Gnot so Gnifty Gnats

We have annoying little gnats all over our house. They seem to have appeared about the same time my ivy got sick, and no amount of bug spray is getting rid of them completely. And now they are everywhere. Including floating around between me and the computer screen right now. Stupid bugs.

Lyrics I Love

Anyone seen the Music Man? The awesome movie version with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones? I love it so. In my repeated travels to Cleveland for training I listened to the soundtrack an awful lot. This is one particular song that I adore. Spoken parts are in plain text, parts that are sung are in bold. The conversation takes place during Amaryllis' piano lesson, and any parts that are sung are in harmony with the scales she is playing.

Marian: Mama, a man with a suitcase followed me home.

Mrs. Paroo: Oh--Who?

Marian: I never saw him before.

Mrs. Paroo: Did he say anythin'?

Marian: He tried.

Mrs. Paroo: Did you say anythin'?

Marian: Of course not, Mama! Now don't dawdle, Amaryllis. So do la re ti mi,
A little slower and please
Keep the fingers curved as nice
And as high as you possibly can. Don't get faster, dear.

Mrs. Paroo: If you don't mind my sayin' so,It wouldn't have hurt you To find out what the gentleman wanted.

Marian: I know what the gentleman wanted.

Mrs. Paroo: What, dear?

Marian: You'll find it in Balzac.

Mrs. Paroo: Excuse me fer livin' but I never read it.

Marian: Neither has anyone else in this town.

Mrs. Paroo: There you go again with the same old comment
About the low mentality of River City people,
And takin' it all to much to heart.

Marian: Now, Mama, as long as the Madison Public Library was entrusted
To me for the purpose of improving River City's cultural level,
I can't help my concern that the ladies of River City
Keep ignoring all my council and advice.

Mrs. Paroo: But, darlin'--when a woman has a husband and you've got none,
Why should she take advice from you?
Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare
And all them other highfalutin' Greeks.

Marian: Mamma! If you don't mind my saying so,
You have a bad habit of changing ev'ry subject--

Mrs. Paroo: No, I haven't changed the subject! I was talking about that stranger--

Marian: What stranger?!

Mrs. Paroo: With the suitcase! Who may be your very last chance.

Marian: Mama! Do you think that I'd allow a common masher--
Now, really Mama! I have my standards where men are concerned,
And I have no intention--

Mrs. Paroo: I know all about your standards
And if you don't mind my sayin' so
There's not a man alive
Who could hope to measure up
To that blend'a Paul Bunyan, Saint Pat and Noah Webster
You've got concocted for yourself
Outta your Irish imagination,
Your Iowa stubbornness, and your liberry fulla' books!

I'm sure the effect is somewhat lost when you can't hear the music, but this is one of my happy songs at the moment, and I wanted to share. It's the very last part that Mrs. Paroo sings that I especially love.

Tracts and Tips

Before I've stopped being a waitress for too long and lost all of my credibility, let me just mention a few things to everyone out there who may not have had the experience. My husband already posted a few things recently about how ineffective and inappropriate some tracts can be so I don't want to go into a lot of depth on the subject. I just want to put in my own thoughts on the subject.

Servers have a sucky job. That's not to say that it can't be enjoyable, but they have to put up with an awful lot of crap from an awful lot of people. Guests can be rude, demanding, messy, and condescending. Ever had someone whistle for you or snap their fingers for you to come like you were their dog? It happens. Parents let their kids eat in ways that I pray they aren't allowed to eat at home, and then the server has to clean it up (unless the restaurant is still fortunate enough to have a full time busser, and then that poor soul has to clean it up). Guests act as though they are the only customers in the restaurant and will often blame you for anything that goes wrong with their meal. And then of course they don't leave you much or anything of a tip. All this for the low low price of $3.50 an hour. Not even a year ago it was still just $2.43 an hour. There is a reason why servers often say that everyone should be required to work in a restaurant before being permitted to eat out.

I'm not trying to suggest that every guest acts that way. There are plenty of people who are kind and courteous and who will leave you fifteen percent. It's too bad they don't realize that fifteen percent is just what you leave for basic service. If you want to be nice to your server you've got to leave at least twenty percent. Remember, their wage counts on you leaving that.

I mention all of this so that people will think very carefully about their witness when eating out. If you really want to let your server know how awesome God is, then you better be the absolute best guest you can possibly be from the second you walk in the door. If you act like a jerk and then leave a tract on the table with a ten percent tip you are sending a very negative message. I should also mention that I have seen the majority of servers simply toss the tracts away, make fun of them, or leave them on the table to be bussed. The only server I know personally who actually enjoyed getting a tract is one who is already a strong christian. She didn't need them personally but she liked seeing what kinds of tracts were in use.

If you really are interested in affecting your servers life and not just trying to pat yourself on the back for your self-righteousness, then talk to your server! Come in during a time when the restaurant won't be busy so you won't be negatively affecting your servers job, and build a relationship. Become a regular. Don't be pushy. Just talk and try to show the difference in your life.

And don't go in on a Sunday. This is where I may start stepping on people's toes (if I haven't already). Once upon a time in America Sundays were a day filled with worship and fellowship. Now they are a day when stores are open to the public just like every other day of the week, it's just another Saturday. Oh, except all the people who do still go to church go out to eat afterwards and flood the restaurants to a point of overcrowding and get short-tempered with the wait and spoil any witness they might have as a church-goer. I have heard several servers say that Sundays are the worst days for individual tips. But the magnitude of people makes it so that you are busy enough that you have to work it so that you can get the volume of all the tips together. And then of course your server can't go to church even if they want to because they are trying to support themselves. Neither can anyone else at the retail stores that are open. So my plea? Avoid going places on Sunday. Make it a day of rest. Stay in. If you want to fellowship with friends after church, and by all means, please do, make it a pot-luck and have everyone bring something.

And, oh yes, if you have an ichthus on your car, consider how you are driving. Same type of thing. Your actions tell the world so much.

Last Day

Friday the fifteenth was my last day working at Bob Evans. Very sad for a lot of reasons. Very good for a lot of others. Lookie what they gave me though! Aren't they pretty? (The picture is slightly blurred because it was dark in the room, but when i used flash the colors weren't right.) My flowers and card made me feel rather loved. And I'll miss working with a lot of the people there.

Of course the only reason I quit Bob's is because I had been offered a different job that was out of the restaurant business. I hadn't been looking for another job, but if one popped up that would pay better money, have better hours, and leave out the food smell I was going to take it. And one did, at the branch of National City bank in my town. So the tellers at my branch suggested I apply, and after a rather odd application process I was hired.

Now comes the fun part, and the reason why I haven't been posting at all this past week. I need a lot of training for this job (obviously - dealing with all sorts of transactions of people's money, and people are pretty picky about that sort of thing!). But I have to drive two hours away and back on a regular basis to get there. And I have to be at training at 8:30 in the morning. Which means getting up at 5:30. And then getting home late and having to go to bed early to be able to make it through the drive the next day. So I've been a bit exhausted. This weekend has been rejuvenating though (except for the part where Rumpels now thinks we are supposed to get up at six all the time! especially on saturday mornings and sunday morning when we can sleep in a bit. grr... stupid cat.) I should finish my training on Monday. So hopefully Tuesday I'll be starting work at my actual branch. I think it will be fun once I get the hang of it though.

New Postapalooza

Lots of posts will be coming soon. I hope. That's the plan anyway. And at least one of them will explain why I haven't really posted this week.

Recently Read

White Night
Jim Butcher

I know I said the next book I was going to read was called Book of Secrets or something like that (actually it's called Valley of Secrets), and I did start to read that book. I'm about a third of the way through it. But over the weekend Nick and I had the rare opportunity to visit both Half-price books and Barnes and Noble while we were down visiting my parents. So we were able to get the newest Dresden book in paperback.

I started White Night right away, partially becaue I've been waiting only semi-patiently for it, and I'm already impatient for the next book in the series (Small Favor). The primary reason being that if I didn't start reading it quickly and finish it quickly too, then Nick was going to steal it from me. Also Valley of Secrets was kind of boring thus far.

White Night is the ninth book in The Dresden Files, a series of highly entertaining novels about Harry Dresden. He's a professional Wizard Private Investigator. Really. Look him up in the Chicago phone book under wizards. He's the only one listed.

The world Harry inhabits is part classic film noir, part quirky fantasy, part complex plot and character development, and part wiseass comments that pay homage to every movie and book ever worth reading or watching. I love a book that will happily quote Monty Python and a vampire character who wears Buffy the Vampire Slayer t-shirts. When I want to smile, these are good books to turn to.

Two Things I Will Miss About Working At Bob Evans

Works in Progress

Canvas Reclamation Project
or: How to Make a Painting


Six P.M. Saturday night: White canvas. Which is just white, so I didn't take a picture.



Six fifteen: Basic yellow background applied with palette knife.



Around seven friends started coming over, so I stopped keeping track since I was going back and forth between hanging and painting.





The next morning I took a few minutes to add the leaves on, so that they would go over top of the paint that was already there, and wouldn't blur in. Total painting time (not including the decades of getting the canvas itself ready): four hours. An hour and a half or so later we were on our way to deliver the painting to it's final destination: my parent's kitchen!




And this is the painting in my dining room that I based it on. This one was done in school on gessoed paper, and i kind of like the way I attached it to the wall with brass thumbtacks.

Works in Progress

Canvas Reclamation Project

Ugh. I hate this bloody, stupid canvas.

Recently Read

Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman

I promise this is the last Neil Gaiman book I'll read for a while. Mainly because now that I've read this one, there aren't any more books of his that I own that I haven't read yet. At the moment I'm going through my bookshelves and picking out the books that I bought but never managed to read right away. Next one up is called Book of Secrets ( I think) and I don't really know anything about it except that the author used to be an archaeologist and it has a really cool cover.

But I digress. Anansi Boys.

In my ramble on Fragile Things I said that Neil Gaiman writes in a way that makes fantasy types of novels accessible to those who aren't hardcore sci-fi/fantasy fans. Or I said something similar. Anyway, I think this book is a good example of that. It is actually a companion novel to Gaiman's previous book American Gods, but you wouldn't need to read American Gods to enjoy Anansi Boys. The only thing they really have in common is that they inhabit the same universe and Anansi is in both.

American Gods said some interesting things about what happens to myths and the characters of them when the people who believe in them go somewhere else. Like when people from the old world come to the new. The old gods go with them of course. Anansi Boys is a bit more lighthearted, and its main theme seems to be about families and how embarrassing they can be. The main character in American Gods is named Shadow. The main character in Anansi Boys is named Fat Charlie. Needles to say they are a little bit different in tone.

Anansi Boys reminded me of a Shakespearean comedy. You meet most of the characters fairly early on, mayhem ensues, and nobody ends up with the people they were with in the beginning. And it was fun. Simply enjoyable. I like a book that can make me laugh out loud along the way, and there aren't many that can surprise me enough to do that. This one did.

Wordless Wednesday (cuz erin told me to.)

Works in Progress

Canvas Reclamation Project

Several months ago I went to visit my parents for my mum's birthday party. Nick and I get there a little bit late, so all of my parents friends are already there, clustered in the kitchen and sunroom. I walk into the kitchen to say hello, turn to say something to Nick who had been behind me, and my eyes rest on the horror of one of my painting one still-lifes plastered to the wall - the only art in a beautifully redone kitchen.

Now even if the painting technique itself was fine, this was a STILL LIFE. A random conglomeration of objects chosen by my professor to offer as wide a range of colors and textures as possible. It had fake fruit and pink fluffy stuffed animals side by side with some coke cans and a fry basket and ribbon. It made for good practice - but not good art. Until then it had safely resided in the basement, kept only by virtue of the fact that the canvas itself could be used again someday.

I was horrified.

So at Christmas I took it off the wall with the promise that I would paint something new to go there. You know, something that was actually worth looking at.

So since then I've been working on the canvas. It's kind of a nightmare to get an already painted canvas ready for another painting. A whole lot of sanding and gessoing. Coat of white gesso, let dry, sand, coat of white gesso, let dry, sand, and on, and on. I think I'm getting close to where I can actually start painting properly. At least I hope so, cuz we're probably going to visit my parents again this week or next, and I would really like to have it done by then.

Recently Read

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Neil Gaiman

This was probably a good book to read after The Thirteenth Tale. I enjoy Neil Gaiman's writing no matter what genre he chooses to take up. You will find most of his books in the Sci-fi/fantasy section of the bookstore, but I don't really believe this is fair. Certainly a few of his books may fall in that genre, but more because they simply wouldn't fit properly anywhere else. I say this so that people who are opposed to fantasy and science fiction novels might still give him a chance. His books are fantastic, but that doesn't mean you have to consider them all fantasy.

This collection of short stories ended up being more of a collection of ghost stories in my mind. Which is why it worked so well after The Thirteenth Tale. The Thirteenth Tale left me feeling like I had taken up residence in a haunted house. The bulk of the stories in Fragile Things opened the doors to rooms I hadn't yet explored in that home of ghosts. It never really let me step fully into the rooms though. In fact that may be the only thing I have against the book. If you want to fully understand a story, you probably wouldn't like these shorts. Gaiman doesn't consider having all the how what and who type of information necessary to a tale. Sometimes you want him to just stop and tell you everything. But I suppose it wouldn't be quite so ghostly then.

Gaiman prefers to write in the nooks and crannies of reality that no one has bothered dusting in a while. So he finds all the places where the strange and fantastic things have been ignored, and he brushes them off a little bit so the rest of us might get a glimpse of them and start to wonder.

I like him.

(Side note: a month or so ago, before I started this blog, I read a book that Gaiman co-wrote with Michael Reaves. Most of you are probably not familiar with Reaves' work, or if you are, you don't know it. But Reaves was one of the lead writers for the greatest tv show in the world. It was called Gargoyles. Gaiman is friends with him. This is another reason why Gaiman is one of the best living authors.)

(Side side note: Gargoyles has all new stories being written by the creator, Greg Weisman, in comic book form now. The first new stories in over ten years. WE LIVE AGAIN!!!! Rock on!!!)

Restraining Orders

So.

I'm not allowed to go to the pet store unsupervised anymore.

And I don't think I'm allowed to go at all for the next month.

Now I can go in a pet store and spend hours just looking at all the different kinds of animals, and the new types of products they have, and which things would be good for the animals and which things are simply laughable. Hours. Easy.

I haven't been to the zoo in a while.

Really, the entire reason I'm not allowed to back for a while is because Nick is an enabler. I'll say something looks cool, and has such and such benefits, yadda yadda, and then he starts thinking that it sounds cool too, and wouldn't it be better to get this one because of the fabulous sale, and what about how this would look here, and before you know it we have an aquarium.

Which is pretty much how our Super Bowl Sunday went.

We went to the pet store to see if they had any mice to feed our snake and we ended up setting up an aquarium for the rest of the evening.

And I went back today to get some water test strips and ended up buying two more live plants for it as well.

So Nick says I'm not allowed to go back.

Sigh.

But we'll have fishies soon! Rumpels and I can't wait!

Recently Read

The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield

I read The Thirteenth Tale a couple of weeks ago. The book revolves around two main characters: Margaret Lea, an amateur biographer and professional book lover, and Vida Winter, the reclusive and prolific writer of the best and most popular books of her time. Winter is nearing the end of her life and finally wants to "tell the truth" about her life to someone.

The first few chapters are enjoyable and well written. They give you a strong understanding of Margaret and the world she inhabits, and set you up for Ms. Winter's tale. I read a chapter or two as time allowed each night, and felt really excited about the book. Then I started the chapters that held Ms. Winter's tale one morning.

And I didn't stop until I had finished the book.

Vida's tale is haunting, beautiful, mystifying, even sordid - though Setterfield's writing is never crude and only states what must be said to understand the story. By the end you realize you have read a book about books, about stories, about twins, about ghosts. And it leaves you feeling haunted the way a good book should.

(note: I am going to try to include a link to my review of any books or movies in the right hand column. So from now on if you were to click on The Thirteenth Tale under the Recently Read list, it would bring you directly to this post.)