Musical Nostalgia.

"Wheel" with the windows down just took me back to this time six years ago. Freshman fall at NC State. Cool weather, late nights, and far enough into the semester to be comfortable with the place.

I was the same, but different. Eighteen, mop-topped, a little preppier, but still smiling a lot. NC State was in front of me rather than behind, and my biggest concerns involved getting football tickets and stocking the room with Easy Mac and Ramen.

"Heavier Things" was a constant that could be heard from my open room or the two 12 inch sub-woofers in my Explorer, and I could relate to the music more than ever now that I was on my own. I was learning lessons and making mistakes and decisions away from home, and the songs on the record picked me up or gave me advice when I needed it.

I can still remember playing "Clarity" for the first time on my laptop in Windows Media Player, before my iTunes days. It was real, and it hit me from the beginning. College was new and crazy, but the song helped me brush the worries away and enjoy that particular moment in my life, because at that time there's no way I could have known just how fast six years could fly by. Crazy, eh?

As much as I love the rest of Mayer's music, I'll always be a sucker for the nostalgia that "Heavier Things" brings me when I listen to it at night in the fall. It took me back again tonight, and still gave me the hope and comfort it did when I was a little younger and different, but had my heart in the right place, as I feel I do now...

With as fast as things move and as uncertain as things are these days, I'll take that as a good thing.

D.

OFF.

Today is my first day off in 9 days. I know I only work part time, but off days are still GREAT. Days where I'm scheduled for dinner shifts can seem like days off, but there's always the thought of work in the back of my mind, and with that they can still be tiring.

My goal was to get up today and get some things DONE. So far I've eaten cereal and had two cups of coffee. Not bad, right? Yeah, I know, nothing productive yet, but I'm gonna get on to some G.R.E. stuff in the next little bit. I'm setting a table and chair up in my sister's room for a temporary "study station" to leave up until after the test. I'm now OFFICIALLY registered to take it on Monday, October 5. This way I can have a few weeks to study for it, I'm motivated by the deadline, and I'll get my results back just in time to finish my application by November 1. Not too bad of a plan as long as I actually study a little.

As for work itself, it's been an interesting week. Nothing too crazy, but there was one instance that gave me a pretty good laugh. Since I've been working at Sticks, I've gotten to know or recognize the majority of our regulars. A lot of these people are really cool, regardless of how they tip. There are some that run your ass off and tip well, and others that trap you in good conversation and don't leave you shit, but you enjoy the time with them. Of course, like any server, I'm a big fan of the ones who treat you AND tip you like a friend instead of a pizza-slinger.

Anyway, the other day this one regular came in with his wife. The best way to describe him is with the word "grouse". He's a grouse. That's not necessarily a word, but it sounds right for this guy. I'll break it down even more for ya. If he were on Sesame Street, he'd be Oscar. If he was a dwarf, he'd be Grumpy. The guy never smiles, and he always wants his white wine glass chilled. I greeted him and his wife a few weeks ago when we had a busted A.C. and they immediately complained about the temperature. Of course, as the messenger of the news, I got the evil looks as if it was my fault we had a bad system, and the guy says "Welp, sorry," and walks out before his wife realized he was leaving (I'm not defending her here, she's almost as bad as he is, but I thought it was funny he left her behind).

Fast forward to a few days ago and the A.C. is fixed and the couple returned. I sat them, crossing my fingers they wouldn't sit in my section (which they didn't, whew), and of course they commented on the air (yeah, thanks, I noticed it was fixed too). They ordered drinks from me, which I passed on to their server. As the night progressed, their pizza appeared in the window, so I ran it out to them. Just like with any customer, I placed it down with a smile and told them to enjoy. Before I could finish putting it on the stand, the guy looks at me and says, "I've got a question for ya." Giving him the benefit of the doubt and thinking he's going to be friendly for a change, I look at him and say, "What's that?" As his perma-frown increases, he asks, "Where did the pepperoni go?"

I feel my half-fake smile fade as I put my tail between my legs and stare this asshole down. "Uhhh, I don't know, sir. Did you order it with pepperoni?"

"Well, I THOUGHT I did," he says.

So I pick it up and say "I'll get it fixed," and as I turned away I stopped, fake-laughed, looked at him and said, "Psht, and I thought you were going to ask me a SERIOUS question...HAHA..."

Didn't deal with him the rest of the night, but felt pretty good about getting the last word in. Of course, I couldn't have done this if he had been my table, and probably shouldn't have anyway, but hey, sometimes you gotta walk away with what holds up as a LITTLE pride in your own mind. You can get away with a lot more than you think with people like that. I laughed about it, because it's hard for me to understand how anybody can be that unhappy all of the time, but what can you do? Ha, I brushed it off and smiled, because he'll be back regardless of little things like that...

Woohoo. Battle stories. Gotta love 'em. And the grumpy regulars. Smile, folks. You'll get less wrinkles.

Not much else to say right now, but it's gonna be a gym/dinner/movie date night tonight, so I'm pretty excited about that. It's also the third weekend of college football, and some good things are happening over the next few days. I still get excited about weekends, regardless of how much I have to work over them. People are happier, and friends are free when I get off work. So yeah, weekend time is gonna be nice.

Until then, I'll be around. Peace outside.
DS.

Double SHIFT.

Typing this one up between doubles at work.

Last night was CRAZY-busy in the pizza-slingin' world. It started off so slow you could hear the crickets, and then: BAM! BUSY. This is how it always happens. You think you're gonna get out of there at a decent hour for a weekend night, and then the customers remember that it's the weekend too, and decide they're gonna camp out over one extra beer for 30 more minutes. Of course, it's not all bad, because in being busy and staying later, you make more money. Simple economics: opportunity costs. Leave early = low money. Stay late = make more money. But then again, on weekends, time IS money. Never realized how true that was until I started waiting tables.

Another thing I realized while I was running around throwing pies last night was that, DAMN, I've gotten GOOD about balancing food and drinks and carrying multiple items. Don't get me wrong, I've still got a ways to go to catch up with a lot of people in the service idustry, but I'm getting better every day. Learning to use different parts of your upper body as third and fourth arms and hands gets pretty crazy, as weird as that sounds. And with a tray...WOW. It's like a pickup truck for food.

Anyway, work was crazy, but I made good money, or I made Beatles Rock Band if you wanna put it a different way. The non-collector's edition (you figure it out). I REALLY want this game, and the fact that Beatles music is being played non-stop on every station is making it even worse. Even VH1 is playing video game music videos of their songs! It's ridiculous, and I've gotta get it. I'm on the verge of getting some stuff done and driving to Best Buy just to stare at it. "Lead us not into temptation..." Ohhhhh, man...we'll see.

For now it's time to rest and maybe throw in a run at some point. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, and I'm doing fine now, but the crash is sure to happen. A nap may be in order, but I'm going with it while I can.

Until then, there's plenty of early season football to watch,Cherry Lemon Sundrop to drink, and Jay-Z ft. John Mayer on YouTube...


Watch that one and you'll see that even HOV is impressed. What have I been trying to tell y'all for YEARS?!?

That's what I thought.

PEACE.
Drew.

Defy Gravity.

It's what I do.

Check out my new custom NikeID running shoes. Designed by me, for me.




Inspiration (if you couldn't figure it out):


I ran in 'em yesterday and kept staring down at them. I can FLY in these things! Gotta love new motivation to run...

Catch me if you can.
D.

PS: Today feels like a good blog day. #2 and counting so far...

One year, Labor Day, and sunsets...

Today was a catch-up day from a great weekend away at the BEACH. Caught up on the gym, caught up on sleep, caught up on healthy foods again. The only easy part was the sleep...whew.

Anyway, the weekend was AMAZING. Celebrated ONE YEAR with Amanda down at Ocean Isle over the last few days, and straight-up bummed it at the beach. One year. It still amazes me how much we've done and experienced over the last 12 months, and how fast it's all flown by. One thing I'm sure of, though, is that I'm looking forward to making even MORE great memories as we venture into this new year together, and whatever the future holds for us.

Our actual anniversary was Friday the fourth (which is actually the first birthday of this blog too...hmmm...HAPPY late BLOGDAY, blog!). We got to the beach the night before and had the luxury of sleeping in until the late hour of 9:30ish (the sun was pretty bright, but hey, no complaints). The day went fast, but we made it to the lower point of Ocean Isle to catch the sunset, and when I say sunset, I mean SUNSET. You could see it falling as we walked down the open beach, and the weather was perfect. There were wisps of blue and purple and orange in the air, and as the sun continued to go down, it melted into dozens of different shades of red and yellow. Once we got to the point, we stood at the channel between the ocean and the Inter Coastal Waterway and in the golden reflection of the sun. Now, I'm trying to give you the best description I can of this sunset, because I don't have pictures yet. I'll post them when I get them, and they're beautiful, but they still won't do justice to what we saw that evening. Imagine the entire color spectrum glaring against the contrast of the dark clouds. Remember the abbreviation from physics? ROYGBIV. They were all there, and it was brilliant. The waves were crashing and fighting each other in and out of the channel, and the sun turned the beach orange as it began to hide behind the trees on the horizon. It began to fade to red towards the end, and then it was gone, leaving us with an orange sky straight from the tip of God's paintbrush to our eyes. WOW. And then we got a giant full moon to light up the waterway. Crucial.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and enjoying our time together. We biked Sunset on Saturday and discovered Bird Island, a lagoon behind a jetty at the lower point of the beach. Here we made a few friends and talked for a bit, which we always seem to do on our trips. People feel our vibe, and we feel theirs. It's cool. It was a beautiful day, and really the last of the sun we saw until Sunday night. Other than biking, we bummed around the place a lot, which was nice because we don't get the opportunity too often. Watched movies, popped popcorn, and cooked in the kitchen. We saved money from this, had some great meals, and spent time TOGETHER, which is the main reason we were there. It was great.

Besides enjoying our celebration, I got fired up to start doing some serious things in the next few weeks now that we're back. As much as it hurts to say it, Labor Day Weekend is kind of the unofficial end of summertime. Now that summer is unofficially over, I'm ready to get rolling with some positive changes in career status. The economy still sucks, as it has since I started this blog a year ago, but there are other possibilities. I'm going to look harder for jobs, but grad school is also more in the picture now. Don't know for sure if I'd go, but let me say that I bought a G.R.E. study book today, and I'll be signing up for the test in the very near future. Who knows what could happen with this in the coming months. All I know is that, as always, I'm excited.

Outta hear for now, but I'll be back soon. Goodnight.

Drew