I started slinging pizzas again for the summer for what I thought would only be about one to two shifts each week, but it’s been a steady three. I don’t really want to work this many shifts each week, but at the same time it’s a good deal of money for fairly easy work. Summer time so deliveries have been proliferating, which means I don’t have to spend an excessive amount of time in the hot kitchen. I can just cruise and listen to podcasts (new favorite podcast is Paul F. Tompkins’ Spontaneanation).
Unfortunately, summer time is wedding season and the Pizza Factory shares a parking lot with a joint that hosts and caters weddings and the like. This past weekend, a 300-person wedding (300 guests, not 300 people getting hitched…they weren’t Moonies) swarmed like a plague of locusts hell bent on chaos and destruction.
That many people are bound to move beyond the confines of the wedding hall, especially when booze and cigs are involved, and the parking lot becomes the central location for congregation. Mobs of increasingly inebriated guys and gals form up, swelling in size as the evening progresses. Children pursuit each other between parked cars, darting across with complete whimsy, ignorant of the comings and goings of normal parking lot traffic.
I don’t want to sound like a grump begrudging people a good time. Have a good time but be mindful of your surroundings. I tried to be good humored about it, but these folks only looked at me with disdain, only moving at the last possible moment before being struck. It’s stressful.
On a related note (to pizza, not weddings) I realized that that if I’m going to keep working three shifts a week, I need to keep my pizza and pop consumption in check. It’s real easy to down that stuff when I have such easy access.
On an unrelated note, I have not completed very much writing which is utterly pathetic and lame. I’ve outlined and I’ve reworked the ending to a story, but I think I may just be using those activities as an excuse not to write. I do want to write, but usually reading, Netflix, or board games with my wife win out. I must strengthen my resolve.
Huzzah!
-Gus
PS-Weezer’s Everything Will be Alright in the End is a solid record with the exception of “Back to the Shack.”
Ryan L. Purdy 