Til Tuesday

Tuesday nights are fun nights for me. They are the Saturday of my life – normally – if my schedule doesn’t get screwed with. They include sleeping late – waking up with a nice walk down to the coffee shop to pick up a Mocha, followed by a little shopping and an exquisitely homecooked meal by yours truly. The only thing lacking in my Tuesday’s is a BBQ grill for my home cooked meals. My menu is thus extremely limited – but I – being the master of make-do often manage to appease any and all taste buds that desire satisfaction.

That said — with a full belly – Tuesday calls me out of the house – away from the daily drudgery that saturates my soul – and into the airplane hangar that Michael Row calls a garage. There I set up the laptop and microphone – moisten my reed – and blow my horn to my hearts content. I’ll also play a lil keys, some strings — not excelling at any of the above – but performing like a true Keith Lockhart – a utility man if you will. It just feels good. It’s a release of the grease of life that never seems to cease it’s coagulation during the rest of the week.

As time winds down – and the synergy of music and add extra ingredients here remains, there is but little choice to proceed to the bar. I’ve spoken of this bar before. In a sense – it is still virgin territory for me. In another sense – everybody there already knows way too much about me because of this guy. Handsome little shit, no?

Anyhow – It was his birthday this past Tuesday – and the roomie and I decided to walk up to the cantina to celebrate. Other than a bunch of loud rednecks yelling around our table, which inevitably led to mixed feelings of amusement/annoyment — nothing quite like the boobierama was presented to fascinate us.

Still – being the creative fellows we are – Monsieur and I found several interesting things on the walk home to keep our minds from wandering.

Tomorrow should be no different. Except for the fact that I may be jobless.

I could be entering into the world of unemployment by my own volition after today’s shift. We’d had a meeting at the job a coupla weeks ago where I spoke of an upcoming venture into the balmy wang of America to visit the grandparents with my parental units. I was told, even though I didn’t have the dates handy, it wouldn’t be a problem to get the time off. The non-problem, of course, turned out to be a problem – when I didn’t get said dates of departure from the parental units in time to put in a schedule request. The schedule had been made the same day I received those dates – and I noticed that the planned excursion from the 18th thru the 25th was thwarted by three shifts – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In times gone by, those shifts wouldn’t have been a problem – but the restaurant is working with five cooks now – two of whom are also occasional bussers. This made rearranging the schedule impossible. I posted a note asking for the shifts to be picked up, along with an offer to trade out – but at last glance – only half of the double I’d been pegged for on Sunday had been scratched out.

Four years of underemployment may now be dissolved. Four years. So that after this Tuesday – I’ll have no reason to get outta bed at all – until I go to Florida on Thursday.

The past two weeks have been something of a headache. Changes were being made to the schedule with a lack of communication. Management shifts were replaced by cooking shifts — and that double on Sunday was something like a nail in the coffin. Seniority didn’t mean shit anymore. The cooks/bussers were refusing to work doubles on the busiest day of the week – which left me to carry the load. Adding a cook would eliminate the need for those doubles – but that would be too easy.

Yesterday was also an eye opener. A former cook who still comes in from time to time to pick up odd shifts had decided to pick up the busy brunch shift. I watched as the GM bent over backwards to keep this guy happy. It was curious for its peculiar generation on this day. I hadn’t seen behavior like this in many moons.

Still – I am wary of making that leap into the abyss. I hope somehow the remaindered shifts will be scratched out when I show up today – but if anything is painfully obvious – its that my happiness on the job isn’t as important as choice others. I’ve never walked away before without two weeks notice. I don’t wanna do it now — but I don’t see how I could be walking into anything but an improvement.

Classes don’t begin in earnest until the fall – and I want to get back into the swing of academia, if only because I have no other long term plans – and I enjoy the enlightenment.

I can’t wait until Tuesday.