Gathering myself!

The last couple days have been rather catastrophic, following the enjoyable weekend I had in Hoboken for Jaime's birthday celebration.

My bad luck began on Monday afternoon when I lost my keys! Jaime and I did a thorough search of her house and bedroom looking for my keys. We also called Panera's, where we had lunch that day, asking them if they had found a misplaced set of keys. No such luck. At that time, we decided to check the parking lots of Panera's and Sovereign Bank, where Jaime had taken me earlier so she could make a transaction, but we could not find the keys under any circumstances.

Jaime, who has a basic AAA membership, called AAA to come to my car and open the door so I could get my stuff out of there. Afterwards, we called a locksmith to make a key replacement. Fortunately, one universal key operates my ignition as well as the doors, so I only needed one replacement. Thanks to Jaime and her AAA membership, I paid $125 rather than $175. This past weekend was a fun and exciting weekend that was capped off by total madness and chaos. It can be compared to a delicious homemade-baked cake, fresh from the oven, which is topped with dogshit for icing.

As if that was not enough, I received a message from Mike the G.M. at work, telling me that I was on the schedule for Monday at 4pm. WTF???? After exchanging phone numbers with my certified trainer at Saturday morning's mandatory meeting, she informed me that she was going to call me and tell me when I was going to work as a certified server who had passed training class. She said it would most likely be Tuesday at the earliest. I could live with that. I stayed at Jaime's for the entire weekend, without a single until Monday night at 5:10pm, when the G.M. finally told me that I was supposed to work that night. The manager was not mad at me; he summed it up as a miscommunication and told me to come in the following night (Tuesday) at 4:30pm.

Driving home from Central Jersey, I ran into some God-awful traffic, perhaps the worst traffic I had ever encountered on the highways in my six years of driving. Apparently there was an overturned truck on Rt. 80, which caused a nine car pile up. I was backed up in traffic for at least eight miles. As a result, I was late to work last night. I was so fed up and frustrated that I knew I was not going to be able to server tables. Last night was supposed to be my first day of getting tables, but I declined and suggested that I undergo one more day of training. Sure enough, I still needed practice with the P.O.S. system, so it was a good thing that I chose not to accept my own tables yesterday.

After taking some time to think about the situation as a whole, I take into account that I was frustrated from driving home in traffic and losing my keys the previous day. I am off today and tomorrow, but I am scheduled to work Friday's lunch shift as a server. It will be my first day of getting tables. Either today or tomorrow, I plan on talking to G.M. about my experiences yesterday as well as training last week. He believes I am ready to work on Friday; he felt as though I was ready yesterday. We will talk about it very soon. On Friday, I will give it a try without any frustration or monkeys on my back. Afterall, I need to complete this internship and make some money. My G.M., just as he had planned to do yesterday, is likely going to let me start off with a maximum one or two tables at a time.

Until then, I am using these two days to cool off, relax, and gather myself. I must make sure that I am right for Friday afternoon, or else there will be another disastrous meltdown.

I look forward to returning to Atlantic City this Saturday night for Jame's 23 birthday. This will be the first of three weekends in an upcoming five week period during which I will be hitting up Atlantic City. I love Atlantic City; it has been a while since I have gone there. A conservative amount of gambling and alcohol consumption will be the theme of the evening this Saturday night. Supposedly, we are going to the Borgota to do the gambling and then we're all going to the Irish Pub for the drinking. The cheese fries at Irish Pub are slammin'.

At this time, I want to go to Panera's for lunch. This time, I'll remember to keep my keys in my pocket!

Take care and have a nice day.

Peace.