Work

Toughing out the last eight hours...

I hate this shift. There's not a soul here. It's warm, quiet, and I have a new book in front of me (that was supposed to be saved for my trip tomorrow, but is being utilized now...). Everyone has gone home. The guests are in their rooms. The phone has mercifully stopped ringing....I'm getting sleepy.

I'm having difficulty with my attitude. I don't want to be here. I should be home packing and cleaning, and leaving lengthy notes to my cat sitter. Instead I'm just sitting....

Quiet

Lonely..and peaceful.

Reading the fictional history of Jessie Fremont...wife of an explorer (now, although he became quite famous later). She was quite a woman. Independent, but not radical. Emotional, but clear thinking. Intelligent and well educated, but not overly aggressive.... Determined in pre-civil war Washington DC that a marriage should be an equal partnership. Each contributing to the other. The woman not relegated to the domestic sphere, but standing shoulder to shoulder with her husband. Supporting, helping, guiding...no small feat in that day and age....I'm impressed so far.

New favorite quote from the book....John Fremont comes back from a six month expedition to his nine month pregnant wife.

"I'm sorry I'm so bumpy, darling. It would be nice to be ravishingly beautiful for your return."

"If you hadn't been so ravishigly beautiful before I left, you wouldn't be so bumpy now."

I hate this shift. I'll enjoy the money when I return in a few weeks, but right now I'd rather be doing anything. Travelling already. Something....

A Woman in a lonely Home
Hearing like a sad refrain
Be faithful, love and love will come
In the gentle falling rain.

Packing...

The Art of Packing...

I realized tonight that packing for this trip is going to be very difficult. Partly because my wardrobe for the last six months has equaled roughly two suits and one uniform.

Partly because I've moved to Texas and California for the last five years and have no cold-weather clothes.

And mostly because I threw away my suitcases....My parents will wonder why I proceeded to throw away perfectly good suitcases. My answer would be that my suitcases were at best, temperamental. One had a clever trick of rolling onto one side whenever it had the notion. Especially when on a cross walk in front of a bus. The pop up handle only 'popped' when the bag was happily stationary. The zipper, we'll call him Bob, took a pair of pliers and a pep talk to close. To open, one had only to look cross-eyed. Or perhaps had a few pairs of scandalous underwear that you didn't want airport security pawing through. (Do I even own scandalous underwear? Isn't underwear scandalous by very nature?)

He spent several weeks sleeping in a corner after we moved here. Then he hibernated in the closet. The cat adopted him as a bed for a while, then he spent a while at the foot of Andrea's bed. Finally it was decided that my suitcase had seen enough of the world, and needed to find retirement. Which he did. The last I saw of my suitcase, and Bob the incorrigable zipper, they were reclining together near the People Helping People truck. Happily jaunting off to new adventures.

clothes

Huzzah and Hooray! Jerah cleaned out the lost and found today, that hasn't been cleaned since she started working here months ago. I got a silk scarf, and a pair of brown leather cashmere lined gloves. Luckily I have the smallest hands of anyone working here....except maybe Catherine, but I got here first! HA! I needed some brown gloves..I have black ones...but one musn't mix colors....

Work

I'm almost done. Two more shifts. That's it. Two. I had last night off and didn't quite know what to do with myself. So I put a couple of loads of laundry in the wash, and copied a poem into my journal...filled out my "read the bible in a year" plan into my day runner. I love my dayrunner. It's way too much fun to be organised. Huzzah. Of course the next four weeks are pretty much a waste of paper... (January 8th. sleep. January 9th. do nothing. January 10th. watch tv and take nap.).....Which reminds me. I also need to book flights for my Waco side of the trip. Whenever that happens...I can't wait to get on that train tuesday. Forget turndown service. Sleeping as soon as I get on board...so take the bunk off the wall and lets get the napping started. With 'convenient reading lamps and power outlets.' If Drea and I plan ahead we can watch DVDs on board too. And eat in the dining car!

Highlights of last evening

Highlights of last night...

Last night I was supposed to have the night off. I had just gotten home from work, changed into my yoga outfit, and crawled underneath the covers for a well deserved nap when work called. They needed me to come in that evening. So, I groaned and rolled over...slept for a few hours and then dragged myself in. It's taking longer and longer every day to wake up. Even with EmergenC's and Pepsi.

We're all so tired. All the servers are fed up with people, and food, and attitudes, and grumpiness. On the plus side, that makes for some great moments when the servers politely tell the customers where to get off...

Some of my favorites...

At table 1..."Can I bring you a winelist?"
(To the others dining) "I don't need a winelist. There's only one chardonnay on there."
"Would you like Hawkcrest or Rusack?"
"Oh. Well. Hawkcrest."

With a gentleman at the bar...with an empty glass in front of him.
"Bring me a martini this time. And make sure that bartended doesn't make it. Doesn't know what a Long Island Iced tea is supposed to be. This last one was terrible."
(Picking up his empty glass) "Which bartender do you want to make your drink?"
"That one there. The one on the left."
Walking to the bartender on the left..."I need a martini, and I need 'the-one-on-the-left' to make it." The one on the right was the only one free, so he made it while I blocked him from view, and 'the-one-on-the-left' handed it to me when he was done.
(Taking it back to the customer) "Yes..That's what a drink is supposed to taste like. Make sure he makes all my drinks." Pretention is funnier when you know they're oblivious...

And speaking of Things-to-the-left...Some ladies ordered a very expensive bottle of wine. I grabbed the one next to it when I shimmied up the wine cabinet. Brought it back to their table for inspection and tasting.
"Here you are Gladys. You'll love this stuff. It's so much better than the stuff we drink at home!.....Yes, it's just perfect. You can really tell the difference!"
Half an hour later they realised that I had brought them, literally, a bottle of the 'stuff they drink at home.' Luckily they weren't mad, but I have to get every bottle of wine checked out by a manager before I deliver it....on principle.....And my boss scraped a label off a bottle of Stags Leap and pasted it to a white zinfandel as a joke, labeling it "Kunze Reserve." It will have a place of honor in my future wine storage....Trophy of the endless ribbing I'm getting......

More wine pretention.... "Miss, could you bring me another glass of syrah and try to prevent this from happening (referring to sediment in the bottom)....she poured a glass from the same bottle...and walked away muttering "What do you want me to to? Decant your glass?"

And then there were the bartenders... Who didn't want us helping in the bar during the reception, though it was hosted, and didn't need us in the room, but still expected us to pick up the bar glasses afterwards....they are perfectly capable of picking up a tray, I think. Lazy bums!

And then, the crowning moment of the night...from one of the servers....

"Rachel, table five needs a bottle of Qupe Syrah."
"Which one?"
"Table Five."
"I mean, which bottle of Qupe."
"The one on the winelist."
"There are two reserves of Qupe Syrah on the winelist, which type did they want. We have one, and we're out of the other."
(Throwing the ticket in my face) "I don't have time for this. You go figure it out."
I was FUMING! If the servers don't know enough to take the orders, they have no business doing it. Especially when there are three cocktail waitresses on that evening, who DO know what they're doing.

*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.

Financial Mishaps

OH OH OH OH! So, now I know why I'm supposed to use the little worksheet to balance my checkbook. I've been very conscientious for the past six months. Trying to be responsible for a change and all that. Every few days I check my online statement to make sure I haven't forgotten to write down any ATM charges. I go through my checkbook every other week to see what checks are still out in la la land. But I hadn't gone through with the little book.

So now I have my fabulous ledger, and I'm basically transcribing all of my accounts into it. First, I found a $20 addition error in the bank's favor. Darn it.

Now I have a bigger snafu, that's taken me three hours to figure out what I did exactly. It seems that I took out a $100 cash back that I didn't write down about two months ago. Then for the crowning achievement, I saw some "shopping" money that I'd actually paid cash for....at the time I'm sure it made sense to put in that missing hundred dollars as shopping. Well, I found it when I was perusing my checkbook a month later, and said to myself, "I paid cash for that! Free money" So I credit myself that money. So, for those that followed that and realised the ramifications...I'm now officially $200 in the hole once everything goes through. Crap. At least, for a change, I am aware of the problem before the overdraft kicks in, and 2, (also for a change) I have money in savings to cover the money I've now spent. Twice. Drat.

Oh so tired.

Gave an 35 minute concert last night in the "lounge" (sounds nicer than 'bar' doesn't it?). I've never had so many encores. Six, I think. And then several groups wanted to buy me a drink. I forgot I'd been too busy singing to eat anything. Blech....only two fruity little things and I'm rather.....unwell...this morning. Blech. Blech. Blech. Reminds me why I don't do that very often. Blargh....stupid stupid stupid. It was fun singing though. I forget, sometimes, how much I love doing it. And it is nice to have people clustered around telling you how wonderful you are. Liking that! If only we had cuter uniforms. And some makeup...by midnight I was a little bit flushed and shiny! I prefer to perform looking cool as a cucumber....and slightly aloof....or something. So I sang, and handed out my cards, and enjoyed being fawned, instead of run over.