Or... What Happens After You Commit Career Suicide
Well I did it. Finally. After well over a year of debating, fighting with myself, making excuses and generally being too afraid to just make a fucking decision already I made the fucking decision already.
I quit.
Tomorrow is actually my last day full time with the place I have gotten a steady paycheck from for over 11 years.
Hang on. I want to say that again. Tomorrow is my last full-time day with my job of 11 years. Just saying it makes me feel freer.
It wasnt an easy decision. Obviously. I cant imagine it is ever easy to decide to walk away from the security of the known and into the vast unknown for me or anyone else, but I have been forcing myself to do this job that I really do not like or want to do anymore for at least the last 18 months. I had foolishly hoped that I would just get over it or that I could just keep doing it while I waited for The Thing. Well, I didnt get over it. So instead I gave notice and am leaving to go make The Thing happen.
So the last 3 weeks have been peppered with "where are you going?" "what are you going to do?" "what restaurant are you going to next?" "did you & bossman have a blow out?". Nope, nothing even remotely that interesting, really. I reached my limit with my entire existence being dictated by the stupidity (mostly not deliberate, for the record) of others, being the go-to sounding and venting (read: bitching) board for 40 plus people and the general chaos that is the day-to-day operations of 5 restaurants and a commissary kitchen. Add all of that on top of working for a very...challenging/frustrating/pigheaded/illogical/would trip over a dollar to pick up a penny...man and thats a metric fuck ton of unhappy. On the surface I manage all of that well - I think in a lot of cases I make it look easy - but the reality is it saps your will to live a lot of days and when those days far outnumber the ones that you go home with a smile on your face thats a problem. The kind of problem that puts you in a major funk in every aspect of your life, saps any creative energy you ever had and just generally made me into a person that I didnt know or want to know ~ and Im sure those closest to me probably feel/felt about the same. Its pretty amazing how just 1 fucked up facet of life can knock everything else so far out of balance.
Where am I going...I dont really know exactly yet. I have agreed to help out Bossman with some transition stuff in a consultants role until the end of January to help my people. Some folks think this is insane and that I should just cut the chord. I hear that, really do, but I cant. And I cant not for Bossman, but for my employees that I am leaving behind. They will need a bit of guidance. Its the least I can do for a staff that has busted their asses for me for so long - I would no more leave them hanging like that then I would jump off a bridge and expect to fly.
I dont really have a terribly specific plan at the moment. I have a general idea & the feeling that I am doing the right thing on every level, and I dont really need more than that, well outside of the support of my other half, which I 150% have. My next Thing will evolve as everything in my career has thus far - as it is intended to.
All things considered this is the closest I have felt to being me in a couple of years. Its going to take me a month or so, if not longer, to get old work out of my system and reprogram my head to make what I want my first priority as opposed to whats best for my work. Its a process that I am hugely looking forward to, truth be told. I also cant wait to get into my own kitchen again, feel passionately about what I do for the first time in a loooong time and to let my life be dictated by my own stupidity as opposed to that of those around me.
Free. As of tomorrow at 5pm for the first time in over a decade I will be FREE.
And it feels FUCKING INCREDIBLE.
Totally Unrelated: WE GOT A NEW PUPPY! My next post will be pics of lil Buster Badass. Hes too cute for words!!!
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
The bitch is back!!
Hot damn its been a while since Ive come to tend my little piece of the internets! Its been a busy busy busy couple months (as always) and Ive thought of a bazillion things that I wanted to blog about but just have just not taken the time to actually sit and write them out once I get home from work.
So this post is going to be a "random" post in a way because I have a goal here I want to share~
So this post is going to be a "random" post in a way because I have a goal here I want to share~
- The primary reason that I havent posted for a bit was because I was feeling a bit exposed. I have unleashed my store managers on the Twitters because I couldn't keep up with the comings and goings that were necessary for the 5 of them. My Twitter account is public (because I kind of feel like what is the point of twittering if you are going to privatize your account - if you are that worried about what you have to say then maybe you shouldnt be saying it) and it is my personal account - so the views, opinions and thoughts expressed here and there are MINE and mine alone. I make it a point to not mention anything specific about my place of work or my coworkers & employees here or there and always have. Well it took them all about 2 weeks, but the Pittsburgh beer scene is a close knit one but they found me so instead of blocking and hiding I just let it go and they follow me. This is good and bad. But bottom line is I shouldnt let it effect me saying & doing what I want to do on my personal blog or twitter account. I think I can safely assume that all of my peoples get that there is the Me they work for and the Me that exists outside of that realm and though they both live in the same body they are very different people. Well that and I swear to all thats holy that if they are reading this and decide to turn my blog or twitter into any kind of gossipy bullshit with ANY of my employees or coworkers that there will be extreme hell to pay (If youre reading this guys you have been fairly warned...ok). I do NOT invade their personal lives and doing that to me would be an excessive invasion of my personal life...but after much consideration I dont think they will. I work with some pretty awesome people and they are all grown ups...so I am going to roll the dice and see what happens.
- I think Im really done smoking. Been pondering this a lot of late and I feel like its time. I had this AH HA! moment a couple weeks ago. Im a smart person. I have a good job, I pay my bills, I am a good person, I possess the ability to make all kinds of good decisions large and small all day every day. And yet at least 10-15 times a day I CHOOSE to put something in my mouth, light it on fire and inhale the smoke full on KNOWING that it will kill me. I wouldnt step in front of a bus 15 times a day. I wouldnt play Russian Roulette with a double barrel shot gun 15 times a day. I wouldnt jump off a roof 15 times a day. But I will smoke 15 cigarettes a day. Took me 17 years but yeah...thats fucking stupid. So there are 2 left in my current pack. I am not buying or bumming (see how I sealed up that loop hole right there) anymore of them after these last 2. I also am going to do this cold turkey even though the general consensus is that may be a bad idea. Through all this thinking and pondering I have also come to this conclusion - my smoking is a choice. Yes...there are things that make them addictive, yes there are chemical receptors in my brain that are going to be PISSED for a couple weeks, yes I might be more bitchy & aggressive than I normally am (sorry in advance) but fuck it. I am NOT going to spend a couple hundred dollars a month to make it easier for me to quit. I am not a weak person and there has not been one thing outside of this that I havent been able to accomplish in my life once I have set my mind to it and this is no different. I am not going to stop giving my money to Big Tobacco only to give it to Big Pharmaceutical. Fuck ya both...Im gonna buy a flat screen or a new Mac!!
- Related: I am going to blog my quitting. I am promising myself I will post at least once a day until I have kicked the habit and have realigned my routines accordingly. I genuinely enjoy blogging, it gets a lot of things that get trapped in my head out for me to look at and I want to do more with my little space on the internets. I like being able to read my thoughts with some objectivity...which is hard to do when wrapped up in your own head.
- Sarah Palin. I am pretty sure I have launched off about her before, but I read an article today that really pissed me off. Michelle Obama has made it her initiative to help curb and control childhood obesity. I dont give a flying fuck how you feel about her politics - but this IS a huge problem. I dont have kids - but I know kids and shes right. They spend far too much time sitting on their asses in front of monitors & TVs than is good for them shoveling shit they really shouldnt be eating into their faces. I walked around for trick or treating with my nephews and my sister had her husband go home and get the car because HER 9 YEAR OLD COULDNT WALK ALL THE WAY HOME BECAUSE HE GETS TOO TIRED. Hes 9. Are you fucking kidding me?!?!? I wanted to hit her and make him run laps. Through this entire conversation he is rooting through his bag looking for more reeses. Sheesh. Her kids also dont eat vegetables. They eat garbage. She eats garbage. Maybe if they learned about healthy eating in school it would help. Maybe it would inspire then to try different foods. I full on blame my sister for the poor eating habits of her kids...but maybe healthier school lunches & better budgets for those programs would help all kids. Its possible. It definitely cant hurt. But Mrs Palin launched off about Mrs Obama's program saying it is the government's attempt to tell us how to eat and control our diets. She was down right obnoxious about it, ill informed and just plain wrong. I wont even link to the story - I cant bring myself to contribute in any way to more people hearing what she has to say. The School Lunch Program and its supporters are not trying to control our diets, they are attempting to educate kids and families to make better choices for their overall health and if that woman is too dumb to see that WHY DOES ANYONE GIVE HER THE TIME OF DAY?!? I dont get it. It scares me...sincerely scares me...that she may make a run for President in 2012 and there are a large amount of vocal people who insist she will win. Please. No. Just No. She is terrifyingly stupid. Believe what ever political ethos youd like - hell! be a tea partier for all I give a shit - but see her for the vapid & ignorant woman she is and make her go away. Her and her entire family. Oh...and take Glenn Beck with 'em - hes just an asshole no matter what you believe.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
I already know I perpetrated a Stupid.
And yes...it was a Stupid with a capital "S".
So Monday night/Tuesday morning. I am sleeping, as I should be at 3am. Cell phone rings (we dont keep a house phone & it has to be on because I am the first call for the security company for all of our buildings - you SO want my job now, dontcha?!?) and its our security company telling me that a motion detector has been tripped on the second floor of the restaurant closest to my house. Fine. Am I happy about this ~ fuck no. Did I lay there and pout for 10 minutes or so ~ hell yes. But I eventually got up, found clothes, pulled the hair into a ponytail and head to the store to see what stupid fucking Oktoberfest decoration set of the stupid fucking alarm that I am getting up at 3am to go check out. Because every damn call I have to go on is something dumb like that, but I still have to go. I did ask them to send the cops out, but I ask them that most times and have yet to actually see one.
I get there around 3:30. I drive the lot & walk the perimeter, I dont notice anything alarming. I go inside and in my best Paul Rudd Wet Hot American Summer impression I start to check the building. I hit all the lights, look for anything out of place, stomp around a bit and dont find anything out of whack that would have set off the alarm. I am confused by this. I believe I said so out loud while standing in the second floor dining room tired & out of sorts. Yes, I talk to myself, dont judge. I do a very perfunctory look in the upstairs bathrooms, hit the lights, go back to main floor, walk the basement (fucking CREEPY when its NOT the middle of the night for the record) check all the doors, still see nothing odd, hit all the lights, reset the alarm and go home. Cranky. I was home a smidgen before 4am.
At 4:10am my phone rings AGAIN. Its the security company AGAIN. Telling me the upstairs motion detector went off AGAIN. This time I tell this way-too-fucking-happy-to-be-calling-me-at-4am-woman to silence the alarm, send the cops and ignore that sensor...something must be wrong with it and I will deal with it in the morning. She says fine, whats your passcode, enjoy the rest of your evening blahblahblah. I go back to sleep.
At 5:07am the phone rings. Guess who it is this time? If you took the security company you WIN!!! I got bitchy. Something to the effect of "which part of ignore that goddamn sensor did you NOT get when I told you an hour ago?!?!?" to which the pleasant lady replied "well we are, for the upstairs, but this time its the bar & side door. In that order." Hmmmmm. This is odd. Unless the whole system shit the bed. Which would also be odd. So I have to go back in and check it out. I tried the boss first because he is usually up at 5am...but he didnt answer my text & I didnt want to call.
So I go back. And this time I go over that place for about an hour trying to figure out WTF is setting off the alarm. I find a bottle of tripel sec & a screw driver on the floor behind the bar that wasnt there at 3am. I dont like that, its just not right & no reasonable way for them to get there outside of our building's ghost - which is not out of the question. I finished up around 6am. Didnt rearm the building because the opening manager was due in in about half an hour, came home and emailed the boss to 1) tell him what had been happening all night and 2) tell him my ass wouldnt be in until later because I needed some fucking sleep and then go back to bed. Where I promptly passed out.
Woke up at 10am and the boss texted me that yeah, someone had in fact attempted to break in but was unsuccessful. They had smashed in a window under the deck and tried to gain access by removing the hinges from a door. They failed because the doors wont open that way...
Him telling me this weirded me out. They could have been under the deck while I was there. Wasnt freaked out, just a tad unsettled.
Well after I go back in daylight and start piecing together all of the stuff the Boss found and what I found and doing some Sherlock Holmes work me & my General Manager are convinced that there was definitely SOMEONE in the building last night. Had to be. Boss is unconvinced. We ask him to come down so we can show him what we found that has us so sure. We show him, he is skeptical. We push harder, he believes.
So this is what happened after it was all figured out. At some point after the closers left at 1:30am someone broke in under the deck. They busted 2 screwdrivers and destroyed the door hinges in their FAIL to get in. When this didnt work they tried to pry open a door on our deck & on the side of the building - both new doors and also a fail. They then used our hood duct work and the deck railing to get onto a roof that gives access to the 2nd floor windows and came in through said window, setting off the alarm at 3am. I can only assume they were on the 2nd floor while I was at 3:30am hiding somewhere I didnt find them. *shudder*
They attempted to leave a little after 4am, setting off the alarm again because I had reset it while I was there. But this time I didnt go out, I just had them silence it so as not to bug our neighbors and went back to bed. But Im guessing they hid again waiting for me to come back or the cops to arrive. Either way they stopped moving.
At 5am they moved again, only this time down the service steps, into the kitchen and behind the bar...where they attempted to clean sweep a liquor shelf quickly, dropping the screw driver they brought up from under the deck, knocking over the tripel sec and a bottle of tequila we found behind a piece of equipment. They grabbed partial bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Well Bourbon, Grenadine (LOLZ), Seagrams VO & SoCo. Less than $40 worth of liquor, really, it was just the closest to the door and the alarm was blaring at this point. They dropped the grenadine outside by the side door, where boss found it in the morning.
I arrived about 10 minutes after the alarm went off. I probably missed their exit by a couple minutes.
Fucked up, huh? Things I figured out: 1) Not going to go into a building on an alarm call without a cop no matter the circumstances ever again. I was naive to just assume it was something dumb setting off the alarm. 2) I am amazingly lucky. I could have been very seriously hurt if I had come across this person on my first trip in had I accidentally confronted them while I was there. *shudder* and 3) I really really really miss my big lab, Diamond, that passed last February. I usually took him with me on calls because he was the Protector & would have let me know that I wasnt alone in that building at 3:30am.
We finished Tuesday night at The ScareHouse for the Crazy Scary event that was a fantabulous fundraiser & one hell of a good time that raised almost $6300 for Christmas Crazy & Make Room for Kids which is awesome.
And I have decided the only kind of scary I want to experience for awhile is of the Haunted House/Scary Movie variety. No more creeping on thieves by myself in the middle of the night. Promise.
So Monday night/Tuesday morning. I am sleeping, as I should be at 3am. Cell phone rings (we dont keep a house phone & it has to be on because I am the first call for the security company for all of our buildings - you SO want my job now, dontcha?!?) and its our security company telling me that a motion detector has been tripped on the second floor of the restaurant closest to my house. Fine. Am I happy about this ~ fuck no. Did I lay there and pout for 10 minutes or so ~ hell yes. But I eventually got up, found clothes, pulled the hair into a ponytail and head to the store to see what stupid fucking Oktoberfest decoration set of the stupid fucking alarm that I am getting up at 3am to go check out. Because every damn call I have to go on is something dumb like that, but I still have to go. I did ask them to send the cops out, but I ask them that most times and have yet to actually see one.
I get there around 3:30. I drive the lot & walk the perimeter, I dont notice anything alarming. I go inside and in my best Paul Rudd Wet Hot American Summer impression I start to check the building. I hit all the lights, look for anything out of place, stomp around a bit and dont find anything out of whack that would have set off the alarm. I am confused by this. I believe I said so out loud while standing in the second floor dining room tired & out of sorts. Yes, I talk to myself, dont judge. I do a very perfunctory look in the upstairs bathrooms, hit the lights, go back to main floor, walk the basement (fucking CREEPY when its NOT the middle of the night for the record) check all the doors, still see nothing odd, hit all the lights, reset the alarm and go home. Cranky. I was home a smidgen before 4am.
At 4:10am my phone rings AGAIN. Its the security company AGAIN. Telling me the upstairs motion detector went off AGAIN. This time I tell this way-too-fucking-happy-to-be-calling-me-at-4am-woman to silence the alarm, send the cops and ignore that sensor...something must be wrong with it and I will deal with it in the morning. She says fine, whats your passcode, enjoy the rest of your evening blahblahblah. I go back to sleep.
At 5:07am the phone rings. Guess who it is this time? If you took the security company you WIN!!! I got bitchy. Something to the effect of "which part of ignore that goddamn sensor did you NOT get when I told you an hour ago?!?!?" to which the pleasant lady replied "well we are, for the upstairs, but this time its the bar & side door. In that order." Hmmmmm. This is odd. Unless the whole system shit the bed. Which would also be odd. So I have to go back in and check it out. I tried the boss first because he is usually up at 5am...but he didnt answer my text & I didnt want to call.
So I go back. And this time I go over that place for about an hour trying to figure out WTF is setting off the alarm. I find a bottle of tripel sec & a screw driver on the floor behind the bar that wasnt there at 3am. I dont like that, its just not right & no reasonable way for them to get there outside of our building's ghost - which is not out of the question. I finished up around 6am. Didnt rearm the building because the opening manager was due in in about half an hour, came home and emailed the boss to 1) tell him what had been happening all night and 2) tell him my ass wouldnt be in until later because I needed some fucking sleep and then go back to bed. Where I promptly passed out.
Woke up at 10am and the boss texted me that yeah, someone had in fact attempted to break in but was unsuccessful. They had smashed in a window under the deck and tried to gain access by removing the hinges from a door. They failed because the doors wont open that way...
Him telling me this weirded me out. They could have been under the deck while I was there. Wasnt freaked out, just a tad unsettled.
Well after I go back in daylight and start piecing together all of the stuff the Boss found and what I found and doing some Sherlock Holmes work me & my General Manager are convinced that there was definitely SOMEONE in the building last night. Had to be. Boss is unconvinced. We ask him to come down so we can show him what we found that has us so sure. We show him, he is skeptical. We push harder, he believes.
So this is what happened after it was all figured out. At some point after the closers left at 1:30am someone broke in under the deck. They busted 2 screwdrivers and destroyed the door hinges in their FAIL to get in. When this didnt work they tried to pry open a door on our deck & on the side of the building - both new doors and also a fail. They then used our hood duct work and the deck railing to get onto a roof that gives access to the 2nd floor windows and came in through said window, setting off the alarm at 3am. I can only assume they were on the 2nd floor while I was at 3:30am hiding somewhere I didnt find them. *shudder*
They attempted to leave a little after 4am, setting off the alarm again because I had reset it while I was there. But this time I didnt go out, I just had them silence it so as not to bug our neighbors and went back to bed. But Im guessing they hid again waiting for me to come back or the cops to arrive. Either way they stopped moving.
At 5am they moved again, only this time down the service steps, into the kitchen and behind the bar...where they attempted to clean sweep a liquor shelf quickly, dropping the screw driver they brought up from under the deck, knocking over the tripel sec and a bottle of tequila we found behind a piece of equipment. They grabbed partial bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Well Bourbon, Grenadine (LOLZ), Seagrams VO & SoCo. Less than $40 worth of liquor, really, it was just the closest to the door and the alarm was blaring at this point. They dropped the grenadine outside by the side door, where boss found it in the morning.
I arrived about 10 minutes after the alarm went off. I probably missed their exit by a couple minutes.
Fucked up, huh? Things I figured out: 1) Not going to go into a building on an alarm call without a cop no matter the circumstances ever again. I was naive to just assume it was something dumb setting off the alarm. 2) I am amazingly lucky. I could have been very seriously hurt if I had come across this person on my first trip in had I accidentally confronted them while I was there. *shudder* and 3) I really really really miss my big lab, Diamond, that passed last February. I usually took him with me on calls because he was the Protector & would have let me know that I wasnt alone in that building at 3:30am.
We finished Tuesday night at The ScareHouse for the Crazy Scary event that was a fantabulous fundraiser & one hell of a good time that raised almost $6300 for Christmas Crazy & Make Room for Kids which is awesome.
And I have decided the only kind of scary I want to experience for awhile is of the Haunted House/Scary Movie variety. No more creeping on thieves by myself in the middle of the night. Promise.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Well HELLO there!!! What a week, or maybe more...
The new restaurant is open. The test services went well, the opening went better than expected. Its been ugly at times...like throw yourself off a friggin bridge ugly through some of the lunch services, and most of the staff is solid, some are not...but that'll all work itself out i the next couple weeks, the criticism backlash has not begun yet, WIN! Overall I'm liking the store, I'm digging the crew and I'm feeling pretty positive. Not to say we havent had some hurdles throughout the week.....like a manager going MIA, having to replace 3 others on the fly, a huge event or 2 coming up in 3 weeks at another store. Oiy. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.....right?!? Lets hope so anyway...
But I did not come here to talk about work...I came here because something Mister said to me the other night and the way he said has been lingering in my melon...so I wanna let it out.
Since leaving The Wizard Mister has been holding down a bar/serving gig he really doesnt particularly care for, but its money. The idea was for him to do that while he found something else. He kind of stumbled upon an upstart opportunity as a brewer that on the surface looked promising and intriguing. Long story short I dont believe it is. And we have gone back & forth about it a few times, I still just see FAIL written all over this thing. His argument is that its experience. Mine is experience at what cost if you & your name are tied to a failure. They want to put him under contract and the terms were just absurd, they have not at this point been able to show him any kind of sales forecasts or estimated revenues and I just generally believe the people doing this are completely in over their head and not in a way that will end in anything positive. I generally have a pretty good gut about these kinds of things too. But regardless we were talking about this some more because another opportunity came up back in good ol restaurant management and we were adding that option and blah blah blah we came back around to what WE want to be when we grow up....
We and another friend of ours want to open a brewpub. Adding this friend into the mix makes the 3 of us pretty much a brewpub all-star team if I do say so myself. With Mister brewing, me cooking and B running the bar...its the perfect combo, proven at that. And we may have someone interested in financing us as well. Very preliminary, very very, but we have to start somewhere, right? But the potential for this chance over shadows this FAIL brewery idea. At least to me it does anyway...
Which brought us around to the "experience" aspect of this whole dilemma...my suggestion was to tell them he would test batch their beers at $XXX per batch, outline exactly what they would be getting for their money, when he got the beer as they wanted it he would finalize the recipe and sell it to the for $XXXX or something to that effect. I'm NOT saying to completely ditch them, I AM saying do not hop into bed with them...just make out with them in the parking lot. His counter was blah blah blah commercial brewing experience- but its being contract brewed elsewhere, so I fail to see the relevance of that argument. Then I think I really heard him for the first time. In not so many words what he was basically saying was he was intimidated by the idea of working with beer on such a huge scale. Like not the product, the equipment.
So wait...he can make fantabulous beers 5 gallons at a time. And the process doesnt change with the increase in volume...like the principals stay the same, its just a matter of having to do some different things with different equipment but all of this equipment comes with bazillions of manuals and shit like that. So I didnt understand the problem, this, to me, seems a minor inconvenience, but far from an insurmountable one. Pretty minor actually. So I broke it down a little different...I know how to make a gallon of marinara, which in turn means I can make 5 gallons of marinara pretty easily, which also means I can make 5000 gallons of it given a large enough pot and the ability to figure out how to get it hot and cool it all down. And he looks at me and says I'm an asshole.
I'm an asshole? Why am I an asshole? I'm just pointing out that as intelligent human beings it cant be all that difficult to learn what is necessary to large scale produce beer. No harder than me learning how to use full scale production equipment at my production kitchen...I had no clue what half that shit was or how to use it, now I do because I learned. With this incredulous look on his face he calls me an asshole again, laughing mind you, and then says something to the effect of "is there anything you think you cant do?!?!? If someone said Mindy build a fucking rocket youd just build a fucking rocket and I have no doubt youd make that fucker fly one way or another!" and I was all like well, yeah?!? I still didnt get it until he said something about my confidence and how if I want to do something I just do it and keep doing it until I figure it out and get good at it, and then I was all like aaaaaaahhhh *DING*. So to me what seemed a minor inconvenience but not really an issue was apparently a larger hurdle for him, and to hear it somewhat trivialized like that was helpful to him...I think, I hope.
I cant even imagine the awesome that would be our bar. I really cant. And that makes it even better. Of course there are a bazillion things to talk about & figure out but none of them insurmountable, all of it important and every bit of it exciting. But this is the idea that feels right, so we shall see where it goes...it would be my effing dream job!! And I think the bit of perspective I lent to Mister also helped him realize that he's just as capable as me and can learn how to do what he needs to to have his dream job...win win win! Now if only I had a magic damn wand to bibbity bobbety boo us to when its all real life & not a cloudy mass of undefined ideas.
Moral of the story - sometimes even a HUSBAND can say something brilliant....when more drunk than sober....and when horribly annoyed with his persistent wife ;-)
The new restaurant is open. The test services went well, the opening went better than expected. Its been ugly at times...like throw yourself off a friggin bridge ugly through some of the lunch services, and most of the staff is solid, some are not...but that'll all work itself out i the next couple weeks, the criticism backlash has not begun yet, WIN! Overall I'm liking the store, I'm digging the crew and I'm feeling pretty positive. Not to say we havent had some hurdles throughout the week.....like a manager going MIA, having to replace 3 others on the fly, a huge event or 2 coming up in 3 weeks at another store. Oiy. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.....right?!? Lets hope so anyway...
But I did not come here to talk about work...I came here because something Mister said to me the other night and the way he said has been lingering in my melon...so I wanna let it out.
Since leaving The Wizard Mister has been holding down a bar/serving gig he really doesnt particularly care for, but its money. The idea was for him to do that while he found something else. He kind of stumbled upon an upstart opportunity as a brewer that on the surface looked promising and intriguing. Long story short I dont believe it is. And we have gone back & forth about it a few times, I still just see FAIL written all over this thing. His argument is that its experience. Mine is experience at what cost if you & your name are tied to a failure. They want to put him under contract and the terms were just absurd, they have not at this point been able to show him any kind of sales forecasts or estimated revenues and I just generally believe the people doing this are completely in over their head and not in a way that will end in anything positive. I generally have a pretty good gut about these kinds of things too. But regardless we were talking about this some more because another opportunity came up back in good ol restaurant management and we were adding that option and blah blah blah we came back around to what WE want to be when we grow up....
We and another friend of ours want to open a brewpub. Adding this friend into the mix makes the 3 of us pretty much a brewpub all-star team if I do say so myself. With Mister brewing, me cooking and B running the bar...its the perfect combo, proven at that. And we may have someone interested in financing us as well. Very preliminary, very very, but we have to start somewhere, right? But the potential for this chance over shadows this FAIL brewery idea. At least to me it does anyway...
Which brought us around to the "experience" aspect of this whole dilemma...my suggestion was to tell them he would test batch their beers at $XXX per batch, outline exactly what they would be getting for their money, when he got the beer as they wanted it he would finalize the recipe and sell it to the for $XXXX or something to that effect. I'm NOT saying to completely ditch them, I AM saying do not hop into bed with them...just make out with them in the parking lot. His counter was blah blah blah commercial brewing experience- but its being contract brewed elsewhere, so I fail to see the relevance of that argument. Then I think I really heard him for the first time. In not so many words what he was basically saying was he was intimidated by the idea of working with beer on such a huge scale. Like not the product, the equipment.
So wait...he can make fantabulous beers 5 gallons at a time. And the process doesnt change with the increase in volume...like the principals stay the same, its just a matter of having to do some different things with different equipment but all of this equipment comes with bazillions of manuals and shit like that. So I didnt understand the problem, this, to me, seems a minor inconvenience, but far from an insurmountable one. Pretty minor actually. So I broke it down a little different...I know how to make a gallon of marinara, which in turn means I can make 5 gallons of marinara pretty easily, which also means I can make 5000 gallons of it given a large enough pot and the ability to figure out how to get it hot and cool it all down. And he looks at me and says I'm an asshole.
I'm an asshole? Why am I an asshole? I'm just pointing out that as intelligent human beings it cant be all that difficult to learn what is necessary to large scale produce beer. No harder than me learning how to use full scale production equipment at my production kitchen...I had no clue what half that shit was or how to use it, now I do because I learned. With this incredulous look on his face he calls me an asshole again, laughing mind you, and then says something to the effect of "is there anything you think you cant do?!?!? If someone said Mindy build a fucking rocket youd just build a fucking rocket and I have no doubt youd make that fucker fly one way or another!" and I was all like well, yeah?!? I still didnt get it until he said something about my confidence and how if I want to do something I just do it and keep doing it until I figure it out and get good at it, and then I was all like aaaaaaahhhh *DING*. So to me what seemed a minor inconvenience but not really an issue was apparently a larger hurdle for him, and to hear it somewhat trivialized like that was helpful to him...I think, I hope.
I cant even imagine the awesome that would be our bar. I really cant. And that makes it even better. Of course there are a bazillion things to talk about & figure out but none of them insurmountable, all of it important and every bit of it exciting. But this is the idea that feels right, so we shall see where it goes...it would be my effing dream job!! And I think the bit of perspective I lent to Mister also helped him realize that he's just as capable as me and can learn how to do what he needs to to have his dream job...win win win! Now if only I had a magic damn wand to bibbity bobbety boo us to when its all real life & not a cloudy mass of undefined ideas.
Moral of the story - sometimes even a HUSBAND can say something brilliant....when more drunk than sober....and when horribly annoyed with his persistent wife ;-)
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
My Current Whereabouts ;-)
So I really should be working on menus for the mock service in 48 hours...but I'll get there eventually. Its been awhile and after a truly shitty day I had an epically awesome day and wanted to share.
I'm in the midst of opening a new restaurant. Its not mine by money, but it is by job title. I'll be fair - I'm loving this. This is the part of what I do that I dig. There are parts of it that blow goats, and parts that are an adrenaline rush and parts that put me in a blind rage...and I LOVE it. I am constantly moving, I am organizing, overseeing, bossing around, training and dealing with it all. And I am good at it. Very good at if I may say so myself, and I think if you asked anyone who has done it with me they would agree. I dont freak out, if I am unhappy you know why and exactly what must be done to fix it, its the only place in this world that I can juggle (i can barely walk & chew gum at the same time in real life) but there I can juggle a gazillion things. Ask anyone who has ever been in charge of a restaurant opening...there is nothing like it. There are so many things that must be perfectly conducted with so many people the stress is unreal...but in my opinion healthy stress to a point in that its see a problem solve a problem stress. Either way I love it. So as miserable as I have been over the last year and as far behind as I am falling with the other 4 restaurants at the moment and the bullshit HR shit awaiting me at the end of this opening I love it now, and thats enough for me.
So about 2 weeks ago the boss handed me the reigns. It was my turn to do my thing. Hence I haven't been around a whole lot. Through the course of every project there is the first month or so that is his. Its his job to get it built. He has to provide me a space...and I am very involved in the development of the space - it just do it via the walk into a meeting and say "yeah I dont like that, move it over there and give me one more fryer, that isnt enough burner space and that oven is ridiculous. Get me this oven, add this over here and move that to that wall to make this flow better." along with gems like "thats hideous and there is no way we are using that fabric on booths" & "well I can understand why you would think that is a good idea but as the human responsible for making that happen i disagree and think we should....." and with an amazing designer he builds me a space. About 3 weeks out he starts to back off and let me turn it into a restaurant. He gets to keep playing with the contractors & builders, I have to get the staff, stuff & rest of it all together. I handle everything but the bar menus. And we are 48 hours from our first Mock service....KAPOW!!! We haz a restaurant!
And I'm excited. The Wizard let me go a direction with the menu that I didnt think he would. Its not a complete departure from our menus, but it is definitely a departure. I opened up the vegetarian & vegan options a lot which I think is great, I cut back the boring pizza menu & dressed it up, I took traditional yinzer salads & made them more yinzer-chic with some less traditional options and changed our more normal meat/starch/veg entrees for a more tapas style-small plate with the majority of it being chef driven and rotated out often with fresh, seasonal, local items. The menu is markedly smaller than any of the other restaurants and tends toward a more foodie feel while still maintaining our core. I couldnt believe he took the first draft and said great...fix some formatting issues for me and we are good. I was prepared to have to work for this drastic of a change; The Wizard is nothing if not stuck in his ways generally. But he liked it. And didnt make me do much tweaking to it at all. Stunned. Still. And the damn things are printing as I type. I think we are going to knock his socks off. And I cant fucking wait. He did the same thing with some of the smaller pieces of equipment. Whatever I wanted I was allowed to get. Granted I didnt take severe advantage...but I got a ton of really nice pots & pans and a few toys for the kitchen that make me happy. I almost wish this kitchen was mine. Almost.
We start our first service Friday at 2pm. We are having 4 invitation only mock-service seatings on Friday & Saturday, we are closed Sunday and open for business Monday at 11am. 98% of everything will be perfect (Frigging cable company is refusing to do the install until next week. Thanks Comcast...way to make it easy to do business) and we will be about 10 weeks from demolition to opening the doors. I am sure Ill take some pics, or have the Mister anyway, over the weekend. The place is beautiful. It takes the best features of our last 2 stores and combines them in a beautiful space. With but 1 exception. And anyone who follows me on twitter knows about the fucking chairs. We are going to have a lounge area in the front and these hideous pink floral apolstered ugly ass chairs appeared there that are a part of this furniture grouping. Im unhappy with just about every piece of furniture in that area. There is this awesomely tacky 70s gold couch that is so awful its fabulous...but everything else is total garbage. I had my tantrum about it. I blatantly called it all ugly and just ridiculous. I plead my case. I got mad...I laughed at him. Didnt matter. I know when to stop, so I agreed on a compromise. We would revisit the area in 6 months. Hes afraid we are going to need it for additional tables, I disagree. If it is going to stay a lounge we pick out some new pieces, if its needed as tables we get the tables. That was the only compromise I was going to get...so I took it. I apologize to everyone who has to look at this furniture...but it really wasnt my fault.
Ill prob post some pics after the dinners. I'm nervous...its always nerve racking for me to make a new menu and have to deal with the feedback. I've eaten it, I know if it is good or not...but its still trying on the self assurance those first few nights out of the gate. I think my KM is going to be a bundle of nerves, I think hes going to freak out a little...I can fix that. I think my GM & AGM are also going to loose it a bit, but they'll snap back, they both will just be reminded that what we are doing is the easy part...running restaurants is what we do, and I picked them to do it because they are good at it. All the getting ready shit is the hard part...and then they'll remember and we will trudge through the questions & confusion. Honestly cant wait...this is the pay off for all the work...seeing it all work the way it is supposed to.
Oh what a crazy trip the last month has been...but its almost here.
We also have one hell of a garden rolling at the moment....Im gonna have to remember to post some pics of that too. We haz a broccoli!!! And tomatoes, brussel sprouts, peppers, basil, lettuces, asparagus, garlic, shallots, potatoes, cauliflower, a bunch of herbs....its a very happy garden!
Hope you all have a great weekend...Ill be hollering myself hoarse & loving every minute of it I hope in a busy restaurant kitchen! Woot!!
I'm in the midst of opening a new restaurant. Its not mine by money, but it is by job title. I'll be fair - I'm loving this. This is the part of what I do that I dig. There are parts of it that blow goats, and parts that are an adrenaline rush and parts that put me in a blind rage...and I LOVE it. I am constantly moving, I am organizing, overseeing, bossing around, training and dealing with it all. And I am good at it. Very good at if I may say so myself, and I think if you asked anyone who has done it with me they would agree. I dont freak out, if I am unhappy you know why and exactly what must be done to fix it, its the only place in this world that I can juggle (i can barely walk & chew gum at the same time in real life) but there I can juggle a gazillion things. Ask anyone who has ever been in charge of a restaurant opening...there is nothing like it. There are so many things that must be perfectly conducted with so many people the stress is unreal...but in my opinion healthy stress to a point in that its see a problem solve a problem stress. Either way I love it. So as miserable as I have been over the last year and as far behind as I am falling with the other 4 restaurants at the moment and the bullshit HR shit awaiting me at the end of this opening I love it now, and thats enough for me.
So about 2 weeks ago the boss handed me the reigns. It was my turn to do my thing. Hence I haven't been around a whole lot. Through the course of every project there is the first month or so that is his. Its his job to get it built. He has to provide me a space...and I am very involved in the development of the space - it just do it via the walk into a meeting and say "yeah I dont like that, move it over there and give me one more fryer, that isnt enough burner space and that oven is ridiculous. Get me this oven, add this over here and move that to that wall to make this flow better." along with gems like "thats hideous and there is no way we are using that fabric on booths" & "well I can understand why you would think that is a good idea but as the human responsible for making that happen i disagree and think we should....." and with an amazing designer he builds me a space. About 3 weeks out he starts to back off and let me turn it into a restaurant. He gets to keep playing with the contractors & builders, I have to get the staff, stuff & rest of it all together. I handle everything but the bar menus. And we are 48 hours from our first Mock service....KAPOW!!! We haz a restaurant!
And I'm excited. The Wizard let me go a direction with the menu that I didnt think he would. Its not a complete departure from our menus, but it is definitely a departure. I opened up the vegetarian & vegan options a lot which I think is great, I cut back the boring pizza menu & dressed it up, I took traditional yinzer salads & made them more yinzer-chic with some less traditional options and changed our more normal meat/starch/veg entrees for a more tapas style-small plate with the majority of it being chef driven and rotated out often with fresh, seasonal, local items. The menu is markedly smaller than any of the other restaurants and tends toward a more foodie feel while still maintaining our core. I couldnt believe he took the first draft and said great...fix some formatting issues for me and we are good. I was prepared to have to work for this drastic of a change; The Wizard is nothing if not stuck in his ways generally. But he liked it. And didnt make me do much tweaking to it at all. Stunned. Still. And the damn things are printing as I type. I think we are going to knock his socks off. And I cant fucking wait. He did the same thing with some of the smaller pieces of equipment. Whatever I wanted I was allowed to get. Granted I didnt take severe advantage...but I got a ton of really nice pots & pans and a few toys for the kitchen that make me happy. I almost wish this kitchen was mine. Almost.
We start our first service Friday at 2pm. We are having 4 invitation only mock-service seatings on Friday & Saturday, we are closed Sunday and open for business Monday at 11am. 98% of everything will be perfect (Frigging cable company is refusing to do the install until next week. Thanks Comcast...way to make it easy to do business) and we will be about 10 weeks from demolition to opening the doors. I am sure Ill take some pics, or have the Mister anyway, over the weekend. The place is beautiful. It takes the best features of our last 2 stores and combines them in a beautiful space. With but 1 exception. And anyone who follows me on twitter knows about the fucking chairs. We are going to have a lounge area in the front and these hideous pink floral apolstered ugly ass chairs appeared there that are a part of this furniture grouping. Im unhappy with just about every piece of furniture in that area. There is this awesomely tacky 70s gold couch that is so awful its fabulous...but everything else is total garbage. I had my tantrum about it. I blatantly called it all ugly and just ridiculous. I plead my case. I got mad...I laughed at him. Didnt matter. I know when to stop, so I agreed on a compromise. We would revisit the area in 6 months. Hes afraid we are going to need it for additional tables, I disagree. If it is going to stay a lounge we pick out some new pieces, if its needed as tables we get the tables. That was the only compromise I was going to get...so I took it. I apologize to everyone who has to look at this furniture...but it really wasnt my fault.
Ill prob post some pics after the dinners. I'm nervous...its always nerve racking for me to make a new menu and have to deal with the feedback. I've eaten it, I know if it is good or not...but its still trying on the self assurance those first few nights out of the gate. I think my KM is going to be a bundle of nerves, I think hes going to freak out a little...I can fix that. I think my GM & AGM are also going to loose it a bit, but they'll snap back, they both will just be reminded that what we are doing is the easy part...running restaurants is what we do, and I picked them to do it because they are good at it. All the getting ready shit is the hard part...and then they'll remember and we will trudge through the questions & confusion. Honestly cant wait...this is the pay off for all the work...seeing it all work the way it is supposed to.
Oh what a crazy trip the last month has been...but its almost here.
We also have one hell of a garden rolling at the moment....Im gonna have to remember to post some pics of that too. We haz a broccoli!!! And tomatoes, brussel sprouts, peppers, basil, lettuces, asparagus, garlic, shallots, potatoes, cauliflower, a bunch of herbs....its a very happy garden!
Hope you all have a great weekend...Ill be hollering myself hoarse & loving every minute of it I hope in a busy restaurant kitchen! Woot!!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Happy Girl Dance!!!
It was another shitty day in a string of shitty days. There are going to be a lot of those in my immediate future. I'm ok with that, really. Its one of those things that I really cant do much about without making some ridiculously impulsive and stupid move that won't be at all helpful, just stupid. I'm know to be many things, but I'm pretty damn sure stupid isn't one of them...or at least if it is I'm blissfully unaware of it and that's good enough for me.
Work just sucks. And I'm not going to launch into some diatribe about it...there's really no point, so I'll just sum it up. We are wicked short staffed management wise, both me & the Mister are having to do a fuck ton of shift cover just to make sure we have openers and closers and whatnot while training a couple of new managers. None of those shifts will make our regular work go away, it's just going to postpone it to a much later, amazingly overwhelming & messy date. Add to that an ever increasing list of things The Wizard (apt new nickname for the Boss courtesy of a friend) wants taken care of, the things I really do have to do, and the other restaurants that also require attention and you've got what I like to call a KLUSTERFUCK! And honestly that little list over there is nothing compared to the REAL one that I haven't yet had the time to compile that will actually give me a well defined look at exactly how fucked I am. I think the list's lack of creation is equal parts no fucking time and I really don't want to know. Right now I know I've got myself, albeit with some assistance from various parties, so far in the weeds I don't even know if I know which way is out...but I'll figure it out. It quite frankly just blows goats. And it'll be over soon enough, but you can sure as shit bet that as soon as this quagmire is all cleaned up it'll be some other bog I wander into, nature of the restaurant beast I'm afraid. But like I said, it is what it is, no point wallowing in it, so I find my silver linings. Its the closest one to my house so quick ass commute...WIN! The staffing woes are due to a not so tragic loss we shall nickname Bitchface~ so thats done and that was best for every single party involved...WIN! I genuinely like the staff and the restaurant so its not painful, just irritating...WIN! So its not so totally awful I can't stand doing the shift cover, the point of ~ tension shall we say, is that I am not doing any of my work, and that stack just keeps growing, but all my office time is spent catching up on what I HAVE to do...and that is rarely what The Wizard wants me doing.
So I got a few annoying emails from our not so pleasant bookkeeper about invoicing some bullshit to somewhere and I had to do it RIGHT NOW because we had never done it in 5 years but it was all of a sudden, and for no obvious reasons, suddenly very important that we start doing it IMMEDIATELY....and then began a flurry of emails these need to be transferred at $XX each, stupid shit and I got annoyed and may have kind of sort of yelled at The Wizard. Long story much shorter I told him I was not even getting what I had to do done and if it was that fucking important for this to be done she could take care of it her damn self but if I got one more terse email about some stupid fucking garbage can I was going to blow my stack. I think I also may have told him that it was epic bullshit and that if he or she thought I could just extract a fucking invoicing system for about 150 different items from my ass, have it implemented and working at the drop of a hat he was high. Oh, yeah, and a buncha other shit about a myriad of other things that have pissed me off in the last couple weeks. I'll give him this...he stood there and took it. I was swearing, I was pissed, I was completely for real and mostly outta line. He stood there, decided that the invoicing thing could be done over the course of this year, we would plan to implement by the beginning of next year so we did it for the full year, agreed with all my other issues (not that that means much, he usually agrees, he doesn't do anything about it), talked about some things he had planned to do tomorrow and then went home.
I left shortly thereafter, annoyed and all sorts of irritated & frustrated. Just MEH! Honestly not shocking, about par for the course really. I was a bitch, and maybe for a good reason, but mostly because I wanted to be. I don't function well when I'm spread this thin, no one does really, and he is not helping or even just shutting the hell up. It would be helpful if he did, I always take care of my shit one way or another and he knows that so leave me the fuck alone. I'm on it...mostly. It's not like we are reinventing the wheel or saving lives. The bare minimum will get done, we will scrape by and he will make his money. So yeah, KLUSTERUCK!
Oh, yeah, and Mister's car went into the shop yesterday with some brake issues as yet to be diagnosed so we are with my car so that's fun. Going to be AWESOME!!! when I have to go out at 1am and go pick him up tonight...he's closing. YAY! <--- insert dripping sarcasm here
So I get home finally, find a box for Mister on the porch and am greeted by my ever so happy to see me and always makes your heart feel better puppies. I text Mister that he got a present from Amazon. He tells me that HE didn't, I did. I don't remember ordering anything, and was informed that it was ordered for me. That means present. I LOOOVE presents - fuck, who doesnt?!? So I ask if I can open it and yes I can! Mister said I CAN open it. I really found that kind of surprising. Usually I think he tells me I can't just because he knows I will listen and NOT open it, but that it will taunt me until I can and that amuses him. So I walked the dogs & then opened my box.
On top was a book I had heard about & mentioned I wanted, Mister had assessed it wasn't published yet (he's part google, ya know) and I had honestly mostly forgotten about it. Well apparently he didnt and he'd gotten it for me. I was wicked happy...and yet another reason Mister rocks~he remembers things like that!! So I pull the book out and notice this odd box thing, take it out, look at it quickly and figure out I don't know what it is therefor it must not be mine and put it on the table. Puppy makes a grab for the pillow plastic doohickythingies in the box and in the process I see ANOTHER thing in the box. So I look to see what this thing might be, it was just a small white box. I look at it and take off the paper and inside is an iTouch, I was confuzzled, he has an iTouch. So I grab the other box and its the rubber thingy that the iTouch lives in and its purple. Purple=MINE! I think i said Holy FUCK! to the dogs and texted Mister a wow...wtf?!?!? He says its just a present for v-day, just cuz & as a congrats for getting started on my business....and THAT'S why my hubby is the #1 ever!
Not to mention impeccable by accident timing for delivery of presents on really shitty days. Its really cool that he got me an iTouch, I really dug his and its just cool. It's even better he got the book, that's some pretty damn good paying attention skills there Mister. The very bestest part? He just did it because he knew I would love both & wanted to. He didn't do anything that warranted an expensive I'm sorry nor does he want anything that I'm aware of...he's just awesome.
So thats how my day went from dumb dumb stoopid dumb dumb to HAPPY GIRL DANCE!!!
And for the record I've been using my time with Mister closing to work on my business plan. I've made some pretty good headway so yes, I may be tired, but I'm tired from staying up too late working on that. I think I can live with that kind of tired...it's a productive for ME tired.
And totally off track ~ but I think Olympic Cross Country Skiing could sincerely be one of the most BORING things I've ever had the misfortune to watch. It's on as I'm finishing this, it is just boring.
I'm going to play with my iTouch some more and see what I can figure out before I hand it over to Mister to get it all set up with whatever it is I need on there ;-)
Work just sucks. And I'm not going to launch into some diatribe about it...there's really no point, so I'll just sum it up. We are wicked short staffed management wise, both me & the Mister are having to do a fuck ton of shift cover just to make sure we have openers and closers and whatnot while training a couple of new managers. None of those shifts will make our regular work go away, it's just going to postpone it to a much later, amazingly overwhelming & messy date. Add to that an ever increasing list of things The Wizard (apt new nickname for the Boss courtesy of a friend) wants taken care of, the things I really do have to do, and the other restaurants that also require attention and you've got what I like to call a KLUSTERFUCK! And honestly that little list over there is nothing compared to the REAL one that I haven't yet had the time to compile that will actually give me a well defined look at exactly how fucked I am. I think the list's lack of creation is equal parts no fucking time and I really don't want to know. Right now I know I've got myself, albeit with some assistance from various parties, so far in the weeds I don't even know if I know which way is out...but I'll figure it out. It quite frankly just blows goats. And it'll be over soon enough, but you can sure as shit bet that as soon as this quagmire is all cleaned up it'll be some other bog I wander into, nature of the restaurant beast I'm afraid. But like I said, it is what it is, no point wallowing in it, so I find my silver linings. Its the closest one to my house so quick ass commute...WIN! The staffing woes are due to a not so tragic loss we shall nickname Bitchface~ so thats done and that was best for every single party involved...WIN! I genuinely like the staff and the restaurant so its not painful, just irritating...WIN! So its not so totally awful I can't stand doing the shift cover, the point of ~ tension shall we say, is that I am not doing any of my work, and that stack just keeps growing, but all my office time is spent catching up on what I HAVE to do...and that is rarely what The Wizard wants me doing.
So I got a few annoying emails from our not so pleasant bookkeeper about invoicing some bullshit to somewhere and I had to do it RIGHT NOW because we had never done it in 5 years but it was all of a sudden, and for no obvious reasons, suddenly very important that we start doing it IMMEDIATELY....and then began a flurry of emails these need to be transferred at $XX each, stupid shit and I got annoyed and may have kind of sort of yelled at The Wizard. Long story much shorter I told him I was not even getting what I had to do done and if it was that fucking important for this to be done she could take care of it her damn self but if I got one more terse email about some stupid fucking garbage can I was going to blow my stack. I think I also may have told him that it was epic bullshit and that if he or she thought I could just extract a fucking invoicing system for about 150 different items from my ass, have it implemented and working at the drop of a hat he was high. Oh, yeah, and a buncha other shit about a myriad of other things that have pissed me off in the last couple weeks. I'll give him this...he stood there and took it. I was swearing, I was pissed, I was completely for real and mostly outta line. He stood there, decided that the invoicing thing could be done over the course of this year, we would plan to implement by the beginning of next year so we did it for the full year, agreed with all my other issues (not that that means much, he usually agrees, he doesn't do anything about it), talked about some things he had planned to do tomorrow and then went home.
I left shortly thereafter, annoyed and all sorts of irritated & frustrated. Just MEH! Honestly not shocking, about par for the course really. I was a bitch, and maybe for a good reason, but mostly because I wanted to be. I don't function well when I'm spread this thin, no one does really, and he is not helping or even just shutting the hell up. It would be helpful if he did, I always take care of my shit one way or another and he knows that so leave me the fuck alone. I'm on it...mostly. It's not like we are reinventing the wheel or saving lives. The bare minimum will get done, we will scrape by and he will make his money. So yeah, KLUSTERUCK!
Oh, yeah, and Mister's car went into the shop yesterday with some brake issues as yet to be diagnosed so we are with my car so that's fun. Going to be AWESOME!!! when I have to go out at 1am and go pick him up tonight...he's closing. YAY! <--- insert dripping sarcasm here
So I get home finally, find a box for Mister on the porch and am greeted by my ever so happy to see me and always makes your heart feel better puppies. I text Mister that he got a present from Amazon. He tells me that HE didn't, I did. I don't remember ordering anything, and was informed that it was ordered for me. That means present. I LOOOVE presents - fuck, who doesnt?!? So I ask if I can open it and yes I can! Mister said I CAN open it. I really found that kind of surprising. Usually I think he tells me I can't just because he knows I will listen and NOT open it, but that it will taunt me until I can and that amuses him. So I walked the dogs & then opened my box.
On top was a book I had heard about & mentioned I wanted, Mister had assessed it wasn't published yet (he's part google, ya know) and I had honestly mostly forgotten about it. Well apparently he didnt and he'd gotten it for me. I was wicked happy...and yet another reason Mister rocks~he remembers things like that!! So I pull the book out and notice this odd box thing, take it out, look at it quickly and figure out I don't know what it is therefor it must not be mine and put it on the table. Puppy makes a grab for the pillow plastic doohickythingies in the box and in the process I see ANOTHER thing in the box. So I look to see what this thing might be, it was just a small white box. I look at it and take off the paper and inside is an iTouch, I was confuzzled, he has an iTouch. So I grab the other box and its the rubber thingy that the iTouch lives in and its purple. Purple=MINE! I think i said Holy FUCK! to the dogs and texted Mister a wow...wtf?!?!? He says its just a present for v-day, just cuz & as a congrats for getting started on my business....and THAT'S why my hubby is the #1 ever!
Not to mention impeccable by accident timing for delivery of presents on really shitty days. Its really cool that he got me an iTouch, I really dug his and its just cool. It's even better he got the book, that's some pretty damn good paying attention skills there Mister. The very bestest part? He just did it because he knew I would love both & wanted to. He didn't do anything that warranted an expensive I'm sorry nor does he want anything that I'm aware of...he's just awesome.
So thats how my day went from dumb dumb stoopid dumb dumb to HAPPY GIRL DANCE!!!
And for the record I've been using my time with Mister closing to work on my business plan. I've made some pretty good headway so yes, I may be tired, but I'm tired from staying up too late working on that. I think I can live with that kind of tired...it's a productive for ME tired.
And totally off track ~ but I think Olympic Cross Country Skiing could sincerely be one of the most BORING things I've ever had the misfortune to watch. It's on as I'm finishing this, it is just boring.
I'm going to play with my iTouch some more and see what I can figure out before I hand it over to Mister to get it all set up with whatever it is I need on there ;-)
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