serve it up or i'll serve you a fat lip

for a terrifically tasty tuesday, you've come to the right place. jerrod from the yellow factor was nice enough to compose a little anecdote for me. his tale of well exercised restaurant restraint is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the discussion of customer service becoming more of a theory than a practice. order up and enjoy!



Lana has asked (threatened) me to do a post for her as she is on a vacation (receiving her treatment). Of course I jumped at the chance to ruin everyone's day on someone else's blog. Nothing better than to go to someone else's house and tear stuff up, crap on the floor and just leave. Kind of love her for having that amount of trust in me. Awww. As you can tell, or should know.. I'm a big Lana fan. Not to a point where a piece of paper orders me to stay 500 ft from her, but a fan nonetheless. Anyway, guest post. Here it is.


Don't judge me...

Those that read me know of my troubles with the fast food industry. Recently I was at a certain McPlace and ordered a #12 with a Coke. She said "Was that a #12?" I said "Yes". This as followed by silence............ then I get this question full of attitude : "Um, with a Coke?!?!?" I sat there a good 5 whole seconds trying to gain enough composure to reply with "....Uh huh." You know the attitude of a 19 year old Latina chica with too much eyeliner and greasy hair, right? I pulled up to the window and she gave me my order without looking at me once or saying a word. Not a one word was said. I even said thank you as she shut her little window. I drove off and I swear I felt I had just died a little bit on the inside.


I'm afraid we as a society are digressing to a point that in the near future, the same scenario could happen although after I say thank you at the end, she opens her window back up and punches me in the face. Sign of the times I suppose. Gone are the days of smiling and saying thank you. Gone are the days of inquiring if I needed anything else to make my meal more enjoyable. Gone is the courtesy I should receive when I go back and exchange the Diet Coke I was rudely given with the Coke Classic that I ordered. That's fine. I wasn't acknowledge at all and to top it all off, the everlovin' fries were cold. For that, maybe I should have punched her in the face.

Any bad customer service stories you would like to share? Flood this post with them so not only will it look like Lana is really famous (she is in my eyes), I will look like I didn't just take a crap on her living room floor. See? Win/Win.

Goodnight and good luck.

golden brown looks good on me

these are my favorite flip flops.


now i know that i'm in between pedicures, so you'll have to excuse the nudie toes. b is a big supporter of my bi-monthly pedicures, mostly because he hates toes in general. he was shocked to learn that in no way is toe-hair removal a part of the process. i could share the story about the time he tweezed my toe hair out because they bother him that much, but he made me promise not to ever, ever tell anyone about it.

me, i'm not worried about it so much. i've had a lifetime to look at my toe hair and i'm ok with it.

back to my flip flops. so i wear these brown babies pretty much every day in the summer. sure i have others, but these always manage to find their way to my feet without me even thinking about it. there is one major downside, however.


every night, as i'm lounged out on the couch, limbs all a-splayed in every direction, b will inevitably burn me up for my ridiculous flip flop tan lines. but that's ok, i can take the heat, i love the sun.

b, on the other hand, for those of you who don't know him, is so white that if you were to put him on a beach he'd glow like a brilliant beacon amongst the pale sand and bright wash of sunlight. his skin may or may not be translucent. he gets sunburn through his clothes and shoes. although, when i'm sixty and wrinkly he'll probably be sixty with soft, supple skin, fresh as a baby's behind.

right, so you know what i have to say about all this mocking of my tan lines?


if you'll pretend you don't see the gigantic big toe on the right side there, you can proceed to be impressed with how i can give you the finger with my toe.

i know, i'm so talented.

oh, and also, because he's currently not annoying the shit out of me, here's monster looking all cute:



finis.

lana-uncut, because i heart sally

this is me:


not in the physical sense, but in that weird comparison that people always make about having a good memory. i don't like the simile, but i'm going to go with it because it's the most recognizable, and also because i'm too lazy to start a whole new simile.

basically, i can remember a ridiculous amount of unnecessary details. i'm talking everything about everything that you never cared about remembering. you know that conversation we had about that new band we both liked three years ago? of course you don't. but i remember where we were, how the conversation started, what we had for lunch, and what we were both wearing.

i swear.

it's fucking sick.

even sicker is that i'm nearly thirty years old and i'm just now realizing exactly how unusual this is.

you want to know anything else about me? well, sally does. she said so herself on her blog. (about a week ago. sorry sally, i was in the grips of typhoid/diphtheria/scarlet fever/a really bad tummy ache). i've actually been tagged for this little thingy before by miss yvonne, and i complied by talking about myself and then tagging some other people. what happened was that the people i tagged either burned me up or ignored me. so this time i'm only going to do the talking about myself part, that's really my forte anyway.

so here's where i list ten things about myself that you don't already know:

1. whenever i hear someone say 'you're crazy' i always reply in my head 'i'm only mad north by northwest.'*

2. yesterday i was driving and saw an old hispanic man on a busy street waving a metal detector over the edge of the sidewalk. i thought to myself, 'what in the hell is that guy doing? there can't possibly be any buried treasure there!' and then i realized the metal detector was in fact a weed wacker.

3. i like pickles so much that sometimes b calls me pickley p. pickleberg. oh, and also because i'm a jew and i like pickles.

4. i don't think boxing counts as a real sport. or maybe i'm just disgusted by the brutality of it i can't understand how anyone could be a willing spectator.

5. my birthday season is fast approaching. what are you going to get me?

6. b just downloaded a bunch of the old classic video games onto the wii so last night we were playing bubble bobble at two am. full blown addiction. (the fruits of our previous internet battles with wires and routers and adapters oh my!)

7. i already shared this one with meaty, but i can count to ten in cantonese. my last job had a sushi bar and the sushi guys had so much fun telling me to say six and seven over and over. i finally interrupted their juvenile laughing fits to ask why and learned that the words for six and seven said together meant dick. i then proceeded to laugh like the juvenile that i still am at heart.

8. i don't understand why blogger keeps telling me that my request could not be processed. i wasn't asking you to do anything, stupid google shitass program!

9. i live thirty minutes from the town i grew up in and went to high school in. it's way too close and too far at the same time.

10. i just remembered there's a new flavor of beer in my fridge....


the ever-evolving essence of me will heretofore be on display at this location for as long as i am lazy enough to not sit down and post about anything else. enjoy!


*someone please tell me i'm not the only dork who knows this line.

you wish you were here

welcome to hell on earth. or just my house. whichever you want to call it.

mr. c invited himself over for a gawker's gander at my surroundings, and because we're practically neighbors (live in the same state) i couldn't possibly refuse him a tour. so come on in, if you want, no pressure. oh, and don't mind that smell, monster's ass sometimes emits a fishy odor when he gets nervous.

i guess the best place to start would be my bookshelves, a.k.a. toy storage.


here you can see we have our dear doggie's bed nestled in between the two bookshelves. this is precisely where he will remain for the duration of your visit, as he has a tendency to rip houseguests to shreds for the mere offense of walking through the front door. oh, and the painting above his bed might look a little familiar. it's an original oil piece done by my nana of myself and my brother. there's a freaky anecdote that goes with it, if you're interested.

mr. c is curious about my favorite bookshelf and what books it holds. it's so hard to choose only one favorite shelf when you can find any number of randomly interesting things. for example:



a: the toga iced tea bottle that my friend got for me from the dollar store when we were in eleventh grade (k do you still have yours? i don't think t does.)

b: my servsafe manual that proves i really do know how to make food without transmitting any parasites or bacteria

c: baby touch and feel animals

the technical analysis of financial markets is b's book.

mr. c also wants to know about what dvds are on my favorite shelf. i think i might only own about a dozen dvds so this one won't be too hard to answer. i find that most movies or shows i like are on one of the 800 or so tv channels we get, and if not, can be easily ordered through the cable box. as a result, the dvds that we do own are from at least six years ago and were dated even then. but here are some samples:



moving right along, the next stop on the tour is my favorite cookbooks. which again, i'm going to half answer because although i'm a professional chef, and have a jewish grandmother to unload her cookbook stash on me one piece at a time, i pretty much never use cookbooks. my favorite food books are more reference type. you can see them here:



the herb bible and herbs and spices are both excellent resource guides for almost every herb or spice you can think of. i usually don't have the patience to follow a recipe and often will read cookbooks like you would skim a boring magazine article, just enough to get the idea. although, this method frequently bites me in the ass when i make something i love and then try to make it again and have forgotten whatever it was that i did to make myself love it in the first place.

what's that, all that cookbook talk has made you hungry? well, if you're expecting me to cook dinner you have another thing coming. i usually don't like to cook big meals at home for a couple of reasons. one of them is named modesto, or something else similar, and his absence in my house pretty much means that either we're going out to eat or ordering in. we can go to the lovely mexican spot overlooking the river with killer burritos, or if you're daring, i could order one of those naked chicks to come over and let us eat sushi off her body:



on second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.

ok, so maybe i can throw a few things together. i've been wanting to recreate this seafood ragout that i've seen at work. it's basically some shrimp, scallops, and mussels cooked with rosemary, thyme, white beans, and a saffron tomato broth.

but i'm also a huge fan of duck. so if i were planning a special 'i'm only cooking to impress you' dinner, i'd probably include some duck breasts with a pomegranate sauce.

or maybe a lamb roast with a mint and papaya slaw.

or i could make osso bucco served stew-like style over rice. i can buy the shanks with the bone marrow still inside for an extra treat.

or i could stop rambling already.

yeah, i need a beer too after all that mess.

lucky for you b and i drink beer like it's our job. i tend to prefer an ipa or lager, middle of the road i guess. nothing dark dark like a stout, but not light like that crap that comes in a can that changes color just so the morons who drink it can tell if it's ice-fucking-cold so that their taste buds will be numbed and not notice the obscene lack of flavor.

b's going to pick up a sixer tonight on his way home from work. the beer store down the road keeps dogfish head cold so that's definitely a favorite.

i hope you enjoyed my tour, or at least didn't hate it. and if you did hate it, maybe i'll send my monster after you to convince you how warm and welcoming my home can be.

no gun show today folks

i used to get embarrassed easily, now i just get annoyed and cry.

this morning i had a meltdown in my car. i sat there, annoyed at myself for getting all worked up again. i knew that if i bothered b at work i'd hear 'why can't you pretend you're linda hamilton and you're going to kick some machine ass?! you need to be a little tougher sometimes and not so high-strung.'


instead i called the toyota dealership and cried to the service manager. and now i've come full circle because i'm extremely embarrassed about it.

i don't know about where anyone else lives, but here in the good ol' hudson valley we've had about five straight days of rain. normally, i find the rain to be refreshing, even comforting, as the sound of water drumming the leaves outside my window will often lull me to sleep.

rain takes a turn for the meaner side of irony, however, when your overpriced, gas-guzzling suv has a busted sunroof.

for the past three days i have been battling mother nature to spare the interior of my spacious vehicle. at three am last night i was convinced that my plastic wrap + garbage bag + towel contraption was the most brilliant idea i'd ever had.

and then i saw things in the light (greyness) of day.

i used to love that sunroof. its wide expanse provided me with a fresh, invigorating breeze after spending twelve hours working in a hot kitchen with nothing more than a pair of ceiling vents circulating the recycled air. there was always the issue of the bitchin' rectangle of arm-tan i'd have to work hard to avoid, constantly remembering to wear tank tops for a drive longer than 15 minutes, but aside from that no major complaints.

so now karma is having her fun with me. not only did my ass get sopping wet (through a towel) on the drive to the dealership, but i've been given a death-trap to drive for a week while they exorcise the demons controlling the sunroof positioning. the flashy yaris sport is eerily similar to the smartshitcar that i have bemoaned in the past.

when i installed the infant car seat, i noticed it was wiggling to and fro as if it were on roller skates and the backseat were a slick, polished surface instead of pleathery upholstery. luckily, little miss didn't seem to mind in the least. babies can be so accommodating sometimes.

returning home to find no viable parking and having to lug a twenty pound infant and all of her crap up an enormous hill to my front door was the icing on my day. i gave in and called b, if only to have him keep me from crying again.

he promptly told me that if i wanted a handicapped parking spot right in front of our door he'd be happy to take the yaris and run over my legs, hopefully rendering me a parapalegic and so in need of special treatment. b's always been good at giving me a little perspective on things.

on the plus side, i plan on falling asleep to the sound of the rain tonight.

my long weekend didn't do much for my writing skills

i think google is mad at me. i might have pushed it over the edge when i didn't want to look up the proper meaning of sadist vs. masochist.

google feels threatened that i no longer care about finding out the exact meanings of things and that i can live my life happily ever after with unanswered questions floating around in my head.

you know what google, not everyone needs to search things all the time. so stop letting all that shitty junk mail into my inbox to try and make me pay attention to you, or guess what, i'll boycott your ass. i'll start writing real letters and mailing them to people, through the postal service, to read instead of using blogger. i bet that'll make me really popular, and you'll lose all that potential revenue from the ads on my blog. you know, those little unassuming links in my sidebar that usually talk about bed bugs or chinese thongs (thank god we got rid of that one).

and you know what else, google, if that's even your real name, i'm still kinda mad at you for making me have to be invisible every damn day on gchat. marvin's still stalking me. isn't there a setting somewhere that will let me just be invisible to one person? if not, i suggest you get on that piece because it's getting really old having to go through those two extra steps to open a chat window with b while he's at work.

so guess what i'm going to do now, i'm going to do your job for you, stupid google. i'm going to answer some really important and profound questions that were recently posed to me. because everyone knows that if you post questions on your blog i am obsessively compelled to answer, much like a dictionary with tourette's.

my little becky, who hangs out over at i'll go eat worms, was the latest to test this theory. while we haven't been friends for very long, i can say that her poignant probes into the recesses of my mind are truly astounding. and for that, becky, i made you a special present. and also because you love doggies as much as i do. so before i get to the questions, i want to give you this:



thanks becky, for understanding the ups and downs of being a dog owner, and also for making up your own words all the time. i'll completely understand if you don't like my present, and i may or may not steal it back to put on my blog as well.


and off we go:

13. if you were an animal and you couldn't get that eye goop that gets in your eye corners from everyday living or baby zebra killing would that just totally drive you frickin insane? additionally, would you lick the eyegoop out of your cheetah lovah and cheetah baby's eyes because, you know, appearance may not be everything but eyegoop is juss nast? and would you sit butt to face sistee nine style to flick flys off each other with your tails?

eye goop is quite possibly one of the most disgusting things on this planet. i avoid the ones on monster's face at all costs, and leave them to grow and harden to the size of small pebbles until they either fall off from gravity or b sees them and cleans them for me. so no, i will not in any incarnation have anything ever to do with goop.

14. bonus! what is the name of my favorite freckle?

hairy petunia

15. if you had whiskers would you grow them out or would you keep them at a respectable length? can you tell that i'm watching a nature show while writing questions?

what i am starting to think is that you may have confused me with some other cat loving blogger, because i hate cats and all cat things, including whiskers.

16. don't you hate it when t9 is like being a bastard and keeps putting of instead of me or good instead of home? why can't they fix that?

ok, you definitely have me confused with someone else! how could you, becky?! are all my posts about my smelly dog not enough for you to remember me? i mean, i can see how you might make this mistake, kristine is my friend in real land, outside of blogland, and we do sometimes make cross-references to each other. but since we are in fact separate people, when her kid t9 is being a bastard i really don't give a what because he's not mine and i only see him like once a week.


and that shall now conclude this round of 'questions i answer so i don't have to think of something extraordinarily witty to blog about' for today. i will try to bring the clever/originality sometime soon, but no promises.

this post shouldn't even exist

i wasn't even going to post anything today, yet here i am type, type, typing away. i have a trillion things to do before leaving for work today, not the least of which may or may not include letting monster loose to attack the man who insists on playing with his remote control car right outside my window.

before i do that, i can easily take a few minutes to tell you all about this little gadgety thing i saw on kristine's blog this morning. it's called wordle, and it takes your most commonly used words from your text and makes a cute little arrangement for you. since something new is better than nothing at all, i thought i'd try it. (and no, it's not stealing post ideas if she encouraged people to do it. which, by the way, you should do it too, it's fun.)

here's my compilation: *

(click here to see julius ceasar in full battle regalia, or maybe just a bigger version of my wordle)**

so, i'm not really surprised to see 'really' making such a loud statement in this collage, but i am wondering why 'so' isn't front and center, considering i have a really, really bad habit of starting off sentences with 'so...'.

who knows, maybe the little guys inside my computer who run around picking up words and throwing them back down randomly forgot all about 'so' because it's so little. at least they didn't forget 'assclowns'. that's one of my favorites.

or maybe the little computer guys are obsessed with any word that starts with the letter 'a'. it seems there's a disproportionate amount of a-words in this wordle. they even grabbed the abbreviation a's (for the oakland athletics-worst baseball team name ever). i guess i should take the hint and change up my writing a little bit. there's only so much i can write about appetite addiction or adventurous attention.

i always did have a problem with excessive alliteration.

now that i've sufficiently wasted another seventeen minutes reading up on mr. linky, i think i just need to stop where i am and leave nature to take its course. i wanted to see if i could pull off adding that piece here so that you could all link your wordles to me, but i guess i should have known it wasn't going to happen before i even started. i don't think i'll ever get all that html crap anyway. well, the thought was there, and that should count for something.



*i'm sorry this picture is so small. i have no idea how to make it bigger and now i really need to go get ready or i'll be late and unprepared for work and then i'll get fired and then i'll lose my home and then my kid will starve. fuck you wordle! no really, it is kind of fun, if you can manage to get the right size to show up. any helpful hints?

**if you really wanted to humor me, you can click on the link. i know, i probably wouldn't either, it's ok.