Category: First course
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But What If I Don’t Know How…?!?!
It’s not like I don’t know the hospitality realm. Hell, I grew up in it. At age 5, I coughed my way through clouds of smoke as I helped the bartender at my stepfather’s Southern California restaurant wipe down his bar surface. Six months later, when my stepfather moved us east to D.C. so he…
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Ten Years Ago Today
Sept. 10, noon Credit card purchases: Hecht Company, misc. clothing; Hallmark store, cards; Nordstrom, cosmetics. Sept. 10, 5 p.m. I dropped Mr. Restaurant Gal off at Dulles Airport for a flight to Sweden. This was a perfectly normal part of our lives, saying goodbye every few weeks as Mr. RG took yet another flight to…
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Do They Still Make Cherry Bombs?
My dog Rouletta hasn’t done her business in two days. What business she has done has been done in a corner of her dog bed because she won’t step a paw outside. Thank you dear neighbors who have reduced my otherwise sweet and house-trained pup into a shaking, shivering and panting disaster in serious need…
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Princesses All
“I’ll be in Orlando for a day between business trips,” said RG Daughter during one of her daily calls a few days ago. “You have to come up.” I love it that RG Daughter calls me almost every day. It’s like she lives just over the fence and a shout away instead of 1000-plus miles…
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ADD Post
Student Loan Madness For months and months, I have been in touch with SallieMae to straighten out my six-plus student loans taken out over the past 8 years so that my kids could attend the college of their dreams. When you have undiagnosed-but-surely-have adult ADD, SallieMae is not a realm in which to wallow. Because…
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Doing the Math
I am never late. I never call out. I do it all and as close to perfect as I can. Although I was sure on day one four months ago that I couldn’t possibly do the job for which I was just hired, I was equally sure by day 14 that I am better at…
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It’s Not that I Have Nothing to Say…
…It’s just that I am exhausted every single day from a season’s work schedule that starts at 5:30 a.m. and sometimes doesn’t end until 2 a.m., when I am on call for two other jobs. I have started three posts in three days. I hope to post at least one of them in the days…
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A Concert We Will Go!
I don’t know the last time I went to a concert. Okay, that’s a lie. When RG Daughter was in high school and was studying “The 60s” in history class (yeah, I know), she became obsessed with the Rolling Stones’ contribution to the music of that fine historical era. “We have to go see them,”…
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Server Trouble
No, not the hospitality-industry type. Rather, the host server for Restaurant Gal. If you had trouble accessing the site for the past two days, you were in good company. Rumors are swirling that the problem has been fixed. Thanks for checking in on RG.
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Charlie the Snowbird
You know the relative–the one who travels from house to house for extended stays with the various family members who diligently take their turns caring for the one who cannot care for himself. Such is Charlie, a young boy with an old soul and bad knees. He hails from D.C., but this winter, he called…