Do Not Shoot Your Meatloaf

Hi, I'm Eric...

2011-12-15T08:40:00.001-07:00

I never really understood addiction. Even as a smoker, I felt like I could quit any time, I had done it, several times. I just couldn’t understand how someone could be powerless against a chemical, how they just couldn’t say I’m not going to do that anymore. Until recently.

As a kid, I hardly drank alcohol, I really only remember a couple of times in high school and a handful more times in college. It just wasn’t a priority, and it was always just for “special occasions.” In the army, I drank more, but still pretty much kept it to weekends. After I married, it was even more rare that I would have a drink. I don’t think that it was a conscious thing, it just wasn’t something that I did.

After Y left the kids and I, I still didn’t drink much. I was just too busy. When Z and I started dating, and later married, drinking became more common, socially and at home, but it still seemed under control. We’d go out for a few beers on payday, and on the weekends we’d share a six pack.

When she left, I didn’t even touch a drink for a month, I just didn’t want to get drunk and all that that might bring. It was probably almost a year before I really started drinking a lot, that summer was…stupid. I spent lots of nights sleeping at the café because I was too drunk to drive home. Sometimes, I drove anyway.

Now, I’ve quit a dozen times. The longest time was six weeks, the shortest a couple of days. The thing is, I don’t even want to quit. I like beer, I like to take a shot of tequila, I like to hang out with my friends at the bar. If I could just do that, have a drink or two and then stop, that would be fine, I wouldn’t even think about quitting. The problem is that when I start, I don’t stop until late in the night. On my worse days I start before noon, grabbing a beer from the walk-in at work, and will then drink all day long, and be pretty much sober the whole time. On the way home, I’ll stop and get a six pack to drink while watching TV or a movie. When that six pack is done, I’ll wish that I had gotten a twelve pack.

It’s easier to stop completely than it is to slow down, or to stop once I’ve started.

I quit smoking again a few years ago, but I still smoke one every once in a while, sometimes they taste and feel really good, and sometimes they don’t, but I never really feel like going to buy a pack and starting up again, so I don't beat myself up over it. I sure wish I could do that with alcohol.

I never really considered myself an alcoholic, I always preferred drunkard, until Sam pointed out that only alcoholics keep track of how many days they’ve gone without a drink.

2011-11-06T23:13:00.002-07:00

So, Eric, what's been going on? Well...a whole bunch, and not much at all. My kids are all moved out (at least for the time being), with both of the girls attending UNM, and my son living nearby with his girlfriend. He still works at the cafe, so we see each other regularly, and I try to get up to Albuquerque to see the girls at least once a month.
So, I find myself living alone for the very first time in my life. The dirty dishes are my dirty dishes, the laundry piled up is mine, the reason there is no food in the fridge is because I ate it...and I kind of like it.
Work is still the same, a hectic summer, trying to get caught up on back taxes from the previous winter, only to be sliding behind again already. Ah, the life of the small business owner in a tourist town!
I met a woman, actually we'd known each other in high school. She messaged me out of the blue on FB one day in March, and after that we messaged, texted, or emailed back-and-forth nearly every day until July when we finally met and spent a day together. At one point during our correspondence, while we were talking about relationships, she wrote that she believed that she felt that she would KNOW when she met the right man. Apparently, I am not him.
Up until our meeting we had really connected, there was a solid feeling of friendship and the beginning of something more, I think, and I really wanted it to...be. Since then, we talked on the phone a few times, we always laughed a lot, but then we just sort of drifted.
So, still no prospects in that department, but that's alright...you get right down to it I'm a 44 year old, out of shape, twice divorced, struggling business owner, whose credit rating is in the toilet from putting his business's and his kid's needs ahead of the need to pay his bills on time. Oh, and I've got a bit of a drinking problem. Not exactly the types of things nice ladies are looking for. No one that I would be interested in being with is going to look at the above description and say, "Wow, this one's really fucked up, I can have a great time fixing him!"
Am I beating myself up? No, it's an honest assessment, and I'm okay with it, because, on the other hand, I've somehow managed to raise three very good young adults, in spite of their mother leaving when they were young and their step-mother doing the same later, and in spite of some serious miss-steps in my parenting techniques. I also think that I'm a pretty nice guy.
I'm not going to go on patting myself on the back...I just don't want to give an inaccurate sense of how I feel about myself. Could I be better? Of course. I could also be a hell of a lot worse.
I'm thinking that I'll examine a few of these sentences in a bit more depth in some future posts, and I don't think it will be too long of a wait, if you're interested, because I'd forgotten how therapeutic writing can be, how it can help one see things from a new perspective.
I hope everyone is well, I'm slowly getting caught up on your blogs.

2011-10-31T22:28:00.003-06:00

Wow, I’ve got some catching up to do…well, with Maria and John anyway. Everyone else that I came to look forward to reading over the years has either stopped, or considerably slowed their writing, but you two continue to pump out the posts.

I’ve scrolled back and think I know where to pick everyone up again; now that we are entering one of the slowest times of the year at work, I hope to be able to get some reading done again, blogs and books. I’ve got a whole stack of books I’ve been buying and setting aside for just this time of the year.

Hopefully, I’ll also get some writing done. Lots of things have happened, though they really don’t seem that interesting in hindsight…really just more of the same that I’ve commented on over the last few years, but there are some cool things in the works for next year. I’ll try to get some thoughts on “paper” soon.

2011-09-26T09:28:00.002-06:00

Winter's Bone

2011-04-12T11:31:00.000-06:00

Another great one.

Get Low

2011-03-28T22:45:00.000-06:00

This is a fantastic movie...absolutely beautiful.

2011-03-20T22:18:00.000-06:00

2011-03-20T21:53:00.001-06:00

2011-02-28T23:07:00.001-07:00

Ugh.

2011-02-04T10:50:00.003-07:00

Last year, before winter even started, we were hearing predictions that our area wouldn't have any real winter weather until February...wow, they nailed that one.

Went to bed Monday to a dusting of snow and crystal clear skies and woke up on Feb. 1st to eight inches of snow and colder weather than we've had here in something like 25 years. By that night I had a broken water pipe and a near brush with frost bite.

It's official: I hate winter. I really, really do. I don't ski, or snowboard, and I hate being cold. Remember that scene in Unforgiven where the fat deputy is asking the others if they'd rather be shot when it's warm or when it's cold? "Everything hurts worse when it's cold," he observes.
I'm with him.

Winter sucks.

2011-01-31T23:56:00.002-07:00

Folks, do I have a wicked bad case of writers block, or what? I know that you're supposed to get through it by...um...writing, but I really haven't been able to. I've sat down and started posts probably ten times in the last month and haven't been able to come up with anything. I start and then maybe a paragraph in delete it all and log out.

I'm not doing that this time though, nope, I'm going to write something and post it.

The problem has mostly been that things have just pretty much sucked lately.

Business has sucked, my love life is non-existent....my life is non-existent...and I've done a lot of soul searching lately and I haven't really liked a lot of what I've come up with. I did decide that I'm probably an atheist (blame Ricky Gervais), so "soul" searching isn't really appropriate. I guess it was just taking stock.

And now I'm running out of steam. I will say a couple of things though:

1. If someone states that they really like the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogen just know that they are not a friend and they probably mean to do you harm. Seth Rogen should be punched by David "The Hayemaker" Haye until I get tired for what he did to the Green Hornet. I walked out after 40 minutes and only stayed that long to save face and to finish my popcorn.

2. Castle is a great TV show. Watch it.

There was actually something else, but now I can't remember.

Please note that I am not drunk and thanks for tuning in. See ya in March.

2010-12-31T22:02:00.003-07:00

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends. One of my resolutions this year, and frankly probably the first to be abandoned, is to write more often.
But, since it's not 2011 here in Nuevo Mexico I'm going to open another High Life, make myself a sammich, and sit on the couch with the dogs and watch some TV.
Happy New Year to you all.

Cafe Thanksgiving Pics

2010-11-29T21:42:00.006-07:00

Thought I'd share a few pics from our Thanksgiving, I hope everyone had a wonderful day.

The Spread

The Friends

The Entertainment

Great movie, by the way.

2010-11-24T00:11:00.004-07:00

Well, I was going to try to write something tonight...something about how things with Sam just aren't developing, and how I'm starting to think that they never will, and how that's probably for the best anyway...

or something about how I was ready to drown my old Italian lady prep cook in the dish sink yesterday and how that made me feel like an absolute douche and how I dealt with that feeling in the time-honored tradition of heavy drinking...

or something about how fucking tired I am and how sometimes I wish I'd just stayed a cop and how...

never mind.

Fact is that I don't have anyone to vent to. I just really miss having someone to come home to, to have somebody to listen to, somebody who will in turn listen to me, somebody to make me a fucking sandwich every once in a while.

More Tegan and Sara

2010-11-21T20:23:00.001-07:00

Can't stop listening to this one right now..."Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at..."

Love that.

Rocks

2010-11-17T23:55:00.001-07:00

2010-11-17T22:01:00.002-07:00

T, should you show up, I'll fix you breakfast anytime. I cook better slightly drunk, so you might want to take me drinking first.

M, only real cream is offered for coffee at my place and I would love to visit with you over several cups.

J, biscuits and gravy...hmmmm...well, biscuits are a bit like scones in texture, they are usually round, but sometimes square, and gravy is just a word we use for sauce. There's an old joke that goes something like,

Q: What's the difference between gravy and sauce?
A: About $15 dollars.

And that's pretty true. Cream gravy is basically just a bechamel sauce...flour, butter and milk with a little salt and pepper.
Sausage gravy is about the same with the addition of crumbled breakfast sausage. Fry up your sausage, then make a roux with the grease and add milk, finish with salt and pepper.
Chocolate gravy is a southern thing. I grew up eating it and the little bit of research I've done on the subject indicates that it originated in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and the western Carolinas. I make it with cocoa powder, flour and sugar and a bit of vanilla and salt. My grandma made it with Nestle Quick. It is nothing short of amazing served over a hot, well-buttered biscuit.

The Breakfast Menu

2010-10-17T00:04:00.011-06:00

Breakfast is going well, this week was the first full weekend and we made it through with no disasters, I am ditching that late night thing for now though. Here's what my schedule was looking like:

Thursday - work from 9:30 am to around 9 pm.

Friday - get up at 4 am, this requires two alarms set at opposite sides of the room just out of reach of my bed, get to work by 5 am to prep for breakfast. Breakfast ends at 11 am, put everything up and clean the stoves and surrounding area. Take care of any boss stuff (bank/store runs, payroll/accounting, stuff like that) and get home around 2:30, nap 'til about 8 pm and then back to work for the late night stuff. Sell 6 slices to three very drunk people at 10:15 pm then absolutely nothing 'til about 1:30 am when the drunks would start wandering past on their way to their cars as bars were closing. Sell about 6 more slices. Clean up and either sleep at the cafe on my cot or drive home and sleep there (cafe sleep is sucky, but good for about an hour more rack time), get up in time to get back to work by 5 am.

Saturday - Same as above.

Sunday - Back to work by 5 am and done and on my way home by 1 pm. Nap. Mostly a day off.

Monday - Boss shit in the morning, then off for the day. Woohoo.

Tuesday - Regular day, pretty much 9:30 am to 9 pm. Cooking, washing dishes and prep.

Wednesday and Thursday - Same as Tuesday.

Rinse and repeat.

So, yeah, fuck that late night stuff...for now. I still think it's a good idea with potential to make some good money, but not at this time of the year. Besides, it was making me stupid.

Breakfast though is going well, not real busy, but that's good. This is a completely different way of cooking than I'm used to at work. Pizzas you make and put in the oven and then you've got seven minutes to take care of other things. Everything is either prepared in the oven or from the steam table or salad bench. It can get pretty hectic on an extremely busy day, but one person can feed the fifty or so people in a reasonable about of time with little trouble. During breakfast service even a small table can throw you into the weeds...eggs are poaching, biscuits are warming in the oven, bacon and sausage frying, gravy thickening, pancakes overcooking in a second, grits turning from soup into glue as soon as you turn your back on them...and, as you can see from the pic, I don't have a flat top, it all happens in separate pans and it can spiral into chaos pretty quickly.

I've never been a short-order cook, but it's getting better, I'm figuring things out, fine tuning with nearly every order that comes in. It will get easier. I just hope that it stays slow until I find my way a little better.

Around here the Mexican breakfast is king, lots of stuff with tortillas, red and green chile sauces, and beans. And I love that. There are few things I enjoy more than huevos rancheros with pinto beans and a couple warm flour tortillas to scoop it all up with. But every restaurant in town has it on the menu and I wanted to do something different to stand out, so I went with the menu below. It's definitely Southern inspired, some of it is what I grew up eating as a kid, and I guarantee you're not going to find biscuits with chocolate gravy on any other menu in Lincoln County...I'd be surprised to see it on any menu in the state. So far, no one not related to me has ordered it, but a lady this morning did ask if I had some bacon drippings for her grits (hell yeah I did) and a couple from Virginia said that their breakfast today (biscuits with sausage gravy, fried tomatoes, and sausage) was the best they'd had since leaving home. So, I'm finding my audience.

Pretty much everything is made from scratch except for the puff pastry, I buy frozen 3" rounds for the 'nests'. The bacon is cured in-house and the sausage is also house-made. Biscuits are from scratch.

I hope you enjoy.

The Rio Plate – 2 Eggs, your choice of Bacon or Sausage, potatoes and a biscuit $3.95

Nests – Light, crisp puff pastry shells topped with one of our four sauces and two poached eggs.

Florentine – Creamed spinach and hollandaise sauce. $5.95

Creole – Spicy shrimp jambalaya. $4.95

Moroccan – Spice infused tomato sauce. $4.95

Jacksonville – Sausage gravy. $3.95

Griddle Cakes – Short $3.95 Tall $4.95

Toast Lafayette – French toast with a crunchy, golden crust $4.95

Maple syrup, apricot syrup, blackstrap molasses, and honey are available

Biscuits and Gravy – Two buttermilk biscuits with your choice of gravy. $3.95

Cream, Sausage, or Chocolate

Sweet rice - Who says morning grains have to be healthy? $3.45

Sides -

Bacon (3) - $1.95

Sausage (2) - $1.95

Grits - $.95

Biscuit - $.95

Rice - $.95

Fried tomatoes - $1.95

Beverages –

Coffee $.50

Hot Tea $1.00

Fountain soft drinks or milk $1.50

Bottled soft drinks or juice $2.00

2010-10-09T12:58:00.002-06:00

So, I've been up for around 31 hours right now, due to a couple of brainstorms (suicide missions) I came up with to keep my restaurant afloat over the next few months.
Ok, that's a little melodramatic...I could keep the restaurant going, but some people, people I care about, would have to lose their jobs. So I decided to stay open late on Friday and Saturday nights to catch the bar crowds and to start serving breakfast on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings.
That means I get to stay open 'til 2 am for the bars and then close and start prepping up for breakfast at 7 am.
And since I'm the cheapest employee I've got I'm the one doing all the work. And that's ok.
Yesterday I made a hundred bucks in a hour and a half doing some PI shit. At the restaurant? I made about nothing in just over 25 hours.
Guess which one made me feel dirty? Yeah, the easy one. The bar crowd I could do without, but the breakfast menu I love. I'll post it soon. I'm really proud of it and the food (for the most part) has tested really well. I say for the most part because several items that were tested and seemed easy a few days ago failed miserably this morning on what was supposed to be our first breakfast service. I ended up closing (we hadn't even had a customer, but things were just not working out the way I wanted them to) and only cooked for a few friends who came by. I learned quite a bit and hopefully things will work out better tomorrow.
And somewhere in the process I realized that it's not only the difficult jobs that hold my interest, it's the difficult loves...the women who, for whatever reason, I just can't seem to attain, or if attained, keep.
All this became clear as my hollandaise broke for the second time while I was burning bacon and trying to nurse my grits back to life and thinking about Sam and how I couldn't wait to see her again.

True Grit

2010-09-29T23:19:00.003-06:00

I thought this was a horrible idea, how could anyone remake a John Wayne classic? Now, after seeing the trailer and seeing just who's involved, I know where I'll be Christmas day.

2010-09-24T19:46:00.004-06:00

Had ourselves a little punk rock show last night at the cafe, and I wanted to share some of that with you all.

Sean Bond Goon

Aka: Sean Davis. Sean used to work at the cafe, starting way back in 2001, I think. I knew him from before that, from my cop days. Sean never got in any trouble, let's just say that I was at his house a number of times when he was a kid because of the adults in that house and leave it at that.
When he started at the cafe, as a buser, I think he was around 17. We had hired his friend Kluthe around that same time, both of them were in a punk band called Backwash with a couple of other kids, one of whom, Joel Hixon, is now the front guy for Absent Minds down there.
At that time smoking was still legal in restaurants here and the owner then was aggressively pro-smoker. The restaurant is tiny, but even if it had been larger I don't think John would have created a smoking area. If someone asked, they were told that the whole place was a smoking area. And that included behind the counter. Everyone smoked. I think that the one waitress (John also had a rule against hiring women, an attitude acquired from the first owner, and one that he eventually softened on) and I were the only two out of a summer staff of around 14 who didn't smoke.
John did have to tighten up on the smoking a little bit though when one day Sean and Kluthe were both working as busers and were filling an ice cream order. Kluthe was bent over the ice cream freezer, his eight inch multicolored spiked hair threatening to knock all the junk that immediately fills any blank spot at the cafe into the open freezer. Sean was standing behind him, holding two ice cream cones, waiting on the third to take them to the table, all with a lit cigarette in his mouth with about an inch of ash hanging.
I can still picture him standing there, this awkward and shy kid, trying to portray to the world a toughness that I don't think he's every really had.
Sean lives in Las Cruces now and runs a small restaurant there and plays punk as Sean Bond Goon and his Psychological Voodoo. He's a true one man band, playing guitar and drums all by himself. Hit the link up there and give it listen. It's rough and it may not be your thing, but it's all him.

Absent Minds

I've known Joel for around the same amount of time. He was already balding at 14 or 15 and has Tourette's which causes his head to rock to the right. So, of course, his friends dubbed him Tick Tock.
Joel eventually ended up working at the cafe as well, as a prep cook and then pizza cook. He's funny as hell but slightly exhausting because he argues about everything just to argue and is extremely opinionated. He and I have had an ongoing argument for about six years now about the historical origins of cheese.
Once, a few years ago, we were both on the line and there was this very pretty girl sitting at the counter. Joel kept looking back toward her and then leaned in, his head bobbing from side to side, and said, "Dude, that chick is totally into my shit, she wants to fuck my brains out." This was something Joel was convinced of any time any female showed him more than any passing interest or, in some cases, none at all. He said that exact line so many times that Brett and I still say it from time to time when an especially pretty woman comes into view.
Later that night, when I mentioned this to the waitress who had been taking care of the young woman, she snorted, "No, she told me that she couldn't stop staring and him and asked me, 'What the fuck is wrong with his head?'"
After high school Joel moved to Portland and got a bachelor's degree in a field he'll probably never work in. At least I hope not. I hope he keeps playing music and living his dream. He's been playing with Absent Minds for a few years now in clubs around Portland. For the past couple of weeks they've been touring, playing several shows in California, before moving on to Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and finishing up tonight in Denver, CO.
And Kluthe, their spiked friend and former band-mate? He's traded his spikes for sideburns and is starting his second year of law school and is brewing some pretty damned good beer in his house. Like Joel, he is opinionated and argumentative...so I think he'll be happy as a lawyer.

2010-09-22T23:21:00.002-06:00

Just thought I'd show off.
I was about to cut this and send it out when I thought, 'Wow, that's the perfect meatball sandwich.' Good thing I had my camera today.

2010-09-20T23:30:00.004-06:00

Sonja left to do grownup stuff, like go to college and live with her fiance. She'd been with me a long time, off and on for about five years. Before that I used to take runaway reports on her when I was a deputy.

She can drink far more than her size suggests and still cook, she curses and talks shit on a level that few teenage boys can match, loves to talk about food, and is always down to start a fight.

She can also name the designer of a pair of sunglasses (or any other accessory) in low light from a block away.

Farewell Sonja, the place is a lot less pirate without you.

2010-09-15T23:49:00.002-06:00

Blech.

2010-09-09T21:22:00.004-06:00

Crew of the Battlestar Rio, August 15, 2008

Where did summer go?

2010-08-30T21:00:00.003-06:00

How in the hell is it already the end of August? I can't believe how fast summer went by and am already dreading winter. I don't want to face another winter in the mountains without four wheel drive, but it looks like I will, unless something pretty cheap comes along before then.

Em finished her first week of college last Friday, I drove up there to take her some of her mail and we had great afternoon. Sushi and sashimi at our favorite, Sushi King, and then fantastic desserts at Standard Diner. They were featured on Diners, Drive ins, and Dives on Food Network a while back and the food is great, my only problem with the place is that it's a little too upscale perhaps to be considered a true diner. Our water had cucumber in it, which sent both of us into a laughing fit in front of our bemused waiter. If you don't get it (and he didn't), just watch The Other Guys. Funny stuff.

Then of course we had to go to the mall, where I was unfortunately too full to hit the Hot Dog on a Stick in the food court. Fuckin' love that place.

But no corn dogs or fried cheese for me for a while now though. I have officially hit my heaviest weight and that with my 25 year high school reunion just around the corner. I'm not even a hundred percent on going, but I probably will and I'm not going like this. So, last night I went to a going away for a friend and had enough to drink for the next month and a half and today started on my mission to create a new Eric. Or at least get some semblance of old Eric back. The Eric that I found existed after my first year in the army, the Eric that I found while a bicycle cop...in other words, the Eric that is somewhere under all this fat, Hot Eric.

This morning, after waking up in a strange bedroom (alone), I went in to the cafe, did the weekend deposits and then left, came home and got my bike (I thought) back into riding condition after about three years of its leaning against the wall, and started on what I assured myself would be a short warm up ride, just to get loosened up and conditioned for longer rides as I progressed. I soon realized that the handlebars were loose, rolling back and forward, and the new discolored swollen thingy on my wrist started acting up pretty quickly, and since I'm way too cool to have some wide ass cushy seat for my wide cushy ass, my ass was hurting pretty badly too.

Pain is weakness leaving the body. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Arbeit Macht Frei. All these bullshit bumper stickerisms went through my head as I pedaled on further and further. That second one is really stupid...there's all kinds of shit that may leave one alive, but weaker in every sense of the word, like an accidental lobotomy with a post hole auger, for instance.

Finally, ninety minutes, 12 miles, one sunburn, one close call when the handlebars rolled while I was trying to downshift, some minor wrist discomfort and some major ass discomfort later I was back at the house feeling weak but satisfied. I'm going to bed tonight with the intent of doing it again in the morning, but to be truthful it may take a couple of days before I can perch on that seat again.

But that's not all. Also only drank water and a couple diet root beers today. Lunch was spinach salad, dinner was tuna steak which I coated in pepper and sauteed to a medium rare and more salad while watching/listening to It's Always Sunny....

Let's see how tomorrow goes.

Cafe Quote

2010-08-04T11:13:00.002-06:00

"Jesus is really starting to disappoint me. The dishwasher, not the savior." - Eric

P.S.

2010-08-03T18:33:00.001-06:00

I almost forgot, Hot Tub Time Machine is waaaaaaaaay funnier than I expected, so if you haven't seen it...

Still not dead...

2010-08-03T18:06:00.004-06:00

I have sucked as a blogger and as a friend this summer and I would like to say sorry about all that.
I have read most of your blogs, still catching up a few, but I haven't left many comments or written anything myself.

I know everyone wants to know about Oklahoma, I made another trip back there last month and stayed for almost a week, but I don't see it ending well and I really don't feel like going into all that yet. After a few months it will be pretty funny though, so let's wait 'til then.

In other news, the twins are moving out in less than two weeks and I will live alone for the first time in my 43 years. I still don't know if I'm thrilled or terrified, so I'm not making any life-changing decisions right now (beyond getting a new tattoo, pretty sure I'm doing that) which is why I don't think Oklahoma is going to end well. She's pushing me to move back there, which I was thinking about doing in a couple of years anyway, but she wants me there now. Did I mention she has an 18 month old? Did I mention that the 18 month old, the one day I spent around her, the day before I left to come home, threw three bloody-murder tantrums, one of which was reported in the DC area as a "mild geologic event"?

There are several other reasons why this probably won't end well, but that's enough for now.

2010-07-09T18:01:00.001-06:00

Texting an ex, while ignoring the what could be next, while thinking about a never-was. How fucked up is my life?

2010-06-25T12:21:00.005-06:00

Hi everyone, I just got back into town again after a ridiculously busy week, and hopefully will get caught up on reading everyone's blogs and doing some writing of my own very soon.

2010-05-30T10:31:00.003-06:00

Thank God...actually, the Romans, I guess...that May is almost over. I said the same thing about April, and March, and will probably feel the same about June when all is said and done, but right now I am looking forward to a new month.

May was full of lots of good things though...although at the time they were happening they didn't seem so good...my kids are all "adults" now, which hasn't really changed a thing yet, but does still give a strange sense of relief. Maybe someday soon they will start paying their own cell phone bills, that would be a real relief.

At Em's graduation I had to spend time with my ex-wife, their step-mom, and it was...ok. It had been over a year since I had last seen her, and I didn't get that punched-in-the-chest feeling this time. Her husband avoided me, which was nice, because though I'm man enough not to hit him, I'm not quite man enough to act like I like him either.

Then I found out that Sam has a boyfriend. She had been a little distant lately, not calling or stopping in as much. The last time she was in the cafe, I mentioned something I wanted to do...I don't remember what...and she said she wanted to as well and that we should do that. She does that a lot, "We should do that..."

"Okay, I'm taking off Friday if you want to go then."

"No, I can't Friday" she said. "I've got to go to Santa Fe for...something."

I didn't ask what. Two weeks later a mutual friend posted a picture of Sam smiling broadly with her head in the lap of a guy I don't know. Someone had commented, "They're great together, such a happy couple." I have to agree, they do look good together, and she really looked happy.

Maybe that's the "we" she meant all along.

I'm not going to mention it, I'm just not going to try anymore. It won't change one thing in our relationship...we'll both continue living our lives, reaching out to each other when we're both single and feel the need, and only then. That's the way it's always been.

In the restaurant world, Brett decided that Cafe Z couldn't make it and was going to close and try to find a job in town. I had, the month before, signed everything over to him just to get it off my books, and had written off any hope of seeing any of my investment returned. And I didn't really care about that. I didn't help him start it to get rich, I wanted to do something to help him out.

But a month later he's ready to call it quits, and though I don't agree, I really don't have a say in it anymore. So, I think about it for about an hour and call him back and offer him his job back here. The more I think about it the more sense it makes, and it should work out for the best.

I did get my investigator's license and am committing some money from the restaurant to get that business started, but the start-up is nothing compared to what it takes to get a restaurant up and running, and once that's done the overhead is almost nothing, and the money can be pretty good.

So, we'll see how that goes...still not sure how I want to do that, I'm not at all okay with handing out information to people without knowing how they plan to use it. I also really don't want to do infidelity cases...but on the other hand, people should know if their spouse might be bringing something home from his fishing trip besides tall tales.

I'll let you know.

2010-05-26T13:46:00.002-06:00

If you're interested, John, here's a link to where those posts start.

http://mountainrambler.blogspot.com/2009/08/part-1-cops-tale.html

12 Years Later

2010-05-24T19:30:00.003-06:00

Kindergarten graduation 1998

My daughter, the dork.

Yesterday

2010-05-23T17:39:00.002-06:00

I did not cry...not immediately.

My kids...yes, I feel old.

Cafe Quote

2010-05-23T11:59:00.001-06:00

"Did you know that this flashlight is, like, semi-waterproof?" - Randy

2010-05-18T17:55:00.004-06:00

Well, John's right, I do need to write more, mostly to clear my own head. Putting things down, even if I don't "publish" them, does usually help to put things in perspective. The problem is that everything I've felt like writing, everything I've felt lately, just makes me feel pathetic, like a foolish old man obsessing over the ones that got away, mistakes made, and roads not travelled, and I'm really, really getting tired of feeling and appearing that way.

Work? I'm pretty much not enjoying work at all right now. It's been slow as hell for the past few months (usual around here) and I got carried away when it was busy at Christmas and over spring break paying down debts. Now, that's a good thing, but it also means that I didn't go into the slow times with the cushion like I had last year. Plus, pretty much everyone at work has managed to piss me off lately and I really don't feel like ranting about that.

Right now, one of them is standing outside my office door, smoking, and talking about this fucking ab machine she wants to buy, and I'm about to snap.

The twins will be going to visit their mom and step-dad in Germany in June, and then they'll be moving out in August. This thrills and terrifies me and saddens me.

Now, another one, the new cook, just came in to brag about her pizzas, how perfect they are...then she's quiet for a minute and makes this "hmmmmmmm" noise, every time there's a silence she feels the need to fill it with a hmmmmmmm. Shit.

And one more thing, Facebook sucks ass. Really. I held out and held out against joining, but then I did because some of my good friends from high school and college were on there and some of my family was on there and it just seemed like a good way to stay in touch, especially for me, the guy who never calls or writes his friends and only communicates with most members of his family with a Christmas card (usually late).

Now she's back, talking about something else (all I can hear is my own teeth grinding) and taking my ibuprofen.

So, back to Facebook, it was pretty cool for a while, I enjoyed catching up with people, seeing pics of their families, staying in closer touch with my family, and I was able to not get dragged into the games and apps, learned how to block them so that I didn't have to see Bobby's Farmville activity every time I opened my page, but now people are getting in touch with me, people I never really wanted to hear from again, and of course I 'friend' them because I'm really bad at being rude from a safe distance, which is really weird.

So, yeah, that's about it.

2010-05-13T10:14:00.004-06:00

These guys turn 18 today. Where did the time go?

Happy Birthday Danny and Emily.

2010-04-28T20:33:00.000-06:00

Let's go get a beer.

Little Tiny Food Show Post

2010-04-27T20:01:00.000-06:00

My friend Keith, who works as a salesman for one of the large food suppliers that I buy from, had been after me to go to this small food show that his company was putting on at one of the country clubs. I hadn't ever been to a food show, but I really didn't want to go. Every once in a while the sales reps from the suppliers come around to take our order with a stranger in tow, the stranger is always some other sales rep from some other company who is trying to push more product in this area.

They are always pushing something I don't need.

Chicken wing sauce...
I don't serve chicken wings.
Well, it goes great on bread sticks...
We make our own sauce for bread sticks.

and

Par-baked bread...
We bake our own bread.

and

Precious little frozen cheesecakes with fancy paper wrapping, just pull a few from the freezer every day...
We make our own desserts, including cheesecake...

...and that is pretty much how the food show was, a bunch of vendors pushing pre-made goodies, and golfers wandering around making a free meal of the samples. I saw nothing of interest except the produce, some of it looked good. But, Keith had a good number of clients show up and that looks good to his bosses.

While I was there I ran over a golf tee and got a flat.

Sam

2010-04-25T20:28:00.006-06:00

"Around here you don't lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn," the woman told her male companion just down the bar from where I was eating lunch.

It's an old joke around here, but like the license plate one, there's a lot of truth in it. Lots of people who have lived here for more than a few years find themselves single at some point and swimming in a rather small dating pool, there are young women, old women, and just not a whole lot in between.

Which brings me to "Sam." Sam is far younger than me, she was a kid when I met her nine years ago, and the girlfriend of one of the kids who worked at the cafe then. She left town for a while and came back not long after Z and I separated...by then she was 21.

One night she and a friend came into the cafe and had dinner, said they were going to a bar to play pool and invited me along. I met them there and we ended up later at the friend's apartment watching a movie. Sam said she had left her phone in my car and I went out to help her find it and as soon as we had a closed door between us and her friend she turned around and kissed me. We ended up at her place that night, making out before passing out on the couch.

Next, it was a party that we ran into each other at; one night it was a bar where we had barely acknowledged each other until I was leaving. I was in my car, backing out of the parking lot when she ran out and climbed in. "Let's go," she said.

And so things went, sometimes we would not see each other for a few weeks and then my phone would ring and she'd need a ride, and then we would end up at her place, or mine. Once, one of my favorites, we passed the night in a Mexican bar getting confused looks from the locals.

The common themes of all these encounters were that they were all on her terms, she always found or called me when she wanted to see me, it didn't work the other way, and there was always alcohol involved. Except once...sort of.

We had ended the night at my house, talking in front of the fireplace before going to bed. The next morning, instead of the usual quiet ride into town to drop her off at her place, we stayed in bed, naked, watching tv, taking breaks to have sex, until late in the afternoon. Out of my nearly 15,695 days, it is one of my favorites.

After a while, she began dating someone, as did I, and the phone calls and meetings stopped. Then she moved away, but about a year later got in touch with me again...this time online. Everything was good, she just wanted to check in, see how I was doing. Soon after, she split with her boyfriend and moved again, this time to Southern California, and started working on getting sober.

We wrote back and forth for a while and she'd call every once in a while. For a while there we were even contemplating taking a trip together, and then she just disappeared. I found out that she had suddenly gotten engaged and then she started drunk dialing again. She wanted out, would I help her? I never could tell her no, figure it out for yourself, but the next day I guess everything would be fine, because I'd not hear from her again until the next time that she was drunk and I looked better than whatever life clusterfuck she was staring at.

Then, she called sober, told me she was leaving, going to Texas to stay with family for awhile. She'd call when she got there, she said.

When she called a few weeks later she told me that she was pregnant. She had found out after splitting with her fiance, and knew then that she had to leave. I listened, not really knowing what to say. After hanging up I called her back to tell her that I didn't know what she was thinking she would do, but that I just wanted her to know that whatever she decided was right would be ok by me...but that I thought that she would have a beautiful baby who would be so lucky to have her for a mom.

Maybe you're thinking, really? She doesn't sound that fantastic, but that's because so far I've only described a drunk who liked to have sex with me sometimes. But she's so much more, she's smart and funny and she works hard and she believes in things and now her baby is almost a year old and it's so good to see them together, because they are happy, and the baby is lucky because Sam is a good mother.

I get to see them because Sam moved back not long after that night that she called to tell me that she was pregnant and sometimes they stop in to eat, or bake bread, or to tell me about her college classes, or to bring me some enchiladas.

Posted by Eric at 3:30 PM

2010-04-18T18:52:00.000-06:00

She brought me enchiladas today...and back on a simmer go I.

Not a quote...more of a chestnut.

2010-04-14T14:52:00.003-06:00

The dishwasher brought in Darkside Zodiac today and we all passed it around. A little later, as I was reading it, the waitress commented that the book was stupid.

"Why," I asked.

"It basically said that I was a manipulative bitch, and a slut," she said.

"That's weird, it was dead on on mine too."

2010-04-09T14:09:00.000-06:00

Linked my phone to facebook and my email...that was dumb.

Mini Vacation

2010-04-04T10:49:00.013-06:00

I've been needing a mental reset, a change, a break for a while now. Maybe you've noticed? No real restaurant posts for months now, just random shit.

Actually, that's a pretty accurate description of life...random shit.

I've just been having a problem with food for a bit now, not food itself, but how we treat it, how it's thought about, written about, and, I am completely sick of "celebrity" chefs and their self-righteous diatribes on all topics, except one. I do think it's good that some are tackling diet-related issues like diabetes, obesity, and the completely fucked up way in which our food supply system works.

But, you won't see that on TV, because no one wants to watch it. No, they want to see flamboyance, and exotic ingredients, and four thousand dollar cakes.

So, yeah, I'm a little burned out right now. No worries though, it happens from time to time, I always come back around, and I took a step in that direction Friday night.

Friday was a shit day. One of those days where I am supposedly off, but end up spending half the day or better at the cafe putting out fires. This time it was a dead freezer, an ailing refrigerator, someone else's calamari going bad in my walk in, and a tax check that I had forgotten to account for being cashed and throwing me deep into the red when I thought I had at least a pretty good grip on the black.

I had gotten a good run in though, and was thinking tacos would be good for dinner, but didn't really want to eat anywhere in town. Go home? No way, I'd have to clean before I could cook and I just wasn't doing that. I wanted to sit, be waited on, have some good food and a couple really cold Coronas.

I drove from one end of town to the other, trying to make a decision...

No, their food sucks.

No, their food really sucks.

I wouldn't piss on the guy's place if it was on fire.

Ugh.

No, so-and-so's working, not in the mood for her bullshit.

No way.

Good, but I'm not in the mood for that...

and variations on all those all the way.

I was thinking about driving to Alamo, but really they don't have anything better and it's a forty-five minute drive, when I remembered the Inn. The Inn of the Mountain Gods is a couple of miles outside of town on the Mescalero Apache reservation and some friends had been telling me how good the lounge was. Kind of like a mini vacation, they had said. Something different, they had said. Sounded good.

I've been out to the Inn a few times since I've lived here. I'm not really a gambler, the food in the "fancy" restaurant is over-priced with pretentious service, presenting "real Mediterranean olives", olive oil and cheap balsamic for bread dipping as if they were from the hand of Thomas Keller himself, and the dance bar is country-western and if I'm going to a country bar, it's going to be to the Win, Place or Show, one of the best country bars on the planet and right up the street from the cafe.

But I hadn't been to the lounge, and though it serves appetizers from the same kitchen that serves the fancy place...and probably the buffet down the hall, now that I think about it...I heard that it good. So I went...and it was great.

I parked in the underground garage, and that was already foreign enough to get me feeling like I was somewhere different, somewhere new. I took the elevator up, walked past the line into the buffet on the right, the giant windows on my left open to the valets busy with a line of cars with Texas and Chihuahua tags; past the entrance of the casino, the bells and whistles trying their best to draw in passersby, down the sweeping stairs that pass to the left and right of a large fountain designed to look like an indigenous basket, the five year old who had been running up the stairs on the left, passing me and reaching the bottom just before me on the right, "I beat you," he said.

The restaurant is to the left, the lounge to the right, to the front is two-and-a-half stories of glass looking out to the lake and the mountain, one of the best views in the area. The lounge's west side is also made up of large windows and shares the same view and the sun was just low enough to be really annoying in the lounge. I picked a spot at the bar where I could watch the whole place, except for the piano player, who was behind me, ordered a Corona, looked at the menu, even though I pretty much knew I was getting the beef tips, and settled in.

I love to do this, watch people, make assumptions based on what I'm seeing, try to figure out a little bit about them in a short amount of time. I had gotten there a little early, six o'clock, so there wasn't a whole lot to work with...

A heavy set female bartender with short, spiked hair who rocked from side to side as she walked, looking almost like it would be easier for her to walk sideways like a crab. She is already falling behind in the not-at-all-busy lounge and as it should get busier as it gets later, I hope she's got backup coming in.

The cocktail waitress looks to be in her late twenties, married with at least one child. She has just enough padding (there is such a thing as too skinny), is wearing the universal uniform of her trade, too-short skirt, neck line cut low, and though I'm appreciating the view, I don't think she would choose this clothing for a night out...I'm thinking a knee-length skirt, green would be good. She is very pretty, in the way that some women from old New England money are pretty, she moves easily among the tables and chairs in the lounge, smiles often and is aware of her surroundings. I think she probably played soccer in college.

The piano player is a repressed homosexual in a long term, but loveless marriage to the girl he dated in high school or college. Now, I know that that is a stereotype, 'piano player playing show tunes has to be gay,' but I think I'm right on this one. He has been wearing the same tweed suit coat when he plays for probably thirty years. He seems to miss a note from time to time, but maybe it's freestyle, what the fuck do I know?

The couple around the corner of the bar from me don't interest me much, though they are kind of amusing. He looks like Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show dressed in tennis clothes, and she is one of those women who drinks too many martinis while holding her glass up and waving it around so that everyone can see how cultured she is drinking martinis.

One other couple sits near the piano and call out tunes for the piano player to try. They are young and have a bizarre knowledge of 70s TV shows...please, no, not "Suicide is Painless"...God. Dammit.

A guy perches at the corner, a couple of stools over from me. He is in his fifties, dressed in jeans, short sleeve western shirt in a red plaid, with a simple belt and work boots. He is wearing a cowboy hat, the same one he wears to work, it is battered and stained with salt around the brim. He has the arms of one who uses them daily and orders Wild Turkey with a Coors Light chaser. He watches the entrance as he drinks.

Hiding from the family, I think. Raised on the farm, the kids all bolted as soon as they had the chance, went to college, got jobs with the gas company, or married accountants. He's glad that they have easier lives than his, but he's a little hurt that no one was willing to take his place and is tired of hearing about carpools, hair dyes, the best place in Dallas to get sushi, and how they're trying to figure out what's wrong with Todd, he keeps getting in trouble in school. Within five minutes of seeing little Todd for the first time in a year his grandfather knows what's wrong with him...remove the ear buds and get the tiny screen out of his face for a little bit and engage him in something instead of harping across car at him while on the way home from another parent-teacher conference.
On the deck, on the other side of the windows, a large family of Mexicans is having a reunion, the kids constantly moving through the lounge area and being patiently shooed out by the pretty cocktail.

My beef tips arrive and are fantastic. An appetizer, they are braised in a spicy beurre blanc, and served in a small cast iron crock surrounded by lots of small slices of good crusty bread. It is really, really good. What seems like too much bread is just enough I find as I finish mopping up sauce with the last crust and order another Corona.

By now the 70s TV fans have moved on, as have Riff Raff and Martini Lady and Dairy Farmer.

A sad looking lady comes in, sitting toward the middle of the bar. In her early 70s, she wears a lot of makeup, an uncomplimentary wig, and struggles for a minute getting onto the bar stool. She motions for an ashtray even before getting settled, but then doesn't produce the expected too-thin, too-long cigarettes, but a pack of Marlboro reds...and she orders scotch on the rocks.

Well, this is interesting. She lights a red, orders a sandwich, and alternates looking around with looking into her glass as if it had an answer.

A couple in their sixties sits down at the corner, then shifts over toward me so she wont' be as close to Sad Ladies smoke. He has a mid-range whiskey with water, she has a cheap Chardonnay. They don't stay long but they smile and touch each other frequently. They have been together a long time, but still like each other...and I think toward the end that is more important...cool.

Another couple sits between them and Sad Lady. He is a runner, in his sixties, casually well dressed. She is in her mid to late fifties, and smoking hot. A shade darker than Marilyn-blond hair cut short with a with a tousled 'I don't have time to care about how my hair looks' look that takes a lot of work to achieve. None of the dead-face tightness that comes with Botox, her age shows in her hands and her taste in clothing, which matches his style. So, she's had surgery, but whoever did it was very, very good and thus very, very expensive. Real money. She has blue eyes and I get a slight smile when she catches me looking at her.

He orders white wine for both of them and a sandwich for himself. She orders a salad.

Sad Lady immediately starts talking to them, but it's when the piano player takes a break and comes around to talk to them...so, they're part-time locals with a place at one of the country clubs, that we learn that her husband died last year and that he loved Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World", and, no rush, but would he mind playing that when he gets a chance?

Another couple sits in the lounge. They look to be around my age, she's a very pretty west-Texas blond, he is about 6-2, over three hundred pounds, all of it up top as it blossoms over his Wranglers, pushing his rodeo buckle to a forty-five degree angle. It is more mushroom cloud than muffin top. His cowboy hat is new, black, and of good quality. His mustache is one of those that runs down his chin getting bushier and thicker and grayer at the ends.

Let's see...sweethearts in high school, he was a football player, defensive lineman, she a cheerleader (let's go for one more stereotype), they might have even stayed together for a bit when he went to Tech and she went off to UT-Dallas, but then drifted apart, married others and raised their kids and now, freshly divorced from their respective spouses, have found each other on Facebook, married and are on their honeymoon.

Yeah, that's a hell of a stretch.

And so the night goes for another hour...some local real estate types come in and sit near the piano, chattering away. One of the women scopes out the money couple at the bar and makes a pretext of going to the bar and stops to introduce herself, placing herself between the man and Sad Lady who was talking about how she hated golf but started playing to please her husband, he died last year, but learned to enjoy the game.

Realtor Lady glances at me but correctly determines that there is no reason to say anything before returning to her group and calling out for a Miles Davis tune.

The piano player wants to know which one.

She can't name one.

I finish my second beer and order a coffee and watch for a few minutes longer. A young Hispanic couple sits at the other end of the bar...A Mexican woman and her mother order a couple of drinks and take them to a couple of chairs and sit down in the now-full lounge...a balding, pasty twenty-five year old with a bushy beard orders a pinot grigio and a Bud and takes it to a table where his girl, a young woman who looks like Mila Kunis immediately leans in as he sits and they start to talk. I don't know what the fuck that's about.

I'd like to stay a little longer, but I'm limiting myself to two beers these days, and once you switch to coffee bartenders tend to start ignoring you.

It's nice to get out of the ruts from time to time and look around.

I'm starting to like this Spenser guy...

2010-03-30T16:27:00.004-06:00

The super had an office partitioned off with chicken wire from the rest of the cellar. In it were a rolltop desk, an antique television set, and a swivel chair, in which sat the super. The smell of bad wine oozed out of the place. He looked at me with no sign of recognition or welcome.

I said, "I want to use your phone."

He said, "There's a pay phone at the drugstore across the street. I ain't running no charity here."

I said, "There's a dead person in room thirteen, and I am going to call the police and tell them. If you say anything to me but yes, sir, I will hit you at least six times in the face."

From the Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

Whoa...two in one week?

2010-03-24T14:34:00.003-06:00

Cafe Quote

John: Melissa's pregnant.

Me: Congratulations...wait, it is yours, right?

I Want a Nap

2010-03-24T11:12:00.009-06:00

I'm tired. That damned time change really screwed me up this year. Maybe it wasn't totally the time change, we did have a hellaciously busy spring break week in there as well, and I did fall off the wagon (not badly, but the wagon did run over my balls as I was trying to get back on), and I found, once again, that I cannot trust thirty-somethings to not get shitfaced when I decide to leave the cafe for a few hours after working 70 hours without a break.

And...the two women I was trying to maybe have some sort of dating-type relationship with both pretty much blew me off. Ok, I wasn't trying to hook up with both of them at the same time, I had pretty much decided on one, even though she's been warm and cold for about a year now, but when it became clear that that wasn't going to happen, or maybe I just got sick of sitting on the back burner, I decided to ask out a bartender who (I thought) has been flirting with me for a while now. Apparently I am not a good judge of such things.

Oh well. The first is probably a good thing, we had a series of drunken flings a few years ago and she's back in town and sober and I thought maybe there had been something there, back then, and maybe there could be something now. I guess what was there back then was convenience and a not much more.

The second is really cool, and while I am aware that bartenders make better tips by being flirty, we have hung out outside of that environment, and we do share a love of sarcasm, Ray Harryhausen movies, and conveniently sized cheeseburgers, and she had gotten out of a relationship a while back, so I gave it a shot. I'm not a hundred percent on it being a no go yet, but I'm pretty sure.

And...my sister (younger) just became a grandmother. I am so not digging that for some reason. I mean, yeah, I'm happy for my nephew, he looks totally stoked in the pics I've seen of him with his wife and baby, but his wife, and I'm judging her based entirely on her facebook page, is a total nut. And, I don't want to be old enough to be a grandpa. Luckily, I had the sense to get my kids fixed while they were little.

And...I don't know what the hell happened last night on Southland. Oh, I watched it all right, but what happened to the bald Latino detective? They just stuck a new one in his place with nothing more than a comment at the end that it had been a hell of a first day working together...and when the hell did Cooper come out? I was pretty sure that he was in the closet, the viewers only recognizing the clues because, hey, we also saw him at the gay bar...and who the hell goes to funeral, especially a cop at another cop's funeral, even of someone they don't know, without asking how they died?

Last nights episode was weak, and there I've been talking it up like crazy. I guess I'll re-watch it in a couple of days and see if I can figure out what I missed.

And...did I mention that I'm tired?

Southland Trailer

2010-03-21T14:15:00.000-06:00

I'm hooked.

At Long Last, Another Cafe Quote

2010-03-18T15:42:00.003-06:00

"This dough is awesome. I love this dough. I'm gonna marry this dough and we're gonna raise our weird pasty children huntin' gators somewhere in the wilds of Looziana."

-Danny

I guess he's not going to wait for a woman to come along who smells of rosemary.

2010-03-06T20:46:00.003-07:00

For the first four weeks I didn't have a drink of alcohol. In the four weeks since, I have only had six beers. There's a 12 pack in the cooler right now, and I don't even want one. Much.

I've fought through the phase where my body was craving sugars (strangely, I got very Southern during this phase, grabbing sweet tea and Moon Pies on the way home from work almost every night). I've replaced my usual Doritos, burrito or grilled cheese dinners with salads, nuts, and fruits, and I've been hitting the gym pretty hard the last few weeks.

But all for naught, because the freaking Girl Scouts are out in force everywhere I go, pushing their crack cookies, and they don't care about my suffering, my pain, how hard it's been or how weak I am right now, they only care about the almighty dollar...and probably a merit badge of some sort...and bunnies.

2010-02-23T10:22:00.007-07:00

I don't know how it started, but somewhere a couple of months ago, maybe longer, I really started feeling like I needed to be doing something else, something that was important.

I know that on many levels what I do now is important, I provide jobs, taxes, and I ensure that our food is prepared and handled safely. But that just doesn't cut it anymore. I've always wanted to be that guy who got the call to do something no one else could, or would do, and I'm not talking about going shoulder deep into the grease trap to remove a blockage. I'm about exciting stuff, stuff that makes a difference to people. For a while, sometimes, I was that guy, and I miss it.

So, what to do? I don't want to sell the cafe, I do enjoy it still, and the money is good (sometimes), so going back to police work or the army is out, I wouldn't really want to do that anyway.

I really couldn't figure it out until it hit me, private investigator. I'd thought about it before, but didn't want to be doing process service and chasing after straying spouses, that's less appealing than the grease trap. But, if I kept the cafe, kept working it, maybe cut my hours back, I could do the PI stuff on the side, I could afford to pick and choose the cases that I accepted.

So, that's what I'm doing, and I've applied for my license, which might actually turn out to be a hurdle I hadn't anticipated. NM requires three years experience within the last five years. I've been out of police work for over five years, so I'm appealing to the board based on my experience and training. One of my friends pointed out that I should be a shoe in, as I have two ex-wives and a drinking problem. We'll see what happens, but I do have a plan B...and a plan C.

In the meantime I've been brushing up. Five years is a long time, I've forgotten a lot, laws have changed, and hunting for people as a PI is quite a bit different than hunting for them as a cop. As a cop you have access to all kinds of federal, state, and local files, you can call water billing for an address and no one blinks, you can enter a name and date of birth into a computer and get pages of information on criminal and driving records. As a PI you can usually still get that information, it's just a little tougher, you have to be more creative, and sometimes you just have to break out the credit card.

This I have figured out over the past month while practicing my hunting. I am interested in primarily taking on missing persons cases, custodial interference, deadbeat parents, that sort of stuff. I knew that it was going to be difficult, not having the police resources anymore, so I decided to practice on a group of guys who no one is really actively looking for, but who need to be found: absconded sex offenders. These are the guys who are required to register, but don't, and skip town. There is one listed in our county, so I started with him, working on him in the mornings, on the occasional day off and during breaks at work.

I thought it would be easier than it's turned out to be, but because he's been tougher to track than I expected, I have learned a lot. I've learned that every state is different when it comes to public records and how available they are, sometimes it goes down to every county; I've learned that it's not too hard to get an unpublished number, but can be very hard to verify that the person who answers it is your bad guy; and I've learned that the county assessor's office in Nye County, Nevada rocks.

I don't have this guy yet, but I'm close, like 98% there. This evening, during the time when telemarketers like to call, I'll be calling that unpublished number and then hopefully I'll know.

2010-02-22T22:04:00.002-07:00

Well, I can’t get home because the roads are slick as hell and the plows aren’t out because the snow started too late, after good and reputable people were already home, so I’m stuck at the café, trying to decide whether to rent a hotel room up the street, or to just bust out the cot and bed down here.

Hotel Pros:
Bed
TV
Shower
Next door to great breakfast place
NOT the café

Café Pros:
NOT seventy bucks

Well, looks like the café wins. I’ll take advantage of the quiet to read or write a bit, then I’ll watch some Rockford Files on Hulu before I toss and turn and freeze my ass off for a miserable few hours until I finally give up and walk to the gym to work out and shower.

Then, I’ll walk over to the Grill for breakfast and then head back to the café to get ready for what will surely be one of the longest days ever.

I hate getting stuck here, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I bought a rear-wheel drive car two years ago instead of a four wheel drive anything.

Oh well.

2010-02-21T19:35:00.003-07:00

I've really been wanting to sit down and write for a while, something with a little bit more meat to it than what I've been coming up with lately, but I just can't.

It's not that there's nothing going on, there's plenty going on.

I cleaned my room, for instance.

I did get to see "Black Dynamite" the other night, and it is the funniest movie I have seen in a long, long time. I had a headache from laughing before it was over.

Check it out.

2010-02-14T09:49:00.002-07:00

We like to give each other names around here, rapper names, fighter pilot names, and so on.
Not too long ago we were on bread names, now we're on prison names.

My bread name is Sourdough.

At least my prison name is Big Spoon.

2010-01-31T11:16:00.003-07:00

"Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?"

"It takes about three years."

"Three years?" He looked shocked.

"It usually does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well."

- From Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye"

Three years? Well, hell, three weeks down.

Yum.

2010-01-28T09:46:00.004-07:00

Ok, since I didn't die, or bend my car, on the way to work, and since there is a fairly good chance that the other two people who are supposed to come in today will make it as well, and since the snow brings lots of skiers and snowboarders into town, and since my kids are all holed up nice and safe, and since the Lincoln County Grill is only a couple of blocks away, easy walking when it's too nasty to drive, and since they have bomb ass huevos rancheros, I will not bitch and moan about the 8" of new snow that I woke up to at 6 am, the hour long ass clenching session that was my drive to work, or the fact that it is still snowing and that I will undoubtedly spend my day off tomorrow re-shoveling the cafe's roof.

Right now I am still basking in the glow that is two over easy eggs perched on corn tortillas and smothered in red chile and cheese slopped up against fried potatoes and beans with bacon and a big ass flour tortilla.
How does one eat this big, gorgeous, sloppy mess? Well, I start by tearing the tortilla into triangles, which I then fill with a little bit of everything else on the plate, fold tight, lean well over the plate, make sure there are plenty of napkins handy, and...go.

Can it be spring now?

2010-01-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's pretty, I know, but I am sick and tired of it. The snow, not the cafe...mostly.

What to say?

2010-01-22T19:34:00.006-07:00

Well, I did have about two paragraphs written, but just deleted them, so the title is appropriate.

Just deleted another.

Hmmmmmm, what's new?

Well, I grew a mustache, for one. Not a beard or goatee with mustache, just a plain old fashioned (and out of fashion) stand alone 'stache. It has been called a copstache, a pornstache, and a mo. I call it Linda.

I named it Linda after being told that I just had to name it. I usually name things Carl...I just think it's funny...but the thought of a hairy Carl on my lip kinda didn't do it for me, so Linda it was.

A hairy Linda I can handle, reminds me of the 80s.

Em hates Linda. Last weekend, as I was getting into my car, Em pulled into the lot, rolled her window down, and shouted, "Shave that goddamned thing off!"

That's my precious angel.

I told her later that Linda and I wanted to talk to her about her attitude.

"I hate Linda, and she's not my mom!" was her answer.

So, yeah, that's new.

What else?

Maybe later.

2010-01-20T10:41:00.001-07:00

In the words of Granny Weatherwax, "I aten't dead."

Ouch

2010-01-03T10:54:00.007-07:00

I lean back, my eyes closed against the light, a warm orange glow on the backs of my eyelids, the cold metal of the Tecate can perspiring in my hand as the sound of gently lapping water just reaches my ears.

Wait, that’s the floor drain backing up and flooding the dish room again. Shit. At least the Tecate is real.

It is day nine of Hell Week and it is starting to show. A couple of mornings ago I sat on the couch drooling and slurring my speech, wondering if I’d had a mild stroke, then Danny kindly pointed out that I still had my toothbrush in my mouth. I’m not sure that’s better.

Saturday morning I sent a text to Brett to ask how the weekend had gone at Café Z. I was sure it was Sunday afternoon.

I hope everyone is having a good 2010 so far, though I've got to say that I feel ripped off. Where is my flying car? My vacation on the moon? And the robot wives? Well, they're here and it turns out that they're just kinda creepy.

2009-12-28T09:39:00.001-07:00

Sorry about the word verification thingy...I got spammed, and maybe hacked.

Cafe Quote

2009-12-24T16:01:00.001-07:00

Conversation by phone between my daughters:

Jo: Where are you at?

Em: If I was up your butt you'd know.

Disappointed

2009-12-16T17:22:00.007-07:00

I had kind of heard a rumor about a friend of mine last night, then today it was confirmed in the papers, ours and Albuquerque's.

Chris was a cop, and apparently a pretty good liar. I've known him for about 13 years, when I started here as a cop he was a cop in the next town over. We used to pass an hour or so of night shift parked on the line where our towns met, just shooting the shit, sometimes we'd catch a meal break together.

Chris had won the Silver Star, the third highest Army citation for heroism, during the Gulf War, was an officer in the Army Reserve, was one of the very few cops I had met who had been in an officer involved shooting, and always came off as someone who knew his shit, someone you would want covering your back if things went bad.

Not long before I left the police department here, he transferred over...problems with the new chief over there. He wasn't the only one, a couple more made the same move around the same time for the same stated reason.

Chris was aways the guy who you expected to climb the ranks. A stickler for policy to the point of being annoying, he was still the guy to seek out for a midnight legal opinion or help throwing a criminal complaint together at the end of shift. I think everyone expected him to be chief someday, and not how some become chief, climbing over the friends they've stabbed in the back on the way up, but by consistently doing the right thing.

The last couple of years Chris had been doing a very good job at the high school as a school resource officer. The kids (mine included) really liked and looked up to him, as did the staff.

Chris got arrested the other day. Seems he wasn't an officer in the reserves, probably never had been. He forged military orders claiming that he needed time off for mandatory training and collected city paychecks for that time off. He's charged with felony fraud and forgery, and more charges are likely.

He was four years away from retirement from the police department. He'll likely spend that four years in prison.

I say we were friends, we never hung out off duty, he wasn't someone I'd call to help me move just because he had a pickup. But Richard was.

Richard was a friend of mine in Oklahoma. He was my supervisor until I caught up with him in rank. We worked together, we did security work off duty together, we painted houses together in our off time, we went to Christmas parties at each other's houses. We were in a couple hairy pursuits together, we responded to several bad calls together, including one where a mutual friend died of a heart attack.

We were pretty inseparable for a couple of years, until I got promoted to the same rank and had my own shift. But even then we stayed close, until politics got in the way. The city was trying to push out the old chief. Richard was backing him, I backed the new guy. Even then it was a friendly rivalry, just like it had been when I backed a young Arkansas Democrat against his Republican incumbent for president. It was just one of those things we'd argue about and then go get breakfast.

Then Richard fell off of a ladder while doing an exterior painting job. No one was there with him at the time, and he crawled into the house with two shattered ankles to call for help.

By that time the new chief was in place and I had been given the choice job of commander of detectives for picking the right horse.

Not long after that, before he was even off of medical leave, Richard left his wife for a young clerk who worked in one of the convenience stores we frequented. That's when my new boss, the guy who I thought was going to be an improvement over the old guard, came to me and ordered me to prepare a case against Richard under a 100 year old adultery law that hadn't been prosecuted in decades.

I balked, he threatened. I called the DA, he assured me that there was no way in hell that he would pursue the case and advised me to just prepare it and bring it to him and he would refuse it. I felt filthy while doing it, but I did it, and it went down just like the DA promised, no charges.

That's when I knew I had to get out of that department, and it was the final shove that pushed me to New Mexico. But by then Richard and I didn't talk anymore.

A few years after moving here I heard that he had gotten another job in police work in another Oklahoma town. Then I heard that he had been arrested for burglarizing businesses while on night patrol.

Luis did the same thing. Luis was one of my supervisors when I first started in the department here. He was lazy, but a nice guy. Sometimes he'd bring his banjo in and play for us to pass time on a slow Sunday. One weekend I went to the lake on my days off and came back to find that Luis had been arrested and that I had been promoted. Weird feeling, that.

Luis had come under suspicion of burglary and our own detectives had set him up with a sting operation and had caught him with stolen property in the trunk of his police car. Embarrassing yes, but at least our guys had done the catching. It's always worse if someone else has to do it for you.

There was the guy that I went to the academy with in Oklahoma...two of them actually...both went to jail for fraud or burglary. The guy who was sheriff in my own home county back there, a guy who I had ridden the school bus with when we were children, who just got sentenced for that most cliche of rural cop stereotypes, shaking down out of state motorists for cash.

Then there was Billy. Billy was a retired captain from San Antonio PD who started working in the same neighboring town as Chris while I was still a police officer here. As with Chris, I would often meet Billy at the town line and shoot the shit with him. Coming, as he had, from a big city, he had great stories and seemed to really have his shit tight, procedurally and tactically.

A couple of years later and Billy had transferred over to a neighboring county's sheriff's office to be closer to the house he had bought. He was mostly working around a very small mountain town with another acquaintance of mine, Bob, who had transferred over there from our own sheriff's office. Bob was a native New Yorker who had fallen in love with the west and all of it's trappings and had moved out here to be a real western lawman.

One night Billy and Bob were sent on a call of a domestic disturbance just outside of that tiny mountain town. Bob went to the back of the house while Billy approached the front. Inside, the resident, a convicted felon and member of a white supremacist prison gang, was shoving his dead girlfriend into a closet. He had shot her just before the deputies had arrived. He exited the back door, leaving his young daughter cowering near the closet that held her murdered mother, and encountered Bob near the back door. For a split second, Bob was engaged in what he may have fantasized about before coming west, a showdown with an armed desperado. Then he was dead, shot once in the forehead.

Hearing the shot, Billy ran around the house, the bad guy coming around in the other direction. Billy found his friend and partner dead and went back around to the front where he came face to face with the suspect. Both raised their pistols and fired, but Billy didn't miss, and Bob's killer fell wounded. Billy then did what we were all trained to do after wounding someone, he secured the bad guy's gun, and handcuffed him. Even if the suspect appears dead that's what you do because you never know.

Billy called for help, then went inside, and found the little girl and the dead woman. He then walked back out into the front yard, in front of God and his patrol car's video camera, and put one more bullet in the wounded, cuffed suspect.

Billy half-heartedly tried to portray the shooting as justified, but ballistics and video nailed him. He was ultimately convicted of manslaughter, a lesser charge than murder, because of lack of premeditation. The prison gang who's member he killed put a hit out on Billy before he had even entered the system and many of them are now doing extended sentences for that conspiracy.

As far as I know, Billy is still ok and still doing his time, but when he gets out there will be another sentence hanging over him, some piece of shit with something to prove will always be out there ready to take a shot at him or his family.

There is no way to justify what Billy did that night eight years ago, cops cannot appoint themselves to the position of judge, jury and executioner. Our society does not and cannot work that way. All of us who do that job at some point have our gun pointed at someone, knowing that the world would be a much better place if we could just stop this fucker from taking one more breath. The majority of us take our own deep breath, send our finger on that long trip from trigger to safety, put our gun in our holster, and reach for our cuffs.

I also know that Billy's betrayal of society's trust lasted all of a second, just long enough to pull the trigger. Actually, one third of a second; not days, months, or, as in the case of Chris, years.

In a way, to me at least, his betrayal is the least offensive.

Dog(s) Free to Good Home

2009-12-13T10:04:00.010-07:00

Well I finally got some time off. Not in a good way. Tuesday morning started with the weather shitty and getting worse by the minute. High winds, sleet, and the roads were starting to ice up on the way to work.

Danny and I went to Hell*Mart and replaced the missing cafe phone and looked at the new movies and video games, stopped at Scronic for breakfast, then headed for work. Here and there we could see where a tree had been removed from the road, the bark and twigs still on the road, the fresh cut logs of the trunk and bigger branches dragged off to the side of the road, the roof of the Shell station piled up in the empty lot next door. I occurred to me then to wonder how my fence was holding. I think this is foreshadowing.

About 9 am the power went out. To be expected when the wind blows even a little bit up here. We live in a pine forest, pine trees not only have shallow root systems, but many of them also have been afflicted by bark beetles, which have left thousands of dead and weakened trees standing around just waiting for a reason to fall over on something, and Tuesday they did, in droves, knocking out power all over town.

I was sitting at the counter drinking the last of the coffee and thinking about putting on a pan of water for cowboy coffee when a police car pulled up out front. The officer got out and came to the front door.

'Shit, what now?' I was thinking as I unlocked the door. "Can I help you?" is what I said.

He told me that my neighbors had called them since they couldn't get through to me at the cafe, and that my fence had blown down and my dogs were running loose. I am a convicted misdemeanant due to two of those assholes (the well-behaved ones at that) and now they and the two younger ones, the ones with no social (or survival) skills are running around the neighborhood? Shit.

So, I drive the fifteen miles home, the wind trying to push me off the ice-slick highway. My cell phone rings...a 336 number, must be one of my neighbors.

"Hello...?"

It's Sonja, she lives just up the road from me.

"...yeah, I heard. What are they doing?"

She assured me that they weren't going too far, it was trash day and everyone had put their carts out earlier in the morning and the dogs were feasting on spilled and blowing trash. She also let me know that my fence was in the road.

Nice.

A little bit about the fence. It is a six foot high wooden privacy fence that I had built last year after years of leaving the dogs in during the day, or on runners, and after one miserably failed attempt at constructing a chain link fence, which the dogs stared at for three minutes before pushing under it and running down to the creek, ignoring my pleas to cease and desist.

They returned from that escape at sundown, covered in mud and happy as hell, in spite of several porcupine quills. Assholes.

I like my wooden fence a lot. It covers a pretty good sized chunk of my property and looks nice, which is to say that it looks better than my backyard. Having several fair sized dogs, my backyard alternates between dust bowl and mud pit, depending on the weather. In a fit of optimism I put a nice little bench and a chiminea back there when the fence was first built. For a couple of nights I sat out there, watching my little fire, drinking some beers, and imagining the stone walk I would build up to the back corner of the yard where I would build a small deck to surround the hot tub I would have installed there. Right about then I would catch a wiff of something foul as one of the dogs finished taking a dump. So, the barren wasteland that is my backyard is forever to be the realm of the dogs.

I would have liked to build the fence all the way around the house. Then I could have built towers on the corners, and I would have then spent my dotage dressing up in a cavalry uniform and singing "She wore a yellow fucking ribbon" at the top of my lungs while rattling a sabre at my neighbors.

As soon as I pulled into the drive, three of the four escapees bounded around the corner, Po shouting at the top of his lungs, "DAD, DAD, DAD...DADADADAD...DAD...DAD!"
Tori and Sadie just smiled.

"Where's Heidi?" I asked.

"DAD!" Po answered. He's not real bright, that one.
Tori and Sadie just smiled.

I got them inside with Chloe the Chiweenie, and went back out to look for Heidi.

Yeah, that's right, five dogs. Five.

Now, a little bit about that. Let's start with the oldest, Heidi, a golden retriever. She was Z's, just a puppy when we started dating. The first time Z brought her over, Danny, who was five, got out his plastic doctor bag and gave the puppy a check up.

When Z moved out, Heidi stayed with us until she had a place where she could keep a large dog. Heidi promptly ran away. This happened a couple more times and Z brought her back to the house, and that's where Heidi's stayed.

Heidi is now 11, her face white, her sight is getting poor and she has arthritis, but she loves nothing more than being out in the woods, and will still chase anything that runs from her. She cannot pass water without getting in it. She is the sweetest tempered dog I have ever known. She sleeps on a cusion next to my bed. She snores. Loudly.

Tori is Heidi's daughter from her only litter. Heidi met Barks when we moved into the house we now live in. Barks was the neighbors' dog, a handsome Black Lab. They were a great match, they took walks down to the creek together, and he would not eat or drink until she had finished. He was an awesome dog and we were happy when she got pregnant by him. But before the puppies were born, Barks was hit by a car and killed. Heidi was miserable for days.

So, Tori must be about eight now. She's got her parents' temperament, and is very fat. When she goes to sleep the Chiweenie curls up on her back and sleeps there. When she was born we kept her because Z wanted to have one of Heidi's and Barks's pups. She is supposed to be my younger daughter's dog.

So is Chloe. Chloe was born to Pepper, Z's wiener dog, and Chopper, a Chihuahua that also belonged to the same neighbors as Barks. Again, Z wanted to keep a puppy, and again it was supposed to be Em's dog.

Em claims this is not the case, and says that she gave Chloe to Danny. Danny ignores this information. Whoever's dog she is, I know that I am the one who picks up after her, feeds, and waters her.

Like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, she bolts at any opportunity, but immediately announces her freedom by barking her head off as she runs the neighborhood, often going through or under other people's fences so that she can let their dogs know how cool she is.

Sadie is a beautiful Border Collie and again she is Em's dog. Em actually claims this one though. She bought Sadie after wearing me down for about a month about how she was good kid and how she got good grades and how she never got in trouble like her siblings...on and on and on. Same tactics that she's using now to wear me down about her going to Austin.

Sadie is supposed to be intelligent, but I have seen no proof of this. She is very sweet though, is interested in cats, but scared shitless of them at the same time since getting mauled when she put her nose up to a pregnant cat's ass last year.

Then there is Po, of all the dogs he is truly mine in that I made a conscious (and sober) decision to take him as a pup this past spring from my mom and dad's place, which is apparently the dumping ground for unwanted dogs in McIntosh County, Oklahoma. Po's already pregnant mom being the latest of no telling how many dogs that have been dumped nearby and then found their way to my folks' place.

Po is a mut, very long legged and skinny, but with the head and markings of a Rottweiler. He actually is smart, having figured out doors and their operation from an early age. He just has no common sense.

Where was I? Oh, yeah...where was Heidi?

After getting the rest of the neighborhood terrorists locked up I went in search of Heidi, calling and whistling...nothing. By then the storm was getting worse, any attempt to face west being dissuaded by sleed driven by winds which were measured at the airport at 77 mph.

My house is on the east end of a bottleneck which opens into the valley holding our subdivision.
I'm not sure, but I think the sleet stinging my face was doing eighty.

Well, this is already turning into a two-night-movie-event-on-CBS, so I'll cut it short. The rest of the story isn't really that interesting anyway.

Heidi showed up about a half hour later, covered in freezing mud, and was so shocked to see me standing there that she barked at me. She almost never barks.

Busted, dad's not supposed to be home right now.

The next day I borrowed a pickup and got the lumber and hardware that I needed to fix the fence. Thursday and Friday were mostly taken up with removing the old concrete footings. There were three that had to come out and I got the first two on Thursday in a little over four hours, chipping away with a pick and a large breaker bar, the third took over three hours. Then I set the new posts, mixing and pouring fresh concrete footings.

Saturday morning I could barely move, I felt like I had been beaten with a rod, my hands were deformed claws, but I did get to sleep in, so that was nice. Of course, the wind was back up that day and maneuvering the fence panels into place and keeping them there single handed was...dumb. Kind of like trying to push a sail in a wind tunnel.

But I got it. It's not perfect, there are some sections that need more work to be a little more cosmetically correct, but as Emily helpfully pointed out, "Who cares? We can't see that side anyway."

She's right but I'll still fix it.

Oh, it took all of one day for Sadie and Po to figure out that they could easily dig out where the once-packed dirt was now loose. Sunday night I came home to find Sadie outside the fence, and Po missing. He hadn't turned up the next morning, but Em found a note stuck to the door from one of the sheriff's deputies letting us know that he had picked Po up and taken him to the pound.

So, I went to bail Po out and on the way home he hyperventilated and threw up in my front seat. Twice.

Anybody want a dog?

Update

2009-12-07T10:00:00.004-07:00

Still would rather be somewhere else. Somewhere warm...with tequila.

Older daughter's roommate is moving out.

Younger daughter has at least accepted the fact that she's not going to Austin. I knew that I was ok when she brought me half of a candy cane (one of the big, soft ones, sorta like the wedding mints, my favorite) and when I smiled at her she shoved me.

Still avoiding my email in box, but feeling some relief at having passed on the bad news.

Using a fresh coffee cup for every cup I drink...just because.

The phone is missing. Really. No one knows where it is. Ok, this is sort of a problem, but it's a problem that can wait for a bit, and the quiet is nice.

Still in need of a massage...or muscle relaxer...or a trip to Vegas...or New Orleans...or New York...or Uruguay. Yeah, Uruguay, no one would find me there. No one would even look for me there.

I did shave this morning, I usually have a beard in some stage of growth, only trimming it down to stubble, but today I am smooth. I look and feel 10 months younger.

And, the walk in? This morning it was running 10 degrees. Did I mention that it's supposed to be fridge, not a freezer? Do you know what happens to produce when it freezes?
So, yeah, that sucks.

2009-12-06T10:44:00.004-07:00

Ugh.

That's how I feel. I don't want to be here today, I don't want to do this today. Problem is, I don't want to do it tomorrow either. Tuesday's not looking too good either.

Older daughter is having roommate problems that are going to end in me having to help her get another place to stay after just giving her the money to move into the place she's in now.

Younger daughter is giving me the cold shoulder because I won't let her go to Austin for the New Year to see a boy she met over Thanksgiving. It's not even that I don't trust her judgment (ok, I sorta don't), but that is the busiest week of the year for us and I need her here.

Just had to write an email to two very good friends who helped me finance the purchase of the cafe to tell them that, sorry, but I won't be paying them back as scheduled.

My dishwasher is late.

The phone keeps ringing, and it's not anyone I'd like to talk to.

The muscles running from the base of my skull to my shoulder feel like a radio tower guy line.

And no, M, there is no dallying. Haven't dallied in a couple of years now.

To dally would be nice.

maybe i'll drive by

2009-12-05T12:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.ruidoso.net/webcam/

If the damned thing ever starts working again.

2009-11-23T19:52:00.001-07:00

I'm tweeting. Damned newfangled marketing gimmicks.

Cafe Quote

2009-11-22T18:54:00.001-07:00

Jared: "I don't like rosemary."

Danny: "Shiiiiiiit, I'd marry a bitch she smelled like rosemary."

Is it over yet?

2009-11-16T11:12:00.005-07:00

Oh, it's gonna be one of those days, I thought Saturday morning as the first of what was to be a two day long string of cluster fucks occurred. I'm not sure what it was, but it was likely the text from Sonja that she was still feeling like crap after leaving early Friday after having thrown up.

Friday is sorta kinda an almost day off for me. I was happily sitting at The Quarters, alternating between reading my book and watching a fifteen year old game between the Packers and Cowboys, had just finished my steak, and was well into my second beer (I saved you a seat, T) when Sonja came over to tell me something. She didn't feel very well then, but an hour later she was throwing up in the dish room trashcan. Time for her to go home.

The walk in compressor had failed the weekend before after struggling along the past couple of weeks, and had just been fixed Friday afternoon. Knowing my luck (and used compressors of dubious origins) I opted not to prep up for the weekend, which would have filled the walk in. In the event that the compressor failed over night I didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of food with no place store it. So, short a cook with a ton of prep to do first thing.

From there it went down hill.

Something went horribly awry with the batch of dough that I started first thing in the morning. Ok, I went horribly awry. Like a dumb ass I forgot to add the second of the two gallons of water that make up a batch of dough. I cranked the bowl up into position, set the timer, hit the start button, and wandered off to do something else for the fifteen minutes the dough would be mixing. About seven minutes in Danny walked by and asked, "What the hell did you do to the dough?"

Nothing, I thought. Did I?

Checking, I saw that yes, I had screwed the pooch. The dough wasn't dough at all, it was a mess of still-dry flour with randomly sized chunks of something almost dough-like spread throughout. This is never recoverable, for the flour particles which did get bathed were saturated and adding the second gallon of water would only result in a very loose batter with thousands of small clumps.

So, of course, that is what I did. Then I added more flour so that I get the paste out of the mixing bowl more easily. And paste is a very accurate description of what I pulled out of the bowl in handfulls. Fifty pounds of paste. This I put in a tub and left on the floor in the back kitchen, where it has given us hours...ok, minutes of entertainment since as it has risen, threatening to consume passersby, until punched, kicked, or stabbed to collapse and start over.

The rest of the day went about the same, as did the next. No matter what I did, it was wrong. I added an extra cup of water to my cupcake batter, which actually turned out to be a good thing, and whatever I prepped, it seemed to be at the wrong time. Since a lot of stuff was still spread throughout the various small coolers where it had been shoved when the walk in died, it was impossible to easily tell what was over, under, or just plain stocked. I thought I should do cheese, but we're running out of sausage; I started chopping bells, only to hear Danny yelling for ricotta.

Add to this chaos a ton of Mexican tourists, Saturday being a holiday commemorating one of their more popular revolutions, the usual dining-in-public-challenged crowds of our neighbors to the east, a handful of locals with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and the young lady who seems only to want me on the back burner just in case someone better fails to come along, and it makes for a very miserable day at work.

Yesterday was pretty much the same. All of it.

After work I went home, fed the dogs, made myself three grilled cheese sandwiches, parked the Boston Lager next to the couch, and settled in to watch Donatella Arpaia judge on Iron Chef and Next Iron Chef. Not a bad night.

Cafe Quote

2009-11-13T19:53:00.002-07:00

"Shit, I gotta Mike and Ike stuck in my nose."
-Randy

Halloween '09

2009-11-01T14:15:00.004-07:00

Crew

Family

Comparing receding hair lines

Danny and Josh practicing the zombie dance

Jared and Em

Jared wins the receding hair line contest

2009-10-28T15:11:00.006-06:00

The snow is falling, but not yet sticking, as I walk the two doors over to The Quarters, our neighborhood bar, for lunch. Long ago the place was a bowling alley, but only the oldest of old timers remember that day, the place has been a bar for as long as most can remember, Nottingham's Pub, The Winner's Circle, then The Quarters.

When I came here as a 29 year old copper it was The Winner's Circle, and it was good for a fight almost every weekend, the bouncers adept at stomping people with their steel-toed boots. I never had to shoot anyone during my cop years, but I came really, really close one night on the front step of the Winner's Circle.

Though it can still get a little rough from time to time, The Quarters is a lot calmer these days. The place shows its age though, the roof leaks, like mine, and, like mine, once it's patched the water finds another way in, so the ceiling is painted black to cover the years of water and tobacco stains. An old frosted glass window, partially hidden by the addition of a foyer years ago, still proclaims the place as being Nottingham's Pub. For some reason it also depicts an arrow passing through an apple.

Today as I walk in the place is nearly empty except for the usual bunch of midday regulars in their usual places, most of them close to the large fire in the deep, stone fireplace...Greg the night shift convenience store clerk, a couple of construction guys who seem to use the bar as an office, an old man, bent like a question mark, stares at something a thousand yards past the rows of bottles lined up across the bar from him. Irish Tom has loaded the juke box with the likes of The Pogues, The Dubliners, and The Wolftones and a Republican protest number is playing as I settle at the far end of the bar and order a draft amber and the roast beef sandwich. I open my book and begin reading, wishing I was closer to the fire, the copper-clad bar glows with a warmth it does not possess, but the beer is good and the sandwich, an open-faced mess of beef, thick brown gravy, mash, and Texas toast is hearty and hot, perfect for this winter's day in the middle of autumn.

2009-10-28T11:12:00.005-06:00

Where did summer go?

Summer, with its warm days, thunder storms, beautiful nights, and, yes, the constant flow of commerce?

It is gone, and with its passing I note that the summer of my life is over as well. I am entering autumn, and, if I may milk this silly cliche for just a little while longer, sooner than I expect, or wish, I will find myself in the winter of my life.

And already, before I even noticed their bright golden flash, the aspens have gone to brown, their leaves mostly gone in the wind, and the rain falls in those peculiar splats of slush.

Where did autumn go?

Soup

2009-10-26T13:41:00.010-06:00

Ok, you asked for it…

Since Maria insisted, I shall try to describe our little Oktoberfest to you, hopefully without offending anyone associated with it because the group that puts it on every year (this was the 28th) really does do good work and all the proceeds go to local charities.

But…our little Mardi Gras (actually, they call it mARTi Gras), which is a fundraiser for the local arts council, sucks ass, and I told them so after being associated with it a couple of times, so perhaps my hopes of not pissing off any nice, well-meaning people who might stumble across this post while googling “Ruidoso Oktoberfest” are dashed before we even get started.

Speaking of starts, this is how this one went…

A few weeks ago a lady called and asked if I’d be willing to stand in for the Lion’s Club this year at Oktoberfest as they weren’t going to be able to participate and didn’t want to lose their spot for next year. I guess I should explain that different groups rent the booths and then sell food, the Republicans sell slices of Black Forest and apple spice cake, the Lutherans sell apple strudel, the Kiwanis sell potato and apple pancakes, and the Run for the BEACH group re-sells store-bought desserts, which is just dumb.

Anyway, I agreed immediately, a victim of my own vanity and an optimistic blindness that has afflicted me for decades.

Notable examples:

Why yes, I do like camping. And you say that I can join now and not leave for a few months? Sure, I’ll join the army!

I know that we’ve only been dating for a short while, but the sex is really good and occurring frequently, so why don’t we get married?

Well no, I haven’t ever made sushi, but I’d love to cater your wedding.

Two years to pay back $50,000, where do I sign?

So, I did what I always do, I waited until the last minute, the pushed through in a fit of panic and rage…or at least stress and annoyance.

I started by ordering 200 pounds of potatoes, because that is what the Lion’s club lady said she used, for the Monday before the event was to start, figured out my portion size, how many portions I was likely to get and how much to charge. Since the Lioness had said that she never had any problem selling the all the soup, this all pointed toward a huge profit on a very modest investment of about $200.

This should have been a clue. Nothing ever goes according to plan, especially if the plan is, “This should be easy, and make us a lot of money.”

The soup itself wasn’t difficult as I’ve been making soups from scratch for a few years now. Here at the café we serve a Portuguese (Azorean, actually) kale soup that’s based on the original owner’s mother’s recipe. It has been on the menu for about sixteen years now and we go through hundreds of gallons of it every year.

While I’m typing this sentence, Danny is cutting linguica and chourico for kale soup as a ten gallon stock pot comes up to a boil on the stove.

I started by peeling 50 pounds of potatoes (ok, the dishwasher peeled the potatoes), and smoking several pork bellies that I had already cured. Lots of leeks, celerly, and onions went into a pot to be cooked down while three stock pots came to a boil. The potatoes were then rough chopped and tossed into the pots along with the diced pork bellies, some beef stock and some salt and pepper. When the potatoes were nearly soft the other vegs were added and the soup simmered for another hour or so. The soup was then split into smaller containers and chilled.

The next day I ran the soup through the Robot Coupe, one of my favorite tools. Like a squat little red ninja, this food processor on crack makes very short, very quiet, work of any chopping or shredding job and looks extremely cool while doing so.

A lot of our tools have names, some obvious, some not so. The walk-in was built by the Warren company, so it’s name is…yep, Warren, same with Hobart. Two of my knives are named, one is Howard, one is Margie. I’m the only person who knows that Margie has a name. We call the Robot Coupe the R2 unit.

So, after the soup was cooled I ran it through the R2 unit to make a smooth puree. At this point it was a very nice vichyssoise. Apply heat and it becomes kartoffelsuppe. Magic! I did this process three more times over the course of three days, staying at work until 2 am two nights in a row, sleeping on the couch so that I’d be less likely to roll over and go back to sleep when the alarm went off at 5:30 am.

The second day I already felt like the guy in the old Winchell’s donut commercials, the one where he’s shown getting up at some ungodly hour, stumbling to the front door, mumbling, “Time to make the donuts.”
About the third time as opens the door to walk out, he meets himself coming back in saying, “I already made the donuts.”

Other stuff that needed to be done included digging chafing dishes out of storage, then hunting down appropriate sized pans for soup since all we had were shallow ones, going to Hel-Mart for Sterno and crepe paper, and going by to visit the field office of the friendly folks of the New Mexico Environment Department to apply for our temporary permit, required for any food service outside of the restaurant. In the mean time, there was also the usual barely controlled disaster that is day-to-day operations of the café…the seventy year old Italian lady and the eighteen year old black kid pulling knives on each other in the dish pit (two men enter, one man leave), the prep kid misreading the chocolate chip cookie recipe and adding six and a half cups of four instead of six and a half pounds and unable to figure out why he has batter instead of dough, the toilet in the women’s room shooting water three feet into the air upon being flushed, not to mention the cooking, cleaning, and accounting that has to happen everyday to make sure that we don’t sink.

Friday afternoon arrived far sooner than I wanted it to and I was rushing around trying to get everything transferred over to the convention center, change bag put together, soup reheated to serving temp, and some sort of half-assed decorations done. Finally about fifteen everything was mostly set up. I had a chafing dish set up on the serving table full of hot soup, another pot in a warmer in the convention center kitchen, some blue and white streamers, a giant potato head with a sign that read, "Eat Me", and, since we were standing in for the Lions, they asked that we display their logo as well, with its two lion faces and the words, Lions International.

With everything ready to go, and my oldest daughter, Joey, minding the booth for a moment, I headed to the beer stand for a hefeweizen. When I got back she said that someone had asked which Lion's club we were with. She glanced over her shoulder at the logo and told them, "The international one, I guess."

And this is pretty much how the night went. The line for the bratwurst stand often stretched past our stand and we sold some bowls to those folks, others would walk up and read the signs, including the one that read, POTATO SOUP, and ask what we were serving. Several young men came over for no other reason than to hit on my daughter, which was...awkward, and by 9 o'clock no one was eating any more and the band might as well have been playing for an empty room.

The next day was better. The event goes from noon to 11 pm on Saturday and my younger daughter, Emily, and I were set up and ready on time. More of the same, questions about the Lions, more apparently illiterate folks, and one older vegetarian lady who sneered at me when she asked if the soup contained any meat and I told her that, yes, it had pork and beef stock. Should have just lied and served her the soup with a big smile.

Sometime during the evening, a elderly lady in line for bratwurst picked up our menu, which I had put on the table along with one from Cafe Z, and asked where Cafe Rio had moved to. I assured her that it was still in the same place, the same place it's been for something like sixteen years. She didn't seem convinced, "I've looked for it and can't find it," she told me.
"Well, we did remodel the front of the building a couple of years ago," I said. "But, we still have a sign."
And the same fucking phone number, I added to myself.
And so the afternoon and night went, rotating soup from walk in to stove top to chafing dish, spending as much time in the kitchen as I could, talking with either the retired chef with the Kiwanis, or the nice old lady with the Republicans as she mixed, baked and decorated one Black Forest cake after another. "Yes, you can use the Republican Ladies cookbook, even if you're a Democrat," she assured me, laughing.
Oh, and then there was the other Republican lady, this one about my age, wearing shorts and heels and drunkenly hitting on me. After about two minutes of her slurred business advice, "You nnneeeed to take shamp...shamples...out to people," while resting her hand on my forearm, I began to McGyver a homemade version of pepper spray from spices and cooking oil.
Luckily, I didn't need it and she was soon showing me that she was right by wobbling out into the crowd with a tray loaded with slices of black forest cake and returning with it empty moments later.

Even though my legs are nicer than hers I decided against it.

Saturday night was definitely better than the night before, more people, more lively, a very beautiful woman with one of the dance troupes walked by several times while doing an admirable job of completely ignoring my Jedi mind shit.

Look at me...you want me...I am the love of your life.

No dice. Gonna have to watch this when it comes out and see if I can pick up a few pointers.

But, by 10 it was pretty much over and I started putting stuff away, was able to get everything packed in my car in one trip, and dropped the left over soup at the cafe, before going home around midnight. All in all it wasn't the worst convention center experience I've had, I'm pretty sure that the gumbo cook off at mARTi Gras will forever hold that honor, and though not as profitable as hoped, it did bring in a pretty good, much needed infusion of cash that weekend. So, if asked I'm sure I'd do it again.

Maybe I'll call the Run for the BEACH crew and see if they might like to sell something with a better profit margin next year.

2009-10-20T16:38:00.001-06:00

Most workplaces have those horrible motivational posters hung all over the place; you know, the ones with the black border and a picture of an athlete and the word STRIVE printed in white at the bottom along with some cheesy quote.

We have…uh…these:

Try not to suck – Spray painted on the dishroom wall.

Please put the fucking shit back after you use it. Thank, and fuck, you. – Magic marker next to the cleaning supplies.

Go Away – Tile mosaic on the floor at the entrance to my office

Life is a chingadera, so get jiggy. – Painted in the back kitchen.

The customer is always wrong – photo of a sign in Mexico, hanging in the dining room.

There is a place online that sells cynical versions of those annoying office fixtures, I have this one in my office.

It's Another Sunday

2009-10-18T10:09:00.005-06:00

Sitting here in the office, needing to be doing some work but beat from the past week of prepping for and catering Oktoberfest (which was pretty much everything I hoped it wouldn't be, by the way) while still trying to stay on top of all the regular work.

Listening to the Ramones' Too Tough To Die, which, sadly, has to be the most ironic album title ever.

Wishing that Balloon Boy was real, and that he and the Beer Bear could go have adventures together and we could all watch and cheer and exclaim, "Oh, how clever the two BBs are, bringing peace to Dafur, and an equitable solution to the problems of Israel and Palestine!"

Also wishing that I was lying on a couch somewhere with my head resting in the warmth of someone's lap, just watching TV, or a movie, or just napping the day away as she reads.

Taters

2009-10-15T11:03:00.003-06:00

Doing all of the above yesterday, today, and tonight making batches of potato soup, kartoffelsuppe, for our local Oktoberfest tomorrow and Saturday.

I haven't been to this Oktoberfest in over five years because, frankly, it had gotten pretty lame. After my more recent experiences with our weak assed excuse for Mardi Gras, I'm not hopeful.

At least there will be plenty of Warsteiner on hand.

2009-10-13T21:30:00.005-06:00

I have just had what in most worlds would be considered a very shitty day, but with each little shit storm I have managed to take the hit and keep moving and my mood has been improving all along. I would say that this is weird, but it's not, it's how I roll.

I'm not one of those types who lives for drama, I hate drama, can't even stand to watch reality tv unless there's cooking involved, and even then I'm thinking, Quit bitching and get back to the flippin' lamb shanks.

But for some reason I love it when things are going wrong, love to be in a bind and work through it, kick its ass, knock it down, stand over its crumpled form and yell into its face, "You thought you had me? Huh? Don't you know who I am?"

As I beat my chest, of course.

Now, I must close to deal with some more shit.

Safety Tip

2009-10-11T14:46:00.002-06:00

Haven't had one of these in a while, but here ya go: Never pour roux into boiling liquid. So dumb, and I so knew better. Combination of being in a hurry and HUA.

2009-10-08T16:48:00.003-06:00

You know that scene from Top Gun...or course you do, the scene where Goose dies? Well, the part leading up to that, the engine flame out and flat spin, is pretty much how things have been feeling lately.

I'm guessing the cafe is the plane...and maybe Goose...or maybe I'm Goose.

If so, at least I was with Meg Ryan.

And, the grocery store has 80s rock playing on the sound system...the music I listened to in high school and college...the Clash, for fuck's sake...is playing in a grocery store.

So, I'm already feeling old when I get to the checkout and pull a fitty out of my wallet and realize that I could be looking in the mirror...I have turned into Ulysses S. Grant.

Signs, Signs...

2009-10-05T09:36:00.002-06:00

I'm doing about 15 over as I pass the sign.

SLOW DOWN
SMILE
ENJOY

I flip it off.

I think I need a vacation.

2009-10-02T16:13:00.001-06:00

Is it just this way here, or does everyone, everywhere, have to be a dick to get things done?

Mixed Bag

2009-09-30T13:05:00.003-06:00

Bad news: the walk-in cooler was dying when I got to work this morning. Moved everything into smaller coolers, packing them out completely. Hopefully it will be fixed in time for the shipment coming in the am.

Good news: Jessica Biel is single.

Doesn't really even out.

2009-09-27T14:00:00.004-06:00

I had one of those oh-so-rare moments of clarity the other night. You know, the ones where something just clicks and knowledge that has been just out of reach for so long is suddenly there, in your hands.

I was driving home, sick of all my CDs, I turned on the local classic rock channel...you know, the one that has a Pink Floyd Power Hour! every Thursday...and then it was suddenly, crystal clear to me, Bon Jovi kicks ass.

Archimedes had his bath, Newton his apple, and I got this. Shit.

Unscrewed

2009-09-25T16:01:00.002-06:00

Everything is better now.

After untangling the mess of hoses that feed the soda dispenser, cleaning everything up, painting the wall, and getting it all back together, I climbed up on the roof.

No, not to jump off. I went up to (hopefully) seal all the little cracks and holes that have been letting water through this rainy season. Water which then finds it's way onto peoples heads at table 3...and table 6...and in the men's room...and in the hall to the men's room.

We have finally had three completely rain-free days and everything up there was nice and dry so up I went, by way of a brilliant stair case which I build out of plastic milk crates, as the ladder I used to use is broken.

See you in the ER, T?

I actually like it up on the roof. The view is not too bad, and it's away from everyone. I often think that I might build an apartment up there after the kids move out. There would still be room for a giant deck out toward the street and some raised beds for a garden. Of course, I'd have a fire pole installed that would drop me into the back kitchen because that would just be kickass.

Anyway, while I was up there, slopping white goo on all of the likely weak spots, and my shoes, I heard a commotion toward the back of the building. Through my white roof and sunshine constricted pupils I could see that the commotion was caused by my friend Chris climbing up while trying not to drop the two red plastic cups that he was carrying.

Now, lots of things can be served in red plastic cups, but around here it means a tasty alcoholic beverage...especially if Chris, a well regarded amateur bartender, is bringing it to you. On the roof.

And I was not disappointed. A couple of Painkillers and bad jokes later everything just seemed so much better. Until it was time to get back down. Gotta get that fire pole.

Painkiller Recipe:

4 oz. Pusser's Navy Rum
4 oz. pineapple juice
1 oz. cream of coconut
1 oz. orange juice

Serve on the rocks. Stir and top with fresh grated nutmeg.

Screwed

2009-09-25T09:23:00.003-06:00

If I'm not on here again it's because I have stabbed myself in the head.

The reason I will stab myself in the head has the grand name of The FloJet Beverage Pump System. Imagine, if you will, all the hoses and pipes and pumps and gauges that kept Neo patched into the Matrix. Now, imagine them all wadded up like some sort of nightmare ball of Christmas lights...covered in corn syrup.

Now, where's that screwdriver?

autumn

2009-09-23T20:43:00.019-06:00

How appropriate that Tuesday night, the autumn equinox, we had our first frost and as I was walking to my car the air was infused with the smell of woodsmoke from someone's fireplace.

There is an old joke here that goes, "How do you know when it's autumn in Ruidoso?"
"The license plates turn back to yellow."

Hilarious, I know, but it's true. During the week, at least, there are almost no white Texas tags, almost no foot traffic, very little happening for a while.

Which is why I have a headache this morning. No, not because sales are down, that headache will hit next week and remain pretty constant until Christmas. I have a headache today because since Tuesday I have been cleaning and painting and generally inhaling a lot of stuff that probably shouldn't be inhaled.

No, not like that...I prefer my chemicals in liquid form.

Oh, and the staff has me about to kill. Not all the staff, not even most of the staff. Actually, just just a couple of 'em are giving me a headache lately. I mean, they all bug me from time to time...

For instance, Randy's music sucks and I constantly have to tell him to turn it down because the dish pit is right next to the dining room and folks on that end probably don't want to hear songs which, from what I can tell, are all about fucking, blow jobs, and killing Eminem. Not that I'm against any of those things, I just don't think most of the customers want to hear it.

New Kid Josh has done what most people (ok, kids) do when they get hired, which is he started off doing an ok job, leading me into believing that he'd get better, that there was hope, but has now gotten comfortable and is slacking off. So, he's gone from mediocre to shitty.

FNG Clayton, or whatever his fucking name is, did the same thing in half the time. I will switch J & C around next week, putting Josh on the floor as buser/ice cream bitch, and Clayton in the dish pit. Josh will do a better job than Clayton on the floor, and Clayton will quit, and then I'll do what I should have done in the first place: hire a Mexican who has three kids. Problem solved.

Jared is a very good friend. With Brett off at Cafe Z, Jared is now my right hand. Jared has been waiting tables or tending bars for over half of his 33 years. Due to that, Jared now hates people. We have a saying, "Fake it 'til you feel it." Jared can't fake it any more, and even when he can he has a degenerative disease that means that he is in pain every single day. It also means that he can't do any of the jobs that would get him away from the public.
He has just gotten a part-time job much closer to his home (he commutes 45 miles one way to work here) and I think he will probably quit soon. I will miss him, but I also think it'll be a good thing.

Wendy is bat shit crazy, but would do anything for anybody. When one of the kids who used to work here didn't have food at home, she bought him food and vitamins.
She is 43 and just found out she is pregnant from a guy she had already broken up with. She also has a fifteen year old son that has lived with his father for the past year since she and her son were fighting all the time. She has smoked all her life and has a raspy, deep voice and if you've ever eaten in a truck stop or old school diner (not the Denny's insta-diners), then you've had a waitress very much like her.
She also has a bachelor's in psychology and is working on her master's but says that she cannot see working in that field. She tends to analyze people too much and broach subjects you don't want to talk about. Because of this, and a couple of episodes when Wendy became "Wanda", her drunk alter ego, Sonja hates her.

Sonja is my chief line cook...I guess if I was a chef she would be my sous. I've know her since she was about 15...about nine years. She started working here then as ice cream bitch during the summer and then left to bus for her dad, he worked as a waiter in what was then a fine dining restaurant about a block away.
When I went back into police work I spent about a year taking runaway reports from her mom and dad when she'd refuse to go home for days at a time.
She came back to work here around the same time I did, five years ago, and when the then owner sent me to open a sandwich shop on the north end of town he sent her with me. There, I fired her, or she fired herself, when I sent her home after showing up late the day after she had showed up for work drunk. I didn't tell her she was fired, she just never came back. Until two years ago when I bought the cafe. I hired her then as a dishwasher and she soon moved up to pizza cook.
She is 1/4 Mescalero Apache, weighs maybe a hundred pounds, her favorite drink is Sailor Jerry's rum, she loves ska and punk and rap, if it's by a Hasidic Jew, and thinks most everything else is shit. She has absolutely no problem letting people know what she thinks of them and has very nearly gotten me into bar fights twice.
In short, she can be abrasive, but you always know where you stand with her, there is nothing fake. Natalie Portman in this video reminds me of her.
She also is working on a degree in psychology, but does not analyze, unless calling a dishwasher a choad is analyzing.
Reference the hungry dishwasher: Sonja's answer? He shouldn't spend all his fuckin' money on weed if he wants to eat.
Wendy says that she is an evil bitch.

Danny, my son, is one of my best, and I'm not just saying that because I love him. Having gotten As and Bs all the way through school, he decided a couple of years ago that he wasn't going to go anymore. Having been down that road with my oldest daughter, when all else failed, I knew that fighting wasn't going to work. So, I let him quit and put him to work full time.
In that time, I have watched him drift away, angry and devastated by his step-mom leaving, turning to drugs and drink, only to come back closer than before. He scared the living shit out of me for a while.
He is smart, articulate, and a good worker. I have no doubt that when he figures out what direction he wants to go, and he's working on it, he will be going balls to the wall.

Emily, Danny's twin, has also had nothing but As and Bs in school. Other than that, they couldn't be more different. She is headed to UNM next fall, intent on being a neurologist.
Em only works a couple of days, since she's back in school now. On Saturdays she either preps or cooks on the line, on Sundays she waits tables with Jared. She has gotten very good at both.
She is in many ways the strongest of my kids. Like Danny, she was extremely close to her step-mom, but has been able to stay close to her since our divorce.
Her last couple of boyfriends had been her age, or a little older and had both been manipulative dicks, both times she suffered through it quietly until she'd had enough and bailed. Now, she's dating a boy two years her junior, other girls at school call her a cradle robber, she answers that no, she's a couga. The other night she wanted to leave work early, I started to ask why, but then asked, "What, you gotta tuck Brady in?"
She just grinned, "Hells ya."
Before my grandpa's funeral, at the viewing, she wanted to go even though I had told the kids they didn't have to if they didn't want to. Danny didn't, but Em said that she did and she held my hand as we walked toward the flag-draped coffin which held my grandfather's remains. After grandma died, grandpa kind of let himself go, his hair was often greasy and his mustache, which had always been twisted up into neat handlebars, was shaggy and ragged.
At the viewing he was laid out in a crisp western pearl snap shirt, his mustache trimmed and neat, and his silver hair clean and combed. "He looks like a king," Emily whispered. He was.

Brianna is the newest crew member, she started as a waitress about a month and a half ago, and so far, so good. She's young, 19, but works here and as a cocktail up the street six days a week. Like so many kids, she did very well in school up 'til high school and then said, "Fuck this noise," and quit. She doesn't really like waiting tables, but is proficient at it and can work a full dining room by herself.

Elijah has been coming in with his parents since he was little. Now sixteen, he works Sundays as a buser. He is funny and walks in and immediately starts working. He is short, stocky and black. The other kids call him Black Hobbit.

And then there's Marissa. I hired her about three months ago after some fuckhead of a good Samaritan called to tell me of this poor old Italian woman who had just lost her job at this Italian place that had gone tits up.
She has worked in restaurants the 30 years that she has lived here, some of them local legends, all of them right up until they closed their doors. Sonja says that by hiring her I have doomed the Cafe.
She speaks very softly, with a very heavy accent, in a very loud kitchen. She also talks to herself. Many times I have turned off whatever noisy piece of equipment I've been using to ask, "Huh?" only to find that she was singing along to fucking Aerosmith on the radio.
She is also too weak to do much of anything, Jared would actually be able to do more, and she is constantly asking for help moving this or that, so the dishwashers hated her immediately. After three months here she still needs guidance daily on what to do.
"You want I should do the cookies, or the bread for pizzas," she mumbles.
"Gee, I don't know; we've got forty full dough trays and three fucking cookies..."
I look forward to her days off like I used to look forward to getting laid.
She never puts lids back on anything that she uses and, since there's not a fucking marked lid on any of the containers, she licks the tip of her finger and sticks it into whatever white crystals are handy to determine if they are salt, or sugar. I have told her that she doesn't need to do this, shouldn't do this. Please, don't do this. "Sugar shiny, salt dull," I say in my best cave-Italian. "Shhhhhoooogar Shhhhhhiny..." She just nods and smiles.
Even after cooking in restaurants all that time she still hasn't figured out English measurements and tells me that she doesn't use recipes, she uses her hands. This would be so charming if she were cooking in some Tuscan trattoria that I was visiting, "How quaint and charming," I would tell my imaginary girlfriend. "Look at how she cooks from her gut, the way she was taught by her mother, and grandmother." But, you want to cook that way in a restaurant? Well, you'd better own it. In someone else's kitchen, that's a bullshit cop out. This is my food, this is the way you do it, you want to do it your way then you'd better open your own place.

Sonja's probably right, we're doomed.

Now, I really should get back to my paint fumes.

2009-09-22T22:00:00.002-06:00

The still arrived Monday, but nothing to report yet. My second anniversary of owning the café is coming up, which means that I’m also due for health and fire inspections, and I don’t want to be explaining to those folks why I’ve got a large trash can full of fermenting corn in my back kitchen. So, no moonshine stories for a bit.

As far as the “Cook’s Tale” series that everyone…well, two of you…were enjoying so much, let me just say that the next three years were pretty uneventful…as far as food goes. I did do, say, and think a whole hell of a lot of stupid things, but I don’t really care to go into any of that. I will say that my dear mom says of those days, “I always loved you, but I didn’t really like you very much.”

When we first moved to Oklahoma and lived in that first house at the base of what passes for mountains back there, I once went squirrel hunting with my grandpa and great-uncle, Osil. We hiked through the hills for a couple of hours without seeing anything…probably something to do with their taking a noisy ten year old along…but eventually found a spring running clear and cold. I still remember how good that water tasted, as well as I remember my first taste of well water from a rusty can that hung from Osil’s cast iron hand pumped well three years before that, as well as I remember any food I’ve ever eaten. To this day I find it hard not to drink from any spring or clear-running stream I happen across.

One very cool thing during that time when I was less lovable was that we lived about six miles from a Civil War battlefield, Honey Springs. Back then it was still “wild”, there was nothing but a metal historical marker on the side of the road to even show that anything had ever happened there.

One of my friends and I used to ride our bikes out there during the summers and hike around and imagine ourselves as brave Rebels fighting off the damned Yankees. Once, I found an old rusted mower blade and was almost able to convince myself that it was a sword. We’d stay out there for hours in the 100 degree heat, drinking from the namesake springs when we got thirsty.

To get to Honey Springs we rode our bikes up the two lane highway a couple of miles north of town and then turned right on what was pretty much a one lane strip of asphalt that passed through the town of Rentiesville, an “all Black” town, before reaching the dirt road that led to the Springs. Many of the Native tribes that had made up the Indian Territories prior to the Civil War had been slave owners and had sided with the South during the War. Afterwards most of these “Freedmen” were given tribal citizenship and continued living within the tribes, but as the territories were opened up for settlement there was also influx of freed slaves from the rest of the South and many of these settled and built all Black towns. Rentiesville is one of the few remaining, and it still has an overwhelmingly African American population (that population is about 140, by the way).

Once when we were riding out to the Springs during a particularly rainy summer we came upon a long section of the road that was under the water of a nearby creek. Nearly the whole town of Rentiesville must have been out there that day, wading through the water, carrying gunny sacks. We stopped and watched as the people moved slowly through the foot-deep water on the road, stooped, and intent on something at the bottom. Every once in a while, someone would reach in and pull something out, crawdads. Until then I had no idea that a crawdad was anything other than something to watch out for when splashing around in the creek. Many people were slicing off and only keeping the tails, casting the heads, claws grasping in confused anger, aside. Many of the sacks were quite full.

We sat and watched for a long time, no one giving the two white kids from town much more than a glance.

2009-09-15T10:51:00.000-06:00

I want to be excited about Saturdays again...

Gotta Lay Off The Peyote

2009-09-13T20:24:00.001-06:00

Apparently I bought a still today. Yep, a still...as in moonshine. Whatever am I to do with it? Hmmmmmmm...

Days Off

2009-09-12T22:28:00.007-06:00

Within 10 minutes of getting to work yesterday I knew one thing: three days off hadn’t been enough.

For one thing, it hadn’t really been three days off. Tuesday was Café Day, and we did have a pretty good time, but it was a lot more mellow than the last time: no one passed out by 4pm, there was no crying in the bathroom, there was no blood, there was no under aged drinking (that I noticed), and the police were not called…in other words, it was kind of boring.

I don’t really know why, maybe it was because some had classes or work the next morning…but that’s never really slowed anyone down…or maybe it was the presence of three little people who weren’t around last Cafe Day, two-year-old Zoe, five-month-old Noah, and tiny, five-week-old Ophelia…or maybe we’ve just spent so much time together over the summer, spent so many hours at the Café, and gotten on each others nerves so often that none of us really wanted to hang out there…together.
We did have plenty of beer, there were a couple of trips to the bar for shots, and we did cook steaks, brats, and ribs on the grill out front on the sidewalk, and had Wii set up for anyone who wanted to play. But for some reason, it was just…subdued…and that’s ok.

Wednesday was mostly a waste due to a cluster fuck involving our alcohol permit for Café Z. I did make it home before dark and spent a couple of hours reading on the couch, and I really can’t remember the last time I’ve done that, so it wasn’t a total waste.

Thursday morning I got up early and met Brett to finish what we’d been working on the day before, and then I headed to Albuquerque, a three hour drive. I ate miso soup, twice, saw 9, and I wanted to like it more than I actually did, but that’s happened before and I’ve ended up loving some of those movies. I ate raw tuna and eel, I drove all over looking for a great bookstore that I couldn’t remember the name or address of, heard a very offensive conversation a guy was having on his cell phone, ate vanilla ice cream on the sidewalk, and, not finding my great, unknown bookstore, headed to Page One. This, I thought might not be a bad thing, since they have used books as well as new, and maybe I’d be able to find the out-of-print book I’ve been looking for, but no. I know, I know, I could find the book with a couple of key strokes right now, but that’s no fun. I did get the second and third installments of the trilogy I’m currently reading (and why the hell do fantasy authors all feel like they have to write trilogies? I blame Tolkien), picked up a book for Danny, and by then was ready to start toward home.

I had thought about getting a hotel room near downtown and heading to this great, nasty little bar that throws a fantastic rockabilly night every Thursday, but I really didn’t want to face waking up at the butt-crack of dawn and driving home after all that, so I went home, watched TV, and then went to bed to read before falling asleep.

The next day, as I sat in the office and the staff was getting on my nerves as I tried to sort through last month’s paperwork, I was really wishing that I could have had a couple of more days like Thursday.

2009-09-09T10:10:00.000-06:00

She only wants me when she's drunk.
Sounds like a country song.

Labor Day

2009-09-07T17:44:00.004-06:00

Saturday hurt, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. I haven’t counted out yet, but Sunday looks like it was bigger and we did it with two cooks on the line instead of three.
Yesterday was just a blur, on a wait all day long, people waiting for an hour to get in and then another forty-five minutes for their food, and most of them did it in good humor, a welcome relief since the crowds all summer have been in pretty foul moods.
By the end of the night I was definitely feeling my age, my shoulders hurt from pounding countless dough balls flat and then tossing them out to size, the constant lifting of dough trays, pizzas into and out of the oven, and my legs and back ached from the hours of standing, interspersed with quick drops into a squat to grab something from the lowboy cooler.
Several of the chef memoirs that I’ve read compare cooking at this intensity to combat, the chatter of the printer spitting out order after order like that of a machine gun, and the cooks are often romanticized as soldiers. Cooking, they say, is the last meritocracy, where the only thing that matters is ones ability to produce quality quickly and consistently, and the ability to do it under miserable conditions or while in pain, emotional or physical.
That’s a load of bullshit. I also read somewhere that the reason male cooks have such high machismo is to make up for the aprons.
I was lucky, I never saw combat while in the army. I did see some nasty scraps and tense moments as a cop though, and cooking is nothing like that. Ok, there was this one time when a guy got so pissed off at the previous owner that he grabbed an olive oil-filled wine bottle and threatened him with it and we all ended up in a pile on an oil and blood-slicked tile floor. That was fun.
I have heard machine guns though, and you know what a printer sounds like? It sounds like a fucking printer, and I’m sure that plenty of other grunt jobs are meritocracies, the fact that you show up and do your job well far more important than who you know, what level your degree is, what color you happen to be, who you choose to sleep with, and whether or not you have a penis.
But we do have three bachelor’s degrees in this little restaurant of mine, all of them preferring the world of restaurants over the world of cubicles and weekly meetings. Things are different in this world of ours, a certain amount of drunkenness and debauchery are tolerated which wouldn’t be in an insurance office. Punching another employee in an accounting firm would be grounds for dismissal, and probably police intervention; here it would be a few minutes on the back steps to cool off…if there’s time. If not, we’ll sort it out later, now get your sorry asses back to work.
Now it’s over. Labor Day is done and summer is over as far as we’re concerned. We shut down it 3pm, ordered some burgers from the Quarters, had some shots and some beers and cleaned for a couple of hours. In the dish pit Randy and Danny are still at it. No dishes and no trash left behind as we’ll be closed for the next three days. Tomorrow will be Café Rio Fun Day…when we drag a grill out onto the sidewalk, drink in public, and play drunken Wii all day long. Wednesday and Thursday, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m thinking about finishing the tile in my kitchen…or going to Albuquerque and eating sushi ‘til I’m sick, catching some movies in a nice theater, and staying in a quiet, clean hotel room with the “do not disturb” placard displayed.
I’m thinking that the tile can wait.

New Mexico

2009-09-07T11:21:00.001-06:00

Listening: Cake
Breakfast: Amstel Light

This morning I just wanted to mention a few things about New Mexico that rock.

1. Breakfast burritos with chorizo. Nearly every convenience store in the state sells breakfast burritos, they’re always big and the best ones are filled with chorizo, a spicy Mexican sausage.

2. The light. The early morning light is breathtaking. This morning at 7am the hills were a bright golden green. Often, this time of the year, the sky will be covered in dark clouds, it will be raining, and everything will be lit up from the sun peering underneath the clouds from one side.

3. Green chile roasters. I’ve said it before, but the smell of green chiles being roasted is one of the greatest smells on earth and right now our home-grown Hatch chiles are tumbling in roasters all over town.

4. Pinon smoke. It’s getting cool at night, soon I’ll walk out of the restaurant at closing and someone nearby will be burning pinon in their fireplace, the fragrant smoke lying close to the ground in the cold air.

5. The grim pride that comes from living in a fly-over state. We’re not chic New Yorkers, cool Californians, or prideful Texans, but plenty of New Yorkers have come here to write or paint, plenty of Californians have moved here to live better, and nearly one hundred and seventy years ago when the Republic of Texas decided it wanted Santa Fe it was a handful of Nuevo Mexicano militia that stopped the invasion. We also tend not to die from things like the latest flu-of-the-week…we get stuff like the Plague.

2009-09-05T15:48:00.003-06:00

We arrived in Oklahoma on April 1st, April Fools’ Day. Dad had committed to going back to work in California that first summer and sometime in July we followed by bus for a visit.
I don’t remember much about the bus ride, other than thinking that the driver looked really cool in his uniform; that there was an English guy with B.O. who tried to teach me how to play backgammon; that we stopped in Flagstaff during a torrential thunderstorm; that one night a car went off the road and then flipped right in front of the bus; and the layover at the Los Angeles bus terminal.
The L.A. bus terminal was, and I’m sure still is, a huge shit hole. I remember being fascinated by the little coin operated TVs, the vending machines full of sandwiches and slices of pie, and the dirty desperation of the whole place.
We were stuck there for several hours and at one point I had to pee really bad. Mom didn’t want to let me go in the bathroom by myself, but, at ten, I was a little big to be taken into the women’s restroom. I remember the restroom was filthy, full of men not using the facilities, and I remember my mom standing just outside the door with Kelli until I was done.
After that I guess she decided the neighborhood surrounding the bus station had to be safer so we went outside and walked around for a while. The bus station was in a Hispanic neighborhood and the sidewalks were full of people. We stopped in a little Mexican bakery that smelled of yeast, sugar, and caramel and bought some pan dulce and ate it on the sidewalk. I had never seen pan dulce before and was amazed by the pastel colors and the lightly sweet taste of the bread.
Later that night as the bus rolled through Hollywood I looked for movie stars but saw only poor people.

2009-09-04T17:44:00.003-06:00

Does anyone else ever have the desire to run away to someplace where no one speaks English, where you could sit in a cafe and not understand any of the conversations around you, where the most mundane or hurtful conversation would only be pleasant- sounding background chatter?
I'm looking at this little place in Uruguay.

The Wether is Wonderful

2009-08-30T20:02:00.002-06:00

A couple of weeks ago my daughter was getting her hair done when Laura, the lady who cuts her hair, mentioned that she had just bought a lamb, slaughtered, butchered and processed for $80. I asked Emily to get the farmer’s number from Laura for me, but Laura did one better and just called the guy and sent him to me.
So, Friday afternoon I’m in the back prepping when Jared comes back and tells me that some guy wants to talk to me. “Who is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” is the answer. “He’s got a card with your name on it.”
Now I’m thinking 1. Great, I’m about to get served a summons, 2. Well, it could just be an amateurish hit man, and 3. I’ve really got to get the staff to ask a couple of questions before turning me over to people.
The guy turned out to be Marcos, a big sixty-something Mexican who’s worked on ranches all his life, mostly as a shearer, traveling all over the West shearing sheep. Marcos is one of those guys who smiles constantly while he’s talking to you, not in a used car salesman or politician kind of way, but a genuine smile that gets only bigger when he’s talking about his animals.
We talk about what he’s got available, no lambs right now, and won’t have any for a few months, but he says he’s got a three year old wether (castrated male sheep) that he’ll let me have for a hundred bucks.
I balk for a minute, mutton can be pretty unpleasant, that’s why people eat the lambs, when they’re young the meat is much more tender and hasn’t yet acquired the gaminess that a lot of people don’t like. But Marcos assures me that the meat will be fine.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“When do you want it, I can kill it tonight, have it to you in the morning.”
Wow, I just ordered an animal killed. I don’t feel good about this, but we have become so detached from our food, forgetting or never realizing that something, be it plant or animal, has to sacrifice so that we may live, the circle of life so obscured by popular entertainment, and mega-mart shopping where our hunt for sustenance takes us nowhere near the source of the food, no way to know how it was harvested, or by whom.
But here this man is matter-of-factly telling me that he will kill my sheep that he had just described with true affection.
So, I feel badly, for the animal and the farmer, but I know Marcos doesn’t feel bad about it. It’s his job, he’s done it all his life and he wouldn’t want anyone else do it because he does like the animal and he knows he can slaughter it more quickly and cleanly than anyone, and in his mind the animal is meant to be eaten, my backing out would only postpone the inevitable.
“That will be fine.” We agree on a delivery time before the restaurant opens since the last time we carried a large dead animal through the dining room some folks got a little upset.
“How do you want it?”
“Just dressed.” I want to do the butchering myself, so I just want it skinned and cleaned.
“Head on, or off.”
“On, please.” This gets a smile and a nod, maybe this gringo does know what to do with my animal.
The fact is, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with his animal and I spend the night tossing staring up at the ceiling, thinking that I have to make sure every bit of this animal gets used, it’s dead right now because I said to kill it, there can be no waste.
The next morning Marcos arrives and I walk out front to his truck and there is the wether, skinned and gutted, legs locked in rigor, the face with no skin a bizarre mask.
“You say you want fresh, so I wait and kill him this morning.”
Wow, that’s fresh alright.
“Ok, you take him. I cannot help, I shattered my pelvis last year.”
‘Awesome, good thing I left the fuckin’ head on,’ I’m thinking, as the crazy-eyed, bloody, no-lipped thing flops back and smacks the side of my leg when I lift the carcass. Luckily there are not a lot of people out and about yet, but we do get some appalled stares. "Don't make eye contact, Margaret." I imagine the accountant in the two wheel drive SUV telling his wife as they pass.
Also lucky that the one and only person walking by is a cook from a place a couple of doors down who is more than happy to help me get the heavy and awkward carcass inside and on a table in the back kitchen where I’ll break it down. He grins and nods. "Cool," is all he says.
Then Marcos and I have a couple of strong americanos and he tells me more about where he came from in Mexico and of his animals. He talks most about his fighting cocks, saying that he doesn’t fight them much anymore, but he enjoys breeding and raising them, and then about his ex-wife, and how she cheated on him, and how he went to kill her, but that with him in jail and her dead there’d be no one to raise his little girl, and he’s still smiling, but it’s a hurt smile, and for the thousandth time I am reminded of how arrogant and judgmental I was as a younger man and how I would have looked down on him for his, to my mind, outdated views and customs, but now I can see him as just another man, doing his best to get by, and we can drink coffee and laugh at each other’s stories, all because of this animal on my prep table.
Later, as I’m breaking down the carcass into manageable cuts I’m thinking the same things as I had been the night before, but I’m starting to know what I’m going to do with each part, and at the end of it there is very little waste, mostly gristle and silver skin. Everything else is wrapped and put up, and one foreleg sizzles away in a roasting pan having been rubbed down with a little bit of olive oil and salt and pepper and topped with two sprigs of fresh rosemary. On the stove top the spine simmers away in a big stock pot, the collagen and marrow being slowly turned into what will turn out to be an amazingly tasteful stock.
I roasted some potatoes with the fat from the leg and made a sauce from those same drippings by whisking in just some butter for what was an absolutely delicious dinner, and today I made sausage with some of the trim and scraps and it was the best sausage I’ve made yet.
Marcos was right, the meat is wonderful, rich and flavorful. He knows his animals.

Staff Meal

2009-08-28T22:16:00.002-06:00

Danny and Sonja convinced me to make chicken fried steak for the crew today. Pretty tasty.