littlelotte

I'm sleepy, but I just spent forever catching up on my f'list and wanted to post a hello.

Because the apartment we just moved out of is technically unhabitable per the city, and there's no chance of them moving anyone in, we've been taking our precious time with moving everything. The important stuff is here, but there is still junk there I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of. Bah.

I've been working way too much lately, and I've wanted to do so much with the apartment, but I just don't have time to with my work schedule. I keep saying "the past month has been crazy," but I've realized that it's constant. One month bleeds into the next and hardly anything more has been accomplished no matter how much time I've spent on anything. A friend posted about his hellish week, and if I were a more sane person it would have thrown some things into perspective. Instead, of course, I just said something along the lines of how I wish my hellish weeks looked like that, but at least this isn't last summer in Sterling Heights when I probably had only three or four less-than-12-hour days from April through July.

It did, however, make me want to put it all down so that I can tell myself I need to slow down. Which I won't...have I mentioned that I'm taking a bellydance class again starting on Monday evening? I figured picking up even more to do would be a great idea, for whatever reason. Of course, this more-to-do is something for me and me alone and something I've been wanting to do again for myself for years.

So...the past week and a half or so in review (I don't even wanna see it!):
Sat 31 - 4p-3a
Sun 1 - off, but at work from 2p-5p
Mon 2 - off, but at work from 2:30p-4:30p for work meeting
Tue 3 - 3p-2a
Wed 4 - up at 10 for 11a-12p "webinar" conference call for work, work 3p-1a
Thur 5 - 7a-6:30p/11p-1:30a - work and all-employee work meeting. If I hadn't been dying from being in heels for nearly 12 hours I would have stayed through because we got absolutely nailed that evening and my help would have been a very welcome addition to the evening.
Fri 6 - off, but at work from 1p-5p
Sat 7 - 9:30a-8p complete with drama of pulling raw tomatoes because of the salmonella outbreaks and finding out that one of the servers in Cincy who started there the same week I did and was a struggling single mom with a very troubled teenage son and who was the sweetest and most genuine woman I've ever met died back in December
Sun 8 - off, not going anywhere near the building for my sanity, but working on scheduling stuff from home because the 12th is the official rollout of our HotSchedules schedules, and they must be posted by Monday
Mon 9 - 7a-5pish. Must force myself out by 5:30 or else making it to my first dance class will not be likely.

...and still so much to do both at home and for work. And the only outside-of-work work that I included was the webinar...but I've done more than that at home. It's a very good thing I love my restaurant and the people I work with. Also, in addition to the schedule stuff, I've got shopping and cleaning to do tomorrow. Is it any wonder that I'm only doing a fraction of what I probably should be doing around the apartment? And Dan hates that most of my "free time" is spent online. It's how I unwiiiiiiind! *whines*

In happy news, Lucid is finally in Michigan!!! Stu was following me around with the bottle at Tiffany's yesterday (I enjoy their deli stuff for lunch) until I turned around and noticed...lol He said they were the first store in Michigan to get it, too! heeeeeee! It was one of those things that fell into the "Much more satisfying to wait for it and be pleasantly surprised by its arrival than to have it sent to me (imported from France in this case...lol)" category. We now have genuine absinthe added to our personal bar, even though neither of us are that into it. It's something nice to have around for friends and company and conversation piece. We're silly like that.

And now I sleep because I'm babbling.

Yesterday was (supposed to be) my first day of vacation. Due to family issues, our FOH manager couldn't do the Taste of the Chamber event for the Chamber of Commerce with Nick. I got a frantic phone call from Nick about this at about 1:30 while downtown at breakfast with Dan, Erin, and John (Erin is one of Dan's very close friends/co-worker/boss, and John is another of their group). I did the "I really do care about my job" thing and forfeited my first day of vacation to work the event with Nick. We took some of our spinach and crab dip and some of our spicy queso dip, dressed all nice and played friendly with the Chamber of Commerce people. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate social events like this? I'm aware they are necessary, but that doesn't make it any less painful.

Anyway, the event this year was at the Kalamazoo Country Club. The room it was in was gorgeous!





( A few more detail shots... )

It was fun, and a good experience (just like the Girl Scout dessert competition event last year), but I still hate social events like this. I did enjoy decorating the table, though :-D

<Nick laughing as I sprinkle sunglasses over the table>
Me: They're like confetti!
Nick: They are like confetti.

Oh! Also, Black Swan had a table there, and they had poached pears stuffed with marscapone and covered in a marsala glaze. Oh. My. God. They were amazing. Amazing to the point that you quite literally say things like "Oh my god" when you take the first bite. We still hadn't gotten around to trying Black Swan, but it's suddenly become a priority ;-)

New phone:


Madeline and Britni got me an ice cream cake that I didn't think to get a picture of until after I had cut it up and offered everybody a piece:


Card! They rock :-)




I'll miss them :-( I feel loved! :-D

The Waterfront was a complete bust--it's a little too yuppie for me :-P They have a business casual dress code, and even though the sushi was really really great the atmosphere was too stuffy and blah. I'd only go there because they serve oysters on the half shell (and oh my were they amazing).

I don't tell my mom how often I eat sushi/sashimi/raw oysters/etc. She's already a constant stream of "oh be careful! Raw fish will kill you!"--okay, not quite that bad, but along those general lines ;-)

I have photos of the restaurant and the Cincy skyline. I can't seem to find any online that do it justice--the blues and oranges and whites and yellows and...it's just so colorful, and so breathtaking as you're driving up on it! I'll get better pics of the skyline next time I go into Newport (it's a little further east than Covington, and the angle is better). Maybe tomorrow night--it is hospitality night, after all. How can I resist half off raw seafood? O;-) We'll see how tired I am when I get out of work. I really want to just finish the last His Dark Materials book, too.

I'm sleepy. I have a pretty major work meeting in Sandusky, at one of the Cedar Point resorts (Castaway Bay), on Tuesday. They're rolling out the new management Quality of Life "packages"--new salary raise opportunities, we actually get a handful of personal days per year, and some other things. I don't completely like everything I've heard for the raise opps, but we'll see what they have for us at the meeting (I really shouldn't know as much as I do already, but our Partner was telling me today). I'm a little miffed that I have to close on Monday night (hopefully it looks like last Monday night and I'm out around 11:15) and then be on the road by 7am so that I can grab food and make the four+ hour trip by noon. We're apparently getting an "early dinner" during the meeting, and then we're supposed to go out and compete in laser tag and bowling afterwards :-P I'm going straight into a three and a half hour drive into K'zoo after Sandusky, so unfortunately I can't carpool with the guys (Mike and John--the Bar manager and KM), and I really doubt I'll be up for laser tag or bowling before. I'm really hoping the K'zoo and Lansing KMs are going to be there Tuesday. I love all the FOH managers at all the MI stores, so I don't care which ones are there--I'll be happy to see any of them. It will be nice to at least meet some of the other Ohio managers, I suppose, given I may be working with any of them at some point in the near future.

Oh! Cincy extended another week or two. I'm pretty sure I'll be here through Mark's vacation time (which starts the 4th of October). I'm pretty pleased with that arrangement. I...really need to get to Sterling and pack my apartment up. Damn. My lease is up October 31st. Yay. I don't know what to do with my stuff. Fuck. Storage near my parents, I suppose? Ugh.

I came across this about a week ago in the anthropologist, but nearly forgot about it until I saw it in USA Today yesterday, too (I get it delivered to my hotel room door every weekday):

Tibetan buddhas told to apply for reincarnation with the Chinese government...

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22183463-5005961,00.html

The new rules are "an important move to institutionalise the management of reincarnation of living Buddhas," the Xinhua news agency said.

According to the regulations, which take effect on September 1, all reincarnation applications must be submitted to religious affairs officials for approval, Xinhua said.

I can't find the USA Today article online...I probably need to be a member, or something.

Also, this restaurant is bizarre--it's half southern dialect and half midwestern, but the MP is from St. Louis originally and has some weird west-coastal "o" thing going on. I think my Oklahoma dialect is coming back a touch being surrounded by so many southerners.

Also, you know you're on the border of the south (or are waiting on someone from the south) when you go to a restaurant and they offer sweet tea, or someone at the table asks if you have sweet tea.

Safe and sound in Cincinnati. Amazingly, the six hour drive seems shorter than my three hour trip across the state from Sterling to K'zoo does. Unfortunately, it seems as though the hotel I'm staying at has been infested with a gathering of 8-12 year old girls :-P In reality, I believe it's a sports thing. I think I saw soccer shirts.

Off to find food and then to the restaurant get my keys and such for work tomorrow.

Now I just need to find people to explore downtown with. I don't like doing downtowns I don't know by myself. A) I get hit on too much at bars, and B) I inherited that whole paranoid "I'm going to get killed if I'm anywhere by myself" gene from my mother.

Tonight was my last night at the Kalamazoo CiP. I report for work in Sterling on Monday afternoon.

I'm going to be smelling whipped cream and wiping it out of my ear for the next week.

Apparently, this is how it went down...
Nick to Derrick: So, tonight's Lindsay's last night. We should get her.
Derrick: I think CJ and I can arrange that.
Some point later: *CJ onstage giving Lindsay a farewell from the restaurant*
Nick: *sneaking up on bar behind Lindsay with a salad togo container filled with whipped cream*

He was silly enough to leave it stuck to my face, and as Derrick put it to me later, "The best part was that you had the presence of mind to pull it off and get him after he got you."

I really wish I had a picture.

Because I swear that half my f'list has one of these counters...


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Got to see amneria with madbillyblack yesterday! This weather can't pick anything, and yesterday it was terrible and snowy and so freaking cold. Will and I spun out on 31 at about 12:45am on our way home. Thankfully, there were no cars in the road. I love how incidents like this don't even affect me. I'm just kind of "hm...okay." about it all. (now this will prove if Dan even bothers reading my LJ anymore...lol I haven't said anything to him about it yet)

Also, the JVP emailed me. He'll be in town next M-W. He said we'll "talk about the plan in detail" then. One week and I know what's going to become of me. Three weeks and I'll be done with my training. I'm scared and excited.

Okay...I have a very busy day ahead, so I should probably jump into the shower. I already paid bills, I have to get my oil changed this morning, I want to get lunch at Sushiya, I want to finish my Legal Issues training book and start my other one, and I would like to maybe do a bit of shopping.

On the plus side, Dan is home early, so I can run more errands. On the down side, he's terribly sick with probably some norovirus thing (though he's not throwing up yet, knock on wood)--and I'm feeling nauseous by association. Some norovirus strain has been rampaging west Michigan for a little while now, actually. A lot of people assume it's "just the stomach flu" or "food poisoning" and don't really get how serious it is. Only bleach kills it, it can live up to three weeks on objects like doorknobs and switches and other things that don't get religiously washed, you can still pass it on for up to three days after your symptoms are gone, and it has shut down a small handful of restaurants for thorough cleaning after one sick employee ended up affecting literally hundreds of people each in the midwest over the past year. I don't worry too terribly much because I'm rather obsessive about washing my hands, actually. Habit from working in restaurants for four years...but I know people who work in restaurants and really don't do it like they should. hmph.

Also, as our MP emailed the home office when asking if we could do some sort of benefit...our fire chief's house burned down. Look up "irony" in the dictionary.

*laughs* I actually did just look it up for the hell of it and found this:
"consisting of, containing, or resembling iron"

I never would have imagined that I could use "That metal is so irony" and be correct.

I obviously didn't get enough sleep last night :-P

Tomorrow starts my MIT...eee! I'm extremely excited and extremely scared, but very interested in learning--so I think I'll be okay.

*bounces*