Memoirs Of J

We went to the traveler’s club international restaurant and tuba museum for dinner last night. It was so weird. First because it’s a tuba museum, obviously. Second because of some of the strange people there, and lastly, the food Curtis ate.

The tuba museum part? Well I just don’t get it. Who thought to cram a museum for rusty old tubas together with a restaurant? It gave me something to stare at other than people though, for once, so that was good I suppose. The only rationale I can come up with is that the tubas are supposed to give the place an eclectic, unique vibe, and it definitely does do that. And this may explain the disproportionate level of weirdos in one place.

I’m not saying everyone there was weird, but our waitress was a bit…off. It’s kind of hard to describe, but she reminded me of someone who should have been in that movie Reality Bites, only minus the witty, intelligent character part.

Since the place is so little and it was a Friday night, it filled up very quickly. A few of the tables are 6 seaters and it is a seat-yourself place. So we ended up at one of these 6-tops since the booths were all taken. A waiter came to ask us if we cared if three people sat at our table and we said we didn’t care. We honestly didn’t care, but for the life of me I could not figure out the situation of the people who shared out table. It was this older, white, affluent-looking couple accompanied by a friendly yet, and I’m not saying this to be mean, partially retarded black woman wearing an oversized Saints t-shirt and baseball hat. Julia blabbed at them and everyone else she saw. The Saints woman and the older guy seemed friendly enough but the older woman made quasi-bitchy comments about how we were eating but Julia had no food (she had been well fed before we left, plus I had applesauce in her bag for when she got hungry).

So we’re sitting there waiting for our food with these people, polite but not going out of our way to make conversation. I’m not sure why everyone feels obligated to make small talk when they are confined to an area with other people. Even I do to an extent but I really have to be in the mood or else drunk to actually act on it. We were relieved when our appetizer (fries and queso) arrived.

The queso was very good, nice and spicy, and the fries were thick and crispy potato wedges. The only bad thing about it was that the amount of queso was about 3x as much as needed for the amount of fries provided.

Our dinners came out shortly after we finished the app. I got lemon chicken with steamed vegetables and Curtis got bobotie, an African dish of lamb meatloaf with curry and spices. It came with some lamb kabobs and a shit load of cabbage (yuck), and yams. My dinner was very good, but I thought Curtis’s was gross-looking. He said was good though. He even ate the cabbage.

We finished our meals, fed Julia her applesauce (as well as various pieces of yam, rice, cabbage, pea pod, and anything else that seemed suitable to give her), and tried to keep J from squealing at eardrum-piercing decibels. It took forever for the waitress to bring our bill. We probably waited about 20-25 minutes just for the bill. It wasn’t a huge deal for us as we weren’t in a big hurry or anything, but there was a small crowd waiting for a place to sit so you’d think they would want to get us out of there so new customers could sit down. We decided that next time we go there it will be during the week when it shouldn’t be so crowded.

Despite a time of recession where most corporate employees are overloaded by picking up the slack amid downsizing, some useless office workers are finding creative and unique ways to spend their time at work. Dippy Thibs, who is paid a respectable salary to perform menial tasks and paper-shuffling for 8-10 hours per day, recently decided that she had too much free time at work and therefore needed to find activities to fill her day.

Thibs took to coupon clipping and bargain hunting like “a fly seeks shit,” according to her coworker, C. “Dynamite” Barn. Barn, who prefers to be addressed as Dynamite, explained that it is normal for Thibs to spend upwards of seven hours during the “work” day plotting her shopping routes and ravenously searching ads that offer mere pennies off.

“She’ll go 30 miles out of her way to save ten cents on a pack of tampons. I mean, I realize that she must go through a lot of tampons because she does have a really heavy flow, but doesn’t she spend more in gas driving 60 miles to save a dime?” When asked why she knows the particulars of Thibs’s menstrual flow, Dynamite explained that Thibs is “very open- far, far too open” with her work family.

As odd as it seems, this is not an uncommon phenomenon in workplaces today. Dynamite and other office employees describe a workday filled with bargain hunting, novel reading, sleeping, sipping Jagermeister from a flask, girl scouting, evangelizing, fantasy sports, excessive smoking, violent bowel-purging in the name of weight loss, and scrapbooking.

“Yeah, it’s kind of unbelievable,” says “Jen,” an employee who did not want to reveal her real name. “My least favorite is the bathroom stuff. Some people seem to make a sport out of seeing how quickly they can clog the toilets and fill the restrooms with noxious, lingering, gag-inducing fumes.”

Sadly, companies turn a blind eye to the rampant time-wasting; therefore nothing is being done about it. Dynamite and “Jen” expressed discontent but admit that it is unlikely that things will ever change. “People will always be lame, entitled slackers expecting the rest of us to do their work while they gobble up the credit. I just try to get through the day with minimal irritation,” explains “Jen”.

The company that Dynamite and “Jen” work for declined to comment, but recommended that any disgruntled worker seek help through the company-sponsored employee assistance program, where one phone call and up to four face-to-face counseling sessions are laughably anticipated to solve deep-rooted emotional issues.

Over the weekend I noticed that Julia’s top two front teeth are coming in. I found this out when she bit me in the face.

I was in line behind some idiot at Subway today. While waiting in line, this chick tells the “sandwich artist” that she “can’t wait to die” because she knows she’s “going to heaven where there are rivers of gold.”

Wow. Too bad it’s ‘sinful’ to kill yourself. Let’s just hope she hasn’t / doesn’t breed.