Work...

You know, there are a lot of times I would like to move to San Francisco and be one of those homeless people that live in Golden Gate Park. Life is hard, but tolerable...and there's a real sense of "family" among them. They're accepting of one another.

On days like today when work seems neverending and thankless I really wish I didn't have to have a job. This thought leads me to thinking of life without a job, and therefore life without money. I have no grand aspirations to be a lottery winner. Thinking about "brokedom" my thoughts end up on those homeless people. I spent a day in the park with a group of them when I visited there last year and - while the smell got a little much at times - it was not a bad time in the least. My heart really went out to the people there, but it was hard to feel too bad for them when they all seemed to be having such a good time.

Oh yes, this post was supposed to be about work - not homeless people. So allow me to get back on track. It's almost lunch time, I've accomplished very little today, and chances are the rest of the day will follow suit - just like yesterday and last week. You see, I'm having a little bit of a motivation problem. Do you know why postal people go "postal"? Because the mail never stops. They work their tails off delivering mail every day to people all across the United States - but tomorrow there is always more. My job is kind of like that, only imagine if half the country forgot for about 6 months to send any mail, then sent it all at once during the last 2 weeks on August. THAT is what my job is like. And now I get to catch up on all of this work and get comments like, "Well why didn't you send out a reminder email?" Well DAMN why didn't I think of that? You know...maybe our sales numbers would be a little better if someone could send you a reminder email every morning to get off your ass and sell something! I despise having a job where half of my time is spent reminding other people to do their job. It is slowly driving me insane. I can just feel my mind slipping away....

There are just a few tolerable people who work here, and it it weren't for them - I'd have lost it already by now. So, a special "thanks" to you guys...y'all ROCK!

Until my next uber-unmotivated, blogging break,

Darbi

The Dreaded Elena Plate

It's been a long time since I've been on to share a little story. Don't ask me why the Elena Plate brought so much inspiration, it just did. Here is the whole sordid tale...

Everyone has a place like this. At every other restaurant in the entire world, you tend to eat like a human being. You get your great big, restaurant portion of Italian, Mexican, Chinese, or good old American food and pick at it until you're ready to pop. In some instances a free appetizer helps to fill the gut even before the entree gets to your table. But there is always that ONE restaurant where the food is soooooooooo good and you are soooooooooo hungry that you start eating like that skinny little Chinese guy in that hotdog eating competition. For me, that place is Los Pericos - a tiny little hole-in-the-wall Mexican food restaurant right up the street from where I work. The food at this place is wonderful and the service is fast and friendly. I get a full hour for lunch, but can be in and out of that place in a half an hour, which is a miracle considering the horrible amount of food that I eat when I'm there.

Let me share a little about the Elena Plate. This is their largest lunch plate - so big, in fact, that it comes to your table on TWO plates. I order this plate every time I go to Los Pericos and have the eating of it down to a science. I order the Elena Plate with no rice (I hate Mexican rice) and extra refried beans. Of course, I snack on a few chips with salsa before the food even comes out. Then in about 5 minutes I get plate number 1: 1 small, hardshell taco and a "cheese puff". A cheesepuff is basically a small tortilla bowl (think the palm of a small person's hand) filled with queso. I eat the taco. I pour some of the hot sauce from the chips into the cheese puff. I eat more appetizer chips with the queso/hot sauce concontion. A minute or so later the waiter will bring me plate 2: a tamale, a cheese enchilada, and a shitload of refried beans. I start by cutting the tamale and enchilada into bite sized pieces. "Why don't you cut as you go?," you might ask. Because I just don't. I alternate bits of enchilada and tamale until both are gone. This leaves behind the gravy that covers both. I scrape all of the leftover gravy to the left side of the plate where the beans are and mix them up. I eat all the beans. Plate 2 is now devoured. I put plate 1 on top of it to save room on the table. The only thing on plate 1 at this point is the leftover shell of the cheesepuff, with some leftover and partially soaked up queso and hot sauce. I crack apart the cheesepuff shell and eat it. That's desert! And that's it. I send two empty plates back to the kitchen and feel like a totally gross pig. Not just a totally gross pig, but a one that has eaten so much I could literally be ROLLED out the farking door.

This is coming from a girl that can fill up on a 6 inch Veggie sub from Subway. This is coming from someone who doesn't even order at a Chinese food restaurant because a few bites from everyone else's plates will fill me up beyond belief. THIS is coming from a girl who has to get that tiny, puny-sized Jason's Deli sandwich because the other is just too much to eat.

How does this Elena Plate Disaster happen? Is it just me???

Contemplating questions for the weekend I suppose....

Have a great one! Darbi :-D

Spirituality

Spirituality is SO important in life. You have to believe in something - even if it is just yourself. Personally, I'm Wiccan. I was raised in a very wonderful and loving Methodist home and was given no reason to ever turn my back on it. However, from the time I was very young I always felt there was something missing or wrong about it. In middle school I found out my friend Sital was not a Christian. I grew up in a small town where EVERYONE was a Christian. I never really knew you were allowed to be anything else. So, this news came as a pretty big shocker. I started thinking...and considered the fact that my religion says that Sital will go to hell. Sital was one of the greatest people I knew. She was smart, sweet, funny, a great dancer, and really beautiful inside and out. This is when I started to rebel against the dogma of Christianity. My spiritual life began to diminish at this time and eventually faded into nothing. In the last year I started to feel a big hole in me that I finally traced down to a complete lack of spiritual passion. I went looking for something that felt right to me, something that meshed with what I felt was right in my own heart. That's when I found Wicca. It's made SUCH a huge difference in my life. Every day I wake up and feel a change. Every day is better. I know it sounds cheesy - but if you can't be cheesy in your blog, where can you be cheesy?? I guess that's it for today. Must stop procrastinating and actually get some WORK done!! Eeeeek

OUCH!

OUCH! Did anyone else notice that my last blog read like someone puked a lot of really horrible sentences onto a computer screen? The reason for that - yeah - I was hung-the-fark-over. It's really kind of sad. I had so many really important things that I wanted to say about my Friday night out rockin' the small live music scene in my cheesy suburb of Houston.

(a small aside to add that since no one is actually READING my blog, there is no one to notice the horrible puking incident of the last blog...so I feel a little bit better)

Now back to the important things.
In my very humble, and often misguided, opinion in order to really love music you have to love it all. You have to love the art of molding random notes and beats into a song. It doesn't matter if its classical, rap, metal, or jazz - you must appreciate the talent that it took to produce a good piece of music. THIS, my friends, is why live music is so important. To go and see the music being made, to feel the vibrations flowing from the speakers into your chest - that is what makes music real. I love the blues - I love to sway to the bass line and look into a good blues singer's eyes as he's wailing. Like Friday, in the same night, I love a mosh pit. I love standing at the front of a crowd feeling the anger screaming from a guitar - so much anger that the crowd breaks out into a shoving match. And after you're knocked to the ground by a scary looking guy twice your size, he stops moshing, turns around, and helps you up. Because, after all, it's not about hurting the individual - it's about feeling the music.
Yes, I've been a raver. Two of my favorite quotes came from my days as a raver. Now seems like a good time to dust them off.

1. MUSIC is the drug

2. Fuck the rave act, let's dance.

Live music

Here's a little information about me. I love music. All kinds of music. And even more than music, I love LIVE music. So, after 2 nights of little-to-no sleep I seriously considered going home last night and going to bed for around 15 hours. But instead I decided to go out - again. Started out the night with a few older friends at a local bar. Decided live music would be more fun so we went to a cheesy martini bar where there was a band playing. The band was great - kinda reminded me of Double Trouble with a great sax player. The lead singer was trying damn hard (but unsuccessfully) to channel Mick Jagger - but he was tolerable. They played some fun bluesy stuff. Atmosphere wasn't too bad, but the bar was mostly filled with old folks - tolerable but not my crowd. So when all the old people I was hangin' with ducked out around 11pm I decided to head out someplace else. So I took off to another live music bar where they were playing some awesome frickin' metal. So I got in the mosh pit and farked around there for a couple of hours. So today I am 1) hungover 2) deaf 3) bruised and sore. But all in all - I'd say it was a successful night.

Worn out - day 2

Well, I did it again last night. Went out to another bar to see my band play. I SWORE I would not stay for the 3rd set. But their 2nd setlist is my least favorite and so I decided I better stay until I could leave the evening on a good note. Which meant, once again, staying until the frickin' bar closed at 2.
At least I slept better last night. The night before was a very restless 3 hours, which I figure I probably got maybe 2 hours of on-and-off sleep. Last night, I got 3 good hours of real-deal, good sleepin' - so I'm not nearly as dead today. I think I owe it to the weather. It was about 60 degrees so when I got home I threw open the two big windows in my bedroom, grabbed an extra heavy blanket from downstairs for the bed and went to sleep to the sounds of distant dogs barking, the breeze through the trees, and the occasional car passing by the house. There's nothing I love more than to go to sleep in a room just chilly enough to be able to appreciate a nice warm blanket....

What a lovely day to start a blog

This is honestly one of the strangest days I've ever had since moving to Houston. It is the middle of August in one of the hottest and muggiest cities in the United States and the weather is BEAUTIFUL. Temp in the 80's, low humidity, and a very nice breeze blowing through. I feel a little bad enjoying such a wonderful weather day like today - seeing as how it's all being brought on by those two awful hurricanes coming in to hit Florida today. So, I apologize, Floridians for your bad luck - but this weather is GREAT! I love blogs - I read them just about every day. So when stopping to think at work this morning on how I can remember such a wonderful day - I thought, "Today is the day I will start my blog". Better to start it on a lovely day when I can talk about lovely things than the rest of the days that pass around here - which are generally bad. I'll apologize for those posts ahead of time.
The thing that I appreciate most about today's weather- it's going to make for a great lunchtime nap. See - I stayed up entirely too late last night watching my favorite local cover band (a really good band in general, but bars like cover bands here - so they went with what pays the bills) and so I'm dragging today. A lunchtime nap is all that is going to save me. Lucky for me, this weather is conducive to driving down the road to a little rest stop, rolling down the windows, opening the sunroff, setting the alarm on my cell phone, and passing out for about 45 minutes. The really dumb thing about me - I'll be going out to see the same band AGAIN tonight at a different bar. I just can't get enough. My goal is NOT to shut the bar down tonight - if I can leave before their last set is up I should be asleep by 1am which is perfectly acceptable - unlike the 2 hours of sleep I got last night. I guess that's all for my first blog attempt. I should work on getting better at this, and trying to work with the settings on this. Hope I don't screw it up too bad! Until next time. :-D