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magic.

the dog days are over

One of life's strangest sensations is the sudden feeling that you are somehow on the verge of something. Surprisingly, it never happens at suspected times.. only at the most random, seemingly trivial moments in a day. Your positivity of it being there is more mentally tangible than the feeling of hunger or thirst, yet it is fleeting. It sometimes lasts only milliseconds, and you come out of it with a feeling similar to that of a really good dream where you wake up remembering, but effortlessly managing to maintain it. Battling the ever-present pull from your grasp, you helplessly watch it slip out of your mind, completely and totally aware of brilliant details being washed from your conscious.... into the dark labyrinth of your subconscious, at which point it either lies dormant and waits to emerge as a deja vu (weird, never thought of it like that before) or it vanishes often quicker than it came. That is the feeling. A brilliant glimpse of your life, teetering both cautiously but wildly courageous, on the brink of something potentially monumental. You're not daydreaming. You aren't fantasizing about far away places as you probably see nothing at all. It's akin to watching something slowly line up, like a skilled thief listening through a stethoscope to hear the clicks of a safe's lock...waiting.

I always thought about this as something comparable to the powerful feeling you get while in the middle of planning something. Freud said something about how we, as humans, MUST be continuously planning for the future, because without that, we are nothing. Whether it is our obsession with controlling what is ahead of us, or whether it is due to our severe and intense fits of boredom, we need to have something to look forward to. A day, a week, a year ahead of time - nothing makes us tick like the lingering thought of an adventure in the works.  Which is obvious, duh. But i am so unbelievably moved by that. When I start to watch my life melt into nothing and bob up and down like a buoy at sea, mucking around in the thick doldrums of reality, I'm at my lowest low. But with the spark of an idea, a plan, a trip, the prospect of adventure we feel the blood rushing through our veins again. ticktockticktock clicking and tingling through our fingers. your heart starts to feel like it is beating for something again, until it is over. until an idea crashes into the rocks and the pattern continues until the next plan is put into motion.

if we are supposed to live in the moment how does it make sense that we are so moved by our plans for the future. how does it equate to be stuck in a conundrum that puts us in a tug of war with time. pushing and pulling against the sands of the hourglass?

excuse me while i kiss the sky

Due to the fact that traveling (the to-and-from aspect of it, anyways) always finds a way to royally screw me over, paired with the unwillingness of my 5 year old ipod to function has left me with a significant amount of book time. The flight home from New York was not exactly successful....well at least for a while. Paired with a searing headache and nausea (all thanks to a night out in the, don't say it, big apple) the day was not off to a great start. The hour and a half delay plus the ADDITIONAL hour spent in taxi was  brutal. There was that small detail that we were actually not on a real plane that made it even better. AirTran, ever heard of it? Me either. There were two rows of.....well, one row of 2 seats and one row of 3 seats. Never seen that before. As if the plane didn't already look like it was going to topple over from the weight of the abnormally large man who should have purchased 2 seats, the captain came on the radio and announced "I'm sorry ladies and gentleman, we are just fixing a leak in the nose of the plane, and then we will be on our way".

Great.

No sooner had he informed us of our leaky nose, I hear Sara go "uhhhh" and I look over as she's holding an unattached seat belt in her hand that had broken off when she went to buckle it.

Strike two.

Strike three involves the sudden wave of nausea where you're gonna hurl all over the woman's weave in front of you, (imagine washing that out "ooohhh I gah waaasshh it") a feeling akin to the one in our apartment in Spain when I got up to go puke and I run down the hallway in my underwear and Beers of Belgium tshirt with my hand over my mouth, attempting to rip open the first bathroom door only to hear Ivan (our Spanish roommate) in there going "estoy AQUI!" (he would pronounce the aqui 3 times louder than the estoy, he always did that at the end of sentences) and then moving to the next door, and consequently ripping THAT one open - only to find Lorenzo (l'italiano) sittin on the toity droppin' a fatty with his hugely hairy thighs in full frontal view. All he utters is "GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH" and I contemplate jumping off the 4th floor balcony (still holding my hand over my mouth here) and decide I would probably make a bigger mess with my blood and guts spewed over the pavement below than I would if I just puked in the kitchen sink. But alas, my dear friend Emily talked me out of either option by forcing me into a Lamaz breathing exercise.

So snap back to reality (woops there goes gravity) and that whole moment where you go "ohhh God, I'm gonna vomit" comes and I'm frantically searching in the pocket in front of me for a barf bag while breathing deeply through my nose (never works). All I can find is 4 of the same In-Flight Magazine with the covers ripped off and I ding the light above me to signal the flight attendant. She comes over, looking at me like "Oh Jesus, what do youuuu want" and I'm like "Can I PLEASE go to the bathroom, we have been sitting here for an hour" and she, in her most obnoxious flight attendant coo, informs me that we are just about to take off.

Right lady, you said that an hour ago.

"BUT I GOTTA VOM-", she cuts me off. "We are JUST about to take off".

Really lady, I have absolutely no issue with spewing puke on you and fatty McFats next to me, and certainly even less of an issue with puking on you.

That entire story was really to set me up for saying the amount of time I had to finish a really good book I'd started on that trip.

Annyyyywayyyyyys. I read this book called "Waiter Rant" by this server who worked at a high class restaurant in Manhattan. He'd started this blog, choosing to change the names of his restaurant and coworkers to keep them anonymous where he would just rant about awful customers who demand things as if they are God's gift to the planet. Sure, this book is really meant to entertain servers, or those who have ever waited tables as a means to end - but it really is for anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant. Hostessing, serving, bussing, bartending, managing.....but even if you haven't - if you are acutely aware of the preposterous demands people make, or if you are fascinated by anyone's ability to master the art of reading people, you will enjoy this book.

You know when you finish a book, and you feel strangely empty inside - as if something just got deleted from your life. Your best friend moved away, a trip you had been looking forward to for months was over...that feeling. I think that happens when we really connect to something. In this case, I think I really connected to the author, a man whose face I couldn't pick out of a crowd. Something about this book inspired me to keep writing, even when I'm not really sure where it is going.

BUT

I was thinking about this the other night while at work. Seeing as how there was, and pretty much never is, anything worthwhile at TGIFridays to occupy my time, I had lots of time to think about anything and everything. I came up with the following list of things that either fascinate me, crack me up, or annoy the living shit out of me when it comes to being a hostess.

1. Regulars: most regulars think they are somehow entitled to something special as a reward for their loyal customer-ness. ok, fine, I agree. Most servers like their regulars because it gives them an opportunity to establish a relationship with them, thus increasing their tip. but these regulars....oh these are the worst. these 3 guys come in at like 12:00 am and look around awkwardly. one of the weirdos owns precisely one sweatshirt. a grey one that says sdsu across the front. the other always wears a charger hat. and the last one slinks suspiciously behind the other two. they inch their way to the host stand and usually say something like "uuhhh I think we are gonna need a table for 3", as if they are just strolling in at 2:30 pm on a monday afternoon.
*even worse than the fact that these people are obnoxious....is the fact that the servers want to (and will) kill you whenever you sit them in their section because they choose to stay until the restaurant kicks them out. they talk with this slow drawl and take about 45 minutes to decide they want the same thing they get everytime - ice tea.
2. The muttering: i dont know if it is just friday's....or if this is common to restaurants everywhere. but i love when the servers walk by me and mutter something along the lines of "I'm gonna f*&@ing quit this job this time i swearrr", or something to that effect.
3. You know you are sad and/or bored when the most ridiculously miniscule things make you happy. exhibit A being when you randomly have the exact amount of napkins and forks for rollups to not have extras of either one. just like magic.
4. i hate so much when people walk in the door and hold up fingers at me. like, unless ur a mute you can tell me how many in your party, idiot.
5. when you start to take a party to a table and they get lost. are you serious? how do you get lost? then you look behind you and notice they are gone and have strayed from your side somewhere in section 4, and are standing confused and scared as if they just got pushed out of a cab in the middle of baghdad, darting their eyes around nervously.

these are a lot of pointless thoughts, do what you like with this information.

do you remember sound?

per usual, im sitting up despite my inability to keep my eyes open.

something is very disturbing about the way i choose to (vampirically) never sleep. im not entirely positive why i would force myself to stay up when i am piss tired - but i do it, and come the next morning i am, surprise surprise unable to awaken from my drunken stupor of sleep. this feeling is akin to the feeling i get when i have loads of homework but consciously choose to spend it watching the loads of recorded shows on my tivo, most of which i have already seen 3-6 times. exhibit A being episodes of friends or the office season 2. this act of stupidity only gives me more and more time to think about things that i should probably just push out of my head - you know. real people things that arent important. finding a job, and, ahem, ways i can NOT find a job, but still get to lay on a beach all day in australia for 6 months.

but alas, here we are. april 13th, practically a month till i graduate college and i havent a clue what - well, i shouldn't say i have no clue what i want to do. what i should be saying is that i am too lazy/stupid/unmotivated to figure out a way to do these things, so i instead piss and moan about it, scheming on how to get-rich quick while living some romantic (romantic, as in not reality...a clarification i deemed necessary) life where i sit in cafes in another country drinking dark beer and meeting interesting people who just happen to stumble in out of the rain (it is always raining in these situations) for a drink and talk all night about how "my, isnt it so funny how we are here because we quit our day jobs and picked up and left and we haven't a clue what the hell we are doing with our lives?"

if possible, that sounds even stupider the second time i say it.

blah blah blah

so a couple weeks ago i went to new york for spring break. ive wanted to go there since i knew what new york was and i finally made it there. fell in love with it, just like i knew i would. and im excited to announce the following facts/information/tidbits, if you will that i learned in my, oh so classy, stay in the....i hate when people say it, big apple.

that just screams nerd alert. all i picture when i say big apple is some dweeb/asian/fanny-pack clad hick in the middle of times square, gawking awkwardly at the massive, in-your-face-ness of it all, posing dweebishly for a picture they are possibly taking of themselves.

which might have been exactly what i looked like. but, besides that...i was bumming a little on our 3rd day in the city because for some reason, i felt like i wasn't accomplishing anything i wanted to accomplish there because i didnt sit in on a class at NYU, or I hadn't yet listened to empire state of mind while standing on top of the, you guessed it, empire state building. soo to make a long story short (too late), were getting out of a cab at 2 in the morning at times square. it had just poured rain, so everything looked even shinier. so anyways, im getting out of the cab, and i just look up at the lights, gawking awkwardly like that asian/fanny-pack clad loser with my mouth open. masked with the ever-beautiful beer buzz, i couldn't believe where i was. i was in new york, and i could not be more ecstatic.

and for future reference. on your next adventure in the city of lights, please note the following:
1. smoke comes out of the manholes there

that is really the most important. that fact alone curbs all you madison avenue junkies. and yes, even you, washington square park hipster-wannabes.

guilty as charged.

FYI

Five things I would rather do than attempt to find parking for an 11 am Tues/Thurs class at San Diego State:

1. Actually pay attention in 11 am T/TH lecture with the married couple rather than sit in the back on the floor
2.. Suck a cup of mayonnaise through a straw
3.. Walk to facultad in Granada on an August afternoon in uggs and pleather tights and a duck hunting hat
4. Have the feeling, for the rest of eternity, that there is a word i cannot remember
5. Only be able to use dial-up internet

stickittodaman-eosis

alright. i dont know if its just me (i think it is) but i honestly can think of nothing worse than actual HERDS of prospective college graduates at the career fair shuffling along in a line of more prospective college graduates all trying to shmooze their way into a job when they graduate. im not going to lie i go every year for the free pens and for my own personal amusement in listening to the disturbing speeches ppl make trying to sell themselves and explain why they would make an awesome sales person destined for a 9-5 cubicle. i cant do it. nope. never. makes me wanna be a bum in pb for the rest of my life.

A. weather.com said it was gonna be a nice 67 in san diego today.
B. weather.com was wrong. it was approx 67 plus 20.
C. im sweating my bloody nards off. (nard dog)

i have started the very bad habit of coming to class at approx 11:47 just in time to sign in to get a measly 2 points. i sneak in the back and sit on the floor with my back against this nag wall of HH218. this place was built in the 70's (possibly 60's) and im positive it contains a plethora of bodily fluids and/or HIV aids.

sometimes i think i just like to hear myself talk - no pardon me, sometimes i KNOW i like to hear myself talk.