White Or Orange Cheese?
Now Playing: Robert Turner--Manitoba Memoir
For most of last week, I managed to stay off the internet. As addictive as it gets when one has a connection at home, it gets worse when accessed mainly through the library (that the library's on my way home from work is no excuse). I feel strangely refreshed, to be honest. It's a great invention, but one can be too attached to it.

The past few days have been mainly enjoyable as well. Work's actually been less annoying, even with a colossal set of caterings we had to prepare over Thursday and Friday; I spent Saturday morning putting together shish kebabs and listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR (and there are far, far worse ways to spend a Saturday morning). Saturday evening I took some biscones and feta cream-cheese cucumbers to the party Sari Brown and Jim Roll threw for housewarming and Sari's graduation. It was a fine time, particularly with Sari reading her rather moving graduation speech and local writer Steve Amick getting us involved in a fascinating discussion regarding the house's defensive capabilities (set atop a low rise at the end of a long, relatively wide street, and smack in the middle of the lump of renter-vs.-owner dry tinder that is the Old West Side of Ann Arbor, I suppose it was only a matter of time). Trebuchets were proposed. That night I reversed my earlier decision and decided to go to the show at the Blind Pig, featuring Chris Bathgate, Canada, and Kelly Caldwell. On my way, I ran into Ryan Balderas, his colleague John, and their friends Megan and Ryan outside of Borders, all on their way to the same show. On our way, we picked up other friends of the other Ryan's, and I wondered whether our numbers would further swell before we got there. I stopped in at the Parthenon to say hi to Phill (they'd only had one table that entire night, which was pretty disconcerting), and skipped on over to the Pig, where most of the usual suspects were present. I had fun chats with Becca, Maria and Laura, Matt Jones tried his hand at cracking my head together with Annie's, Bathgate was great, and I prefer Caldwell's earlier stuff. For the most part, it was a very fun, rather social day. Canada continues to be a great live act, even if I only heard two of their songs. I lost the mood and left early, because...

When getting my third beer, a Labatt Blue, the bartender yelled at me for not tipping him--"Dude, if you're not gonna tip me, don't order from me!" When at the Pig, where you only have as much time at the bar as it takes to get your drink, I follow one of two customs: I include the tip with the price of one beer, or I keep a tally (which I would anyway) and leave the tip at the end of the evening (or, more often, beginning of the morning). I've done it both ways for the past three years and nobody has once complained (including this guy, usually nice as pie). It sounds like I'm outrageously overreacting, but tipping is very important to me.* In lieu of widespread and effective labor unions, it's the only way in which I can really express any meaningful solidarity with fellow service industry workers. I almost always overtip, even if it's at the end of the night. For this guy to yell at me was rather shocking (and a little bracing). I didn't blame him for being irritated; perhaps he'd just had a bad day or had been stiffed earlier. I do blame him for yelling at me; no matter how obnoxious or unpleasant a customer's been, I've never yelled at them or been rude until out of earshot. Add to that the fact that tipping, while it should always be done, especially in restaurants, isn't legally (or sometimes even customarily) mandated outside of large parties (even though it becomes more complicated when speaking of workers making minimum or over). I'm usually pretty conflict-averse, so I was proud of myself for answering back and telling him how I did things, and to his credit, he said he was sorry. It's good, I think, for something like that to happen every now and again.

*It's also mildly embarrassing to note that this was probably the most exciting incident my life has seen for a number of weeks.