for those attitudes and he had better check it at the door or he was welcome to work elsewhere.  I’m really glad I won’t see him until Monday, this really gives me time to get my pissed offness in check.

Now, the best part of today was going to the farmer’s market.  We got a watermelon that I swear weighs as much as my dog.  I know it doesn’t, but it’s freaking huge and I so cannot WAIT to cut into that bad boy tomorrow when it will be nice and cold.

Really makes you wonder

Sitting out on my patio the other night around 1am (the only time it’s actually bearable of late) and I can hear the ‘frat house’ that lives upstairs on their balcony jabbering to each other.  They are discussing how they don’t like Canadians.  How do you NOT like people from Canada?  Then they move onto Nebraska and how they don’t like people from Nebraska and how it surprises them, but doesn’t surprise them because Nebraska is after all a border state of Canada. WTF!!!!   Next they moved on to discussing how they don’t sound like hicks.  I so wanted to say, ummm, yeah, you do sound like hicks and surprise, surprise, you are hicks, but I kept quiet because while they are more than annoying, it was at least semi-entertaining, if only for a moment.

 

Last night at work, there was a college-aged group in, maybe 12 in total.  One of them came up to order a dessert and he said he wanted something chocolate and asked which of our chocolate cakes is my favorite.  I told him the German chocolate cake.  He said, NO, it’s too Americanized.  I really, really wanted to tell him it’s not something that originated in Germany, but he was slightly drunk, and arguing with a drunk was not in my plans.  How about our chocolate tres leches?  Too Americanized. OHHHHH.  Recipe is our pastry chef’s grandmother’s recipe.  Straight outta Mexico.  He eventually settles on something and before eating it, takes about 15 pictures of it cause “I am a foodie and I have a food blog”.   I thought my eyeballs were going to break off I rolled them so far back in my head.

Strangeness.

It’s the weekend

The great part about that is while I usually observe others enjoy the typical Sat-Sun weekend and have mine sometime between Monday and Friday, I am enjoying the weekend at the same time as everyone else, and I even got a 3 day one.  My days off this week were Friday and Saturday with office work on Sunday.  I was able on Wednesday to get the costing done for all the menu items, new and old.  I’ve been able to get a lot of other stuff done which has put us ahead of schedule and the boss lady wanted to to give me a surprise.  She called me last night before I got off and told me, how about you ‘work from home’ on Sunday.   YAY  Comes at a good time since it’s like a thousand degrees outside.

The heat and drought that we’ve been dealing with is really starting to fry people’s brains.  Lotso crazy at work of late.  Woman paid by credit card the other day and then wanted a refund because her cheese was see through.  WTF,

see through?

Yeah, it has holes in it.

It’s swiss.

I don’t want cheese with holes.

Would you like a different cheese.

No, I want my money back.

Ok, let me credit your card back.

No, I want cash.

Ma’am, we don’t give cash back on credit card purchases.

Why?

All you can do is shake your head after they are gone.  The funny thing, my boss called the woman the very next day and the woman freaked out on her for taking a week to call her back.  When the boss said, no ma’am this was yesterday. She screamed at her and said no it was closer to a month ago.  I swear we have a crazy magnet attached to our building.

Getting closer

Menu change is getting closer and closer to fruition.  Sat down today with the GM and the owner and we went over the changes.  The GM and I have been hoping we would be able to get rid of this one salad, she and I hate it, it’s the owner’s favorite salad, so it’s been an uphill battle.  I guess with the both of us sitting there, telling her how it gets returned all the time and that we had adopted a ‘no questions asked’ on the return of that salad.  Gave her the complaints we have received about it and with both of us telling her what a pain that salad is for us, she couldn’t deny it any longer. YAY

We also get to get rid of the word panini.  I am going to be so thrilled if I never, EVER hear the word ‘but it says panini, where is the panini bread’.  Ughhhhh, I will never have to bite my tongue to keep from saying:

There is no such thing as panini bread.  Panini is the plural of sandwich in Italian.  The way we use the word is completely incorrect as you are not getting multiple sandwiches, you are getting one sandwich.  And further more, a panini does not have to be put on that damned sandwich press, that is not what it means either.

We are also getting rid of the word fusilli in one of our pasta dishes.  I thought everyone knew what fusilli pasta is, apparently not.  As I heard on many occasions, I want that pasta with that fusilli stuff, whatever that is, but can you make sure it doesn’t have that corkscrew pasta in it.

While I’m excited about getting a new menu, I know it means more stupid questions and comments, but hopefully I won’t have another that returns the buffalo burger cause it has meat in it.

ribs…yummm

I teased myself (and the dog) all day with the ribs in the crockpot and they were well worth it.  Made some baked beans and some sour cream/chive mashed potatoes.  I should have taken pictures of the ribs but I never think about that until there is nothing left, then it’s like a ‘damn, did it again’.  Never been much of a picture taker because most of the pics I take suck.  I’m not allowed to take photos at family functions for this reason and videos are most definitely out of the question, people get seasick looking at those.  I don’t have enough of an attention span to hold it on one subject for long and when I move from one subject to the next, it’s really quick, then of course there is the tilting of the head, looking at the sky or the ground.  Then the video ends up having very little in the way of people  and lots of me muttering that of course is ALL picked up.

Once the weather is cooler, I want to make what a friend posted on FB today.  She made meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting.  They looked SO good and quite tasty.  Maybe the kiddo would actually eat some meatloaf if I did it like that. And who knows, maybe I’ll even remember to take a pic.

My weekend, yeah

So it’s Friday for everyone, for me, it’s Saturday.  Grocery shopping done.  Of course it rained while I was in the grocery store, but at least it was finished when it was time to unload them, but I wish it would have waited, I like sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee and watching it rain, especially since I really haven’t seen any real rain since the end of January.  I can count the number of days of rain we have had, including today, on one hand.  Sucks really.  We didn’t have much of a wild flower season and now instead of everything being green, it’s turning a blah brown.  Weather folks got me excited with Tropical Storm Don, thought for sure it would land in between Corpus Christi and Galveston, which would have given us a lot of much needed rain. Instead, it’s coming in south of Corpus.  We will get some rain, but not much.  At least some of the state will get some rain out of it and since the entire state is in a drought, everyone could use it, but the selfish me wants it here.  Enough of that.

While grocery shopping, they had a sale on some country style pork ribs.  Big, fat, thick suckers with some really sweet marbling, you know the kind where one is plenty.   I don’t have a grill cause I don’t like to grill and it’s too hot to turn the stove on, crockpot to the rescue.  Tomorrow morning those bad boys are going in the crockpot with some BBQ sauce.  Can’t wait.  Now to make tater salad or some kind of pasta/macaroni salad.  Not sure which I’m gonna go with, but I’m sure it will hit me soon.

The rain finally comes, while I’m home to enjoy it. YAY. Of course, the dog isn’t thrilled, but I think he’s enjoying his nap just the same.

 

Preparing for a new menu

So we have been in the process of getting ready to roll out a new menu.  It’s exciting and tedious.  The exciting part is of course the testing of new items.  Make it the first time and it’s needs more salt, less salt, more onion, no onion, some of this, some of that, etc.  Once you have decided on the items you want to add, then it’s time to test them on the customers by putting them on special and getting customer feedback.  Then the tedious part begins.  Costing and typing.  Sure, you start out with the basic recipe that gets typed in, but nobody has time to make all the little changes you make along the way.  Now it’s time to finalize all those recipes and get the final cost.

But then, you have a fellow manager who has ‘issues’ to say the least.  Unhappy with your job, move along, easy peasy one would think.  Not for this one.  Instead, she went on a sabotage spree and wiped out the entire database with the standardized recipes plus a few other things.  We had ALL of our recipes typed and thankfully printed.  Now you might think, so, what’s the big deal, type out those 30 (40, 50, whatever) menu items out, except that those 30+ items have recipes within recipes.  Salad dressings, sauces, marinades, rubs, spice blends, and on and on.  So what should take a 70wpm typist a day or so to type, takes a whole lot longer, especially when you are down a manager for a couple of weeks and then training the new one, then vacation time for everyone.

After several months, we are FINALLY at the point of getting ready to send the menu to the printer.   Of course, then you have more fun on the horizon.  Getting the staff familiar with the new menu and then rolling it out and bracing for the customer backlash when their favorite item (the least popular on the previous menu) has been axed.

I’ll be glad when it’s done so I can quit being Typist and get back to being Manager.

 

Howdy ho neighbors

So, I had a blog before and was a good little do-bee, updating it pretty regularly and then I didn’t.   I had been thinking of starting it back, but decided instead to start a new one.   I got all political on the other one and all that did was raise my blood pressure and sense this is going to be more about the crazy things I see and hear in the restaurant, I went somewhere new.

I have to thank the Dixie Peach for the idea to start up again.

Most of the stuff I write about will be my wondering how some people get from point A to point B in one piece and without wreaking havoc in their wake.

A couple of days ago, a woman came in to the restaurant and ordered our goat cheese salad and asked:

Does it have any cheese on it.  

Yes, it has goat cheese.

The menu lists the lettuce, tomato, other vegetables, and dressing but it doesn’t mention cheese.  

Ummm, the name of the salad is the Goat Cheese Salad.

OHHHHH. Well, if you are sure it has cheese.

I have a difficult time biting my tongue at times as it really isn’t my nature to bite my tongue, mainly because it hurts.  Close family and friends know not to ask me the ‘do I look fat in this dress’ type questions unless of course you really want to know what I think.