Barbara Walters is a man

When it's cold and grey and the windows are rattling and the wind is blowing, it's a lot easier to get excited about sitting in front of a computer and working in a restaurant. Last night was the first night back since Saturday and family meal made me sick, of course. Family meal is the meal that the kitchen puts up for all the staff before or after service. At some restaurants, it's an introduction to the dishes they'll be selling or a chance for line cooks to try their hand at menu creation. At others, it's an alternative to the garbage disposal.

Where I work, the meal is put up at 5pm, before the shift, and we color-code it. Last night was "rainbow meal." Sometimes there's "white meal," which is pasta with bacon in a cream sauce and white rice. "Yellow meal" is usually curry-flavored, "red meal" tastes like chilis, and "brown meal" often has lentils involved. "Rainbow meal" isn't so bad, it's stir-fry with different vegetables, but I couldn't eat it. I had a couple of potato wedges (all ten of the servers I work with are potato hogs, and usually the kitchen will put up a couple of baskets of French fries for us at the end of the night. Last night as I was leaving I didn't even look at the fries, prompting real concern from the waiters who'd perhaps not really understood that I actually was quite ill) and then convinced my Valentine to bring me a smoothie to work, which I also couldn't finish.

The one real table I had was Barbara Walters. Not the real Barbara but an ancient drag queen who comes in about once a month in pearls and heavy makeup, although s/he wears men's clothes. The bad wig is what earned him/her the moniker, and last night was his/her birthday, and s/he paid for the whole thing and s/he is cheap. We served them eleven green salads and eleven chicken dishes and opened four bottles of their own (crappy) wine although our corkage limit is two. Since ol' Barbara Walters is a regular, I guess my manager figured we'd try to make him/her happy.

After all that talk about not going out after work last night (which I didn't), I got to school this morning to find that there WAS no school. I guess if I took this taking classes thing more seriously, I would have realized that today is president's day.