Now serving 501 on the Ledo Deck

So added to the Summer Stack is Barron's 501 German Verbs, you know... for fun. And Freed's The Servants' Quarters. I wasn't going to do any more book shopping this Summer because the finances need to be wrestled into submission in a Hulk Hogan head locking sort of way. But I really need to understand verbage. By that I do not mean just words. But I really need a good solid refresher on how it is that German verbs play well together. Surprisingly, they do just fine. It's my impatience to better understand the music that is holding me up. I guess this is not an area for multi tasking. And I'm being smarter about my shopping.

While I love hardcover books for the many tricks of feigned indifference they afford, the top shelf pricing is decidedly unaffordable. So the book that cost 24.00 and seemed interesting last Summer has with stood the test of time. It was still here when they busted out the bargain bins. For 4.00 I can be comfortable snoring under a shade tree right before the clouds burst. And unlike a new fangled Kindle.... if I do get an impromptu shower the book affords scant protection and is easily blow dried though not set to factory default. I dare someone with a Kindle to leave it out in the rain...
perhaps in MacArthur Park.

Life is a Zoo

I do not know under what category this is going to fit. I do not usually write about work stuff. I do not have a geeky job. I do not have an artistic job and frankly folding laundry in any hotel is about as interesting a thing to read about as watching grass grow during a drought. But somethings transcend the norm enough to merit a post. And today certainly has lit the fire of creative prose.

Sometime in the not too distant past, our humble little band of laundresses was asked to assume the mantel of Public Spaces Attendant. In addition to doing the laundry for the hotel and ironing linens for special events, we split our shifts cleaning the lobby, restrooms, fitness center, pool & spa and generally maintaining appearances. And it has been my special joy, of late, to have the Worst Morning Shifts Ever. For the last month I've walked into the public restrooms to find plugged toilets and seat liner confetti strewn about the place like Buggy Bunny had lead a ticker tape parade through the place. And it has been my special Joy of Joys to be far more intimate with our guests than even an Orion slave dancer* would care to be.

You see, before I even put my hand on door handle I knock and announce "housekeeping". I do this in the hopes that any one occupying the bathroom will prevent me from walking in to see a bare ass or dangling appendage hanging our by the urinals. The first time it happened was startlingly inappropriate. I was already in the bathroom and cleaning the urinals when a man walked in and
dropped trou right next to me before I could stammer an "excuse me" and race Han through the Kessel Run**.

Hellllllooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woman cleaning the bathroom who is not your mother/sister/wife/girlfriend/friend with benies/FB/Bf/paid escort/maid!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are you people doing!?????????


Our management wants us to maintain a professional atmosphere while still making people feel right at home. I guess we win. It doesn't get any homier than peeing with the door open. But seriously!!!!!!! I have seen so many bare male asses and penises in the last month or so that I am seriously done even being remotely interested in male anatomy. BTW: the boyfriend thanks you for your commemorative "aw man that blows" to which I will snicker "he wishes". And.... as if the barrage of wankers at work is not enough, the good luck follows me everywhere.

The impetus for this ranting post comes from the coffee shop. 24 ounces of German Chocolate mocha can't hang out in my bladder as long as it used to. And there is little warning when the few ounces there want to be let out... like a cat at the butt crack of dawn. So I hopped up... gingerly picked my way through the swarm of patrons who descended on the place. I heard nothing but the snarl of espresso machine and the door was open. In bathroom parlance that means it is "un-occupado" or in the German, ungeschlossen. So as you would expect, all restraint and decorum evaporates under the pressure of an immanent containment leak (wow would that have been putting it mildly), and I burst through the door.

And there is a cute guy peeing!!!!

What the hell??? Was I the guy thousands of years ago who told the municipal governors in Londonium "We don't need no stinkin' public sanitation standards." ??? What the hell did I do in a past life or this one to see this ALL THE TIME!? Uggghhhhhh!!!!!

Sadly, my friends, my life has become a zoo in which the only exhibit is the baboon cage.

Which I guess could be worse. It could be a poop flinging monkey cage.


*its a Trek thing
** 12 parsecs+not enough for escape velocity.

Bad News on the Door Step

Sadly, we have lost a follower. I don't know what I said yesterday that made our friend leave. But I am kinda sad. I know tastes change happens and sometimes you have to edit a blog reading list because there will never be enough hours in the day to do the fun stuff without getting busted by your boss. Still our little group has held steady at 18 followers for so long. I'd hoped that we would grow our numbers. But that is life.

I made a typo on facebook today. "Finally got my geek groove back" came out Finally got my geek grove back". Of course my friend the English major/ Music Doctor caught it. Funny how those little mistakes reflect so much. When you look at the followers list, you all seem to have been planted there in neat little rows.... rather like a cherry grove. So in a way, having regular access to my blog is like having my grove back... but minus a tree.

I need to think happy thoughts. I hope that she is ok and that she just got bored or busted by an employer and had to trim her blog list. I hate to think that she just got everything deleted because the spectre of death took solid form. Yeah...... I need to think happy thoughts. That is to morbid even for a person descended from the creators of Schadenfreude.

Summer Reading List



Summer Stack: fiction, foreign language & fun.

So far this Summer's stack is pretty light on serious topics. The only thing missing in here is the Martha Stewart book I told you about. But Summer reading isn't really supposed to be all heavy and heady and junk. Light and airy keeps the gear box from binding with too much information in its teeth.

I really liked The Last Dickens. Much like Stephenson's System of the World, I am reminded that the people that I admire from history aren't pale synopsis of a life lived. These were real people. Sure I didn't much like Newton when I got done with Stephenson. But I don't think that we were supposed to like him. Dickens, with all the historical reference and the wealth of anecdotal information comes to life in this book in ways that help set the rest of his work in a finer context.

Happiest Days of Our Lives is plain old fun. And after the Winter of my discontent, I need all the fun that my meager earnings can provide. Which means borrowed books and revisiting the best of my personal collection. Uncle Wil just makes me happy. Though I will grant that I am responsible for finding my own happiness; its good not to be the only geek in the room.

And yes, those are Romances on the top of the stack. Not for their relative importance in my literary diet but because this was the best composition. I'm not gonna lie to you, Marge. I really do think that art is the thing. Kenyon has a series that, for my money, embarrasses the Living Hell out of anything Twighlight can do. It isn't just vampires and werewolves. It is the scope of all mythology. Each Pantheon, much like Stargate, gets a nod. And if that sounds suspiciously ambitious.... that's because it is.

Uncle Hugh.... just in case you missed the post in which I gushed over this book is in here with his Evil Plans along with some good inspirational fun from Lynne Perrella and the folks at Somerset Studio. Just in case you were wondering, the German usage book does discuss the naughty bits. But it is so much more about getting the feel for informality and fitting in than that. Germans like to make friends. But they don't like making friends with posers. Which, I guess, explains every clique on the planet.

Juices are starting to flow in the direction of productivity. Now I just need to get to a place where that can come to fruition.