Winter Vacation?

So THIS is what it feels like to relax. After going from Mid July to late September without and job and then transitioning transitioning to having to rush around balancing work and school. Its nice to just be able to do nothing for a few weeks.

My written exams were so-so. Actually I did quite well on my Princples exam. Better than I thought I would. I credit it to the fact that I got my head out of my ass pretty early on and asked Chef Angus for some advice and guidance as to what to do. Like I said in an earlier blog, I think the lingering self doubt I sometimes have is what got me the first time through so I was glad to beat that this time. And with that in mind I'm pretty sure I did pretty crappy on my Banquets exam. I knew going into the exam that I had a low B. So part of me wasn't worried. Call me not dedicated enough, and give me all the crap you want for settling for JUST a B. But hell, its better than "settling" for C's and D's like in high school. Oh well.

The presentation I had to do for Principles went as well as you would expect from me. Which means, mass amounts of nervousness, mass amounts of rushing around finishing it and then an "oh fuck it, lets just do it" attitude about 2 seconds before. But I did GREAT. Not any of the stuttering or flusterness I'm known for when I get nervous. I made my points well. Chef Angus loved it. The one person from my class who I ran into a few days later loved it, it went great.

Friday after the catastrophe that was my exam, I went to the bar with some of the people from school....at like 5:30 at night. And this was one of those bars that was also a restaurant. So let me lay it out for you. 15 or so people between the ages of 21-40 + end of the semester + total end of school for some of them + some of them moving away + oh, the fact that you have culinary students who could regularly fill up a swear jar while SOBER = a recipe for trouble. ha. I had actually caught up to them after they had been there for an hour or so and promptly ordered a hamburger (btw, The Cottage Bar KINDA knows how to make Medium Rare). A bunch of them had had a shot just before I got there and then had another one after I had been there 10 minutes. Then someone may have dropped the f-bomb. And there was a family next to us who didn't really like that. And doing what I do best, I was like "screw it" and just ate my hamburger. Eventually they moved. I suppose I should feel kind of bad. But thats life. The other people around us loved us though, so I think it evens it out.

After we kindly and subtley got pressured to leave some of us met up with a few other people at another bar and the drinking continued. Although then I had to be lame and go pick up my sister from the airport. But I think I learned something that night. That I totally should've started hanging out with Culinary folk sooner. It was nice to hang out with people I felt comfortable with and could be myself with. I havn't had enough of that lately other than hanging with Zigs and G-Spot. And furthermore, being done with the semester and the feel good feeling I have from it REALLY reafrirmed my decision to go back to culinary school. While I've come to the conclusion that I may not become the best cook out there, I HAVE regained a sense of direction and idea of where to go in life.

In other news:

~ I have a fan (or fans). Today at work Peter brought up that he had read my blog and saw what I wrote. And to clear the air, he IS African American. In my defense I had worked with someone as dark as him who had a similar accent and was from Central or South America. But oh well. He gave me some good natured ribbing about it but said he didn't mind.

~Still kind of in limbo with work. I'm waiting to see what my schedule will get switched to once I move back to only night availiability. Should be interesting to see

~ I made stock and then Mushroom soup from the Les Halles cook book. Good shit, I took pictures they'll be up soon.

Life

Damn....its been almost 2 weeks since I've posted. Ironically I don't think many people know about this blog yet, so I guess it works out. ha.

Anyway time to get you all up to speed.

My practical ended up going okay. I was nervous as hell, it was kind of chaotic. But with a few pointers and suggestions (and a slight bit of inspiration) from my table partner I ended up hanging in there and getting an 86 out of 100, which I think works out to be somewhere in the B range. So yeah, I'm happy. Pictures of it will hopefully be around soon.

School in general is going good. Its almost done for the semester and I'm happy with how I did. I seem to be more genuinely interested and enthusiastic than I was the first time around. I am kind of bummed that theres a portion of what I learned before that I havn't retained. But I'm still learning things and and making a forward motion in knowledge and confidence. So I'm hoping I can keep that up. I still have two more big assignments due next week, so once those are past I can relax a bit.

Work is work. Although its been kind of hectic. It seems that two of the guys I was working with both had fake green cards. And so yeah, they both got fired. So things were crazy for a few weeks why they were trying to get everything covered. But now they have one new guy hired and maybe another so things are almost back to normal. I'm kind of hoping that with some of the minor shuffling going on that I can start cooking. But the one thing working against me is my speed so I'm not really sure yet. Maybe I should talk to my boss about that.

Thanksgiving kind of sucked. Due to the afforementioned problems with losing two people, I ended up having to work. Which was SUPER crazy. Yeah, it sucked.

My birthday was okay. I never did end up going out. But I got enough new cookbooks to leave me busy for a few months. Yeah, thats that.

So yeah, thats my last two weeks in a nutshell