time to fill your prescription

the forecast calls for bright sunny skies and a high of 76 today, but when i stepped outside this morning i would have sworn, by the look of it, that we were in for a storm. then my other senses kicked in: i could smell and taste smoke, and i remembered that we've hit the season of prescribed burns.

Right now, about 20 miles north of town, the forest service is burning 3800 acres of gambel oak and douglas fir. dozens of fire jumpers from all over the intermountain world (montana, idaho, washington and oregon) are here helping to keep the fire in control while the Bureau of Indian Affairs uses their "helitorch" helicopter to drop a gelatinous form of petroleum into the forests to advance the blaze in the prescribed direction.

something about this freaks me out. maybe it's that it seems so familiar and analogous to the routines of the pharmaceutical companies (let's find a symptom that might, in certain instances, result in severe physical disorder and come up with a "treatment" that eliminates/reduces its immediate physical manifestation and then convince everyone that they need it and at the same time ignore the other underlying invisible factors that might really be the source of the problem that are just too big and too inopportune to make money/employ lots of people). or maybe i'm just freaked out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has a piece of equipment called the Helitorch in a region called Purgatory. hmmm. well, i guess i'll go put my gas mask on so i can go plant my garden which will eventually be watered with petroleum laden snow melt. yeehaw.

coffee or....

i just sat down in my local cafe (local to my new housesit-i'll have more news soon) and opened my computer to check my email. The wireless window popped up and asked, "None of your preferred networks can be found. Would you like to join ASS MUNCHER?"

well, i guess if your network is going to pop up on hundreds of computers a day, you might as well name it something that will wake people up!
(oh, and just to clarify, i did not join ass muncher. i went to the list and chose steaming bean. i prefer coffee to start my day).

working out

yay! i have 3 whole days off in a row starting today. i slept very late for an amy--til 10:30, and i feel a little off as a result, but i'm going with it and seeing where it takes me. waiting tables has significantly altered my sleep patterns and has introduced odd energy fluctuations into my days. i'm looking forward to a more set schedule (which i've requested) as gardening becomes a more prominent time commitment for me. feels like it's coming--we had our spring snow (which usually occurs in March, but hit us about 2 weeks late this year) just a few days ago so, despite some cold nights, we should be clear of winter really soon.

spending so much time doing restaurant work recently has allowed me to discover a few things about myself that i hadn't really acknowledged before. first off, there are a lot of strategies involved in serving (because it's really a sales job, if you do it the way we've been trained). there's a lot of judgments made about people--both by managers and servers--that suggest what kind of strategies to employ. of course, i have judgments about these judgments, and, that said, it's helped to reveal a whole slew of judgments i have that hold energies back...let me give an example.

one day, as i was putting in my third or fourth order for lunch and marveling at how people spend $9 on a sandwich they could make at home, i exposed to myself my nature around eating out. i don't eat out much, mostly because i think that, in general, i could make a healthier, better tasting meal for myself at home for a fraction of the cost. i'm not likely to drink a lot either--again, the bottle of wine on the list that catches my eye is one i could buy for $8 less 2 blocks away at the liquor store. going out for me entails that the meal is something i couldn't make at home, or that there are options and opportunities of new, innovative cuisine to explore, or something big to celebrate. i had, in my mind and being, a BIG BLOCK against eating out, and subsequently, to people's behaviors around eating out.

i sat with this for a day, exploring how my judgments and preconceptions around eating out impacted my ability to do good service. i've considered myself to be a good waitress--i'm very courteous, engaging, fun, dynamic, efficient, and i averaged high tips (percentage wise), but co-workers that seemed lacking in these traits did better overall sales than i did, across the board. a big difference between me and these co-workers: they all ate out regularly and had no problems spending money that way.

i went into work the next day, acknowledging and taking full responsibility for my resistance to people spending money on food. and, eureka! if i didn't make great sales all day. and then the next, and the next...without doing anything else but letting my energy around it all just breathe and make room for other ways of being.