Today Buddha left us. Yesterday Buddha was arrested. This OTHER guy, Charley, stole a bunch of money from a bunch of people. Somehow Buddha got tied into it in the polices’ minds. The ONLY thing Buddha is guilty of is sending out two checks of a large amount (between the two of them being over 1000) and didn’t have the money to back them. But that was taken care of, he got the money through for it. One story is that the checks were TO Charley and one story is that Charley knew about the checks and so pointed his finger at Buddha hoping to get himself off the hook. Either way Buddha spent the night in jail and, apparently 3 years banned from the park and a certain amount of unsupervised ion. 3 YEARS BANNED from the park! That screws his apprenticeship over, that tears up all his plans and shakes his life completely. He dropped by today to say goodbye, and cried. I almost cried (granted I’m also hormonal but still). It’s complete bull! He did nothing to deserve this, nothing. And the romantic side of me says the entire world should have stopped for today, like in the movies when something happens and everything stops. I hated that everything had to go on. I said goodbye, gave him a hug, then went back to work. Everyone went back to work, nothing stopped, life has to go on. Drove me nuts.


But, as life does go on, we got to picking on Cheryl. One of my Sous Chefs… I think my favorite. A few of us were saying she needs to start her own restaurant. To which we would say “screw this” to Yellowstone and the Inn and work for her. Even I, with all my dreams, would stop to work for her. Talk about valuable experience! She’s good enough to do so, we all that were discussing it work WONDERFULY together and we all love Cheryl. It would be AMAZING. She’s worked front and back of house - decided she was born to wear the whites, but she KNOWS both sides. It could work. It would ROCK. And apparently they’ve been telling her that since school. When she said that - all exasperated - I replied that if so many people are saying the same thing maybe we’re ONTO something! She just gave me one of her Cheryl looks and walked away. But still! So I kind of hope one day she will. When I leave I’m going to exchange numbers and emails or something and tell her that if she EVER decides to open CALL ME! TELL ME! And all of the returners agree that since it’s change of hands Xanterra has gone downhill SEVERELY, most of them don’t want to return.. It would be perfect timing and everything. I hope she buckles and goes for it. ^_^

Anyway, that's what's new. Good, bad, and the ugly. And the hopeful. FIVE WEEKS AS OF TODAY!