Hey all,
So I've noticed that for whatever reason, no one leaves me comments. If you would start, just once or twice, if you have something worth commenting, that would be lovely. Then perhaps it'll feel less like I'm talking to a brick wall.
Now, on to the blog, I suppose. Let us see...
I'm fighting off a cold or illness of some sort. All it amounted to was a sore throat and stuffed sinuses. The sore throat is gone, but the stuffed sinuses are being a problem. My amazing roommate, Alliya, got me some Sudafed, though, when she went to Bozeman so I feel much better today.
Buhdda, my co-worker (who's real name is Nick), threw a party at the pub on Thursday. The unofficial (as in "we can't put that on the posters because someone might get offended) theme was "hos and pimps" party. The posters said "Bootyshakers and Moneymakers" So I got dressed up - I don't have ho-ish clothes, but we did our makeup thick and outrageous. Portland Road style, yo. And went and I danced all night. It was so much fun, we left at around 10:30 and I didn't get in until 1:30 or 2 am. I danced with co-workers, with one of my soux chefs Sheryl, Kevin and Lindsay, lots of people. Got offered a beer by one guy I danced with. We were dancing and he was holding FOUR open beers, and he offered me one. It was kind if hilarious. He's another co-worker of mine, Ian. The next day (yesterday) my thighs were sore! Clearly I don't use those muscles much, but dancing all night was so much fun. And yeah, everyone's thinking "Oh GOD!" cuz I can't dance, which is true enough - but no one can really. Once in a while a circle breaks out because someone CAN dance and IS, but generally we're all dancing at the same level. And no one's ashamed or embarrased, we're just having FUN. Total success - Buhdda rocks.
The 3rd of July Michael's visiting. The 3rd to the 6th. I'm so excited. I'm not the bounce-off-walls type so people think it's no big deal, but whatever. They can think what they will.
Oh - Alliya, my amazing roommate... Will no longer be my roommate. She's moving out to move downstairs with two of her friends. No big deal I guess, I mean, I LOVE having her as a roommate, and I'm going to miss having her around all the time... But whatever, such is life, and she's gonna be happy so cool. It's not like we'll never see eachother again. We're still in the same dorm, we eat at the same place, we work at the same place. The biggest worry is who'll replace her. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are arrival days for new people. I know that even though today is Saturday it doesn't matter because she's not yet completely moved out. I'm hoping to not have one until after Michael leaves. He's staying here with me whether my hypothetical roommate likes it or not, I'm not making him get a super-expensive room at the Inn. I could probably talk to the personnell office about it and get them to hold off for a time. Besides, we have at least two completely empty double rooms here that I know of. Anyway, I'm sure that things will be okay. They can't really go that bad. I mean, I was here first which gives me not only priority but the ear of the RCs. I'm friends with both of them and I get along with the personelle ladies too. If I get a bad roommate, I'll just change it.
Anyway, that's how things are going with me. OH! One more thing...
I've been thinking about this for months - MONTHS. I don't guess I have a real definitive answer as to why - and I know I'll be asked why a lot - but I want to get my right ear pierced. Now I have thought about it all. I want to get it pierced at the top of my right ear in the cartalige. I want to get it pierced while I'm here at Yellowstone kind of as a commemorative thing. It was while I was on this adventure! And no that doesn't mean that I'm going to get something done every time I have an adventure, or by the time I'm 80 I'll be completely pierced and tattooed. I talked to one of my friends, well, I've talked to a lot of them about this... But one of them told me that she believes that piercings and tattoos are kind of strangely addictive, but not in the same way as most things. With piercings and tattoos, they're addictive, but you have a limit. Like, you get a few things done, and you're satisfied. You no longer have the urge to get piercings or tattoos. I kind of believe her. I mean, there are the extremes (as Abigail pointed out to me) that have either no limit or a very large limit, ya know? But most people, most normal peoples have that limit.
My limit, I think, will be this piercing, and ONE tattoo if I ever get one. I've been thinking about it for a while. I kind of want one, but a good meaningful one. I don't want to look back in fifty years and go "yeah that was stupid"... So I think if I get one, it'll be after I get married and because you can't wear a ring in the kitchens I'll get my wedding ring tattooed onto the appropriate finger. Probably in the celtic braid style. I really like the celtic braid look. That would be meaningful and cool and something I could still cover up with a real ring if I want/need to.
It's funny, though, the idea of getting a tattoo partially because of the kitchens. Appropriate, don't you think? And watching Anthony Bordain's No Reservations, when he went to Portland, Oregon, he did note that a LOT of kitchen people have tattoos, and that really Oregonians are the only ones like that... we're just odd I guess. :D I don't mind going with that stereotype or that group or whatever, ya know what I mean? So yeah, that's my limit. I think.
Now that I've told Mom what I want to do, and I know she is cool with it, I'm actually really excited. I've been thinking about it for so long, it'll be sooo cool to actually have it done!! :D
So yeah, this time around, someone should leave me a comment. More than one someone too. Please and thank you!

Hey all,
Just got off my weekend - went out to West Yellowstone on my way to Bozeman, Montana with a few friends of mine. It was fun. Saw a dead deer, which was odd, but other than that no spectacular wildlife. Which, by the way, bison are no longer spectacular... So yeah, we saw quite a few of them, but big deal. Well, except when we saw a few babies RIGHT out our window. We even pulled over, and I got a few pics and a small video. Yay for my camera taking videos... I'll try to get them up but no guarantee.
I bought a few books and a few movies. Nothing else to do here. Oh - Crystal would find this especially interesting - I bought Mists of Avalon on DVD. I watched half of it the other night... And it was good - but sadly it doesn't follow the book well enough to truly compair them. Think of them as seperate works and the movie is quite good though. I also got The Tenth Kingdom - 417 minutes and three DVDs. Haha! But a good movie, and it'll just take me a few days to watch it. :D I also got Spaceballs and Men In Tights. Typically I wouldn't buy so much entertainment crap, but it's needed here!
OH! New In Town - Renee Zelweger (or however it's spelled) as a corporate on the way up moving to Minnesota to nab a promotion... Good movie. APPARENTLY the Minnesota stereotypes are SO wrong though, they're not ALL like that. :D My roommate is from Minnesota and she laughed her butt off at how they portray them. But yeah, good movie. I watched it on my own, and I'm a little off, but there were really funny moments from time to time. And of course, it's a chick flick so it's got the touchy feely parts now and then too...
So today I was so tired I napped all the way through dinner, and all we have in the room is snacky stuff... Shelby is out in West Yellowstone, though, and said he'd pick me up something, thank GOD! I'm starving... And I can't wait to eat the brownie I smuggled out of the kitchen. See, I portioned off the brownies today - the GOOD ones we use for the dining room, not the EDR ones - and there are little bits left all over, ya know? Like, stuff stuck to the spatula, stuff stuck to the pan, etc... So after portioning two sheet pans of brownies, I took the bits and put them in a cup with a lid. :D Greg, my supervisor, saw me, but I wasn't being obvious, and he just grinned. I mean, it's going to go to the trash otherwise, and I'm not being obvious "LOOK WHAT I'M TAKING!" and I'm not taking a brownie - just the 'waste'. It's only corporate hogwash that's keeping us from doing that sort of thing a lot. Like, both the soux chefs on duty walked by and grabbed a tasting spoon to take some of the 'waste' for "quality control"... it's nonesense! But whatever. Such is life.
Anyway, I'm going to finish with Shelby's music before he gets here and then perhaps watch a movie (so I don't fall asleep again!) until he gets here.
I'll update again later. Later!

So today was my Monday. I realize that it's actually Saturday, but regardless. And it was one HECK of a Monday. I would say everything that could DID go wrong- but I said that to a line cook and he argued it. "Really?? EVERYTHING? Your hair caught fire and your food all sucked and you cut yourself badly and..." ok - so not everything. But AGH!
One of my co-workers turned in his 8 day notice, and then was a no-call no-show today. Turns out he decided to up and leave. Well fine, I understand how he's sticking it to the man - Xanterra our employer. I understand his need/want and his reasons. But does he have to screw me and the rest of the pantry crew over in the process? We all scrambled like chickens with our head cut off trying to get it all done. See, during lunch there are four of us in the pantry typically. A line person (me), a buffet runner, the breakfast buffet runner prepping for tomorrow, and a prep guy to work on our prep list (the no-show coworkers job). In effort to do HIS job and ours, I did extra prep AND Bear Paw Deli stuff before I did my line, ran late prepping my line AND burned my thumb, and I stayed late an hour. The entire morning and night crew in the pantry at once trying to do our jobs and his. UGH! The only real upside is that now we truly know there is no small job in that kitchen and EVERYONE is vital.
I also changed my opinion on the call-in people who aren't really sick. I went from "well it's your choice, your honour" essentially to "that is not ok, you're screwing over your entire crew needlessly"
So yeah, that's my rant and my Monday. Burned my thumb on my right hand in the middle of the lower joint - you use that for everything. And then I had to wear laytex gloves all day that hold in the air, which held in the heat. Hurt! I held a lot of ice to that burn over the day.

BUT! Such is life, I suppose. Life goes on, and at the end of the day I somehow still love my job. I hate my boss - Xanterra admitedly sucks.... But I LOVE my job and the crew I work with so it's easy to forget I work for Xanterra. Sometimes it does feel like I've been here already forever. Like this summer will drag on into a hundred years without anyone realizing it. But sometimes it feels like the summer flies by...

OH! One thing I've noticed with irony!! The only thing to do in Yellowstone, really, is walk. Which is fine, it's beatiful and the air is fresh and you can smell the rain when it falls... But we - all of us that work in the Inn, and especially us in the kitchen or dining room, work ALL day on our feet, walking/running around etc. At the end of the day all we want to do is relax. On our days off WALKING is hardly on our list of things we want to do. No wonder no one has seen all that much of Yellowstone for having been here a month. Sigh. Cest la vie, right? I think that's how you spell it. Crys'll correct me if it's not.

Anyhow, that's pretty much all I say anymore. Such is life. Such is life. Such is life. So I'll talk to you all later when there is something else worth saying.

Three days off!!

Hey all,
So I know it's kind of been a while. The way the schedules turned out though, I wound up with a three day weekend :D so I thought I'd chat. See, the schedules go from Thursday to the next Wednesday. Typically I had Thursday and Wednesday off - opposite ends of the schedule. But as long as it happens more than once I get a real two day weekend, right? Right. Well, on the new schedule, they moved my weekend from Thursday Wednesday to Thursday Friday - meaning I had Wednesday off from the previous schedule, AND Thursday and Friday from the new one. WOOO!! :D
I still love my job. There's been a little drama going on in the workplace, though. People leaving, coming, changing jobs, and *hopefully* getting fired. People changing rooms in the dorm, changing dorms... People with sudden conflicts, etc. A lot of it in the dorm is high school juvenile drama. They just need to grow up. The drama at work is genuine something needs to be done about certain people drama. In the pantry where I work, for instance, one of our guys is leaving in 8 days. And we have no one to replace him as far as I'm aware. But we're short staffed anyway - the entire Inn is. But we're also getting new people soon. New people in the DORM tomorrow. New people at work... I don't know when, but I know the pantry needs two new people just to bring it to par. Luckily, I'm safe. I have a shift that is mine and as a co-worker pointed out, we doubt anyone COULD take it unless I left. It's MY shift! Lunch line - 7am to 3pm.
I'm slowly but surely - well not SO slowly - realizing the difference between off-the-clock and on-duty people. I could easily hang half the wait staff during my shift. But most of them are actually pretty cool people - OFF THE JOB. It's just ascertaining that difference. Which I'm getting better at.
Lets see, I never really think there's much to tell. It's great fun to act like a tourist while off duty and in public - which we're supposed to. It's so entertaining. Every time I walk into the Inn lobby I stop and go "tourist moment!!" and look all around in the "we're not in Kansas anymore" manner and "ooh" and "ahh"... :D Fun stuff. Oh and people watching!! Is hilarious. "You just bought all this brand new stuff just to 'look the part' even though you'll NEVER WEAR IT AGAIN! How does that make you feel?" And someone asked one of the hostesses "what time do they turn off the geyser?" Or "where are the fireworks for the fourth of July?" (for those who can't figure it out - NO FIREWORKS it's a bloody NATIONAL PARK! Wildlife preserve! No fireworks!) It's fun. Makes me so glad I work BOH so I don't deal with them. YAY back of house!
Anyway, my roommate and I are still fantastic, I love my job, and I have a THREE DAY WEEKEND! :D I'm excited. Ttyl!