Dyed my hair completely jet black today. Looks pretty neat.

Won't be moving to the Northside after all. One of my potential housemates has been forbidden by her overprotective parents--they think she'll get shot/raped/robbed by the vicious criminals that live next to the grocery store. I don't know what's up with people; you've got to fucking live a little to live, and right now I'm living in a windowless, overheated, flourescent-lit chicken coop.

But it's not really all bad. I'm really enjoying life up here, and all this means is that it'll keep on going the same way. Except now there's snow and Christmas and awesome holiday shit. It's going to snow tonight and tomorrow. I've got the weather channel bookmarked so I can know exactly when it starts because I want to see these "snowflakes" falling out of the "sky" that the natives here speak of.

I bought some cheap lamb shoulder chops at Giant Eagle tonight. As I lack a grill, I will probably pan-fry these in one of my nice cast-iron skillets. I might debone them and tenderize them a little bit too, but I'm not sure yet. Either way, something really hardcore awesome is going to happen Saturday, my (first and probably last ever) day off, and it's going to involve lamb chops.
I gotta find out who's doing this graffiti. It's just awesome.

Closing again tomorrow. Friday is going to be a rough night. It's the annual "Light-Up Night" at Market Square and 50,000 people are supposed to watch this event where they light up all the Christmas decorations at once, effectively beginning the winter season. That's nice and all, but at the restaurant we are going to get absolutely hammered. And I just know, somehow, that the crowd will not be the easily-satisfied burger and fries football crowd, nor the after-show crowd that comes in for dessert and lots of alcohol. Our customers will probably consist of suburban families that drive the suburban downtown n'at once a year--it's the crowd that thinks they know something about food when they order their well-done filet mignon and the "Homemade Mashed Potatoes" which we receive in solid frozen brick form from a big truck that comes once a week with gravy ladeled right out of a dusty #10 can. Anyway, tomorrow and the next day are going to be tough, but for the first time in months I'm going to have an entire weekend during which I will be responsible for doing absolutely nothing.