As my bones grew they did hurt

Well, I haven't posted in a while. So! Time for an update.

On Saturday, I stayed up super late (talking to a mysterious shadow figure... or something) and had to get up real early Sunday morning for work/japanese class. Originally, I was planning on not going and calling in sick, seeing as how my WinCo morale is so low right now, but I decided to go anyway.

It was finally an easy day!

I kind of had to work Sunday, but it was very easy. However, my sleep deficit supplemented the pain that normally comes with doing the job on regular days. So, it was a "normal" day, in my opinion (actually, it was still better than normal since it flew by)

Now, my schedule cannot be stopped for sleep! (ok. That's a lie. But I don't like cancelling things) And so I had to proceed with my plans of food making. Originally, me, PM, Paul, and Evan were going to cook but Paul flaked out (count on the "creator" of the event to flake out. That's why he's a big baby) and PM didn't call until during the session.

That left just me and Evan.

I had some "superior" stew meat purchased, since WinCo was selling meat really cheap. I don't usually eat meat (I'm practically vegetarian) but I wanted to learn how to cook meat and having only meat eaters be the cooks did help very much yes. So, we decided to be bold (ok. I decided to be bold) in what to make. We decided upon tempura-steak fajitas since I have just acquired several abilities to cook like a "real" chef (I'll have to write about some of the terrible chinese food practices that go on). We got the stew meat (hereafter referred to as steak) cut up into bite sized pieces, cracked out the flour and eggs and opened up the tempura batter mix...

My first thought when looking into the batter box was: "WTH? the batter mix is just flour and eggs!" and indeed it was. I was expecting bread crumbs, but it was not. Foiled! We already had the canola oil ready (it took a really long time and lots of trial and error to get it to the right temperature (smoke...)) and we couldn't be stopped at this point by an incorrect ingrediant. No sir! So, we dipped a piece of steak in flour, egg, and tempura batter and skewered it on a kebab stick (what do they call that... fondue style meat or something?) and then dipped it in the canola oil. the steak turned an ugly bone color... ewww! we pulled it out, stuck the skewered steak piece on a piece of napkin, and pulled the skewer out. Still red inside...

We stuck the skewer back in and stuck that back into the canola oil. The batter finally turned a "healthy" golden color, but not before the batter split into an ugly shape on the steak (it didn't fall off the steak, fortunantly, but it was just hideous looking). After we confirmed the done-itude of the steak, Evan tasted it for quality and concluded what we suspected was brewing in our kitchen all along -- chicken fried steak.

Appalled by our non-tempura food, we made the tempura batter by itself and tried frying again. Same result.

We were making chicken fried steak tonight, boys and girls(I hate chicken fried steak).

Shocked and disappointed, me and Evan decided to deep fry other foods (since we had so much oil). We tried onions, forks (well, accidentally), and lastly, bananas. Evan really went for that, since it tasted like sweet, sweet okra. I don't care for extremely sweet food. But, I let him use as many bananas as he wanted, while I searched for a hot wheel or something to dip in the batter (I failed in that search, especially since I don't have any hotwheels).

Although Evan was enjoying a dessert dish, the bitter taste of disaster still clung to my tongue with such voracity that not even the bananas could save me from the nothing that I felt within. After letting the canola oil cool, I put it in the fridge to harden. Then, I proceeded to avenge the steak with all the cooking power vested within me. I threw in onions and pepper, season all, olive oil... you name it. Out came very delicious steak that I suppose anyone could have made. Dish saved.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that I didn't have the tortillas as I thought I had. Reeling again from the setback, I hurriedly ran around, searching, to acquire the last resort edible holder, kaiser rolls, before Evan ate all the good meat in the name of "sampling". Ahah! In the cupboard! While making horrendous animal noises, I slapped Evans fingers with my wooden spoon and toasted the kaiser rolls until golden. Then, I poured out all the ingrediants to make this dish good.

We had sweet and sour sauce, two types of barbecue sauce, lots of different oils and spices, sour cream, tomatoes, onions, NO LETTUCE, cream cheese, NO LETTUCE, chicken, NO LETTUCE, NO LETTUCE, NO LETTUCE.

We decided beforehand NOT to buy LETTUCE. Silly us.

And so, a meal that only a bachelor could/would make was born.

And that's the tale of "The tempura disaster and what happened after." Yum.

Ok, so I had fun. But by the time we were all done, cleaning the kitchen and everything, it was late at night and I ended up getting only 5 hours of sleep again.

Monday, Monday: Memorial day. I got up, went to work tired and cranky (being tired is the only reason why I'm ever cranky) and proceeded to make $20/hr for working the holiday. And it was slower than yesterday! Very good stuff, indeed. It was so slow, the cart dept. stole reading material just to have something to do (of course, we could've cleaned the store (no one asks anyone to clean the store), but the discontent in that cart room is so high right now that we don't care about other departments). When work was finished, I got reinforcements of kaiser rolls to carry the day in my cupboard, along with yummy granola support. Then, it was off to Grand Uncle Jack's grave to pay respect, and make sure he had flowers (amazingly, I have family around here, despite not being a local at all. I guess I just have family all over the place)

Jack had been conscripted into the special forces 101st airborne division during the Vietnam war. Just to dramatize him:

During one of the jumps out of the plane, he got his carribeaner caught against the rope that was supposed to get him far enough from the plane to not get chewed up. (they had a rope extending out the back of the plane with which the jumper would secure a carribeaner to). He had to act quick since his buddies were coming down the line in quick succession, so he whipped out his knife and cut the line. Free fallin!

During one of his reconnaissance missions, he and two buddies were passing 3 North Vietnamese posed as South Vietnamese to get back to base. As his group passed them, the Vietnamese attacked. The guy on his left died instantly from a head shot, and the guy to his right had a bullet whiz through his abdomen (without, surprisingly, touching his internal organs), cutting his abs and spilling his guts. Jack turned around with his .45 and charged them, shooting. All three vietnamese died. Then, Jack called to a nearby medic. But, the medic was too green, and couldn't handle working on Jack's right-hand man, so Jack had to put all of his internal organs back in and keep them held there until an airlift came. The man lived through it.

Jack was awarded the (i think) bronze star (bronze something. Cross?) and the medal of honor for that incident.

During the battle in Vietnam that marked the beginning of defeat for the Americans (I forget the name of the battle), Jack was killed by a mortar shell. Took his head right off.

Mortars are terrible things. So is war.

Anyway, so I paid respect to Jack's grave and then headed over to Richard's house to watch Casablanca (note that I was tired, to the point that I was thinking up completely different endings for the movie). That movie could've very easily had some EXTREMELY romantic settings, like the couple could've waited at the cafe in Paris, or Bogart could've stayed waiting at the train station for her. Oooh! So many different, interesting themes could've been done! An interesting side note is that the script changed daily when they were shooting, and the movie was supposed to be an unimportant side feature, not the 2nd best movie ever made in America!

On a side note, why is it that movies of today are so crappy? This is something I was arguing to myself today. Just because I know there's a certain person out there with certain interests (that's you Erin) I will explain things as I go along so that it will show that I'm not talking about career choices.

First off, I thought, "Well, these people go to college and major in film, at least most of them, so maybe going to film school is useless" and then I wondered how anybody would be able to do anything if they didn't know all the processes for doing film. On top of that, I deduced that every decade (assuming we divide movie eras into decades) had lots of stinker films released. "They don't make em like they used to" just isn't so. I'm merely not seeing them since they didn't survive far enough to be easily seen.

What's more, I was also thinking of the stagnation of the entertainment industry in general. Let's face it: it stinks right now. Sales are down (the industry is blaming it all on piracy), but that also means the quality standards are lower than normal as well. That means that it's probably easier to make a film and have it shown in theaters right now than usual.

Good strike timing.

Anyway, so I left Richard's house Monday night and got a good night's rest.

next day: Tuesday (it's coming! Did you bring your coat?!?)

I got up, goofed off and ate granola support fire (or just granola for all you old fashioned people), paid the phone bill, and called Kevin Knife.

As stated before, Kevin's a very interesting, polytheistic, crafty, hot tempered but VERY generous man who looks a lot like Trent Reznor, only with lots of knife scars from shit hitting him (oh, and colored tattoos). The guy who was fat but decided one day to "stop eating like the fatass" he was, dun was Kevin. The guy who valued true freedom (with a wicked anger) over his father's oppression, deciding to start doing carts at WinCo 9 years ago and working to produce, dun was Kevin. The guy who used to do hard drugs before quitting due to a change in lifestyle and work requirements, dun was Kevin. That's the kind of guy Kevin is. Fiery, generous, coffee drinking, knife maker. In the future, Kevin says he'd like to take on a bear with his axe and knives. I think he'll do it someday.

Anyway, I went over to his house to start forging with his coal forge (which, when he gets a propane forge, will sell to me for $100), and off we went. As I work with metal more and more, I find increased enjoyment. I love playing with the bench grinder to flatten the metal. I love pounding the metal to shape with hard, steady rhythms. I love the lonely whirr noise that the bellows makes (which is a nice departure from everything else, themed "not lonely").

Kevin is an awesome person. You just have to spend enough time with him to find out. He collects junk and puts it to use, which is what I'm turning into.

as another side note, I keep wondering if i'm a geek that's normalized. Am I even definable? Oh well. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Anyway, as I went to work today, I found difficulty in time going by. It's the first of the month, and that means we're busy. Only, today is a regular day. Our sales must've been some other day...

But, I wanted to quit today, and was about ready to.

We had a broken chain to one of the corrals. Not a big deal, but as I was picking up that chain, the flap that keeps carts inside the corral (the only other safety feature) smacked my knee, and it stung real bad. Last time that had happened, I had to use the cart hawk since it hurt so bad to bend the knee. I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and went up to the guy who fixes the store up, Brent Wick. Brent said he'd fix the chain problem, but advised me to go visit the manager about the flap problem.

When I did, the manager replied that the flap hitting my knee was my own damn fault and I shouldn't let it happen again. We then got into a slight tussle about the flaps being on too tight vs. negligence of cart pushers keeping the flap from hitting their knees, with him not talking about flaps being on tight and me getting angrier by the second.

Folks, the thing about me is that I don't fight real hard if I don't think It's worth it. In general, I bottle my problems up, let them well up good and deep inside of me, until I get so many that I explode. (man, I'm using a lot of colloquial dialect tonight)

The big problem with the manager is that: he just doesn't listen to what I say. I may get into fights all the time with my father (practically the only person I get into fights with, which is why I mention him right now), but at least I don't hate him or feel very discontent afterwards. After all is said and done, he loves me and I love him.

But this guy, he doesn't listen! No matter what conversation I'm in, I always get talked to like a child, and the we, cart dept., get referred to as "you cart boys". God I hate that! He spends so much time manipulating it all that I felt quite ready to raise the stakes and put my job on the line tonight (but, even in anger, I'm always able to rationally think, and I convinced myself to spend some time and think about what the best course of action would be, as well as let off some steam by ingesting some of that "time" drug, which has a forgetfulness effect) anyway, his big quotes are that "if you come upstairs to fill out another accident report (I have yet to fill out any accident reports) I will write you up for unsafe work practices," "burn me once, shame on you, I mean, me. Burn me twice, shame on you," and "Does this sound ridiculous to you, Sondra(the secretary)?" Sondra: "Sounded ridiculous the moment I heard the first sentence" (that hurt. I thought Sondra was a nice lady. Bah)
What's more, after I left, I went downstairs and put away my crap to get ready for lunch. When I went to the breakroom, I heard laughter and the sounds of the manager finishing his sentence about "pads". In the breakroom, I found several employees (on break/lunch), Brent, and the manager staring back at me (with the manager wide-eyed). Brent quickly offered me some pads for my knees that he had at home (Brent's such a nice guy, though crazy if he starts talking about religion, which he can do out of the middle of nowhere), though I declined, and the manager said he would look into seeing what it would cost to get different springs on the corrals. Then the manager left the breakroom, spent some time in his office (while I ate lunch in the breakroom that's between his office and the sales floor) and he said, "Good night, Darrel. I'll look into those pads".

I doubt he'll really do anything, and I think he was just saying all of those "nice" things because I had caught him red-handed in the breakroom and he wanted to save face. What a fucker, ya know? All I was asking for was that he maybe consider whether and what it would take to get different springs installed in our really screwed up corrals. But he had to just be a rotten goblin.

The guy has had a lot of really bad setbacks lately, and I recognize this. Some things, like the bracelet that his wife rejected and the inability to find a house in humboldt county, have put a lot of stress on him (not to mention that he works so hard I see him really tired, looking like an overworked piece of machinery, every day) but, despite my secret disgust for him, I have gone out of my way to see that he has what he needs: from giving him my yellow, winco issued, raincoat, to cleaning all sorts of rubbish that I know he would want clean (since I see him clean it himself. They're maintenance duties, and since I'm sometimes maintenance... I know how)

Sometimes I think that ignorance is the sole reason why so much bad (including hatred) happens.

For example, I used to hate movies that were not realistic. But, I just didn't understand the concept that some people go to the movies to escape reality.

That's ignorance for you.

Anyway, I have many busy days (of fun stuff to do) ahead of me, including breakfast club in about 5 hours! (and I'm tired) So, I'd better take off.
D.