Are men stupid or is it just me?

I don’t get guys. There are some things that guys do that I just don't get. It's like they WANT to be caught. Here's what happened.

Last night I was working. There was a woman that came in who asked for a table for 2. She sat and waited for the guy she was meeting to come in. He came in and sat down. I walked over to greet the table and instantly recognized him as having been at the restaurant, but can’t really remember from when. Now, I am horrible with names, but I am pretty good at remembering faces. I say hi and something about welcome back. The girl goes “I didn’t know you have been here.” In my head I’m thinking “OH SHIT!” I know how I recognize him. This was probably 7 something in the evening when this happened. This SAME guy was in at 4 with a completely different woman! I know, I know, I totally busted him, but come on!!! If you are going to go to the same damn restaurant at least tell the girl you’ve been there before. This is completely why they get into trouble. There is an NFL player that does the same thing. I’ve seen him in there with 2 different girls and apparently there is a 3rd he’s been in there with too. When I waited on them, I greeted them as if this were the first time coming in because I she hadn't been there and I didn’t know if he had mentioned that he had been there before or not.

HI! It's almost 5 am and I am exausted. Some of the guys from work and I went to have a couple of drinks at a place down the street. They don't close till 4am and we met the manager and some of the bartenders. I am sooooo tired right now and a little loopy. JG came to see me at work today. It was very nice. He and KR and another friend of ours came by on Friday, but I was so busy then that I didnt' get to talke to them very much. Today I wasn't so busy so I hung out with him and his honey for a little bit and even gave them a couple of splashes. Splashes are just a tablespoon (or a couple if I'm the one pouring!) of wine to see if you like it or not. They are free and it's great because you don't have to pay for a glass if you don't like it! I splashed them on some 9s and 10s, which are $23 a glass or more. Yesterday after closing, some of the co-workers and I went out for drinks. After a while we went to this great place that is open 24 hours. They have pizza and these great sandwitches. The sandwithches have french fries and coselaw on them. It is the perfect food at 5am or when you have a really bad hangover. Anyway, I didn't get in till 6:30 or later last night because we went to get pizza and one of the owners/managers of the wine bar went and got us a couple of bottles from the resturant. She just unlocked the door, took the bottle and left a note saying she'd pay for them later. We had those and the pizza at one girls house. Mommy called while I was at work today. They are somewhere near Minnapolis right about now. The drive has been ok and they aren't sad about leaving VA at all. They are just looking forward to seeing my niece for ther 2nd b-day. I can't even believe she will be two on Saturday. My other friend called while I was working tooo. She wanted to thank me because I made her a cake for her going away party. She is moving to England next week to teach and her party was tonight. I made a 4 layer chocolate cake with chocolate ganache between each layer. I'll have to call her when I wake up to see if she liked it. The dog is sitting by the door crying right now. I alrady walked him so I'm sure he just wants some attention. I'd better go pay with him so that he won't wake me up at the crack of dawn. Yes, he is THAT special!! Oh I almost forgot. No word on the parents being roommmates yet. Shel, yes, I would charge them for the year, but not as much as I'd charge someone else. NYABG, the advantages of having them here is that I never have to walk the dog, do laundry, cook, or fix anything in the house or car. The disadvantage is that I'll be a single woman pushing 30 living with my parents! All - I don't know what is going to happen yet, but I did make $300 on Firday and $200 tongith. It's all looking up for right now. Well see how I feel next week! Sleepyness kicking in more. I'm sure I'm rambling so I'll go now. We'll talk soon!

Things are going much better now. The sun has come out and it's been so nice out lately. Saturday night I worked and it was busy, but not too busy. I like it when it's busy because I don't like having nothing to do. I'm a very social person, so I much prefer it to be a steady stream of people rather than being crazy busy. That way I can chat with people. So far I've met some very interesting folks. Being in a tourist place, we get to meet people from all over. Sunday I worked a double. I though it would be busier because we have brunch, but it was pretty empty until night time. I close again tonight then I have a couple of days off in a row. That will be nice! I’ll have to take the dog to the dog park. He’s not so depressed anymore, but he was mad at me yesterday for being at work so long. How can I tell, you ask? Well, whenever he is mad at me, he gets on the couch and knocks all the cushions on to the floor. He is not allowed on the furniture and does it just to spite me. Then he waits upstairs and won’t come down when I get home. Special huh?

Oh, I almost forgot. I talked to my mom the other day. They are packing up since they are closing on their house on Thursday. So, their plan is to drive to Seattle to visit my sister. My little niece turns 2 at the end of the month, so they want to be there for that. Then they are planning to go to Callie to see the house. They want to go see it to decide if they want to live there or not. Ummm, do I hear and echo? Of course I just say “Sure mom, that’s a really great idea you have there” and bite my tongue. So, if they don’t like the neighborhood anymore, they will decide to stay in Seattle. They’ll just buy something small. And she even said to my sister “Yeah, we can even get just a small one bedroom condo” Ummm, WHAT? When I asked her she said “You can stay with your sister when you visit.” EXCUSE ME??? Ya’ll know I don’t like them! AHHHH! So frustrating. So now I’m considering keeping the house because if I sell it, I pretty much don’t have anywhere to go. I could get an apartment here. If I keep the house, I may get a roommate. I said this to my mom and you know what she said? “Well, if we stay in Seattle, I won’t want to be there all year long. Your dad and I can be your roommates during the winter months.” Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Isn’t my Mama funny?

Mommy and Daddy are here! Woo hoo! They got in at 3:15 this morning and they woke up at 8am. I'm telling you, something is wrong with them. :o)

There are a couple of guys who I will always love for the rest of my life. We are still friends and I wish them well, but it's hard to hear certain things. A couple of weeks ago I heard form one. He's having a baby. I don't think I'm really over him being married yet and now they are having a baby? Today I spoke to another one. He's engaged. WHAT? I think all I could really say was "Wow" and then I threw in a "That's great." This shouldn't bother me. Neither one should, but they do. I know, Shelly, I told you it didn't bother me, but it DOES! I can't help it. I can't even describe how I feel right now. I just need to go away or something...

It's still the weekend!

Ok, Sunday I didn’t make it into work. I realized that I didn’t have black pants to wear on Monday. At my old job, I usually wore jeans and when I did wear black pants they were pin striped. So, I met up with a girl from work and we looked for pants. She needed some too! Afterwards, I went to the BBQ, I mentioned in my last post. Shawn, I didn’t even realize I said cookout! Damn New Yorkers got me saying that. ;o) It was nice to hang out with them, but they are CRAZY. Between 4 of us we went through 7 bottles of wine. There were more people there but they were drinking beer. We had tons of food. There was jerk Chicken, blackened Dolphin, and some great steaks cooked on the grill. We had garlic potatoes, green beans, and salad with strawberries and poppy seeds. Needless to say, everyone was full and a bit drunk. Oh and did I mention that we lost a guy? Ok, here’s what happened, one guy was DRUNK! He fell asleep in the pool. So when we got him inside, he was laying on one girl’s bed. Side note: All of their bedrooms have back doors leading outside. So, he was in there on the bed when we closed the door. When we opened the door he was gone! We looked everywhere for him and couldn’t find him for about an hour. So we left. They wanted to go to a bar down the street so we went. We really did look for him. After all, he couldn’t have gone far without his cloths, wallet, keys, and phone, right? Well, while at the bar, he calls. He broke into the house to get his stuff and went home. He was mad at us because he said we left him in the pool. He was not in the pool! We had to walk by the pool to get out so we knew he wasn’t there. To this day, neither he nor the rest of know where he was. Needless to say, I did not make it home that night. I ended up sleeping over and got home at 6:45am, just in time to shower and get all dressed up for work.

Monday was friends and family day at work. Basically, people that knew someone made reservations to come in for lunch of dinner. They got 2 glasses of wine per person, an appetizer, entrees, and a desert all for free. I didn’t realize it would all be free. Lunch kind of sucked because I only had one table. After lunch, I hung around waiting for the shipment of more wines to come in. They never did, so I headed off to meet my friend that was home visiting from DC. Well, when I spoke to her she said they wanted to meet on Las Olas, which is where I work! So I turned the car around and had a brilliant idea. I called the manager to ask if I could bring my friends there. She said they were pretty booked up, but she could do it as long as we sat outside. No problem. So my girlfriend, her boyfriend, two of her brothers, and another of her friends that I am not that close with all met up at my restaurant. The food was good and the wine was good. They enjoyed it and my girlfriend even bought a couple of bottles of wine. After they left, I stayed around to do inventory. We had to count all of the bottles of wine in the entire place. It was ok. We actually had a pretty good time hanging out and chatting while counting. We actually opened up a bottle wine and had a little while working. It was really good wine. The only bad thing was that we found 2 bottles missing from the bar area. They weren’t the best wines and it seemed a bit random that they were gone. There’s no way to tell who took them, so I don’t know what they are going to do about it. There were only 4 of us there so I don’t know that anyone else knows yet. We'll see what happens.

Yesterday was our first actual day open. It was really slow when I got there. The whole street was empty and because we are still missing the sign and awning out front, people didn’t realize we were open. I only had 4 tables all night, but we spoke to lots of people walking past outside. We told them about us, gave them to go menus, and tried to get them to look around inside if they wanted to. It was a pretty good first day for a soft opening, I guess. The real test will be Friday when we are guaranteed to be packed.

On another note, my parents are coming down on Saturday. I really need to clean the house!

My weekend started Wednesday, how about yours?

Sorry I haven’t posted much. I’ve had a busy week. On Wednesday I went to happy hour, which turned into much more. We all met up at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood. It’s been here for a little while. Besides the hotel and casino, there is an outdoor part with shops, restaurants, and clubs. That’s where we usually go. When I got to the restaurant that we had agreed on, my ex-boss was there with a guy visiting that I didn’t know. He proceeded to tell me how he missed me around the office and tried to guilt me yet again, but I didn’t let it phase me. Soon some other people arrived. For the first 10 minutes after each person arrived, I heard “so, what are you doing with your time? Are you happy? How is everything?” After everyone got that out of their systems, we were fine. We had drinks at the first place, then went to another restaurant to have dinner. After dinner, most people left. A few of us met up with another friend at another bar there. It was kind of interesting because they had this speed dating set up. Ummm, yeah, I’m never doing that, so don’t even ask! We had a few drinks there and I was so tired. I was really ready to go. To get back to the parking garage, you have to walk back through the casino. So we headed that way. There were 3 of us, one guy, a girl and myself. Well, as we walked from the bar to the casino, the girl started acting strangely. She was fine at the bar. All of a sudden, she was silly and a slurring her words a little. Even thought I was tired, we decided to stick around for a while because we knew that she couldn’t drive. She wanted to gamble and drink more. We cut off the drinking and gambled a little bit to try to waste some time. Then we suggested coffee, but she wasn’t having any of that. To distract her, the guy suggested we head out to the pool area. The pool at the hard rock is set up like a beach/Laguna type area. There are sand and fake rocks, and waterfalls. There is also a bar out there, but luckily it was closing when we got out there. So, we went around to the opposite side of the pool, where there were less people and chilled on the lounge chairs for a while. Now the girl was still talking a bit crazy. She got the brilliant idea that we should all get in the pool. Ummm, no. She tried to convince us for a while. So, I took off my shoes and stood in the shallow area to shut her up. Well, that was a BAD idea. In fact, the guy blames me for what happened next. After instructing him to cover his eyes, the girl proceeded to take off ALL of her cloths and get in the pool! Did I mention that randomly, people were walking by the pool! I couldn’t believe it. I have been out with her before when she is drunk and she has never done anything like this. That and the fact that she was fine one second and crazy the next made me think she had taken something or someone slipped something in her drink. So I texted the guy we left at the bar. He just gave her 2 rum and cokes. She should have been fine. So, I managed to get her out of the pool and get her cloths on her (even though I had to fight her to put her pants on!) We got her shoes on her and were getting ready to go when she decided to run back into the pool. She was sopping wet when she came out again. Our friend from the bar came and met us by the pool. He wanted to make sure we were all ok. So, my girlfriend tried to get all of us to get in the pool. No one would go in with her. She got in about up to the knee and wouldn’t come out. Our friend from the bar was like “Don’t make me tackle you in the pool.” So she started in on him “What? Whatcha gonna do, huh? Nothing! You aren’t gonna do a damn thing!” He quietly emptied his pockets and tackled her. It was so funny. Of course then they discovered the water slide. So they are drunk, sopping wet in their cloths, and coming down a water slide. That is when security came by to tell us that the pool was closed. He was walking around the other side of the pool when my girlfriend ran after him and grabbed his arm. We were too far away to hear what she said but the guy who had been observing all of this with me just said “Oh my god, she is accosting him! Can I be deported for this?” LOL! After one more ride down the slide, we sat her down and got her shoes back on her. Did I mention that they were gold strappy heals with that stupid ankle buckle that is had to do when you are sober? So, we got them on her, she had one arm around my shoulders and the other sopping wet guy was holding her up on the other side. As we walked back through the casino, people were staring at us like we were green with red spots. She kept slipping and almost falling. We got her outside and into my car. I drove the boys to their cars and took her home. On the way she was like “Are we going to my car? I can drive.” Only it was more like “Are we go-wing too my caaaar? I can dwive.” No you can’t! I got her home and inside. On my drive home she called me because she didn’t know where her car was and wanted to go get it. I told her to go to bed and call me in the morning. At about 2:30/3am, I get another phone call. She had a fight with her boyfriend and was like “I don’t even have my car to go for a drive.” I told her she shouldn’t be driving upset anyway and to try to get some rest. Needless to say she didn’t make it to work the next day and didn’t remember what had happened the night before. I went and picked her up at about 2:30/3pm and we went to get her car and have some breakfast. By the time we finished eating, I had to head off to work.

Work was good Thursday. We did food tastings. Now I NEVER eat before going to work. I’m usually starving. How come the one day I ate, we have food tastings? I ate so much that I thought I was going to die! We had salads and quesadillas. They were really good! The steak on the salad and in the quesadilla was soooo good. We also had more wine. I left my wine list at work, so I can’t tell you which ones we had right now. I’ll tell you later.

Friday we got in the wine shipments. There were somewhere between 250 and 300 cases of wine delivered. So, I went into work early to help unpack. I figured it would help me become familiar with their names, categories, and locations in the retail side. From 2pm to 2am, minus a short 2 hour break for training which included food tastings again, I carried boxes and stacked bottles. It was like doing squats for 8 hours because I was putting most of the ones on the bottom shelves away. I was so sore yesterday that it hurt to move. The advantage of staying late is that a) we were getting paid for it and b) to thank us they cracked open a couple of the 10 grapes for us to have. Those are the expensive red wines. There was a malbec that was soooo good. I’ll have to remember the name of it to tell ya’ll about it later. We had some of the spreads and the pisas. The smoked salmon pisa was my favorite. I didn’t really think I’d like it that much, but it was excellent. The hummus and spinach and bacon dips were both good too.


Yesterday, we had to add medallions to all of the wines (little labels with a description and price on one bottle) and unpack some more boxes. We did some more training and ate some more food too. It was the appetizers. The lamb chops, crab cakes and chicken & Portobello quiche were all very good. We also had deserts! The Le Chocolate was so good! It’s a chocolate shell with flourless chocolate cake and chocolate moose in it, with butter toffee, caramel, and strawberry sauce. They also have a really good blackberry jasmine green ice tea. Yummy!

Today we are supposed to have the day off, but they need some people to help set up the restaurant for friends and family day on Monday. I have had the hardest time trying to find friends and family to come in! I am working lunch and most people I know are too far to come for lunch. Anyone in the area want to come in for some wine and food? One of the bartenders and servers are roommates and they are having a cookout today. I’ll probably stop by work for a bit then head on over there for a while. Hey, a girl’s gotta eat…