Day 321! Well, I was pretty exhausted today, but it didn’t stop me from getting to work with a smile on my face… even if that day of work was pretty dang slow. But it was still a good day and I’ll be able to catch up on some sleep tonight!

I stayed up way too late again last night…

But even with going to bed around 2:30am, I still had to get up on the earlier side for work. My alarm went off at 8:30am and I promptly snoozed it for another 30 minutes. I felt more awake after this so I got my day going, but I really didn’t have a choice since I needed to get my rear in gear.

I showered and made myself breakfast. I had just enough time to write my blog post, from the day before, after eating and then had about 10 minutes to relax and read before heading up the hill to work.

Work today started at 11am and was supposed to go till 3pm… but as (almost) always, that changed.

Today was all around a slow day at work. Not a ton of people were coming in and out of the bar or restaurant, but there was enough of a steady trickle that all three of us clocked in needed to be there.

Monday is free beer day for the social club members at the hotel. So everyone makes the trek up the hill to enjoy it, which was most of the patrons we served today.

The other patrons of note were a group of three, two of which ended up being from the US visiting their former exchange student they homed for a year. Not only were they from the US, one of them was wearing a Green Bay Packers shirt! And not only were they a fan, they were from Sheboygan. It was pretty wild hearing a very thick Wisconsin accent all the way out here and when they asked for water I told them there was a bubbler at the end of the bar. They got a kick out of that!

Around 2pm, I was starting to get pretty hungry. So I got a bowl of French fries and shared them with my coworkers who were bartending with me. It was exactly what I needed to get through today… I was pretty dang tired from the couple of late nights I’ve had. BUT I was still enjoying bartending and chatting with the customers who were there.

My manager ended up asking me to stick around till 4pm. They were having a manager meeting and one of my coworkers needed to be in it, so he wanted me to hang around till he could take over behind the bar. So for about an hour, I was the only one behind the bar! This is all because I now have my RCG so I can help out with the TAB and Kino desk, which is a big part of the bartending job.

I was only needed a couple times at that desk and served a handful of beers during the hour. But I kept myself busy cleaning the bar, restocking things, etc.

4pm came around and the meeting still wasn’t done. But then a rush of people came just as the meeting finished, so I stuck around till just about 4:30pm.

I had my knockoff beer and chatted with a couple of my coworkers while they worked. While I was standing by the bar, a local, who I hadn’t met before, offered to buy me a beer. I decided to accept, even after my last odd encounter of a customer buying me a beer, and it turned out this guy, Glen, had lived in Vietnam for 18 years! So we exchanged some SE Asia stories and then he went back to drinking with his friend. Just another example of the nice people in this community!

While I had the second beer, it started to rain. Thankfully, one of my coworkers was about to take our courtesy bus to pick someone up. So he gave me a ride down the hill. Just as I got home is when it started theoretically down pouring… so I would’ve been caught in it for sure if it hadn’t been for the bus ride!

When I got home I plopped down into bed and cracked open my book. I read all the way to dinner time and made myself some tuna sandwiches.

I don’t have work till the dinner shift tomorrow, so I’ll be heading to the grocery store for sure! I’m out of groceries!

After dinner, I read some more and then watched two episodes of Bleach before calling it a very early night.

Tomorrow, depending on how I’m feeling, I want to try to get a little surfing in, pick up a book from the library that’s been on reserve for me for a bit, and go to the grocery store before work at 5pm! We’ll see what I can accomplish!

– Elie