Tales of a Restaurant Server: Part One

My first ever job was expediting pizzas and busing tables at Chuck E. Cheese's. I eventually moved up on the food chain to host birthday parties for loud children and their sometimes rude parents, and everyone's favorite (though not really), dressing up in the Chuck E. costume and walking around as a giant gray mouse with really awesome shoes. I ended up in the kitchen doing food prep and cooking, which is the area I've worked in ever since.

Until now.

And...I like it. I like going back to serving and being around people and smiling and taking food orders and refilling drinks. That's weird, right? Yeah, probably.

Anyway, tonight was my 4th night training this week, and I got to take some orders and such, and, lucky me, all of the tables whose orders I took were from some other country. I think France, but I can't be totally sure.

See, the thing about the restaurant where I work at now is that we're right next to a hotel, and St. George is actually quite the tourist town since it's right next to Zion National Park and 2 hours from Bryce Canyon. We get a lot of people from out of town, and often out of country. Which I have absolutely no problem with...except that they can barely understand me and I can barely work out what they try to say to me in their guidebook-English-speak.

All in all, it was an interesting night.

Later days.

Song of the Day: "Turnpike Ghost" by Steel Train. Also, Steel Train's latest album is on sale for 3.99 on amazon.com right now, which is insane, because it's probably one of my favorite albums of the year, besides The National's High Violet. And for the record, I like the Tegan & Sara cover of that song about as much as I like Sara's bowl cut. So, not a whole lot.

And just in case you were wondering, "Touch Me Bad" is my favorite song right now.

Today. [Plus Some]

Today, I woke up, went to work, school, home, school, bank, WalMart, Barnes and Noble, school, home, work.

Everything was non-stop. Whenever I sat down to rest, I remembered I had something else to do. I just had a lot of business to take care of, a lot of errands to run, a lot of work to do.

I'm still waiting for my financial aid money. I need to go back to the F.A. office yet again in the morning in order to figure out what's wrong; I've done everything that I was told to do, so where's my money?

Ugh. I'm incredibly tired.

Later days.

Song of the Day: "Love the Way You Lie" by Eminem ft. Rihanna. Such a great song, and a pretty good video to go with it. I can't...stop...listening.

[edit]

I've decided that what I've written previously is not satisfactory. Therefore...more.

Lately I've written about 3 or 4 songs for RTC (Reorganized Trench Coats), and I love them. Unfortunately, I'm not getting a Mac anytime soon, so my hopes of recording with Logic Pro and adding drums and a string orchestra to my music will have to wait until I can start saving for the appropriate materials. So, after Wrockstock.

I'm in the middle of the last season of Bones. I'm still completely in love with it, so that's good. Also, I got all caught up on True Blood, with the exception of the last episode. I need to figure out how to watch Weeds now..

I got to see Erin today for about 5 minutes. She stopped by my work on her way up to BYU. I was glad to see her for even just those few minutes. It's tough to live so far away from my best friends, even if some of them now live in the same state as I do. There's still about 4-6 hours between us, depending on whether we're talking about BYU, The U, Weber State or Utah State.

Speaking of BYU and The U...it's football season again you guys. I don't really watch sports on TV unless it's the World Cup or the Olympics, but I will watch Utah's football games. I'd love to go to another one sometime, it's been 2 years now since I was there last. One year since I was up in Ogden last...hopefully I can pull off a visit in October sometime. I miss that town.

Sometimes I feel grateful that I have ADD. I mean, yeah, I definitely hate it most of the time. It's frustrating beyond anything I can think of. Think. That's the idea, isn't it? I think so much it's incredible. So much. If I had to describe what ADD was like in my mind, I would say that I have so many thoughts going through my head all at once that it's hard to focus on just one thing at a time.

I forget what I'm saying while in the middle of sentences on a daily basis. I tell myself that I have to make a list of things to do because I'll forget to do them...and then I forget to make that list. I can't fall asleep easily/early because my brain is so darn busy doing stuff, even when I'm tired, like now.

When I was a sophomore, my English/History teach told me to write down everything I was thinking in order to sort out my frustrations and gather my thoughts, so to speak. I told her it would be hard, but I'd try.

This entire blog is a product of me writing everything that I'm thinking to the best of my ability.

That's the basis for me doing all of this in the first place. I don't care if you read it or not. I probably wont even ever read it again, I just need to be able to let my mind wander free as best as it can.

Whatever that means.

Now I'm done.

Ha. Okay, song of the day for Wednesday: "ADD S.U.V." by Uffie ft. Pharrell Williams. Also, "Pop the Glock" is probably one of my favorite songs, just so you knoww.

Rage, Rage

Today, I got overly excited about villanelles, mainly because I first got overly excited about Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", which is probably one of my favorite poems. Anyway, the whole reason I even looked the poem up is because that main line, do not go gentle into that good night, popped into my mind for some reason or another, and I had remembered reading it Captain's class*, so I Googled that line to look up the rest of the poem.

Now, if you're keeping up with my life** via twitter and/or tumblr, you would [possibly] know that I'm restoring an electric guitar. I've been trying to decide what I want the body of it to look like, so just today I choose to go ahead and put some text on it. It's going to be dark green with all the metal pieces gold plated (tuners, tremolo, tremolo bar, volume and tone knobs, etc.) and hopefully I can eventually get some gold lipstick pick ups, but they're expensive, so they might have to wait. Anyway, it'll be green, gold, with a tortoise shell color pickguard, and over the green paint on the body, I'll put text in gold. Most likely the last two lines of the poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In other news that's slightly related, I wrote a song concerning this poem and tumblr earlier today. Hopefully I can eventually get it recorded for you guys.

And I think...that's all.

Later days.

Song of the Day: "In The Past I Was An Astronaut" by Yellow Ostrich

Film of the Day: Clueless (1995). I've never seen it and am about to watch it...now.

PS - Weeds started it's 6th season today. I can't watch it, personally, because I don't have Showtime, but if you do...check it out.

*Captain is what everybody called the senior AP English teacher. She's pretty awesome.

**I wouldn't be if it weren't my life, so no worries.

Words Seem Meaningless

I'm writing a new song right now, but I have no idea what the lyrics mean.

This tends to happen often; I simply write the lyrics because they sound good. That's it. No secret tricks to my lyrics. In fact, they're kind of bizarre most of the time because they make no sense.

After writing them, I like to try and find mean behind them, like perhaps create some sort of analogy to my own life if at all possible. But it's usually quite a reach when I do it.

I'm thinking about writing some country songs for a change.

Except not really.

Later days.

Song of the Day: "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode

School Is Near, Thank Goodness.

I've been trying to branch out with my reading. I typically don't read anything but young adult fiction, and I've yet to find many books outside of that genre to convince me otherwise. I enjoyed Rum Diaries by Hunter S. Thomson, but other than that...nothing. So if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know, I'd really like to read about more than just angsty teens for the rest of my life*.

I've been patiently waiting for school to start and it's just about here. Two more weeks. I'm quite excited to start learning again, along with procrastinating and not doing my homework.

...I'm not really sure how I got straight A's last semester.

I've decided to spend those two weeks making things, which is what I should have been doing this entire Summer, really, but have only dedicated a fraction of my time to doing. I've come up with another idea for a 7 piece art project**, I need to come up with a new design for some Foundation of Fair Fortune shirts and make the screens for those, and I'm slowly (but surely) restoring an electric guitar. Also, I started out 2010 in hopes of finishing 40 books that I've never read before, but I'm afraid to say that I'm still only at 15. I need recommedations!! It's kind of odd, but I don't like choosing books to read for myself for this sort of thing. Just one of those things. Though I'm not sure what those things are.

But I digress.

And I think I'm done.

Later days.

Song of the Day: "Dream Catcher" by Unicorn Kid

*Though I really do love it for some reason.

**I did a 5 piece project I called "BElieve" for my drawing final last Spring that involved graffiti. This new one does not.

John Green and The Little Things

My cousin read Paper Towns last week and told me today that it’s the best book he’s ever read. He also said that it was the first book that ever made him laugh out loud.

I gave him Looking For Alaska to read on his drive back home to California tonight, and he was already 40 pages into by the time he left my house, so excited to read another John Green book.

It’s the little things in life like this that make me so incredibly happy.

On a side note, all of my John Green books are currently not in my possession, which is annoying because I had just started re-reading LFA. Now I have to go buy more. Again.

Song of the Day: "Give Chase" by Tegan and Sara. It's actually an unreleased track that you can only hear live versions of, but it's still pretty brilliant.

Thoughts From Today That May Or May Not Be Interesting And/Or Relevant

• I stood on the edge of a cliff that was about 2000 ft. tall
• Germans like to go to Zion
• Lightning ruins everything
• Always check for cactus before climbing up a rock
• It's best to not let squirrels guard your back pack
• My brother talks too much, not that I didn't know that already, it was just emphasized today
• Watching The Lion King at least once a year should be mandatory
• People are so awkward
• I want to move back up to Ogden and go to Weber, but I feel like something inside of me is scared to do so for some reason
• I LOVE taking things apart and looking at their insides, and by things I mean electric guitars
• Nature is so incredibly beautiful it's ridiculous
• I think I want to move to Nashville/Franklin, Tennessee after college if I can get a teaching job there and I haven't gone to Canada yet
• My other choice would be Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Beavers do not climb trees and flamingos can, in fact, fly

Today was a great day.

Later days.

Song of the day: "With Arms Outstretched" by Rilo Kiley

Film of the Day: The Sword In the Stone

I'm Too Young, They're Too Old

I was thinking about doing BEDA again this month after having done it throughout the month of April, but then I remembered I'm taking 19 credits this semester, which starts in the middle of the middle of the month. I felt like I shouldn't try and commit to it.

Anyway, my week has been...interesting. On Sunday, I literally just stayed in my pajamas all day watching Bones and playing guitar. I worked Monday morning, but I ended up never sleeping Sunday night, so just went to work at 6 am extremely exhausted. After work, I got one hour of sleep, watched some more Bones, then went back to work for 4 more hours at 5 pm.

I ended up falling asleep that night at 11, which I don't think I've done for literally years.

On Tuesday, my brother, Andrew, and and my cousin, Karina, and I went to see Karate Kid, which impressed me, to say the least, though the original will always have a special place in heart. We also painted birdhouses and discussed primary colors and shading techniques. Well. I discussed. They kind of listened and asked me art questions, which was fun for me, regardless.

I haven't written a now song for a while, but I think I'm going to try and sit for a bit tomorrow after work and figure out a new tune of some sort. I'm not sure if I want to do wrock or regular...maybe both.

I'm tired. I work again tomorrow. Well, in 3 hours, actually. I should probably attempt to get some sleep, right?

Later days.

Song of the Day: "Hard To Explain" by The Strokes

PS - I'm doing a Blogtv show on Thursday night! I'll play some songs, talk to friends, just kind of chill. Should be fun. Follow my twitter for updates if you feel the need.