Hi, Folks...

To answer your question, John, I am doing pretty well, thank you. I've got a fairly severe case of end-of-summer burnout, but that should pass. Labor Day is upon us, we'll get our asses kicked for the next three and a half days, and then things should be a little more manageable. We've been working seriously short-handed for about a month now and we're all ready to blow. Well, I know I am.
Being short has actually been a bit of a blessing the last two weeks, instead of scheduling extra days for coverage, and working 70 hour weeks myself, I've just closed the past couple of Tuesdays and Wednesdays...and it has been glorious. I've been able to mow my yard, to my neighbors' delight, I've cleaned my room (though I'm really not sure how it got messy) and I've been up to the big city to visit the kids and spoil them with Indian food and trips to Hastings.
My love life is still non-existent, but I'm pretty sure that in at least a couple alternate universes I'm having one hell of a smoking hot affair with one of my waitresses (you've seen a picture of her, John). She is waaaaaayyyyyy too young and pretty for an old fat man like me, but as we used to say back in Oklahoma, she makes my chiggers itch. In at least one alternate reality, America is being ran by jack-booted thugs (okay, that's not much of a stretch) and she and I go on a multi-state crime spree to help raise money for the resistance. I die in a hail of gunfire buying time for her to escape an ambush, and she later becomes the leader of those fighting alongside the kangaroo people to overthrow our corporate overlords.
Yes, I know that's Tank Girl, I never said I was original.
Maria, I promise you a rant soon...I probably could have written it today, but I already vocalized it on one of my poor vendors...I'm not sure of the actual count, but I think I said "fuck" seven times in five seconds.

Paper Man...great movie.

The blank page, or screen, truly is one daunting son of a bitch. I've been sitting here for quite a while now trying to think of what to write and nothing really comes to mind. Things continue as before...work, home, work, home, work, and so on with no real distractions, the days and weeks and months just sliding by until I look back and see all that has happened around me while I've been been working, or sleeping, or drunk.

Well, this is in danger of slipping into a rant, and that's not what I want to do. Been doing too much of that lately, but it has helped me to see that maybe I don't need to stay in this little mountain town for the next five years (that's when the cafe is paid off), maybe I can do two more and then sell, make enough to move and start again somewhere else. Then again, I should probably just push through and get the damned thing done. I've already got two could-have-been-retired dates behind me, and another coming up. I think I'll stick this one out and see what happens.

I know that I need to find something outside of work that inspires me, because work no longer does, the restaurant is like an infant that will never learn to wipe its own ass, or an extremely high maintenance spouse, and I'm just fucking tired of it all...the constant repairs, scheduling headaches, financial juggling, employees who don't give a shit, and don't even get me started on the customers. There I go on the rant again.

On the upside, I am sitting in bed typing this stone sober. No, I haven't quit, but this is the first night in quite a while that I'll be falling asleep as opposed to passing out, and that's a start.