living dead...

...girl

*

It's fun rediscovering your past.  The LJ is active and really, it's always been the best forum for me anyway.  I was kind of surprised to find out that the site is still alive, I had to fight with them for a bit just to get my password reset (one tends to forget things after...a few years).  Plus, a lot of people I like are still active there, no one personal but the people that make the things that you and I watch on TV.

Whatever.  The point I'm getting at is that I'm so much more online than I ever was, even if we want to go back to the 1990's, and I'm shuddering at the thought of that.  God Bless Unemployment.

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Eh, we'll see about that last bit.

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I'm thinking Rob Zombie isn't that bad of a wake up call on a Friday.

Cheers!

time ain't on my side...

...time i'll never know.

*

sometimes you just don't know.  sometimes...you find yourself in a place where you thought, Damn, How Did This Happen?

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I suddenly saw myself on the edge of a bed in a Hampton Inn in Pittsburgh at the end of this last.  It means nothing to you but means everything to me.

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I miss the day to day idiocy.

I miss the updates from corporate.

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that Hampton Inn...it was all me.  I just wanted to say goodbye, but...

she did it better.  i grabbed her mittened hand in mine, and...well, that was years ago.

who cares.

*

I'm supposed to care.  I try.  God knows I try.  And I do.  I especially like crap like i just typed.

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I just don't care.  i'm listening to Ventura Highway right now and, easily one of my favorite songs but...who cares.  who cares.

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right now I look across my myriad drinks.  bottled water, green tea, knob creek, and dr. pepper.

*

I used to think that I wrote these things for others, but i'm finding more and more that it's just because I know that I will never hold onto this crap, this place, these things that used to tie me down.

I threw it all in storage when I moved from Pittsburgh to Madison.  I moved it all to Charlotte.  And then I just threw it all away.  I moved to DC with a truck full of a chair and some books.  And here I am, three years later, with more books but no better idea of what to do with it all.

*

I used to think I had something good, something to give.  When I was 20 I imagined myself at 25, working on a grad degree in English and looking to teach lunkhead freshmen.  Maybe have the chance to do an Honors course or two.  When I was 25 I realized that goal wasn't going to happen so I focused on work, with school as a secondary priority.  I focused on work, as that was the means to the end, work equals money, money equals school, therefore, degree.

At 30 I was mired in work, 70 hour weeks but I was happy, or so I thought.  I put aside everything, all the things that made me, "me".  The late nights.  Lack of responsibility.  Doing it all and going above and beyond but please, don't ask for more.  These last three, I thought that is what I wanted.  I was wrong.  All it did was lead me into idiocy and further heartache.

I was driving back to my shitty Motel 6, driving along the beltway in Madison, the weekend of Mothers Day 2006 and I swear I say Ronald McDonald in the middle of the road and that's when I think I began to snap.  I slept 16 hours that night/day.  Thank God I didn't have to actually go into work Monday.  I called Chef and apologized around...3? maybe.

*

The point, I think, is that I tried.

I tried to make a difference, yet the funny thing is, a year after I left my restaurant in Madison, I went in for a drink. All new faces, kitchen was a mess, management was a clusterfuck, and the only thing really running within reason was the bar.  I asked about a glasswasher and, oddly enough, it still hasn't been fixed. A year after I had made a point in my review to just get this one thing fixed, and it was still not working.

*

I tried.

And fuck.  I'm tired.  I shouldn't be.  But I'm tired.  I don't know how others do it, going in, evaluating, spot checking, doing the white glove crap.

I can do it.  Fuck, I'm good at it.  I know what to look for.  I look at menus and restaurants online, and good fucking grief, I don't know how half these places stay in business.  Are we just lazy as humans?  Looking for the best deal?  Regardless of everything?

*

I've spent some time looking at various restaurants in a GA market, and geez.  Aside from repeated spelling errors (if you are an Irish pub you really need to know how to spell Guinness), and the inability to update your website since...2009...it's a ripe market.  I know I don't necessarily have all the skills but fuck it if I don't see this as an opportunity to take advantage of in the ensuing years.

I just need to get my ass out of SOMD.

I used to think that Pittsburgh was sucking the life out of me.  And then it was Madison, which turned into Charlotte.  I found a home in DC.  I love DC.  DC doesn't love me, and I'm fine with it.  All that means is that I just need to get my feet back on the ground and establish myself again.  Regardless of how hard it may be.

I've dumbed down my resume, got rid of the cover letter (in certain situations...), I cater to the lowest of low (not at IHOP level but gimme a break here...).  I've worked with more headhunters than a cannibal would know what to do with.

*

I'm going back to basics.  Going away.  A few hours, and gonna wash some dishes, I hope.  Spend some time just being, which I supposedly have been doing but, in all honesty, haven't been doing very well.

Just be.  Make a few bucks.  Get myself re-established.  Maybe try and get back there, doing the right thing.  Maybe not for myself, but maybe for others, and for something that will maybe make a difference.

*

I read it all over, and yeah, I'm just saying Who Cares.

I nearly had all that I wanted.

Who's to say that I can't make it happen.

you give me a ladder now

i surely believe i'll climb

*

Getting too old to keep up on the music scene, and while I'll fully admit a late period liking for French pop/electronic/whatever, I still find myself tracking down songs that get stuck in my head from God only knows when.  A solid bass line, good harmony, hell, throw a Hammond B3 in there and I'm sold.

I also get stuck on songs with great intros.  Pearl Jam is a good one for this kind of thing.  Beth Orton.  Versus.  Songs that make you want to hear them over and over, just because the opening is so great.  Used to feel this way about classic rock, but as I'm finding now, even early PJ is "classic rock".  Age is a bitch.

*

I never cared for Joan Osborne.  The whole Lilith Fair idiocy, Sarah McLachlan, yeah, I listened to my fair share of music written/sung/performed/etc by the by-fairer-sex in the '90s.  I also had season tickets to the OSU hockey games.  I revisit both in the ways I can afford.  The latter, via internet, the former pretty much the same.

*

some tell me you're slow and lazy
some tell me you're so inspired

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The opening 8-16 bars of "Ladder" still rocks me for some reason, and this song is 17 years old.  It's one thing if the lyrics or the music gets to you, completely different when they both always hit you like a 2 ton heavy something.  If anything it reminds me that no matter how old you get, some things always sound new every single time you listen to them.  Today and every day.

*

I'm standin' here in your closet
Unbuttonin' all your clothes
I sleep in your bed tonight
But I never find you home

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If ever there was four lines that summed up my relationship life in only four lines, there it is.  And it  tends to reflect both our lives.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down...

It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles...

*

It used to be, sending off letters and such to far off places was a problem, well, perhaps not a problem per se, but something that took effort.  Since 1994 or so I think I've maybe sent 20 actual letters in the mail (not counting bills, duh), and of those letters probably all of them were Hallmark cards.  Don't know about you but I was taught how to address an envelope in grade school, and how when it comes to certain offices you may have to address it differently.  Even more so was the heading, and typing, and...it does kind of surprise me how many people don't know the basic keyboard.  I'll fully admit, my numbers are still off at times, but damn if I don't know the numerical pad pretty damn well, and self-taught, thank you.

But I'm off track.

Sitting on a back upper deck, here in Southern Maryland.  Roasting a chicken in the oven when it's 98 degrees outside.  But reading one of my favourite books, Theroux' "The Happy Isles of Oceania", and the fact that it's like I never lost this book, still know it note for note.  It's maybe not the best book for me right now as it starts out incredibly depressing, but even 40 pages in the tone changes, and while the doom and gloom of the first Gulf War is there, there is the part from Vanuatu...reading about the perfect island.  No people.  No nothing.  You and your tent, looking at the stars, the Milky Way.

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I read this book for the first time because Theroux wrote a piece for National Geographic back in 1991(2).  I left it out in a rainstorm in '92, and found it again in the Library Store in 1999.