5000 hits and a new nickname

wow.  i honestly never thought i'd get 5000 hits.  when i started this blog, only about five people read it, and i think that number has increased only slightly.  so, thank all of you for reloading my page a thousand times a piece.  i told my wife i was gonna party hard when i hit 1000 hits, (i didn't) and it got to 2000 pretty quick.  i know 5k hits isn't anything to get excited about, in a world where good websites get hit a million times a day, but still, i'm pretty stoked.  keep reading ya'll.

so, i have officially broke through with a nickname at work.  there have historically been a lot of nicknames around the restaurant...zombie, whiskey jay, rattlesnake steve, skywalker, chomo, lor-bear, and the bar manager bestowed a nickname upon myself last week.

i'm henceforth known as...panama.  it's pretty sweet loving van halen so much that my favorite song becomes my moniker...i am known to run over to the stereo and crank it when panama comes on, and i recently tore a huge hole in the crotch of my checks doing sweet jump kicks while listening to panama.  (jump kicks are a time honored tradition in my kitchen).  everybody knows when i'm in a foul mood that a little van halen goes a long way toward improving my disposition.  so, yeah...panama.  dat's me.

beat this sucka

so i was going through old cell phone memory cards and i found this kick ass video of me spinning a soup pot lid like a top...

happy new year to all three of you who still follow this blog

if you read this blog, you probably realize i had a bit of an up and down year in 2010.  i left a great job, great boss, and great crew to take a chance on a new restaurant, and it turned out to be a pretty bad idea.  it is what it is though, and i survived.

i got a job at one of the busiest bar/restaurants in town as a result.  it was the first job i was offered when i was unemployed, so i grabbed at it pretty quickly.  it kicked my ass all over the place for a couple months...my mental state at the time wasn't helping, but i just wasn't used to the sheer volume the place does, and it was kind of a completely different kitchen setup than i was used to.

but i survived.

and now i'm full on in the swing of the place, and i kinda feel more loyalty to my crew than ever before.  i work with some awesome dudes, and i laugh my ass off every single shift.  we have fun at work, and we crank out tons of kick ass grub.  the pigdogs need their mung, after all, and they often look to us to get it.  we listen to punk rock all day,  talk smack about eachother and everybody in the dining room, and we congregate at the bar and share in whiskey shots to celebrate a job well done.

part of the reason i haven't blogged too much in recent months is that i really like my job and can rarely find things to complain about, and it's way more interesting to read a "listen to the shitty day i had at work" story than a "i had fun today!  the end." story.  i still throw out the occasional post with the boys over at kitchen convoluted, and have recently contributed to fat pride times.  so i'm still here.

i'm still surviving.

but here's the thing.  i don't just wanna survive.  i wanna thrive.  so out with the old, in with the new.  it's a new year, and i'm damn well gonna make sure it's a better one than last year.  keep with me folks, and i promise i'll try to bring you into the eye of the awesome storm that is my current kitchen.

pour yourself a cocktail and enjoy what's to come...