What's going on with me?
After ten months, a promotion!
So, my dad and stepmom’s weekend visit has come and gone. As expected, we spent the days in an orgy of gluttony, moving from one meal to the next. I had some great ice cream, crab cakes, and stuffed French toast. (At three different meals. I’m not a gorger!)
AND, a fabulous thing happened. Saturday we went to my restaurant for lunch. I can make reservations since I work there, so we didn’t have to wait in line for hours like all the tourists do (and yes, they really do this, no matter the weather). As we filed into the elevator like cattle, one of the managers came running around the corner, called my name, held the elevator doors open (seriously, yes, just like in the movies), and said to me, “Go buy your server shirt and apron! I’m moving you up.”
Which means that I have now graduated from server assistant to bona fide server. Which means TONS OF FRIGGIN CASH. I start training tomorrow. I am five training shifts until the tons of cash!
Tomorrow is bingo night. Phallic markers, here I come.
5.16.2006
Just killing time between meals
Well, a week and a half until I move. Thank the sweet baby Jesus! My dad and stepmom are visiting this weekend, which is great. I had asked them to come about a month ago, when all that crappy stuff was going on, and I think this was the earliest weekend that worked for both their and my schedules. It should be nice.
As I said once way back, my stepmom is really ill, and she’s on oxygen, so travelling for them has become sort of a logistical nightmare. All these years they’ve been married, they had a dream to tour around Italy once my dad retired, but now that seems nearly impossible. Whenever she flies anywhere, she has to arrange with the airline to have travel tanks of oxygen waiting at the arrival terminal for her to get back on as soon as the plane lands, and the hotel has to have a big oxygen machine in the room, and so on. It’s insane. Thank god for Medicare, because it turns out that medicine is expensive. I know! You can thank me later for that bit of breaking news.
And THEN (no “and then!") (guess what movie that’s from!), the following weekend, my mom and stepdad are coming for a visit. The very same weekend I move into my new apartment, supposedly. That should be awesome and stress-free, if by awesome and stress-free you mean nightmarish and apocalyptical, because my mom is crazy!
Already, the crazy begins. I left some things behind in their basement in Maryland when I moved down here - things like dishes and crates of books and, um, my bed frame - because I’d have no room/use for them since I was sharing an apartment with others. But since the timing of their visit works out so well, I asked my mom if they could get one of those small u-haul trailers to hitch to the back of my stepdad’s car and bring it down for me.
Well, nothing is easy in my family. My mom called back the next day and was all, “Uh, I asked your stepdad about the hitch idea, and, as I suspected, his answer was a resounding NO. He does NOT want to hitch anything to his bumper. So I’ll just have to ship your things down to you.” Well, this is ridiculous. I don’t even want to imagine how much it would cost to ship dishes and books across the country. Surely it would be more than just re-buying the stupid things.
And as for why my stepdad refuses to hitch the u-haul to his bumper is a mystery. According to my mom, he said: “No! And this discussion is closed!” and then stomped out of the room. And refused to discuss it ever again.
Um…hello? He’s a tool.
So my mom can’t/won’t bring it up again. I don’t understand the big deal about this. Can someone explain it to me? Am I missing something? Do u-haul trailers wreck your bumper or something, and I’ve just never known it? Because he drives a Civic, not a Jag or a BMW or something, so I really don’t see the issue.
But then again, I’m a spoiled rotten only child, so it could totally be me.
5.11.2006
Come to mama, my little Japanese beauty!
I got my car back today! After six weeks of driving a large, Love-Boat-esque American rental, I got my Civic back. I am so pleased. It looks just like before the accident. Nay - better than before, because they also washed it, and I never bothered with that. So, car down, apartment to go. I move into my new studio a week from Saturday, and a week from Saturday cannot come fast enough, because let me tell you, my female roommate is a raving bizznatch.
Also, I forgot to mention this, but I have become addicted to Wednesday night bingo at the local American Legion. Yes, it is true. It is outstanding. A girl friend from work clued me in to this; she’s been into it for years and invited me along. Oh, what a sight it is!
It’s mainly elderly people, but my work friends and I get all hotted-out for it, to pretend it’s an event. You have to buy all these different packs of sheets for the various games. There is something called “coverall” and something called “speedball.” There are special markers you use to mark the numbers. They are very phallically-shaped.
See?
And people have special BAGS in which to carry many of these special MARKERS. I am telling you, it’s a whole subsect of American society, right here.
It is ringed with specially-sized pockets in which to hold your plethora of bingo markers.
And the Legion has a snack bar. The snack bar exists in some weird currency time warp back to the fifties, in that sodas cost 50 cents, sandwiches (made by little old ladies) cost $1.25, and slabs of pie on styrofoam plates cost 75 cents. At the bar, a run and coke that is 99% rum costs $2.50. If you have access to a Legion, they are probably very good places in which to “pre-game.”
And the bingo! Is very fun and also cash is involved. My first night I won $10 (a $100 pot, but 9 others won on the same ball as I). The second week, I didn’t win at all, but I was already hooked so I went back last night. And last night I won an entire game, all to myself! Which meant $50!
Which means that maybe I will consider invensting in my very own marker bag. But only if it is covered in whimsical cats. That was I can use it all my life, even when I am an old cat-hoarding-bingo-playing-spinster-lady.
5.8.2006
Acid green is a perfectly good reason to sign a yearlong commitment
I signed a new lease today, and all it took was some mild, low-level stalking of my new landlord. Bill is a kooky, laissez-faire old dude who drives a pickup and seems to own, like, half the ramshackle apartment buildings of Savannah. I had to leave him two voicemails to get a hold of him, but this does not bother me as far as future interactions with him go. (Possibly because I am stupid, but only time will tell.)
I think he’s just very busy and very big-picture about the whole landlording thing. (I hope I hope.) For example, I asked if my lease can start on the last weekend in May, so that I’ll have a week of overlap with my current house and therefore a week to move things and clean and stuff. He was fine with it and even declined my offer to pay a prorated rent for that week, saying he was just too busy for “teeny details” like that, and wanted to help me out. So, fine.
My new place is a one-bedroom on the west side of town (west side, represent!) (sorry, I am very white, in case you hadn’t guessed). It has off-street parking, so hopefully my car will be safe from the drunk savages I share the city with. It has a huge long front hallway, with a parallel inexplicably huge long closet, plus a teeny bathroom, a good-sized kitchen, hardwood floors, and windows facing the east side of the world. Also it is painted an electric, acid green. (Like this.)
I love this color. At the end of my last term as a painting grad student (sniff) I did a very big painting that incorporated that color (see it at the bottom right?):
This is called Collective Hair at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
And I really liked the color when I put it in the painting, and I ended up really liking the painting in general, so when Bill The Kooky Landlord showed me an apartment in acid green, of course I had to take it.