Even After All Of This Time

My stress often manifests itself into a Restaurant Dream! Or should I say nightmare. Rarely is it a specific restaurant but rather an amalgamation of several restaurants I worked in over the years. I realize halfway through the dream and then say to myself, 'Wait a minute, I don't work here anymore. This a dream. I wonder what's bugging me?' That usually ends the dream sequence.

I couldn't tell you what's stressing me out in particular right now: returning to work after the break, money, job related stress, or just life. I can tell you that last night, in my dreams I agreed to pick up an extra shift at a restaurant. They needed help with the hosting for the night. I then proceeded to spend the rest of the dream regretting my decision, and trying to piece together an appropriate uniform for my upcoming shift. My clothes were too wrinkled. I was afraid I'd forgotten how to use the POS system. Was it going to be a busy shift? I couldn't find the right shirt. I couldn't remember what time I'd agreed to show up for work. I was dreading bumping into the boss. All of these little stresses started to take over before I realized I'm dreaming. Then I wondered why I always dream about the restaurants.

Surprise Day Trip

Last Wednesday, the 24th, was our 3rd year wedding anniversary! (Cue The Applause) I wracked my brain trying to come up with a cute present idea, or a romantic present idea, or even just a good present idea. I was looking for DVD's I knew she liked - yes, I know that's not very romantic. Maybe jewelry? Dinner out? An origami unicorn? What to do what to do?

Today we're heading out for a mini vacation; a little day trip that I planned? We'll see what the wife thinks of it. I'll update this post when we get back.

7 Hours Later - We're Back From the Frederick Wine Trail!

That's right I surprised my wife with a trip up to Frederick, Md, to visit a few local vineyards for a day of wine-tasting and fun! I 'inadvertently' misled her with some misplaced clues, and misspoken hints and when we headed out on Route 70 West she had no idea where we were heading. When she finally saw a sign for the vineyards and figured it out she was very excited.

1st we stopped at a small vineyard, Elk Run, for a tasting and just to get the lie of the land. It was a cute little farm house set up and we eased into the day. We enjoyed a nice glass of Cabernet Franc and sat outside in the cold for a bit.


Then we drove to the Black Ankle Vineyard, just a few miles away, and arrived just in time to join a tour of the small operation. We saw the barreling room, saw some dormant vines, and even chatted up the owner of the vineyard. Next we had a tasting in their straw hut, enjoyed some local monacy ash cheese, and a wonderful Syrah by the fireplace.
All in all, it was a successful adventure. I surprised my wife with an impromptu day trip to Maryland's wine country. We enjoyed some nice wine and local snacks before heading back east to have appetizers and soup at one of Sara's favorite Columbia restaurants, Leelynn's. Now we're home enjoying a bottle of wine purchased on said trip, snuggling on the couch and basking in the glow of a wonderful day!

I Am Thankful!

I spent the day overeating with family, watching a few football games, and taking several naps! This is what the pilgrims had in mind all along. Happy Turkey Day!

Gobble Gobble

Sara took the day to try prepare her father's roast beef recipe. This is a dish that she grew up eating every Sunday at her grandparents' house and then for many years afterwards when her father would cook. We cannot visit MN without her father setting aside a day to cook roast beef, and Sara always goes bonkers when dinner is served. Our house smells, apparently, just like Sara's childhood and it is amazing.

We also have less than a week until Thanksgiving! (Sara's favorite holiday.) This year we've decided to celebrate down in North Beach, at my parents' house. We're going to have a little potluck style dinner. Sara and I will go down Wednesday night so we are there to help set up, and cook a few items on Thursday. Then we'll stay Thursday night and help clean up. This will also give us time to digest our food, go back for turkey sandwiches later in the evening and relax on the bay!

Now if only the 3 remaining work days this week would fly by as quickly as they can then we could get onto the turkey!

I Can't Do It!

A few years back I finally read Moby Dick. (Here's what I thought about it!) It took me 5 attempts to get through the book! I know it's a classic and everything but Melville is boring! You don't even see the whale until page 576!

I've recently tried to get into Melville's The Confidence Man. I can't do it! His writing is too... I don't know what! It's hard to follow, he writes run on sentences, and then compounds them with too much detail! I explained it to Sara that I feel as if I am reading a foreign language half the time. I'll read a page and then realize I have no idea what has happened.

Here's an example:

"As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men of pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters; heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch, Danes; Santa Fé traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters; Quakers in full drab, and United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto, quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews; Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotalers and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists and clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests. In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man."


Actually, the above paragraph, from Chapter 2, was one of the passages I enjoyed from the less than 5 chapters I read before throwing in the towel. I don't know if I'll feel the need to come back and try again later, but for now I'm saying no to this classic. Melville is not my friend!

Feeling My Age

When I think about it really hard it comes to me that perhaps the last time I went to a live Capitals' Hockey game was back in the old Capital Center! Now, after a little bit of research it turns out that the Capital Center, became the USAir Arena in 1993, then the US Airways Arena, before taking back the original name, The Capital Center, and then closing in 1997. I think the last time I went to a Capitals' game was before any of the name changes, and before I graduated high school which, oddly enough, occurred at the Capital Center. (At the time all of Prince George's High Schools used the Center for their graduations.) So it has been awhile since seeing the Capitals play live hockey.

This Thursday a coworker of mine handed me 4 tickets to a NHL Game: The Washington Capitals vs The Tampa Bay Lightning! I was excited. I went to the game with an odd assortment of my friends, old and new, and got ready to Rock The Red! We had Amazing Seats! It was an Amazing Game! We won 6-3, Semin got a hat trick, and I rediscovered my enjoyment of live ice hockey - sometimes I have a hard time following it on TV. Let's Go Caps!

Fast forward one afternoon and I go out for a quick bite to eat after work with some friends. I bring along the ticket stubs from Thursday's hockey game because they entitle us to free wings since the Caps scored over 5 goals. We order a few beers and the waitress asks to see identification. We all reach for our wallets and she turns to me and says, 'Oh, not you. You're fine.'

Ouch!

That stung a little. Actually, it was okay but then my coworkers, two really nice guys who happen to be over a decade younger than me start busting my balls about being old. It happens from time to time. A song will come on the radio when we're driving to work and I'll comment on how it reminds me of high school or college and they'll reveal that they were in elementary school when the song was popular. It's happened on numerous occasions.

Anyway, we enjoy a fun meal, pay the bill with the free wings cleared from the check, and head on our way. The host asks, 'How was everything?' I then make the mistake of telling the guy that this particular restaurant, located in my hometown, was the sight of one of my first jobs. Back then it was a Bob's Big Boys and I hosted there my Senior Year of high school. The restaurant then became a Shoney's and I waited tables there before heading off to college. The host gave me a queer look and tells me that this restaurant's been there for years, and before that it was a Boston Market. The host even suggest that I might be mistaken. I tell him that it was back in the early 90s when I worked there and the little jack ass laughs and says, 'Oh, well I wasn't even born until 91 so no wonder I don't remember that.'

So, in summation - I enjoy Capitals' Hockey, even though I hadn't seen them live since before they moved to the Verizon Center, and changed their color scheme twice. I had a good time hanging out with my friends at the game, and then again at a restaurant on Friday night even though 2 of the eatery's employees gave me the verbal equivalent of a quick kick to the nuts, and I might be realizing that the mid 30's are a little surprising to suddenly find myself in... I'm 35. Wow.

I Was Surprised...

Between handfuls of Cheetos and sips of Apple Cider he says to me, "I wish I was born years ago. Then I could've played a Nintendo NES, or a Sega Genesis. I would've played those old platform video games with really cool music. Then I would've stayed up all night long trying to beat a game because back then you couldn't save your progress like you can now."

It made me chuckle. He also said that he didn't get why cell phones were, "...all the rage". It's refreshing to see an 11 year old who isn't quite satisfied or obsessed with the latest greatest technology and the instant gratification of today's society. I used to stay up all night trying to beat "those old platform games with really cool music" and somedays I miss those adventures.

Yay October!

I love this time of year. It's not just autumn, it's October. The nights are cooler and the days can still be pleasant. Halloween's approaching, and I like to watch as many scary movies as I possibly can during the month. Movies like H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, The Crow: City of Angel, The Haunting in Connecticut, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, The Wolfman (Original), Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, Dead Snow, Jeepers Creepers, Frankenstein (Original), The Crazies, Final Destination, Paranormal Activity, The Wolfman, and Candy Man, to name a few.

I guess I should say horror movies because not all of the above films were actually scary. Dead Snow was an amazingly entertaining foreign nazi zombie flick. H.H. Holmes was a documentary about America's 1st documented serial killer. Paranormal Activity sucked! (I hear the sequel's supposed to be good but the 1st one was a snore.) We have 2 more nights for horror films, although I don't restrict my horror film watching to only October it definitely is concentrated during these 31 days.

Tonight we're invited to a few different parties, we have to finalize our costume ideas, carve a pumpkin, and figure out when were going to go and see the niece & nephew's Halloween outfits, if we can. We should also probably clean up the apartment a little, on this wonderful October day.

A New Look/A New Attitude?

So I decided to update my look a little here on the blog. Why? I don't know really. Maybe I'm bored. Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe I need to try something small in hopes of sparking some kind of creative spark!

What does that mean?

Lately I've sunken into a funk, I think it would be safe to say. I am not actively writing/developing any of my creative projects. I have been turning down prospective theatrical productions because I don't really feel motivated to make such a time-consuming commitment. I am choosing to stay home, mope around the apartment and be antisocial in many instances. I am consumed by an overwhelming feeling of pessimism, and self doubt. That is not who I am.

Well, okay, I've always been a bit of a negative person but it was amusing. I was creative in my naysaying. The title of this blog is all about my ability to laugh at the negative things in life, to mock the aspects of life that I take grievances with... but in a fun, hopefully entertaining way. Lately it has not been a productive trait of my personality.

It exhausting being this much of a bummer day in and day out. I shoot down ideas left and right. I already have an answer as to why certain resolutions are doomed to fail. I claim to be unaffected by certain goings on in my life but then bottle up the anger and resentment. I am always stressed out - about money, about debt, about my commute, about my future, about my family, about my lack of progress through this footrace we call life. I hate always feeling sorry for myself.

I am confused daily by the turn of events that have led me to my present. The decisions that I have made, and the obstacles that have arisen in the last few years hover around my head, and constantly buzz in my ear. I was going to be an actor. I was going to be a writer. I was going to be a teacher. I was going to have some stability. It turns out that I have unfinished manuscripts, unpaid bills, a blog and just as many questions as ever.

So I decided to change the appearance of my blog. It's a baby step but one hopefully taken in the right direction. I'm still not going to audition for productions that I am not interested in, but hopefully I will be more open to being approached by interested parties. Hopefully I will get of my butt, dust off some of my manuscripts and start sending them out again. Ideally, I will not let my life be defined by the +3 hours a day I spend sitting in traffic to get to my low-paying job or the hemorrhaging banks accounts, both of which could be cured by mysteriously winning the lottery one day.

In the meantime, I will work on slowly bettering my attitude. The motif of books you see in the background here is something that makes me smile. I love to read. I love books. I love the endless possibilities represented by an unopened book. Hopefully, this will help to inspire me in in these uninspiring times.

Douchebaggery!

1st let me say that in my time I have, admittedly, probably been less than cordial to many people in my lifetime. It would also be fair to say that I have been known to act obnoxious or indecent on occasion. I've also wronged many people in various and numerous ways that I am not proud of BUT I am pretty certain that I would not be classifiable as a Douchebag. (Maybe I'm wrong.)

I do find that these days I am quick to anger at people I perceive as Douchbags! Whether they be deadbeat fathers, reality television 'celebrities', or even just your everyday joe schmoes yelling at the bank worker because the door scratched their arm on the way out I am instantly annoyed. I grit my teeth, and fight my rising blood pressure. It's funny. Why should it bother me so much.

I should develop a tougher skin. 'It's only fantasy football... I guess it's fine if you want to act like a douchebag.' 'Of course you should make Douchbag profile updates on your facebook page. I understand that you're delusional about your talent level, stage presence, and/or performances. Oh, and did I mention it's community theatre?' 'It's completely fine if you want to drive on the shoulder of the Beltway to the next exit because you can't be bothered to wait in the traffic jam caused by a fatal car accident with all of the rest of us working stiffs. That's not Douchey at all!'

Or maybe it is! Maybe you shouldn't! Maybe you should just up and die, Douchebags!

PS. A truck carrying a tank of water crashes, head on, with a truck carrying a tank of vinegar! ->DOUCHE<-