okay, let's do this

Wow, it;s been a really long time since I last updated this thing, I'm still hoping to update it more frequently, but for some reason when I get home, I just don't want to sit down and write about my day for 1/2 an hour. Maybe it has something to do with me getting home at 12 almost every night. Anyway, I'm going to try to update this thing at least 2 times a week, if not more. Well, here's some things that I can remember about the last 3 weeks.

A couple weeks ago I got to work one on one with chef in the kitchen, which means that it was just him and me working the line. This isn't unusual for H5O, since it's usually just me and Amber, or me and Robyn, or Amber and Robyn working the line. But this made me feel good, it kinda made me feel like chef was testing me to see if I was up to his standards as a chef. Monday was dead, I think we did 5-6 heads, but Tuesday was insane, doing about 60-85 heads, and when each person orders 2-3 plates, it really adds up. Long story short, we were busy nonstop on Tuesday days, but it was a good kind of busy. When service was done and chef was getting ready to leave for the night, he turned to me and said "That was a great service Brendan, I can't wait to tell Amber and Robyn about it", I felt so good about myself. After that was all said and done, chef left me to break down the line by myself. He showed me how to clean the flat top and the french top on Monday, so I had no problem with this. I got out at around 11:20ish, which is pretty good considering it was just me.

I went in to work last week to go over some paper work with chef about how well I'm doing as an extern. It has basic questions on it like "does he follow standard recipes"(which we don't have), and "can he properly identify food", just basic things that every chef should know. Now, I got to fill one of these out for myself, and I gave myself some pretty bad scores, I gave myself a couple 2's even, cause I just felt like I should be able to do things a lot faster than I was doing them, and this made me nervous about what Nick was going to say about me. It went a lot better than I hoped it could. I don't think he gave me anything under a 4 during the 20ish question sheet. He even told me that I can do somethings better than everyone else in the kitchen, and that he's probably going to get me hired in the next couple of weeks. That really made my day, and even though I got up at 7 am to do this, I was full of energy and just plain happy.

The next day I had to go back in to work cause I forgot my hours sheet at home. This was okay with me thought because it gave me an excuse to hang out with one of my bestest friends from WCI. Alex was my friend from day 1, and it took me a while to realize that we were even in the same orientation group a month before we started school. Anyways, she works at Cafe Bleu, which is a small cafe that sells things made by students, mainly brownies, sandwiches, bagels, and cookies, along with drinks. I turned in my paperwork and immediately ran down to go hangout with her. We talked about how well our externships are going, comparing different injuries, basic things like that. I think I was there for a couple of hours, because she had to close down for the night. We made plans to try to get a group of us who are still in Oregon to go to the Zoo someday and hangout, than I left thinking that I wouldn't see her again for a while. Well, wouldn't you know it, a max cart broke down somewhere before my stop, so not only was the max late, but when it stopped and opened it's doors, it resembled a bus from India. Crowded, not enough room to stand, and hot from body heat. I decided to take the next one, since it usually isn't as bad. Well, I was wrong, it was worse. But during the wait Alex caught up to me and we got to talk some more.

The Max rolled around again and opened it's doors reviling all the people trapped inside. We made our way up the stairs, only to be pushed in further by a couple of stragglers. The people that got in behind us were pretty cool though, I talked with them for a bit before they got of, like, 2 stops later. After that, nothing really happened, that is, until someone on the Max said something rather scary. I don't remember the whole thing, but it was along the lines of how he curb stomped a "sandniggers" head in when he was in Iraq. The max went silent after this. I mean, dead silent. Non one wanted to upset this angry angry man. Alex, who was standing close to him, turned and looked at me with a worried face, while I was holding back laughter at the absurdity of the conversation. It's nothing to laugh about for sure, I had never once in my life heard someone say something like that with a serious tone in real life. I've heard stuff like that in movies, but it never occurred to me that people actually said things like that in this day and age, and it kinda worried me. The worst part was this guy got off the max at the zoo with a couple of small children. I just wondered what he was teaching them as the max rolled away.

My schedule changed, so now I'm working Friday-Tuesday. It's not so bad, it's just a couple extra hours a week. Friday an Saturday are our busiest night's, and we stay opened till midnight. Like I said, not that bad. I get to go into work later on Friday, which is a plus, I guess. Mainly I'm just hoping that one of these days matches up with Ela's off days so that we can hang with Alex somewhere downtown, maybe go out and get something to eat together.

And finally, Yesterday I stabbed myself in the hand with an oyster shucker. Thank god thee tip was broken, so it didn't go very deep, but still, it hurt. The wound is tiny and unimpressive, but it's on a sensitive part of my hand, so anytime I grab something, it hurts a little. Robyn also told me the I was getting better everyday, and that I was already better than some of the people that they had hired in the last couple of months. I could tell that she meant it too, which made me feel really good.

Okay, that's all I can really remember about those weeks. Hopefully I get the urge to update my blog more often, cause I know that some people actually read it, and I didn't really wanna let them down.

When I get angry, I cut myself

Well, tonight was the first night that I got to work on the line with Chef Nick. I'm going to admit that when I woke up this morning, I was more than a little nervous. I didn't want to mess up in front of chef, especially since he is the one who decides whether or not I get the job there. I got to work 20 minutes early, put on my apron, and got to work. We didn't expect many people to show since it was labor day, which turned out to be correct. Most of my day was spent cleaning or making Caesar rolls. Chef was out of the kitchen for most of the day working on the Fall menu that we're going to switch too soon, which left me alone for most of the day. I played my music while doing odd jobs around the kitchen, singing along with Starfucker and Asleep in the Sea while straining beef stock.

around 8:30-9:00 we got busy fora while, but not enough to really stop us from cleaning. Near the end of the day chef was talking about a show he watched over the weekend called "Lock up" or something, he told us that it's a show about prisons, and how one of his favorite quotes from the show was "When I get out of prison in 20 years, how am I going to tell my kids that I cut myself when I get angry?!" Chef's response was "Maybe you would tell them why you were in prison for 20 years, and not why you cut yourself, you dumb motherfucker." We all had a jolly guffaw at this remark.

Cleaning went by super fast today, chef showed me how to clean the flat top and the french top, which was useful. I basically did all the cleanup today though. I swept and mopped the floors, I wiped down all the counters, I broke down the line, I took out the trash/recycling/linens and I cleaned the fryer. I finished all the cleanup by myself before we were technically closed for the day. At 10:00pm I left the kitchen, walked into the park across the street, called my sister, and waited for her to pick me up. While I waited in the cool night's air, listening to Danger Doom, and looking out into the water, a strange looking man with a flour in his hair asked me for a cigarette. I told him sorry, and that I didn't smoke, wherein he replied "Dammit" and walked away. This isn't the first time I have been asked for a cigarette, and it got me thinking that maybe I should carry around a pack of Marlboro's, just in case someone asked me for a smoke. I always feel bad when I don't have any cigarettes to give out to people when they ask me for one.

Well, tomorrow I am working with Chef again, but this time I won't be so nervous. Chef told me that we might talk Wednesday about me getting a job there, so we'll see how that goes.

nighty-night.

and the pace quickens

Well, today and yesterday were noticeably busier. Both days had slow starts, but eventually they got quicker, giving us more stuff to do and less time to do it.

Today was the first day since beginning my externship where I just didn't want to go in to work. Maybe it has something to do with paintball over the weekend, and how because of it I had yet to just lay down for a whole day and do nothing. I only have two days left till my weekend, but I feel like it's not getting here fast enough. I really just wanna sit down and do nothing but watch t.v. or play video games, maybe work on my bike, but that's it. I don't even want to get out of my pajamas.. Maybe I'll just stay in bed all day Friday.

Nothing much happened yesterday, and nothing really happened today. At least we got out at a reasonable time yesterday. Today, at around 8:30, a 4 top sat down. This is all fine and dandy though since they only had one thing each, but than the new owner and his friends decided to hop on down at 9, and keep ordering food till we closed at 10. I know the new owner wants to eat a free meal, and that we can't tell him to leave, but come on buddy, we just wanted to clean up so we could leave. We didn't end up getting out of the kitchen till around 11:30, and luckily my dad decided to pick me up today, or I wouldn't have gotten home till after midnight.

I ran into Jacine the other day on the max while going to work. I thought it was kind of funny, cause the night before I ran into her boyfriend on the max after work. I wasn't sure if she'd recognize me since I cut my hair so short, so I didn't end up saying "Hi" to her till she stood up to get off. Even then neither of us said anything, we just smiled and waved at each other. Later on she told me that she felt like a dork for not talking to me, but I told her it was all right.

Man... I'm really hoping tomorrow and Thursday go by quickly, cause I really wanna relax.

well, that's really it, two days, and nearly 16 hours of work, in less than 5 paragraphs.

Seacrest out

Dammit Ela, why did you get that stuck in my head. Speaking of which, I have a wicked awful headache.

And the lord said "LET THERE BE SUSHI"

Holy fuck cunts, today was boring. It's a Sunday, so I wasn't hoping for much action today, but still, JESUS. What am I saying? I didn't even want today to be busy, I'm still super sore from paintball. We got a lot of cleaning done at least. All the table legs are clean, the spice racks and shelf above the cooking area are spotless, and the inversion grill looks brand spankin' new. We got the occasional ticket which broke up the monotony of cleaning, but it also kinda bothered us that someone had to interrupt us before we could get done. Almost every ticket though had sushi on it. MY GOD PEOPLE, ORDER SOMETHING ELSE. Get some fucking duck confit, or maybe a nice bowl of soup. Stop getting sushi. And to top it all off, most of these rolls were veggie rolls, the most labor intensive roll on the menu. I did get to make a crab nepolian, which is one of my favorite things to plate, so that kinda made up for it. I must have rolled 10-12 rolls of sushi today, 8 of which were veggie rolls.

We started cleaning at around 8:30, just so we could have something to do. We finished all the other cleaning, there were no tickets coming in, we were just standing around listening to music. So we cleaned. And wouldn't you know it, at 9:50we got an order.

It was for me.

It was sushi.

Not only that, but it was for a spot prawn roll, which requires the use of the deep fryer, and as luck would have it, I just put the frying baskets in the dish washer. This means I had to grab one of the small flour sifters we keep in the back and hold the basket in the oil. The handle on this thing is less than 6 inches long, and these prawns are big. As I lowered the prawns into the oil, I could feel little splashes of oil hitting my hand, like tiny burning suns pattering on my flesh. I hoped to god that I wouldn't somehow slip and punch my hand straight into the hot oil. This went on for 3-4 minutes, the hot oil mere inches from my knuckles, I couldn't let go of the basket or the prawns would sink to the bottom of the fryer, never to be seen again. The prawns finished, and the danger was over. I rolled that shit up in rice and nori with some green onions, and then layed it down on a plate, sexily dressed with tamarind sauce, spoon dragged, of course.

I got out today at 10:05, a whole hour-and-a-half sooner than last Sunday. I said my good-byes, and made my way. I got on the Blue line to Hillsboro, like usual. As I boarded the train, I ran across an odd site. It was a morbidly obese woman that I saw once at Good Will some months ago. She's not just morbidly obese, shes like Jabba the Hutt in what I guess is lady form, a power chair, and a Southern accent. She was more than half the width of the Max by herself. But enough about her, let's talk about another odd encounter on this magical Max. I ran into my old friend Kyler Gould (pictured below, just cause I wanted to talk about his beard). We talked of our wanting to zoo-bomb, and of our current lives. He's working, from what I understand, as a phone sex operator. We made plans to make bikes this Friday with our friend Quinlan. We parted ways at Sunset, but not before hitting each other, as men often do, in a playful manner.


This is Kyler. He enjoys being a badass , and living on the edge. He likes his whiskey like he likes his women, 12 years old and cut with coke. His beard gets more women than I've even seen. He looks like a goddamn urban pirate. He's ridden sharks, sank ships, and impregnated women, all at once.

He is everything I wish I could be. Well, except for being short and hairy. He's no Chef Luke, mind you, but he's some type of superman.

Well, that's all for today. Maybe something awesome will happen tomorrow, like I win the lottery, or get challenged to mud wrestle Olivia Wilde.

The eruption of Mt. Yanes

Man, what is it with this week and slow days? All-in-all, we had more tickets today, but it was still super slow compared to last week. It does have it's upside though, cause I can think about how I'm going to plate a dish, so they have been coming out looking super nice. Since it was a slow day, I had more prep work to do throughout the day, which boiled down to cutting brussel sprouts and clarifying duck stock.

The day went pretty smoothly, if not horribly boring, till we got a ticket for a cobb salad. Neither myself nor Robyn, the other line cook, knew that the eggs we had were bad. This is when the day went downhill. Let me tell you what we do to the eggs for the cobb salad. First we hard-boil the eggs, than we separate them into whites and yolks, then we run them through a tammy to get small ricee sized pieces of egg that we put on theplate with some avocado, tomato, and minced olive. It looks pretty nice when it's all done, but it's a bitch to do. Well, since the eggs we had prepared went bad, we had to hard boil the eggs to order. For some reason this took us 30 minutes, and the eggs still weren't cooked all the way through, the yolks were still a little runny. This is when chef got angry. He was saying how it "shouldn't take 30 FUCKING minutes to make a FUCKING cobb salad", and how we made him look like a jackass for taking so long. His anger was understandable though, since neither of us checked the eggs before hand, we just assumed that they were gonna be good.

This is the first time in 2 weeks that I've seen chef act like that, usually he's one of us, a happy go lucky guy, singing along with the music we play in the kitchen, even playing his own selection of music. He's almost always in a good mood and laughing at something or telling jokes, but tonight he did a total 180. It really caught me off guard, it kinda felt like having a fight with a good friend, and how afterwords you feel weird being around them. The feeling will probably go away by Sunday, but man... It was just so strange seeing him act like that.

He left shortly after that, leaving the kitchen in the hand of Robyn and myself. We started cleaning at around 9:30 again, but had to stop halfway through to make some food for some late night bar patrons. We still got out at around 10:30ish. Clean up goes by faster with Robyn than it does with Amber, I'm not sure why though. They seem to do the same stuff, cleaning wise, but with Robyn, I'm almost always leaving before 11.

I just found something out today though, the average age in the kitchen is 22. I'm the only one who can;t go out drinking at Patty's after shifts, and it makes me sad. I have to do all my drinking at home. Again.

Rollin' California rolls like fatty blunts, bitch

Shit, I forgot to post this last night

Hot damn, another slow night. We had 3 tickets all day till about 8, when we got bombarded with tickets again. Because the night was so slow, chef Nick told me to practice rolling sushi, cause I suck at it. Rolling sushi is a lot harder than you think it would be. You have to make them tight enough so that thee insides don't fallout when you cut them, and so they won't squish when you cut them. He had me practice by making him 2 California rolls and a Spicy Tun roll. The Spicy Tuna roll came out like shit compared to the other 2 rolls. I'm getting better at least, cause I remember the first roll I ever made there fell apart as soon as the knife touched it.

I was gonna practice this weekend, but I'm not gonna be home, I'm going down to Lebanon for the weekend to play some scenario paintball. It's a Vietnam themed game, so I have a whole outfit together to make me look kinda like Sgt. Elias K. Grodin from Platoon. I'll post some pics from the game on Sunday.

I saw some people getting off at the zoo last night for some late night zoo-bombing. Damn, I really wanna do that. Not late night zoo-bombing, but zoo-bombing in general. I would go with some friends of mine, but I have no bike to use. All mine are normal sized MAN bikes, so I'd either have to borrow one of my friends, or make one myself. Maybe I can trick Brian and Quinlan to come over to my house next weekend and help me construct such a bike.

Shit just got real

FUCK. Tonight started out as another slow night, all until 8:45. at 8:45, we had two 4 tops, and a 2 top seated, and they all fucking ordered at once. I had 3 different sushi rolls to roll, and I fucked to first one up when I was cutting them, so I had to make it again. Shit sucked. We had maybe 4 tickets come in before that, and they were for shit like sliders, which I don't make.

This means that I spent most of my day cleaning the kitchen. Cleaning kitchens is not fun. In fact, it's downright boring.

What can I say? Today was uneventful for the most part. After the tsunami of dishes hit us, we had nothing left to do, till some dick ordered room service 8 minutes before we closed.

In other news, I made a banner for the blog, if you think you can do better, feel free to try.

Slow Nights and D.S.L's

Tonight was super slow, I think we had 5-6 tickets, and maybe 5 room service orders. Nothing really happened today, I made some jicama salsa and cabbage slaw, as well as throw away all the shitty herbs we had in the walk-in. But that's really it.

We had a couple orders for sushi tonight, and I'm getting better at rolling/cutting them, but I'm still shit at it. One day I'll be able to roll sushi like a samurai, but that's a long ways away. Amber a fucking master at it though, but the time I'm done rolling mine, hers are already cut and on the damn plate. Cutting sushi though is the pitts. There's a certain way you have to hold it so it stays round and doesn't smoosh down, but I just can't get the hang of it.

The new bartender was working tonight, I still don't know her name. This is only the second time I've ever seen her, so I guess it's okay. Let me tell you this though, she is super fucking cute. Maybe it has something to do with her being a red head, I fucking love red headed girls. I don't know why, but something about them makes me happy. I noticed she has a tat that swirls up her arm and around to her back, but didn't ask about it. Amber was teasing me today about the new bartender, saying I had a crush on her and shit. I don't. I just think she's cute.

Now, lets talk about D.S.L's. For those of you too mature to know what that means, let me tell you. D.S.L. stands for Dick Sucking Lips, something I'm surprised Ale doesn't have. Neil must be very sad about this. Anyway, I say this because it was one of the main topics of discussion today during morning prep. That's really the end of the story, and fuck, I don;t even know why I brought it up, maybe I'm just trying to pad out this post and make it longer than it should be.

Oh, and apparently women don;t dig 70'spornstar mustaches. THIS IS FUCKING NEWS TOO ME. I was planning on growing one as soon as I could go into bars just so I could flash the guns to some pretty little lady, and BAM,get laid. I thought it was a fool-proof plan. Now I gotta rethink my "get laid quick" plans.

Like I said, not much happened today, hopefully something good happens tomorrow so I can talk about it

I hate Chicken Saltimboca, but I love working the line

Wednesday
Got in early again today, so early in fact that I was the only chef there. The lunch crew had left, and the dinner crew had yet to arrive. When Chef Nick got in, he told me he needed me to break down some chickens for him. He gave me a quick demo of how he liked to break chickens down, than I got busy. The first couple of chickens took me a couple of minutes to get right, since I hadn't broken down a chicken in months. Well, chef told me to hurry up, so I did, I broke down those 20 chickens in under 30 minutes. I pumped my arm and thought of how proud chef Luke would have been. We woulda high fived, screamed "FUCK YEAH", and play air guitar together.

And in my mind we did.

Well, after thanking Hermes for blessing me with the speed of a god, I cleaned up and did some dishes. Than chef had me do something so horrible, so mind numbingly painful that you should pray you never have to do it. He had me wrap the breasts in jamón.

"But Brendan" You say to yourself yourself, "how is that difficult, it sounds easy"

That's where you should shut your whore mouth, this shit is hard. You have to make sure that you wrap the breasts really fucking tight, or something bad'll happen. I don't know what it is, chef never told me. But fuck me, it took me 40 minutes to FAIL at making 8 or 9 of these fuckers, 2 of which I re-did cause of how ugly they were. After running out of jamón, chef told me to steam the ones I had finished and that I could do the rest tomorrow.

Which I didn't.

Whoops.

After that, I did more dishes, than helped close down the kitchen. We left that day at 10:15pm, more than an hour earlier than Monday. It was pretty sweet.

Thursday
Chef Trevor was here today in place of Chef Nick. People say we look alike. Which we do, I guess, but Jax (one of the waiters) said I was cuter. This made me feel good about myself. I have never been called cute by another man, or woman for that matter. There wasn't much prep to do today, so I mainly stood around joking with Matt (another waiter) and Robin (the other line cook, besides me). We weren't expecting many people today, and we only had one reservation at 8. Trevor told me I was gonna work the line today doing salads, sushi, really anything that didn't need to be cooked. I was thrilled with the idea of doing real work for once, and not wash dishes all day.

My first Salad was a ceasar, one of the easiest salads to make. Just toss baby romaine in the dressing, stuff in a round piece of crispy baguette, roll up an anchovy for the side, crack some pepper on it, grate some cheese over it, and send it out. BAM. First one down. I got a couple more ceasars, a surf crudo, and some fennel kumquat salads. Really the hardest thing for me to do is the cheese for the cherry gazpacho. I forget the name for the thing, but you use spoons to make it.

Lets talk about the surf crudo for a second. The thing is the weirdest interprotation of surf and turf I have ever seen. The thing is a thinly sliced frozen scallop, topped with beef tar-tar and wasabi foam. The beef tar-tar is amazing, I could eat that shit all night. But pairing it with scallops? I guess Chef Nick likes it, so it stays.

Matt got us some pizzas from Old Town Pizza, one of the best pizza places around.

For some reason drunk people love sushi. I don't know why, but closer to the end of the night, the drunkards at the bar kept ordering sushi. We couldn't figure out why, so we just decided that it must be easy to eat since you only need your fingers.

We started to break down the kitchen at 9:57, but didn't leave till 11:30, since the restaurant is open till 11 on Thurdays.

I'll finish this post with a joke Trevor told me today. Whats the difference between Jelly and Jam?

I can't jelly my dick in your mouth.

No one said it was going to be easy...

Well, today was the first day of my externship at H5O, and it went pretty well. The day started easy, waking up at 11:00pm, which was an hour before I wanted to get up, I decided to watch some videos online and relax before my day really started. I had 3 hours to kill, so I read some webcomics, lurked on my favorite image board, and watched some Cinema Snob reviews. After about an hour and a half, I got up, got dressed, had breakfast, brushed my teeth, ironed my apron, everything I'd usually do before heading to school. Than I layed back down on my bed and thought about what might happen that day. I finally left the house at 1:45pm,got into my sisters car and headed towards the Max. About half way to Elmonica a little thought popped into my head, and it went a little something like this,

"SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, I don't know where my stop is"

This was bad, cause I knew that if I missed my stop, there would be a 20ish minute round trip to get back there. So, I called up my dad and had him tell me the right stop, which turned out to be wrong. But I still got to H5O 30 minutes early, which wasn't bad. I walked in through theback, made my way to the kitchen,put my stuff down, and got a tour of the kitchen from a woman named Amber. She reminded me allot of Alex, the way she talked, her jokes, her height, everything. Anyway, after a short tour of the kitchen I got to work chiffonading Parsley and cilantro. All I have to say is fuck choffonading parsley and cilatro. It is one of the most time consuming tasks I have ever done. You have to pick through all the stems one by one till you get a good amount of leaves, than you have to cut this pile into such thin strips of herb that it is no longer recognizable. After about 30 minutes of this, chef Nick told me to watch Amber plate food, so I would know what goes with everything. This was fun, I just sat back and wrote stuff down, than got to eat. It was the second easiest part of the day.

After this we opened for business. Amber got to work, and I either stood near her, or did some other task. This went on for the rest of service. All I really did today was cut herbs, dice Tuna, and make potato sticks, that's it. Than we started to clean up, starting with the outside (which is really supposed to be the front of the houses domain, but what ever). We tried to open the big sliding door thing, but one of the chains came loose and popped off the cog, so we needed to get a ladder to fix it. The first ladder was too short, and the second one was really fucking heavy. We fixed it, and got to work. It was about 10:30pm when we finished. Now we get to worry about our end of the day tasks. We started out by playing a little music, some Harlem Shakes (my suggestion), and than we wrapped the food. This part was quick and easy, not much involved with it. Than we started on the dishes, or should I say, I started on the dishes. We have no one to do our dishes for us,in fact, there's only 3 people working the kitchen, including me.

I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. At around 10:50pm I was halfway through the mountain of dishes that had accumulated over the course of dinner service, pots, pans, dishes, everything needed to be washed by me. Everything. I stopped for a while so I could sweep the floor and put some of the clean dishes away. It is now 11:20pm and it finally hit me that I was only half way through cleaning the dishes, and that I might miss the last Max out of Portland if this takes too long, but I resume cleaning anyway. At 11:40pm Amber asks me when the Max stops running, I tell her I don't know, and that it might still run after Midnight, but I wasn't sure. She told me that I could leave, and that she would do the rest of the dishes. I told her thank you, got my stuff from the other room, and left. I didn't even change my shoes like I planned. Turns out that the last Max out of Portland is at 12:44am, but dammit, I really don;t wanna have to take that one.

As I exit the building, I feel the cool nightime breeze engulf my body, I just now realized how hot it was in that kitchen.I walk for a couple of minutes before reaching the Max stop across the street. I sit down at one of the benches and wait. I curse tri-met under my breath as the Max rounds the corner into view, revealing the harsh yellow mask of the Yellow Line. I just want to get home, I want to take a shower and sleep, and fucking tri-met thinks that people still need to get around fairless square at fucking 11:54 at night. I wait another 15 minutes for the Blue Line to appear, marking the beginning of the end. I board the near empty max and sit behind a man wearing a Noble Rot shirt.

I call my sister when I arrive at Sunset, she sounds tired, and angry. Can you blame her? Here I am, 19, with no drivers license, my only means of transportation at such a late hour being my parents or my sisters. I apologize to her for waking her up to come and pick me up. She hangs up the phone, I put my earbuds back on, and listen to the rest of Two-Headed Boy part 2 before switching to Fortunate Son. I arrive at Elmonica to see my sister's car waiting for me. I exit the Max and enter her car. It is 12:25am when we finally get home.I finish my burger, the first food I had eaten since 4:00, and took a shower. It is now 1:46am as I finish writing this post, I still need to brush my teeth and clean the shit off of my bed before I can finally sleep.

I am so glad I only have 3 more days till my days off.

The first day of the rest of your life... almost

Holy shit, 15 months sure did fly by quickly. It seems like just yesterday I was learning how to tourne a potato, or how to properly flip an egg without using a spatula. As of August 14, 2009, I'm done with culinary school, and it kinda felt like it ended so abruptly. The day started out like normal, my friends and me waiting outside of Bleu, looking cool and impressing the newer students with our knowledge of all things food related. Standing around discussing our externships, our projects that were due that day, and about our lives in general, until Chef Jeff told us to line up for morning inspection. After that it was business as usual, go in, make sauces, help people with their stations, and get yelled at by Chef Franz (he's really just a big teddy bear at heart). We had more to do that day than we usually would, so Wes, Mark, Alex, and me didn't get to eat crew chow, and this was the one day where it wasn't something egg related.

We did a final check on our stations, got pans on the grill so they'd be ready to be used at a moments notice, and then we set off. Cooking the night away. Friday was our busiest day out of the 3 weeks we working lunch, we had over 40 people. The day went by fast, almost too fast, and then it was over. We cleaned up our stations, washed dishes, and shuffled out into the elevator so we could ride up to the 5th floor for the last time. I cleaned out the last of my books, got changed into clean clothes, talked with Chef Peter and Ela for a bit about my dream family, than I took the elevator back down, and left the building for the last time. The last day of culinary school is nothing like the last day of High School, we didn't get the day off to sign year books, or finally ask our crush out on a date, no, it just ends.

And tomorrow, I start working at H5O Bistro in Portland, Oregon. I've been looking forward to this day for quite some time. I've been cooking practically my whole life to some extent, either helping my mom in the kitchen by stirring soups and cutting bread, to working the line at my school. It's become such a large part of who I am, and I really couldn't live without it. The anticipation is killing me, I have no idea what they are gonna make me do my first day, maybe I'll prep veggies, or cut meat, or maybe I won;t do anything at all and the whole day will be one big pow-ow, who knows? I certainly don't. But isn't that the best part? The mystery of the real kitchen that I've been dying to see my whole life,finally to be revealed to me in one swift blow?

The purpose of this blog is to, I don't know, express my feelings on what it's like to start working in a kitchen, when you have never had any other job before in your life. I plan on updating this thing weekly, but we'll see how that turns out.

well, this has gone on long enough, I have stuff to do today.