*Much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth*

Oh, no more sighs of relief. Nope. Finally found out why all of the loan consolidation people keep calling me. Seems I have not one student loan as I'd though, but 5 more waiting in the wing. Oh huzzah. And I was so thrilled that I was within a few hundred dollars of being done. Now I'm just a few hundred away from being done with one. Bye bye sporty little sebring Convertible.

Oversight.

Oh, tentative sigh of relief. My $200 oversight, once futzed and calculated, and computed, and stared at, and sweated over, and added a thousand times, and prayed, and fretted (can you do both at the same time ... probably CS Lewis would have an excerpt on faith to answer that), and steamed, and stewed. And erased. Now I have four pages afterwords to correct the balance on. Terriffic. But I think it might be fixed. And if not, I'll have to find out where the problem is later...

Happy Freakin' New Years!

I MADE ITTTTTTT!!!!!! Oh my gosh. I had a lady yesterday ask me how I can smile so much, working double full time this holiday. My assesment this morning (as I drove to work 15 minutes late because my alarm didn't go off) was: I'll cry if I don't keep smiling. I have a nervous breakdown walking around the back of my psyche, poking his head in from time to time to see if "now is a good time." Tonight is my last evening at the alisal unless I get called in sunday. And, well, I was only supposed to be working through sunday, but looking at the new, revised schedule -- seems I got put on Monday too. Huzzah for the 7-day, 75 hour work week. Isn't it fabulous!

A wonderful time was had by all last night at the Alisal. Someone had the bright idea to put all sorts of blowers and noisemakers on the tables. Good plan, whomever. So the evening went something like this...."Hi, I'm (HONK), I'll be your cocktail waitress tonight. Can I (HONK)?" "What?" "May I bring you a (HONK)?" "Oh, yes I'd like a (HONK) (HOOOOOOONK) on the rocks with a twist, and a gin (HONK HONK HONK FWEEEEEEEEET) with an olive." "Excuse me, can you repeat that?" "Sure. I'd like a (HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK TOOOT HOOOOOONK)." Um...............I'll have that right back sir. (Whatever the heck he just said.)"

By the end of the evening, tempers were flaring. The room was dividing into two camps. The "I've been coming here for forty years, and its just too noisy, and I pay good money for a relaxing evening" crew. And the "It's freaking New Years and its time to PARTY! crew." About 9 last night the two fronts crashed. One lady had gone around to all the tables around her asking them to shut up, and then told our manager to do something about it. He went to the closest table and got out "Excuse me...." when the rather intoxicated woman looked straight at the other woman and yelled something that rhymes with 'duck fur.' blink. blink. Mike picked his jaw back off the floor. "I've been coming here for 5 years, and it's freaking New Years. So if she doens't want to party she needs to get off the freaking planet! Duck! Fur!" Mike walked back to the complaining table and said, "Well, you heard how that went." I went back to the duck fur table and offered to make her a cappucino. It was too refreshing to have a guest tell another guest what we aren't allowed to: GET A LIFE!

Aside from that, we had several tables who decided to change places for no good reason. One guest, when told he couldn't sit at someone else's table put his bread on the floor. Why? We're not sure. Presumably to complain about the size of the table. Which was exactly the same size as the table he wanted. One table over.

Two tables in the same party kept sending messages to each other by way of the waitors telling the other that they were too noisy. Which of course precipitated several "who can make the most noise" contests with the honkers. Bonnie's table lost. And the adults easily drowned out all 4,384,328 children who were letting out stray honks all evening.