A Parlour for a Plague

I love the way you handle things.

no thanks.

In even the current situation, I refuse to partake in certain absurdities. This includes sitting at a table of an overpriced restaurant, outdoors while strong winds rage and rain pours down in buckets.

Nor will I eat outside while at a table in brutally cold weather.

Further, I never have and hopefully never will, stand on a line to get into a restaurant.

In all the above, if they provide takeout, then give me that and off I'll go. In brutal cold, I might just go to a local park and nosh away there.

Knew ya couldn’t.
It’s a myth anyway.
The eyes don’t necessarily tell you ****.
How they treat you says it all.

While most people enjoy going out to eat once a while, I think it’s really a younger persons thing.

In regular times, on the weekend, 95% of the people who are lined up for brunches and such are under a certain age.

It’s really more about seeing and being seen, the mating game.

I just want to get something to eat. I prefer taking it home.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong about using going out to eat in order to meet new people, whether you’re conscious of doing it or not.

I’ve met enough people. I’m not going to be besties with a 25 or 28 year old. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but do I really want to? Nope. Not a bit.

She came in mouseless!

Eating out or coffee with friends is one of my favourite things to do and I’m 67 in a month.

Not in actual rain.

It’s not a particular age group thing here at all.

Then why do so many more of a particular age group eat out so often?

I’m not saying every one, or all the time. I’m going to be seeing a friend tomorrow so I can show her something, and chances are we’ll do something involving edibles.

How often do you see a line of people over 45 or 50 wrapped around a building waiting to get in to eat a meal?
There’s no problem with that. It’s where their priorities are socially. They might not be specifically there to meet let’s say a potential love interest, but they’re open to it.

It’s the natural course of things. I think it’s cute.
It’s like seeing a young couple who are so enraptured with each other they know that no one else has ever felt that way.
It’s sweet.

Someone older? They’ve established their peer group. Going out is obviously less often. That’s good too. For everything there is a season.

Oh I could, I just don't want to.

Another moment of possible insanity struck a few hours ago.

Although I am not in dire need of anything in the grocery world, I checked my favorite online grocer. Immediately, I looked at paper products. There was good news and bad. Toilet paper is back. Not being grerdy, I purchased two of the four packs (Scott with the 1000 sheets per rolll. I'm now in possession of 23 rolls. (I am living in a future expectation of I don't rightly know what)

However, paper towels are not available again. And I'm down to my last 12 rolls! (It was earlier panicky buying).

A few weeks ago I read an article somewheres that said people who buy the way I do are something (other than crazy) and it was a good thing to be. BUt, I can't recall what it is that am....other than mildly obsessed.

And no tissues available for my nose.... Hasn't been any of them for months and I don't have a prudent reserve of them!


So, how are all of you fine folks this morning/afternoon/evening?

What I want to know Sturgis, is where I can find a cannister of wipes?

As far as how I'm doing, pretty well.

I haven't talked about it before, because I figured I'd put a jinx on it, but it looks like the sale of my house is going to go through this time.

The closing for the new owners is on August 11, and my closing for my new house is scheduled for August 12.

I have until August 16 to get out of this house.

Tomorrow I'm going to 2 furniture stores where I have picked out what I want, and put in my order for delivery after Aug 12. Maybe I'll get to the mattress store too. I'm getting myself one of those Purple Bed mattresses! A premium hybrid model.
I know the sectional I got will not be delivered until sometime in Sept. The other stuff, like the bed frames, mattresses can be delivered earlier.

Originally I was going to have Habitat for Humanity come by and pick up a lot of things furniture wise. Then I discovered they can't come into a home, and you have to put stuff outside.

So, I'm going to have the movers take those items to the new house, and put them in the garage.
Then, when things settle I'll call HH to pick it up.

I'm keeping a couple pieces like a really good sofa and armchair, to use until the new stuff comes, then I'll put the sofa in the master, and the armchair in the guest bedroom.
I am really attached to those two pieces.

This sounds like a lot of material stuff, but no, it's all going to be very much only what serves a purpose to me.
Of course I'll have art, but I'm going to have to really love it.

You know what? It feels really good to make all the choices for a change, and not have to consider what someone else likes.

We don’t line up. We book.

We had a toilet paper disappearance again recently. Possibly because one of our states,Victoria, has a large covid spike,with people in lockdown again in some areas

This in a state with one known case! But we are back to being able to dine inside restaurants again and the distancing has come down and the number of people you can be with has gone up, so people may be expecting another spike.

I got 2 canisters of wipes from Stop and Shop a few weeks ago.
Also scored a 40 ounce bottle of hand sanitizer at the pharmacy.

And happy things are moving in a good direction for you Chai.

That choice thing is a major bonus to being single, I think.

I have two friends in particular with problems in that area.

One’s husband has completely opposite taste, so buying furniture, houses etc is a nightmare. He also believes in totally native gardens, which means everywhere they have gone he has taken out all fruit trees and anything, no matter how beautiful, that wasn’t native. She was both tolerant and frantically busy so generally put up with that, but told him if he took out the lemon tree in their current house, she’d divorce him. Little bugger took it out when she was overseas on business. We offered to take a contract out on him after that, but she let him live!

The other has a husband with a clinical level anxiety disorder about money.

So....they now have heaps to retire on but, because of him, are stuck in the little starter home they bought decades ago.

There’s no dining area and she loves to cook and entertain. It’s dark and poky and makes her really miserable now.

It stresses him so much to think about moving or renovating, because of the money, that she can’t bear to keep pushing.

He’s a lovely man but has no insight into the fact that his anxiety is totally unreasonable

It drives me nuts at second hand because he’s seeing a shrink who clearly has no expertise in working with anxiety, which has well proven treatments, and because I see the toll it takes on her.

You mean like booking a reservation?

Oh sure, we do that too. A lot of the time eating out is a spur of the moment type thing though.
The only places where people line up all around the side of the building is somewhere that is really hip and popular with the young crowd, and it's part of the whole experience to wait. It's like what they do on the weekend. Get up from partying the night before, put on makeup (gender dependent), all primped up, then meet your gang and go over to the restaurant for an overpriced brunch and stand around posing, feeling woke, entitled, whatever the ****, then go in and have and $8 coffee and some locally sourced kale juice.
Like I mentioned, it's all part of "seeing and being seen".
If there wasn't a line, they wouldn't go there. They Want a line. That's the social aspect.

It's like standing in line to get into a popular night club.

Heh, when doing uber eats, there's a place called Phoebe's that's one of the hot brunch places. It's less than a mile from my house.
I'd turn on my uber app around 11am on a Sunday morning, and it would almost immediately go off for a pickup from Phobe's.

The thing is, the place would be so overrun with people and their cars, they had a guy who was kept busy all morning putting a boot on people's cars if they parked in front of the convenience store, or even down the other end of the parking lot where you're not supposed to park.

The first time I pulled up there, obviously no spots. I know running in and out would take no more than a minute, so I pulled in a place on the side where I thought I'd be ok for 60 seconds. I even put the uber sign on my dashboard.
Ran in, picked up order off counter, ran out. It would have been half the time but I had to get the 20 people standing in line out of my way. There's the boot guy already there, just getting ready to bend over and put the boot on my tire.
I'm running, balancing coffee and pancakes or whatever it was, calling out "OH! Sir! pleasepleaseplease, sorrysorrysorry. I was just picking up uber." He just said "you're lucky you weren't 2 more seconds"

The next week, I made sure I parked where I could. As I was walking down the sidewalk, some guy was yelling at the boot man, who was just ignoring him. That guy wasn't lucky.
I don't blame the boot man, he's only doing his job. You let one person off, everyone will want it.
I got booted once at another place, and had to pay the guy right there with a credit card something like $120 for him to remove the boot.

So....from then on, whenever I got a chime for Phoebe's, I rejected it.

I'm with you Deb.
I don't think anything about waiting for a few minutes when walking into a restaurant.
Is booking a reservation the usual for any restaurant there?
How much advance notice to you give?

That's awful when someone has the money, won't part with any of it, and there's no good reason why not.

It reminds me (sorry if I sound like I'm not making sense, my mind is just making all these connections) of how people will get screaming and violent over not getting their coffee, or hamburger right.
The person they are yelling at may try to remain calm, but it obviously gets to them. You can see a million videos on youtube of people absolutley losing it over the most minor things. The person they are yelling at could hand them a hundred dollar bill, and it wouldn't help anything.

I had a revelation a couple days ago, watching one of these types of videos.

I thought "It's not about the coffee, is it?"
When you see someone like that, what is going on in that persons life that is making them do this?

Relating it to the guy who won't spend any money. I wonder if he has ever sat down and figured out how much he needs to live a good life, and pad that number by 10% or more. Then look at what he actually has. I get anxiety, oh boy do I.
I have no answers for that man.
I do know if you don't know where you are right now, you can't know how to get where you want to go.

Thank you.
Today is good.

We don’t have a queue for hot restaurants culture. Young people queue for night clubs.

Some places don’t take bookings but I wouldn’t queue for more than a few minutes if we got there and it was really busy.

Sometimes you try a place just to see if they have a spare table, but it’s no drama to walk to the next place or even a few places generally, except for popular nights or times, then you’d want to book anyway.

How far ahead to book depends on popularity and luck.

Where I live is normally a tourist hot spot on weekends and holidays,especially summer holidays, so I’d be booking well ahead for good and popular places.

Around Christmas you might be wanting to book for staff things or Christmas get togethers a few months ahead

But we have a big cafe culture where people come in just for coffee or for a light meal and move on quickly, and there are heaps of places to eat in most areas.

There’s certainly hot eateries for young people, but they often have hard wooden stools, which my back won’t take, so I don’t keep track.

But generally people of all ages like to be out and about and the ages seem to mingle with ease.

I’m doing a compassion course right now which says to always look at the underlying need when people are being arseholes...I’ve certainly dealt with lots of aresholery both in hospitality and professionally.

I see most violent men who aren’t sociopaths as terribly insecure, frightened little boys and tried to meet them there. Sadly a lot of them were very, very dangerous to any partners or, worst case, would kill their kids to get back at partners. Scared babies in powerful bodies are potentially lethal.

I have several times dropped a man who was arrogant to wait staff just like that.

To me it’s a real danger sign if someone abuses someone who can’t tell them to leave.

I have to say, the first set bosses in the first Chinese restaurant I worked at would only allow so much aggression towards staff from non Chinese people. If a customer was Chinese they expected you to take whatever from them, because all white people (and any race but Chinese) were so inferior to all Chinese.

I recall one incident where a drunk had been obnoxious and threatening to me and other staff and suddenly all the kitchen staff rushed out with machetes and threw him out!

The next lot of bosses expected you to take anything and the Chinese woman boss, herself, said absolutely nothing when a super arsehole customer actually stubbed his cigarette on her hand! I would have called the police.