Streamy thoughts after a rainy couple of days..

It's rained the past three days here.  LAME.  This place is supposed to get maybe fifteen inches of rainfall a year and a third of my days thus far have involved rain.  I'm clearly the bad luck guy who brought the bad weather with him.  Maine has been reasonably nice since I left.  The mid-Atlantic has been getting pounded, presumably because Mother Nature first thought I had headed there.  It looks like she's found me now...what a jerk I is.  K, I'm over it.

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O, I got a job.  I'm the weekend dough roller at Round Table Pizza - Kaanapali.  It's a pretty prestigious position.  I Put forty pounds of pizza dough through a rolling machine a bunch of times, slowly thinning it out, then I cut pizza crusts out of it.  The room I work in is about 35 square feet and has one porthole window into the rest of the shop.  It's miserable, haha.  I guess I technically got hired Wednesday but I went in on Thursday to watch the weekday dough roller do his thing and that was when I got my name tag and and :Round Table - Maui" trucker hat.  The owner was out of town for the week so I have to wait on my t-shirts.  I can always use more t-shirts...

My first real day was today.  My 18 year old boss/manager didn't seem impressed with my skills.  And for good reason - I was moderately terrible.  But I started off in a sour mood because this clock-knocker told me to arrive to work at 8am.  This wasn't a big deal.  The big deal was that he didn't show up until 9am...so I sat in front of the locked pizza shop for an hour.  Really made my day...no, wait, it did not make my day.

Once we got going it wasn't too bad, except when I was in on Thursday the weekday dough roller sort of stood over my shoulder while I rolled once or twice and had no problem saying "You're doing it wrong; do this."  My manager today loved the standing over the shoulder watching part but enjoyed waiting until I butchered 40 pounds of dough before he said, "How do you think things are going?"  Buddy, I have a blob the size of Jobba the Hut and it's supposed to be a quarter inch thick and 40 feet long...how do you think I THINK things are going?

I didn't say that, which is why it's not in quotes.  I thought that.  Feedback is good.  JUST GIVE ME IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK, DAMMIT.  All I really needed to hear is, "Hey asshole: Use more flour so it won't fucking stick back together you donkey shoe."  Ahhh, yes, thank you.  I was putting flour on but it was just a light dusting which would be absorbed long before I got my snake of dough folded and set up for another run through.  Flour is your friend; I know this now.  Thanks for the update, Big Ben.

After that debacle did I feel bad when he said, "Well, you can leave because I have to make more dough and it's going to be another hour before it's ready..."  No, I did not.  I worked my shift and that was good enough for me on my first day.  I just hope I don't get fired.  I don't know if I could handle having to listen to an 18 year old kid tell me those eleven sad, fateful, traumatic words that NO ONE ever wants to hear: "Maybe you're just not cut out to be a dough roller."

I think I can (I think I can...I think I can...I Think I can...) be the best damn dough roller out there.  But we shall see...we shall see.

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In other news I picked up a badass cruiser bicycle on Friday.  It's an classic old, women's Schwinn from WAY back.  This sucker weighs about as much as I do.  But it's got six speeds, a rack on the back and it's spray painted royal blue so on Friday when I was cruising around town I looked like I belong.  Mad props everywhere I looked form the locals.  Progress is a good thing (not sure whether this "progress" is actually taking me forwards or backwards...but I'm not going to worry about that for awhile...Shhh.).  It's a little moist outside so I'm not going to bother to take a digital photograph for you today.  But trust me, it looks as good as you'd expect a bike purchased from a recycled bike shop to look.

My ringing rainfall to Lahaina aside, this bike purchase also demonstrated the poor luck which I have most of the time.  After taking a quick public bus ride then walking a couple of miles (Had to save that dollar!) south to Lahaina Twon where the bike store was located, buying the bike then cruising town for a couple hours because I had nothing better to do I returned to where I've been laying my head to rest to read a little and just hang out.  Once home I remembered I had seen a number for a place to live while I was running that morning so I decided to hop on  Babe (I think that's what I'm going to name her.  She's a big blue ox, if I've ever seen one.  And this time it's got the required female parts [read: low pole] so it's definitely a girl's name.  I don't have to choose gender-neutral names like the Blue Goose and the Red Dragon/Little Red Wagon this time around.


ANYWAYS I saddle up and POP.  I hoped I just hit a rock and the POP was the rock bouncing out and away so I start cranking up the road...and right when I get to where I saw the telephone number I'm about on the rim.

Fucker.  I had run over a tack and it popped my front tire.  I decided to walk Babe home because I'm a gentleman and I didn't want to rough her up when we're just getting to know each other.  J.Mac is a big time biker so he's got enough patches to seal up, well, something really big that needs to get sealed up but this bike's from probably the 70's so it certainly doesn't have quick release tires.  Meaning I need a wrench to take the front tire off.  A wrench I do not have. So I'm left with the need to go to the supermarket and buy a $10 wrench to fix my tire or take the bike all the way down to Lahaina, probably most of it on foot, to get it patched down there.  Needless to say, I'm going to buy the wrench at the supermarket and then try to return it after I get the tire fixed.  What happens when I pop another tire?  I do the same damn thing.  $10 for a wrench?  That's been more than a day's worth of food here.

Which reminds me that I live about 100 yards from a sick [read: good] Farmer's Market/organics store.  Everything is expensive on this island but this place is actually fairly reasonably priced.  Somehow most of it's items are cheaper than identical items at the supermarkets.  I don't really get it but I like they're style.  I wish this natural foods store sold wrenches...but that's not where I was going with this.  This is where I was going with this: They have this pretty tasty hot foods bar that has rices, a chili and a soup dish, then six or seven different entree's to choose from.  While the daily rate of $8/lb doesn't do it for me...it goes to half off an hour before the store closes, right smack at 6pm.  So the past three days I've gone in to grab a little dinner along with a few other homeless people that live nearby.  They're legitimate homeless people and they're great people.  But, shit, today I got a delicious black bean and corn burrito and some vegetable pad thai for less than four Washington's.  STEAL!  Couple that with the five dollar foot longs I buy at Subway every now and again which work out to two meals and you can see how I'm shedding pounds.

They also have delicious Blueberry Flax granola that I mix with yogurt for a meal, too.  I'm always a sucker for granola and yogurt.  It tastes just like it smells: DELICIOUS.

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I got my first honk and whistle from some ladies on my run Friday morning.  That's an aspiring-anorexic's wet dream right there.  Svelte, here I come!  Actually, I'd like to be sinewy.  But I don't think guys who are under 5'9" can be sinewy as sinewy has connotations of long and lean.  Shucks.  Svelte can work, I guess...

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On a side note, this could be the last time you hear from me.  I'm going to partake in an Aluminum Man event Sunday at 8am.  And no, this event doesn't involve imbibing in tall, cool Uncle SteveWeisers - those will be saved for later in the day.  The Aluminum Man is a half mile swim, followed by a half mile beach run, followed by a three mile run.  Have I mentioned before that I'm not a strong swimmer?  Well, I'm not a strong swimmer.  I'd say there are even odds that I will succumb to the murky depths.  I don't see the trot being any picnic, either.  Wish me luck..

Cheers.