1. STFU and get off your cell phone; I have about a dozen questions to ask you. If you patronize my establishment often enough that I know you are a repeat offender, I am going to stop trying to get your attention and start making you whatever permutation of your drink most amuses me. The next time you bark “Gimmie a mocha” from behind your RZR, you are getting a kid’s size decaf mocha frappe with sugar-free chocolate and soy milk.
2. Know what a cappuccino is before you order it. It is espresso and a little steamed milk with lots of foam. It is strong. It is not at all sweet. It feels like there is nothing in the cup. This is a well-made cappuccino. IF YOU WANT ONE LIKE YOU GET AT THE GAS STATION… HEY, THERE IS A GAS STATION RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET.
3a. If your drink is so complicated that even you cannot remember it, you are not allowed to order it. Ever.
3b. And you certainly shouldn’t expect me to REMEMBER it. I wait on hundreds of people a week. Get over yourself.
4. STOP ACTING LIKE MATING SNAKES WHILE YOU ARE ORDERING. I SWEAR TO GOD, IF I VOMIT I AM GOING TO VOMIT IN YOUR LATTE.
5. Use your words, Big Boy. Stop grunting at me. And if you whistle for your barista like you are calling a dog, your barista reserves the right to piss on your shoe.
6. Forget the lingo. Unless you are at an actual Starbuck’s, nobody knows or cares what a Venti is. “Small,” “Medium” and “Large” work everywhere. (If you ARE at an actual Starbuck’s, STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. Their pretentious espresso is actually fairly disgusting.) And ordering a “Moo-moo” is cute, but you are just as likely to get it with half-and-half as a black-and-white.
7. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. STOP ORDERING “EXTRA HOT NO FOAM.” First, the best you should ever get is 175 degrees because milk burns at 180, and most places already heat their milk to 165 or 170 anyway. Second, the chemical properties of milk proteins change at 180 and it expands like a marshmallow in the microwave. I CANNOT MAKE YOU “EXTRA HOT NO FOAM” BECAUSE PHYSICS DOES NOT ALLOW IT. STOP BLAMING ME FOR THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN REALITY AND YOUR NEED TO SCALD YOUR FACE.
8. Read the actual menu board. Don’t get to the front of the line and then act like coffee is a whole new world to you — unless coffee IS a whole new world to you. Then, you should ask questions and a good barista will be happy to answer. But stop ordering “frappuccinos” when you are not at a Starbuck’s (do you even KNOW if you ARE at a Starbuck’s?), and STOP ORDERING THAT SPECIAL DRINK WE MADE FOR THE SUMMER OF 2006; IT HAS NOT BEEN ON THE MENU FOR THREE YEARS.
9. Order what you actually want, the first time around. Stop saying things like, “Can I get that on ice, with skimmed milk, extra hot, as an enema?” after I am finished making your drink. This is particularly important when there are sixteen of you together and everybody wants to shout changes from the dining room. News flash, gifted kids: I barely know what you all ordered, let alone who is shouting what or what face goes with which drink. YOU ARE ALL GETTING SKINNYS WITH EXTRA FOAM NOW, DAMMIT.
10. Tips are nice, but not required. People who smile and/or are congenial are not required to tip. Tips are mandatory from assholes, however, especially if you ever want a drinkable americano here again. Have a nice day.
Nana 10-14; Yazawa Ai I’m enjoying the expansion of the frame of reference on the characters, here, but things are starting to get confusing (I start to get lost, visually, in a manga after I have to keep up with more than a dozen or so characters). I do like how Nana and Hatchi’s emotional roles are slowly reversing, but Ren is suddenly scary. D:
INVU 1-4; Kim Kang Won It took YEARS to get the latest volume out, and so I had to reread the first ones to remember what all the drama was about. This was my first manwah and still my favorite, though. The ‘Resourceful Girl is resourceful, asshole, and doesn’t need you (except emotionally and for romance)’ thing never gets old with me. I know, I know.
Re:play 1-2; Christy Lijewski Crazy, emotionally scarred, musicians struggling! Possibly with vampires! I mean unexplained diseases! There are helpers – or are they hinderers – from the underworld – or is it overworld! In short, lots of fun.
Flower of Life 1-3; Yoshinaga Fumi I love Fumi’s art a lot. If you are a BL fan who has never read one of her books, you should fix that immediately. Her drawings are often spare but evocative; whole pages go by with no dialogue at all, and a series of frames might express the intensity of an experience with just the curl of some toes. Flower of Life isn’t BL and it isn’t as intense as all that, but it is fun and more laid back them some of her other work, frequently opening the fourth wall, and including self-referential notes on manga production and even recipes. High school slice of life is a lot of fun in her hands.
Sticky Chewy Messy Gooey: Desserts for the Serious Sweet Tooth; Jill O’Connor I am the sort of person that reads cookbooks from cover to cover, and this one was fantastically inspiring. I mean, I want to make EVERY SINGLE RECIPE, RIGHT NOW, LET’S START WITH CHURROS AND CHOCOLATE SOUP. Also there are interesting notes on each dessert, as well as informative inset sections on particular ingredients and techniques. Recipes and instructions are well written and easy to understand, although not always basic-level cooking. Aside from a certain hysterical devotion to coconut on the author’s part, I can’t recommend this one enough.
An Abundance of Katherines; John Green Honestly, I am more of a fan of John Green himself than of his writing, but this is my favorite book of his, by far. It doesn’t have the dark themes of Paper Towns or Looking for Alaska, but lets his quirky, geeky humor shine. High School roadtrip romance is a genre new to me, but this must be an A+ example. Special mention for: FOOTNOTES (“40 That’s true. Most of the meter in Don Juan only works if you read Juan as bi-syllabic.”), MATH (Colin develops a Theorem to graph the probable arc of any relationship), VOCABULARY (‘sitzpinkler’ is my new favorite word) and ANAGRAMMING (‘dingleberries’ is apparently an anagrammatic jackpot).
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I’ve Learned; Alan Alda I wanted to read this books first because Alda uses great titles (also, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself) and second because he was one of the stars of what I personally think was one of the great TV shows, ever, in all respects, and I was hoping to learn a little about that experience. The book actually touched very little on M*A*S*H and was a pretty straightforward, generally interesting autobiography (crazy mother, vaudeville childhood, polio, etc.). I was particularly interested in Alda’s short discussion of his own fraying mental health and the very calm, matter-of-fact way the subject was handled. (Tangentially, Alda mentions an incident that occurred while he worked on the TV show Scientific American Frontiers. The doctor he was interviewing did an MRI of his brain and was excited by his “plump hippocampus”, which they go on to discuss as the seat of memory as far as we can tell. I have been wondering ever since if there are any known correlations between Grave’s Disease and the functioning of the hippocampus, since memory loss is one of the side effects of the disease that I have found most troubling.) Enjoyable for the biography crowd or anyone who has some interest in Alda particularly.
My Freshman Year: What A Professor Learned by Becoming a Student; Rebekah Nathan I read this in my free time at work because it seemed like an interesting premise: a university sociology professor takes her sabbatical year and enrolls as a freshman at her university. Honestly, I didn’t find it particularly interesting or insightful, and there is one area where I truly believe the author made a gross misjudgment. Nathan discusses that students foreign to the US often expressed surprise and sadness that so few American students asked questions about their countries, cultures, and life experiences. The conclusion that Nathan draws is that American students are insular, self-centered, lacking in inquisitiveness, and generally insensitive. Now I certainly won’t deny that generally Americans do act pretty entitled and it doesn’t win us many fans (and rightly so). However. However. I think Nathan overlooked a significant, gross, American cultural motif and did a disservice by not explaining it to those students who were so frustrated. My argument is that, in American culture, we have invested heavily in the melting pot concept and spent a lot of cultural capital on eradicating issues of lineage from public discussions. We therefore do not often ask, particularly in public setting, questions about another person’s cultural background. Actually, I would argue that the question, “What’s so-and-so like where you come from?” actually parses as slightly aggressive to Americans on a subconscious level. Which is all not to say that people shouldn’t be interested in each other or anything, just that I think Nathan completely missed what was going on in from of her. In any event, not particularly recommended.
Apples Are From Kazakhstan: the Land that Disappeared; Christopher Robbins Now, I am going to cheat a little here and include this book which I didn’t actually read in January, but rather some few months ago when I wasn’t bookblogging. It is so good, though, that I want to let everyone know about it. Apples Are from Kazakhstan should be read by anyone who likes travel writing, social or political science, apples; has an interest in the USSR and it’s demise; or has any sense of curiosity at all. The first half of the book reads like a travel narrarative, starting with a chance meeting during which the author is told, “Apples are from Kazakhstan, you know.” This seems such an extraordinary claim that he sets off to find out, traveling all over a country that most of the western world has forgotten completely even though it is the size of Europe. In the second part of the book, Robbins is granted an enormous amount of access to the president of the country and has time to both observe him at leisure and question him closely. If ever anyone asks what I am looking for in a politician, I will now know where to point them is all I can say. In any case, the book is a truly engrossing read, for anyone. Highest recommendation.
Here’s the thing about moving to Montana: I thought I was going to have a place to live. Seriously, while I was out here jobhunting my aunt and I talked about ways to get half of her 10-acre property, including the house, into my possession. So I came out. But now there are problems with the county saying I can’t live here once her new house (on the other half of her property) is finished, and transferring ownership of this property hasn’t come up again. And I can’t bring myself to be all, “Hey, so what happened to giving me 5 acres and a house, hmm?” at my aunt. So sometime in the not-too-distant future I will be homeless. And my job does not pay rent money, let me say.
Which brings me to my new job. There is only so much I should say here, I suppose, if I am smart. But let me just tell you all that at work I was IN THE BATHROOM CRYING during the holidays. Also I recently told my GM off for being an unprofessional asshole to me. God it is so awful. And the pay is shitty. MACDONALDS is paying $0.75 more/hour to start than I am making, and I got more then most people usually get because of my experience. Costco starts people $1.75 more/hour. $1.75!
Obviously I need a new job. But the thing is, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the living situation here, and I don’t want to start something new if I am just going to have to move in the spring — jobhopping looks SO BAD on a resume. (And even if I found a job that paid rent here, I REALLY REALLY don’t want to keep renting, especially apartments. I want something of my own, dammit.) I may wind up back in FL again, but even my family is all, “But it would really suck if you came back here and then we sold the house and moved back to Montana right away.” Apropos of which, my parents turned down offer #2 on the house.
Anyway, my aunt is now making noise about having the county inspectors come and see that this place is shut down (no cooking facilities, which is already pretty much the case, I won’t go into it here) and then just letting me stay anyway. “What could they do?” THEY COULD FINE YOU A LOT OF MONEY IS WHAT THEY COULD DO AND THEN I WOULD FEEL RESPONSIBLE AND ALSO LIKE I HAD TO PAY THE FINE. But I say nothing, because what else is there?
In additional stress news, my ovaries have been, like, hemmoraging for almost three weeks now despite The Pill (which I have been taking for years). And I do mean ovaries, not uterus. So, polycystic ovarian syndrome kicking my butt? Stress of move+new job+bad news on the homelessness front+holiday insanity+awful jobness = rebelling hormones? Or something more sinister? I DO NOT HAVE INSURANCE RIGHT NOW, BODY. I CANNOT TAKE YOU TO THE GYN. GIVE ME A BREAK FOR ONCE.
In all seriousness I think I am really clinically depressed at the moment, to the point where my thinking is not completely rational. I do not know what, in this post, might be a cause and what might be an effect, but I do know that, again, I have no insurance yet and so cannot go talk to a doctor. I don’t mean to be all emo and whingy, but I am seriously not coping. I would REALLY like to not have all these overwhelming feelings of total failure and helplessness, and the occasional panic attack is something I could do without, as well. (I am turning into my mother.)
Body AND mind weirdness could conceivably be explained by improper thyroid med dosage, of course, but once again… NO INSURANCE. Jesus, help me.
In conclusion, two firm conclusions:
1. It is bad for me to be away from people who will physically touch me. I crave physical contact and miss it when I don’t get it, and the lack thereof has a definite affect on my ability to cope. I promise myself that I will never again move somewhere that I don’t have someone I can hug when I need it.
2. The problem with not demanding a lot of life is that you don’t then get a lot from life. Which makes sense, I suppose, but how do you suddenly come up with some big heroic goal to strive for when all you really want is somewhere small and comfortable to live, a touchy-feely friend or two, and a dog?
It really is too beautiful here for words. Helena sits on the side of a very round valley, so I am surrounded on all sides by mountains. (I am down on the valley floor on the west side. The Scratch Gravels are immediately to my west, the Elkhorns are to the south, the Little Belts are to the north, and the Big Belts are to the east.) The problem here is that the scenery is so expansive in every direction that it is akmost impossible to take landscape shots of the area without a panoramic camera. Still, I have done my best and hope you enjoy the results.
Can you tell from which direction the prevailing wind comes?
Taken from my deck. I love these hills.
The property where I live is surrounded on three sides by the Kinsey farm and on the fourth by a neighbor’s pasture. Immediately next to my house are the remains of an orchard. This is an old apple tree.
Autumn on a neighboring farm. Taken on my way to work.
This is SE of my house on the shore of Canyon Ferry Lake, at a point called White Earth by Lewis and Clark. There’s a campground just on the other side of the point. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that the background clouds are snowing on the Big Belts. This is one of the few photos I took on my jobhunting trip in September.
This is my Aunt, freezing her buns off at Park Lake in the mountains above the nearby town of Rimini. Also taken in September.
My parents sent me out into an area known as Bird’s Eye, just on the other side of the Scratch Gravels, to look at a house. This is the view from the patio. That’s MacDonald Pass and the Elkhorns in the background. Wow, do I love that house.
Cattle Grazing in the Scratch Gravels. Taken in September.
A tiny but perfect golden delicious apple in the orchard next to my house. My goal is to prune in the spring and hopefully I will get full-size specimins next autumn.
I’m not the only one that enjoys the orchard. There’s a small bachelor heard of mule deer that bed down there most nights.
This is the city at night, taken from my deck.
And, as a bonus for Kanikanihia, my new dishes & flatware.
Just now I was standing on my deck listening to the shush of the first falling snow of the season as my grandfather’s cockoo clock chimed midnight inside the house. The taste of snow was in my nose and mouth, and the normally endless and china blue sky was instead a heavy blanket overhead. I had forgotten how snow muffles sound and makes the world smaller, how the universe outside the door is suddenly totally alien to the one inside. I came in when the snow soaked through my slippers. But I wanted to sit all night on the steps, while the snow fell in my hair and stuck to my eyelashes, and observe this alternate world.
________________
I typed that up on Sunday night (18 November). The weather started out with a few hours of off-again-on-again sleet but eventually became honest to God snow, albeit the heavy, wet sort. The temperature plummeted after that and has been down in the single digits (F) ever since. I am so happy to experience the turning of the year again.
So, weather aside, I am here, I am working, I am doing well. There is not enough hot cocoa, instant cuppacuccino, hot tea, or bullion granules in the WORLD — or fleecy pajamas, for that matter. There is some stress at the moment about future housing arrangements, but even thinking about it makes me tired and I therefore don’t have the energy for whinging.
But I suppose I should back up a bit, since I haven’t posted much for so long.
The drive out here was long but enjoyable. Day One was all about latitude and the racing-sim feel of driving the Eastern Corridor. I left my house with two cats in the back of the station wagon at 0700 (EDT) and drove about 10 hours to Monteagle, Tennessee. That took me through Atlanta, Georgia* and into the Cumberland Mountains. Day Two I finally got to turn left and cover some longitude. I left Monteagle at 0900 and it was all downhill from there to Nashville (which must have the world’s best behaved, most polite drivers). I should have stopped to take photos this day, because autumn in the Cumberlands was just exceptional. Otherwise, everything went swimmingly until I got to the ridiculous urban planning disaster that is Saint Louis, Missouri — it took me almost THREE HOURS to get around the city. I finally pulled into Topeka, Kansas and flamesword’s apartment at about 2100, where I spent all of Day Three. We went shopping, saw Transformers, had dinner with some of her siblings, and watched some Coffee Prince. It was very good. Thanks, Flamesword!
Flamesword & me
Day Four was Topeka to Wall, South Dakota. I left Flamesword at about 0800 and did the latitude thing again for most of the day, driving through America’s Heartland. It was all about the farms, let me say. At some point in the afternoon I pulled off the highway at a scenic turnout and walked a short distance to an outcrop that overlooked the Black Hills. I stood in the wind and silence and felt the vertiginous sensation of clouds racing towards me from hundreds of miles away. The sky was impossibly huge. Later, I stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota to pay homage to American oddity at the Corn Palace, then pulled into Wall at about 1730. After checking into the hotel I headed for (apparently) world famous Wall Drug, but they closed at 1800 on Sunday.
The Corn Palace
Me taking a photo of myself at the Corn Palace
(Wall Drug photo to come, hopefully)
On Day Five I left Wall at 0715. This was Rocky Mountain day. I came over a rise outside Sheridan, Wyoming and saw the Front Range for the first time — and it was completely white with snow! I drove tward/along it for miles wondering if there would be snow in the passes and generally feelking apprehensive. Along the way I passed through Sundance where I saw my first “If gate is down, road is closed. Turn back to (_Sundance_)!” sign. These was pretty frequent in the Wyoming mountains.
First approach to the front Range
The big fight of the day was the wind, though, particularly after I got into Montana and onto the Crow reservation near the Little Bighorn. It was INSANE coming over the Bozeman Pass from Billings — I was the only asshole on the road dumb enough to try to drive the speed limit (when my car could achieve it in the headwind) and that’s saying a lot in Montana. Montana, incidentally, often helpfully privides you with large identifying signs so you know which mountain range you’re about to brave, such as the Elkhorns — or the Crazies. But I finally pulled into my aunt’s driveway at about 1700.
View from my driveway on arrival day
I was only supposed to have one day here to get some thing done and then start work on the second day after I arrived, but that didn’t happen. My new employer is just incredibly, er, laid-back about things. I finally began working after about a week, and the phone company was only three days late installing my phone service (they insisted that couldn’t find my house inspite of the fact that it is correctly identified on Google Maps, has had phone service from them before, and they had a technician out here earlier in the week to verify my address). I am settling in, I suppose.
Anyway, more local photos to come in a few days. Hope you are all well & happy!
*Eight hours from Fellsmere to Atlanta, Roomonthewire. Did I do good?? I think I did good!
Well. I was offered a few jobs in Montana, two of which did not include benefits. I’m still waiting to hear from the hospital — the recruiter says they ‘definitely want to get me in, somewhere’ but are ‘just not sure where.’ Meaning, of course, that I was not hired for either of the two positions for which I applied. In the meantime I have agreed to go full time as a book stocker at the book/media store in town. I am to start 24 October.
I’ve been trying to get all sorts of things done since I got back from my trip, but I don’t seem to be making appreciable headway. So many things to do and so little time to do it in. I only gave myself two days here between my last day at my current job and the day I leave. It’s not nearly enough time, but I was already asking new employers to hold a job for three weeks.
So, I will be leaving here in my mother’s station wagon on 18 October. I’ll be spending a day en route with LJ-user Flamesword. It will be good to see her, and good to be able to break the four-day drive in half.
It is sort of flattering to see how genuinly sad my Monkey Crew seems to be at my leaving. I am having terrible guilt. I have also been having second thoughts. The new job pays even less than the current one, and I am getting nervous about making ends meet, meeting new people, new family arrangement, etc. But I am going forward anyway. From another POV, it seems foolish to turn down what amounts to the gift of a house and property, and I have never liked Florida anyway.
The most difficult part is that, while I was jobhunting in Montana, my Nana’s cancer returned. Her health is not good, and I rather expect that after I leave here I will not see her again. I have tried to convince her to come with me, on the grounds that Mom and Dad will be coming out, too, sooner or later. But Nana doesn’t want to move and uses the cold weather as an excuse although she rarely leaves her house. But there is nothing I can do.
Some other items of business:
Nekofreak: I didn’t forget your birthday. I’ve had a little bag here since the beginning of September that I need to get in the mail; I am just slow and overwhelmed. I hope your birthday was terrific, however, and hope you will forgive my tardiness. Your gift should be mailing before I leave Florida! Also, no love for your job right now. You deserve better; go out and get it!!
Lethanon: I got your postcard today! I <3 you. Also, my mother laughed at it, a lot. Thumbs up! I may have to come for a visit after all. Also, sorry we got cut off the last time we talked. I tried to call you back but couldn’t get through, and I haven’t had much time since. I will call you again from Montana!
Strawberryjoy: I continue to send you Good Thoughts, for whatever they are worth. Your job situation sounds incredibly frustrating and stressful. I’m glad you’re doing things like escaping to the city for a day and such.
Randomly, John Green came out of the closet on Nation Coming Out Day, although possibly not the closet one might assume. I think you will be entertained.
Now I may need more Cotton-candy-jpop music for my FOUR DAY DRIVE. Anybody know where I can nick some Arashi or similar?
Apparently, LiveWriter works, at least in some limited capacity. I wonder if there is any way to make it lock my LJ posts as well. Will have to explore that — is there some XML code I can insert, maybe? Handily, though, once I post this the window will remain open, I will choose my LiveJournal blog from the dropdown list, and I will hit publish to send it there, too. No copy-pasting required. Still needs testing at GreatestJournal and InsaneJournal.
When I sleep I hear you breathe; it comes from all directions in my dream.
Thought I'd close my eyes and make you leave...
I'm Reading
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