Before you read this, I just want you to watch this clip from Blue Velvet.
Thank you.
The office job I interviewed for came through for me, and right now I'm at the end of my first week. That's right. Yesterday was casual Friday, I wore jeans and a t-shirt to work, and when the clock struck five, started the first normal two-day weekend I've had in a very, very long time. Right now I'm chilling in a clean, newly decorated house (yeah, I finally unpacked and made this place look like home), enjoying a cold beer, with a pot of pinto beans on the stove. The beans are for me, but Alayna will be here later and I'll roast a couple of chicken legs, and stew some peppers, potatoes and tomatoes in cream and stock with some saffron; we'll have aioli as a condiment. We can do whatever we want tonight, because we're both off tomorrow. And from now on, I'll be off every single Saturday and Sunday, and I'll be free anytime after five on the weekends. I'll have paid holidays, and eventually health insurance. Although I'm not making a fortune, it's more than I've ever made cooking, and I anticipate these next few days of waiting for my last check from the mall gig to come in the mail to be the last time I'm broke for awhile.
Speaking of the mall gig, last Saturday was my last day, instead of Sunday, which I'd expected. The boss's business partner showed up with one of his people who helps with trade shows, and told me to help break down the kiosk and load it into the van. With absolutely no notice at all, they shut the place down and left nothing but a pile of dust in the middle of the mall. Is that shady as hell, or what? I knew business was going badly for them (I started doing embroidery to pass the time), but wow.
The new job is at a big medical company called Lifeline, a treatment and diagnosis center for people with sleep disorders, mostly obstructive apnea. I'm essentially doing data entry, compiling a bunch of separate files from patients' charts into final reports and then faxing them to doctors, although the work is more interesting than it sounds. I'm actually learning a lot about the healthcare industry, which is something I've never really had a thorough understanding of. Also, I'm good at the work, so I expect to do pretty well there, meaning I should be paid better eventually, and get on the company's payroll after the temp agency's 90 days. Somehow I forgot somewhere in the depths of my culinary career that I'm real fuckin' fast at computers.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
my life is a comedy
My professional cooking days are over.
Or at the very least, my professional cooking days are taking a long hiatus. Following the pattern of my previous cooking job, I became sick of Eleven and its disorganized atmosphere pretty quickly. I was being paid well enough, sure; but within the first two weeks I felt the familiar dread of going to work, looking for any opportunity to escape having to stare at a salamander for ten hours straight and cook with faulty equipment bought by the same cheapass corporation I made stir-fry for two years ago. As I quickly moved from the entry-level "hot apps" station on the line of the behemoth 150+ seat restaurant to saute, I realized that while I was getting good at my job, becoming a valuable member of the crew, I just didn't enjoy cooking at a restaurant level anymore.
You see, when I cook at home, it really is to make people happy. I can stand around, relax, and use the skills I've learned over the years to astonish people and generally improve my quality of life. Cooking is about friendship, to me, in a very literal as well as a metaphorical sense. Through the making of meals I get to know myself, I get to know my friends, and the food that I work with in a very intimate sense. It's perhaps an overly sentimental way of putting it, I know. But if growing up in coastal Texas taught me anything, it's that you really ought to take the time to sit down, cover the table with old newspapers, and eat twenty or thirty pounds of boiled crawdads with the people you love, taking all day to do so if necessary.
When I'm on the line at a restaurant, chef barking orders from behind a heat lamp (during my stay at Eleven Contemporary Kitchen, he threatened to burn a cook's house down with his children inside), my entire life, the meaning of my existence, seems like an endless list of tasks that will never finally be accomplished. I do not exaggerate when I say that I began to lose sleep and started having lucid nightmares about being at work, feeling the same maniacal urgency I did at the restaurant while in bed, unable to realize that the checks fluttering in the window (filet, rare! lamb saddle two times! chicken, sub roasted potatoes for risotto! where the fuck is that tomato app?) were a part of my imagination. I never got the four day weeks I requested when I started cooking there. Aside from the physical exhaustion I was experiencing, commuting 20 miles a day via bicycle in a city built in a river valley, drinking and sweating gallons of water on the line at night, I had no mental energy left whatsoever.
Ramblings about the nature of professional cooking aside, I am 21 years old and I have spent enough hours over a grill, in the dark, ultra respectable fine dining or not. The simple fact about it is this: there is no god and no afterlife, and I only have one short period of time to enjoy. I will not look back twenty years from now and remember nothing about my personal life because of all the time I spent working for money.
So, for the past two weeks I've been working at the Monroeville Mall, in a kiosk. The hours are easy and short I have time to read--I finally finished Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey and am almost done with What is the What by Dave Eggers. It's still evening hours for me, but I generally work from four or five to nine-thirty. I have a lot more free time. My girlfriend and I carved a pumpkin and I cook us dinner more often. In the mornings we go to Nancy's Diner, a genuine truck stop-style American spot in my modest neighborhood, for bacon and eggs. I harvested wild grapes on the Southside again this year and now I've got a bottle and a half of homemade wine aging in one of my dark closets in Wilkinsburg. I'm making pumpkin-infused vodka with various spices. My arms aren't covered in blisters, and my feet and back aren't killing me. And currently, my commute, while still a formidable distance, takes me through a nice space of suburban Pittsburgh, under the changing leaves of Autumn.
They're not paying me a ton there and I plan to find something better very soon, though I've finally climbed out of the hole I was in after quitting Legume. Tomorrow I interview downtown for some light office work at the Frick Building, which might be nice. I'm slowly getting it figured out, but I'd like to be working daylight hours. I'm doing research on choral groups in the area; if I'm not occupied from twelve to midnight for once in my life, I'll be able to attend rehearsals. Today, while I sit around at the mall which is constantly dead, I'll be brushing up on music theory.
Or at the very least, my professional cooking days are taking a long hiatus. Following the pattern of my previous cooking job, I became sick of Eleven and its disorganized atmosphere pretty quickly. I was being paid well enough, sure; but within the first two weeks I felt the familiar dread of going to work, looking for any opportunity to escape having to stare at a salamander for ten hours straight and cook with faulty equipment bought by the same cheapass corporation I made stir-fry for two years ago. As I quickly moved from the entry-level "hot apps" station on the line of the behemoth 150+ seat restaurant to saute, I realized that while I was getting good at my job, becoming a valuable member of the crew, I just didn't enjoy cooking at a restaurant level anymore.
You see, when I cook at home, it really is to make people happy. I can stand around, relax, and use the skills I've learned over the years to astonish people and generally improve my quality of life. Cooking is about friendship, to me, in a very literal as well as a metaphorical sense. Through the making of meals I get to know myself, I get to know my friends, and the food that I work with in a very intimate sense. It's perhaps an overly sentimental way of putting it, I know. But if growing up in coastal Texas taught me anything, it's that you really ought to take the time to sit down, cover the table with old newspapers, and eat twenty or thirty pounds of boiled crawdads with the people you love, taking all day to do so if necessary.
When I'm on the line at a restaurant, chef barking orders from behind a heat lamp (during my stay at Eleven Contemporary Kitchen, he threatened to burn a cook's house down with his children inside), my entire life, the meaning of my existence, seems like an endless list of tasks that will never finally be accomplished. I do not exaggerate when I say that I began to lose sleep and started having lucid nightmares about being at work, feeling the same maniacal urgency I did at the restaurant while in bed, unable to realize that the checks fluttering in the window (filet, rare! lamb saddle two times! chicken, sub roasted potatoes for risotto! where the fuck is that tomato app?) were a part of my imagination. I never got the four day weeks I requested when I started cooking there. Aside from the physical exhaustion I was experiencing, commuting 20 miles a day via bicycle in a city built in a river valley, drinking and sweating gallons of water on the line at night, I had no mental energy left whatsoever.
Ramblings about the nature of professional cooking aside, I am 21 years old and I have spent enough hours over a grill, in the dark, ultra respectable fine dining or not. The simple fact about it is this: there is no god and no afterlife, and I only have one short period of time to enjoy. I will not look back twenty years from now and remember nothing about my personal life because of all the time I spent working for money.
So, for the past two weeks I've been working at the Monroeville Mall, in a kiosk. The hours are easy and short I have time to read--I finally finished Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey and am almost done with What is the What by Dave Eggers. It's still evening hours for me, but I generally work from four or five to nine-thirty. I have a lot more free time. My girlfriend and I carved a pumpkin and I cook us dinner more often. In the mornings we go to Nancy's Diner, a genuine truck stop-style American spot in my modest neighborhood, for bacon and eggs. I harvested wild grapes on the Southside again this year and now I've got a bottle and a half of homemade wine aging in one of my dark closets in Wilkinsburg. I'm making pumpkin-infused vodka with various spices. My arms aren't covered in blisters, and my feet and back aren't killing me. And currently, my commute, while still a formidable distance, takes me through a nice space of suburban Pittsburgh, under the changing leaves of Autumn.
They're not paying me a ton there and I plan to find something better very soon, though I've finally climbed out of the hole I was in after quitting Legume. Tomorrow I interview downtown for some light office work at the Frick Building, which might be nice. I'm slowly getting it figured out, but I'd like to be working daylight hours. I'm doing research on choral groups in the area; if I'm not occupied from twelve to midnight for once in my life, I'll be able to attend rehearsals. Today, while I sit around at the mall which is constantly dead, I'll be brushing up on music theory.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
my name is john, and I'm a workaholic. i've been sober for a month.
I wonder if anyone still reads. I know I'm the kind of person that checks old friends' abandoned blogs every once in awhile, just to make sure. I'm not much of a writer anymore. Although, I've been thinking of starting a work of fiction. Fiction has traditionally not been my thing, but I think my priorities in life have shifted. I've quit reading food (read:work)-related non-fiction all the time and started to pick up stories.
I quit Legume. I lost my mind and walked right out just before dinner service. It's not really like me to go insane like that, and I tell myself that it maybe had something to do with working on little sleep after Alayna was in the hospital for a few days and I spent my time visiting, but it would've happened anyway. That restaurant, as all the restaurants I have worked in eventually have done, made me unhappy. I was overworked and exhausted all the time, and while I felt good about the work I was doing, I realize now that I honestly didn't give a shit. Or, I should say, I take pride in good work, but only when I have a life to enjoy aside from it. And I no longer want work to be the biggest part of my life. I'm 21, and this is not a time to waste sweating in front of a broiler sixty hours a week. There is never a time for that.
So, during a week of unemployment, I looked for jobs outside the culinary field, but it wasn't exactly a good time. Seasonal labor in things that I wanted to get my head into, like jobs at bike shops and road construction, and even landscaping, is over right now. It's about to start getting cold. I even put myself on the list to ride for Jet Messenger, but that season hasn't really started yet.
Like anyone that started out in the culinary industry, I desperately turned back to the stove and now I'm working for Big Burrito again at Eleven, a gigantic clusterfuck of a restaurant downtown that employs four sous-chefs. The schedule is three pages long and we did 220 covers on my first night. Two weeks in, they put me on the saute station, so here I am, riding 20 miles a day to commute to work, cooking my ass off until late at night. And while it might be a much more fast-paced restaurant with a menu eight times the size of my last gig's, it's about twenty hours less than what I'm used to. So now, I'm sleeping enough. And on top of that, I asked to only work four days a week. Usually that happens; last week it did, and this week I'm working five days. But eventually, since the company is happy to give out less overtime, it should be a regular thing for me. The idea is to actually enjoy life, not have burns all over my arms constantly, and not burn out. And, although I'm still in a period of some financial turmoil due to the unemployment, I should be fine on 35-40 hours a week with the wage I negotiated when I got hired. Things are looking up.
I quit Legume. I lost my mind and walked right out just before dinner service. It's not really like me to go insane like that, and I tell myself that it maybe had something to do with working on little sleep after Alayna was in the hospital for a few days and I spent my time visiting, but it would've happened anyway. That restaurant, as all the restaurants I have worked in eventually have done, made me unhappy. I was overworked and exhausted all the time, and while I felt good about the work I was doing, I realize now that I honestly didn't give a shit. Or, I should say, I take pride in good work, but only when I have a life to enjoy aside from it. And I no longer want work to be the biggest part of my life. I'm 21, and this is not a time to waste sweating in front of a broiler sixty hours a week. There is never a time for that.
So, during a week of unemployment, I looked for jobs outside the culinary field, but it wasn't exactly a good time. Seasonal labor in things that I wanted to get my head into, like jobs at bike shops and road construction, and even landscaping, is over right now. It's about to start getting cold. I even put myself on the list to ride for Jet Messenger, but that season hasn't really started yet.
Like anyone that started out in the culinary industry, I desperately turned back to the stove and now I'm working for Big Burrito again at Eleven, a gigantic clusterfuck of a restaurant downtown that employs four sous-chefs. The schedule is three pages long and we did 220 covers on my first night. Two weeks in, they put me on the saute station, so here I am, riding 20 miles a day to commute to work, cooking my ass off until late at night. And while it might be a much more fast-paced restaurant with a menu eight times the size of my last gig's, it's about twenty hours less than what I'm used to. So now, I'm sleeping enough. And on top of that, I asked to only work four days a week. Usually that happens; last week it did, and this week I'm working five days. But eventually, since the company is happy to give out less overtime, it should be a regular thing for me. The idea is to actually enjoy life, not have burns all over my arms constantly, and not burn out. And, although I'm still in a period of some financial turmoil due to the unemployment, I should be fine on 35-40 hours a week with the wage I negotiated when I got hired. Things are looking up.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Monday, June 09, 2008
holy writing time
So, things haven't changed too much for me in the great north. Or, I suppose, they have a bit since I last posted roughly three months ago. Sorry about that, guys.
First of all, and I forget if I mentioned this, I'm with a lovely girl whose name is Alayna. She lives six miles away from me in Forest Hills and so I've been doing a lot of riding lately. Right now, unfortunately, she's in Mexico until the 19th of next month, so I miss her terribly.
Second, here's what I've done with the garage. Now I've got three sturdy bikes that are fully built in case I have mechanical issues one day or I need to ride off-road:
Alice, of course, the '79 Super Le Tour track conversion. I've got a setup that I feel comfortable riding at least 60 miles a week with now. Recently I salvaged a very old Raleigh touring frame that came with a few beautiful components such as the chrome fork and Bulletproof crankset. The crankset lets me run a 42t wide chainring with a 14t cog in the rear, so no more disparate cog widths grinding about in my drivetrain. I put a fresh set of Wellgo track pedals on as well, and finally got a pair of DP18 aero wheels with sealed cartridge bearings so I never have to grumble about tightening my hub and leaking grease all over my apartment again. I also lost the Brooks and the dual bottle cage. The cage, honestly, is poorly constructed and needed constant tightening to keep it from rattling about on the poorly maintained streets of Pittsburgh. For me at this point, it's better to just have water in my bag. Or a cup of coffee in my hand, which is usually the case on the way to work anyway. The Brooks was beginning to drive me nuts. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautifully designed saddle and it's going to get a lot of use from me someday, but it's not ideal for my riding style, which is fairly aggressive. It also weighs about two and a half pounds, and if you ever, ever get it wet it's just a saggy trash bag with copper rivets. Way too high-maintenance for me, so I put it on the Raleigh that I mentioned:
First of all, and I forget if I mentioned this, I'm with a lovely girl whose name is Alayna. She lives six miles away from me in Forest Hills and so I've been doing a lot of riding lately. Right now, unfortunately, she's in Mexico until the 19th of next month, so I miss her terribly.
Second, here's what I've done with the garage. Now I've got three sturdy bikes that are fully built in case I have mechanical issues one day or I need to ride off-road:
Alice, of course, the '79 Super Le Tour track conversion. I've got a setup that I feel comfortable riding at least 60 miles a week with now. Recently I salvaged a very old Raleigh touring frame that came with a few beautiful components such as the chrome fork and Bulletproof crankset. The crankset lets me run a 42t wide chainring with a 14t cog in the rear, so no more disparate cog widths grinding about in my drivetrain. I put a fresh set of Wellgo track pedals on as well, and finally got a pair of DP18 aero wheels with sealed cartridge bearings so I never have to grumble about tightening my hub and leaking grease all over my apartment again. I also lost the Brooks and the dual bottle cage. The cage, honestly, is poorly constructed and needed constant tightening to keep it from rattling about on the poorly maintained streets of Pittsburgh. For me at this point, it's better to just have water in my bag. Or a cup of coffee in my hand, which is usually the case on the way to work anyway. The Brooks was beginning to drive me nuts. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautifully designed saddle and it's going to get a lot of use from me someday, but it's not ideal for my riding style, which is fairly aggressive. It also weighs about two and a half pounds, and if you ever, ever get it wet it's just a saggy trash bag with copper rivets. Way too high-maintenance for me, so I put it on the Raleigh that I mentioned:
This frame represents what I've learned about building, and more importantly, restoring bicycles. I should've taken a picture of this poor bastard when I picked it up in Bloomfield; covered in green latex paint, sporting a 700c front wheel and 27 inch rear with cheap 35c knobbies, steerer tube wobbling around inside the headtube, handlebars loose, a lone brake cable draping from an ancient, clawlike Dia Compe lever through the main triangle to a rusty rear brake like a curtain. You can imagine. Apparently it used to be a singlespeed and someone completely butchered it trying to turn it into a geared reincarnation of its former self.
The first thing I did was strip the frame of every single component and carefully sand it down to the bare Reynolds tubing. I put a few coats of black spraypaint on, and then added the messy 700c track LP18s from the Schwinn, the crankset from the aluminum roadbike I still have, with a 42t Sugino chainring in the front and a 13t cog in the back. The chrome drop bars, brake and lever, and Wellgo pedals come from my parts bin, along with the seatpost and of course, the Brooks. The stem and fork are actually from the Schwinn - I stripped the original paint from the Schwinn fork to reveal a beautiful chrome plating. The amazing thing about so many bikes from that time period is that they were first lugged, then polished and chromed, then given a white primer coat before the final paint color was selected. What I ended up with is a track bike with a fairly high gear that looks high-end but is anything but.
Finally, this might as well be considered a cyclocross frankenbike. 35c knobbies on 700s that barely clear the frame, a Shimano drivetrain with a Deore rear derailleur and Tiagra crankset, a brand new 105 rear brake and a 30 year-old Dia Compe front. This bike is a monster. It crushes small children in its path. The aluminum frame can be a little jarring at times, but it's not as bad as it could be due to a straight blade steel fork, and of course, the big tires. I took it through the park the other day and was pretty happy with the way it performed. The shifting is as smooth as I'd expect with the low quality setup, and the rear cluster gives a pretty wide range of gears. The only thing I'd like to do to this bike at this point is lose the drops and put on some big ol' riser bars, and maybe a shorter stem. My reach right now on this thing really does make me feel like I'm a cyclocross racer.
Otherwise, it's hot as hell at the moment, which makes water taste really good. Also, the restaurant's hours are extended for the summer so I'm sticking around a bit later in the evenings. I also have a new telephone number, one appropriate for someone living in Pittsburgh, so if you don't have it yet please let me know.
The first thing I did was strip the frame of every single component and carefully sand it down to the bare Reynolds tubing. I put a few coats of black spraypaint on, and then added the messy 700c track LP18s from the Schwinn, the crankset from the aluminum roadbike I still have, with a 42t Sugino chainring in the front and a 13t cog in the back. The chrome drop bars, brake and lever, and Wellgo pedals come from my parts bin, along with the seatpost and of course, the Brooks. The stem and fork are actually from the Schwinn - I stripped the original paint from the Schwinn fork to reveal a beautiful chrome plating. The amazing thing about so many bikes from that time period is that they were first lugged, then polished and chromed, then given a white primer coat before the final paint color was selected. What I ended up with is a track bike with a fairly high gear that looks high-end but is anything but.
Finally, this might as well be considered a cyclocross frankenbike. 35c knobbies on 700s that barely clear the frame, a Shimano drivetrain with a Deore rear derailleur and Tiagra crankset, a brand new 105 rear brake and a 30 year-old Dia Compe front. This bike is a monster. It crushes small children in its path. The aluminum frame can be a little jarring at times, but it's not as bad as it could be due to a straight blade steel fork, and of course, the big tires. I took it through the park the other day and was pretty happy with the way it performed. The shifting is as smooth as I'd expect with the low quality setup, and the rear cluster gives a pretty wide range of gears. The only thing I'd like to do to this bike at this point is lose the drops and put on some big ol' riser bars, and maybe a shorter stem. My reach right now on this thing really does make me feel like I'm a cyclocross racer.
Otherwise, it's hot as hell at the moment, which makes water taste really good. Also, the restaurant's hours are extended for the summer so I'm sticking around a bit later in the evenings. I also have a new telephone number, one appropriate for someone living in Pittsburgh, so if you don't have it yet please let me know.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
I've been AWOL for awhile and I'm sorry for that. I've been devoting my literary efforts to my weekly (sort of, so far) column over at Blue House. Every Sunday I write about food, or cooking, and try to keep the profanity to the lowest level I'm capable of.
I just saw a Rastafarian guy walk by with a little white rat sitting on his shoulder. Holy shit. This is both the reason I hate it when it gets warm and the reason I love it--all the people start coming outside again.
It's definitely nice out. All of a sudden, there are cherry trees blooming and daffodils in peoples' front yards. Also, my plants are all growing! I have a big plot to grow things in this year, so I've gotten a lot of seeds started, including pumpkins, squash, collard greens, a lot of different herbs, carrots, and rhubarb (for next spring). I think, since I'm a little more experienced with it this year, that things will turn out nicely. My space also has a lot more sunlight than my previous one. I'm going to have big rows of corn and sunflowers!
I just saw the hottest girl ever ride by on a really nice old-school GT BMX bike.
Speaking of bikes, riding is amazing right now. It was good in the winter too, but the act of getting on the bike and going somewhere is much less of a project at this point, since I can leave about ten pounds of clothing at home. Also, my Brooks is finally broken in and perfectly adjusted. It's like riding a bicycle on a tiny leather couch, all the time.
Right now I'm actually taking a break from spring cleaning. Today I bought (at my most favorite store, Home Depot) a real mop (just had one of those stupid TV commercial rag on a stick things before) and a bucket, a scrub brush, lots of chemicals, and a new shelf to put up in the kitchen. I've done the shelf and the bathroom floor so far, but I haven't gotten to the hardwood yet, which I have a big jug of Murphy's oil soap for. I guess I'm in the middle of one of those phases where I realize I actually have a really nice place, and it looks even nicer when you can see the true color of the tile on the floor...
Just saw somebody stall at the light, and a bunch of people wearing yarmulkes pushed her car off the road.
I just saw a Rastafarian guy walk by with a little white rat sitting on his shoulder. Holy shit. This is both the reason I hate it when it gets warm and the reason I love it--all the people start coming outside again.
It's definitely nice out. All of a sudden, there are cherry trees blooming and daffodils in peoples' front yards. Also, my plants are all growing! I have a big plot to grow things in this year, so I've gotten a lot of seeds started, including pumpkins, squash, collard greens, a lot of different herbs, carrots, and rhubarb (for next spring). I think, since I'm a little more experienced with it this year, that things will turn out nicely. My space also has a lot more sunlight than my previous one. I'm going to have big rows of corn and sunflowers!
I just saw the hottest girl ever ride by on a really nice old-school GT BMX bike.
Speaking of bikes, riding is amazing right now. It was good in the winter too, but the act of getting on the bike and going somewhere is much less of a project at this point, since I can leave about ten pounds of clothing at home. Also, my Brooks is finally broken in and perfectly adjusted. It's like riding a bicycle on a tiny leather couch, all the time.
Right now I'm actually taking a break from spring cleaning. Today I bought (at my most favorite store, Home Depot) a real mop (just had one of those stupid TV commercial rag on a stick things before) and a bucket, a scrub brush, lots of chemicals, and a new shelf to put up in the kitchen. I've done the shelf and the bathroom floor so far, but I haven't gotten to the hardwood yet, which I have a big jug of Murphy's oil soap for. I guess I'm in the middle of one of those phases where I realize I actually have a really nice place, and it looks even nicer when you can see the true color of the tile on the floor...
Just saw somebody stall at the light, and a bunch of people wearing yarmulkes pushed her car off the road.
