Friday: 5-29-09: Hot Boat Cold Boat
(note: with this entry begins the posts I have written and saved over the past six weeks since getting the new laptop. Until the blog is caught up to date, I will post two or three of the entries per day, depending on their length.)
Woke up sweating, 9:30AM, harassed by flies. Worked with Charles in his office again, instructing him on how to move the songs he purchases on iTunes between computers. A series of random individuals comes through the unlocked front door of the closed restaurant- boaters wanting gas, a UPS driver, a man looking for a beach. Charles, never one to loose his patience, deals with each person calmly, even getting out a map to direct the man to the beach.
11PM, Sarah is sweating in Gonzo’s cabin, sitting behind her laptop computer. We cash our paychecks at the Northern Neck Bank, only 200 feet up the road from the marina. Sarah points out on ancient change counting/sorting machine behind the counter. “Yeah, that’s been in here since 1958″, the teller says, “the main office offered me a new one and I said they would have to kill me before they took that old one away”.
I cook us cheeseburgers on the Coleman, eaten on the restaurant patio in a mostly futile attempt to find a breeze. No escape, we resign ourselves to the boat’s v-berth, napping for an hour, harassed by the same flies, or so I would like to believe they are the same flies so I can hate them more. Why must flies be so attracted to human faces, especially the lips.
4PM. Wake up with dripping forehead. Dish washing shift begins. Effortless compared to the insanity of last Sunday. No cage of dishes forms around me tonight, easy to keep up, even plenty of time to help other kitchen workers with their tasks.
Sarah borrows bartender Ann’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee to make an important Wal-Mart run to Kilmarnock, Gonzo desperately requiring an air conditioner. She returns with a tiny $109 window unit, perfect to fit in the base of the hatch. I seal the gaps around the edges by cutting up sections of the styrofoam packaging. A semi-comfortable summer is now secured…just must now find a way to do laundry…..
Saturday: 5-30-09
Since my earliest memories as a consumer, I always buy the broken one, as was the case with the new air condition Sarah bought last night. A bit warm outisde this morning, we cranked it on. Ten minutes of wonderfully cool, dehumidified air……then stupid normal air. Turn it off, back on……same situation…just 10 more minutes of conditioned air. Like a caring foster family, we brought this air conditioner into our lives, into our home, only to be mocked and teased by it. No actually, we are more like the manipulative foster family that uses people to our advantage, then throws them out when they no longer serve a purpose…..
I began to envision the machine sinking to the creek bottom, but Charles noticed our struggles, offering, “just throw it in the back of my truck and I’ll get it back to Wal-Mart for you”. He was on the deck using a gas-powered nail gun to fix loose boards as two large shiny yachts eased into slips using their fancy-pants side thrusters. One of the dock boards had come up when I stepped off the boat yesterday, nearly sending me into the creek. “Look, they’re building the docks for us”, one of the yacht pilots smirks. The two big boats are nearly too wide to fit in the slips, one of which begins making a horrid scraping noise as waves rub a corner of its stern into the dock, leaving black/green smudges on what had been shiny perfection. The other yacht docks better, but the woman on board becomes outraged with the man on board when the air conditioner shuts off for a few seconds between the time he shuts off the engine and plugs into shore power. She flings open the rear sliding glass door, teeth clenched, face contorted, “The….air…..conditioner…IS….NOT…..WORKING”. She should be locked in Gonzo’s cabin for a few hours. It would be like solitary confinement.
A night’s reprieve from dishwashing. Order checking instead, taking all the food produced by the cooks and arranging the plates as to the orders of specific tables. A very easy job during most shifts, allowing plenty of downtime to help others with their tasks, mainly the dishwasher.
Sarah worked a busing shift, her first shift ever in the restaurant, as she’d just been in the gift shop before tonight. Her busing means that we pass each other continually all night and that I can poke her in the sides each time.
Once all the customers were clear and the night was over, Charles and his wife Olivia told me playfully, “If you ever have any suggestions about how we could improve the business, let us know. We are going to teach you and Sarah how to do everything so you can run the restaurant.”
One of the waitress’s, Terrie(sister of the dishwasher Sharon), brought five DVD’s in for us to borrow. She’s previously offered to lend a 13-inch TV/DVD player and an expensive 50AMP marine extension cord, both of which I declined. She claims that her husband owns nine boats. I readily accepted the DVD’s, tonight watching “Freeway” on the computer. Quite an entertaining movie, but recommended for the under-40 crowd that’s used to excessive movie violence.
Sunday: 5-31-09
Violent seagull fight. Fights are not unusual as the birds vie for the dead fish floating from the processing plants, but prolonged violent encounters are not the norm. The average fight consists of brief foot chases and just lots of crying, on land or docks, but this morning’s fight was on the water, 15 minutes of desperate screeches. Sticking my head from Gonzo’s hatch, I wasn’t the only boater curious of the disturbance, seeing other heads also searching for the source. And that source was two gulls floating just 20 feet offshore, necks intertwined, wings flailing, sharp beaks wildly slashing at each other. An all-out bird brawl. The cause of the fight was uncertain, as nothing was visible in the water. Still, both birds appeared to be searching for something, maybe a piece of food that had been lost in the heat of battle. One bird eventually swam away, keeping its wings outstretched in an apparent effort to make itself look tough. Considering it was the loosing bird, the attempt at looking tough in the face of defeat must have been for the purpose of ego repair. Just like a beaten human struggling to keep a straight expression while experiencing extreme pain, as not to feel embarrassed, in their own eyes or others. Gull personalities are much like roosters, so such rationality may not be all that unbelievable.
A few hours alone in the afternoon after Sarah begins her gift shop shift. I spend the time customizing the new computer, removing the unwanted pre-installed startup programs that automatically load at startup, installing Avast(anti-virus), Skype, Filezilla(FTP). Some new Dells are apparently being shipped with a major flaw – Control Panel will not open. Researching the error, many other victim reports were immediately found, all new Dell users. Considering the problem is well documented, it’s surprising that Dell would ship out more systems without fixing the problem. Or, maybe it isn’t surprising considering Dell has become so extremely large of a company. Getting big, popular, successful destroys everything, a concept that never fails. We will all end up starving if the idea of world government ever become a reality. Nobody will do anything. Dells can be found everywhere from Vietnamese Consulate offices in China to public universities in America. How did they do that anyway?
Passing by the gift shop on my way to work, Sarah said that the bartender Ann had just told of her karate prize-fighter ex-husband who once beat up Chuck Norris and also fought Bruce Lee. She didn’t discuss the results of the Lee fight.
The restaurant was so slow tonight that there was barely even a dish to wash. Keeping myself occupied, I organized every storage shelf, finding many instances of multiple partially-used packages of the same item, especially spices, like 6 half cans of thyme in three different places.
Completing the workday, Sarah and I watched the movie “The Whole Ten Yards”. All I can say is that it passed the time decently. The original was better. But, if somebody gives it to you, as was the case here, then you might as well watch it. Maybe they could put that quote on the back of the box.