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The week leading up, reservations. All told maybe 60, 70 people, 2 1/2 turns of the restaurant. Not too crazy, we should be able to manage fine.
A few days before, customer comes in for soup to go. She can see I'm unwell, not the best, and so is insistent that I get the chef to dish her soup to go out. I can touch nothing. Single-handedly I'm the plague, poisoning babies, killing villages, ...
I'm too sick to argue.
The same day, another lady, has a friend, can't eat gluten or rice, what do we have? I answer nothing. Not entirely true, but - close enough, and my patience for this is expired.
***
Valentines comes and it's a shit-show blown up beyond belief. Clearly and without precedent, without even a near comparison the worst Valentines I've worked in the industry. Ever.
There's a line up at the door all night. People without reservations, who thought they wouldn't need them, couples, families with strollers, people looking confused that a reservation might be required, "Why?", you can see it in their perplexed, offended faces.
The busiest day of the year, and why would you need a reservation? We manage to fit in perhaps 40 walk-ins, another 200 are left grumbling to go and try elsewhere.
***
Feb 14th, Saturday. Busy again, this time with people out to enjoy the live music and a few mocktails. A young couple come in, don't like their table, try and switch to a booth for 5. I tell them we're reserving that for a larger group, they get offended, leave, write an online review that calls me a "racist" for not letting them have the booth.
***
This industry, it's peak entitlement. Every idiot feels entitled to have their every idiocy pandered to. I'm done with it, maybe, at best, I've another 3, 4 months left, but I can't do it anymore. Now to begin looking for a way out...any commonality, of good manners, breeding, it's vanished and I'm exhausted.
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Over 2 weeks of feeling like shit, sleeping 16-18 hours plus a day, barely surviving every day at work.
I'm used to this, not "Used" to it, per-se, but more of the stoic philosophy that says ride it out until you get better, and sooner or later you'll wake up feeling a little (or a lot) better.
2 weeks, 2 days, until last Sunday I finally grab a cab and drag my sorry ass off to the hospital.
Work, they'd grown a little impatient with my misery, I had no choice, really.
The hospital, Emergency, 3 hours waiting to see a physician. The standard, and then some x-rays and it's Pneumonia.
Fine. Off to Shoppers to get a prescription, 5 days, 6 pills, I should be feeling fine around Thursday or Friday.
The week passes. Still sick as a dog, sleeping, work is to be barely survived, endured. All I want to do is to get home and back into bed. I eat out, nothing in my fridge, tacos, but they taste wretched and I've no appetite. Breakfast, same, food, generally, the same. I pick, fuss, eat a bit, and then go to bed. On a whim I go to the Co-op, buy 4 cans of Organic Soup, $5.00 per can, only it's as well garbage, I'm paying 10 cents for the can, 3 cents for the "organic" soup, which is nothing at all, for $5.00 in a restaurant you'd send it back, and you'd be right, and here I've filled a bag with this inedible nonsense. I'm too sick to cook and too sick not to.
The days are unendurably long. I'm not well. Not by a long shot. Thursday, working the day, collegue texts me that she'll be late. 4:30. 4:30 comes and passes, no show, 5:30, 6:30 and I'm on the phone with the owner, "Where the f@@#R! is .....", no call in, nothing, this place, it's murdering my every hope of survival.
I'm not happy.
A replacement is found, sent in to spell me off, and I'm home again to bed.
Friday I'm better. I've slept, not well, but better.
Dreams, by the way, for the week. No liquor, no cigarettes (well, maybe 5 per day). Most days simply pass out in bed, the night sweats, wake when you wake, no memory of dreams. But one night, that i'm in a well lit warehouse, hundreds of other generic souls boxing up cutlery, boxes, hundreds, no soul to this, a factory, machine.
Then the next night a dream in which all the things, court filings, papers, business, it's bursting out my wallets, I'm disorganized in the extreme, everything I've ignored these past few weeks due to being sick is now piled up in bulbous exploding wallets and I need to get organized, get my shit together...
...and I'm awake for an hour or so before I figure out this was a dream, a fever dream, and the fever, it's filling my waking and sleeping hours and I'm not able to find when I'm myself.
***
Friday, Valentines Day, Saturday, the day after. These are separate posts.
Sunday, my medicine, prescription, expired on Thursday, and I'm pretty sure I'm not getting better. And so I finally suck it up, cab once again to the hospital.
3 more hours, a physician, the hospital, today, it's full. The waiting room, full to the brim, no seating, and so 3 hours today, it's a blessing.
The last diagnosis, pneumonia, well, incorrect. They thought I had a more fashionable variant doing the rounds, prescribed accordingly, no, it seems I have the more classical variant.
I could have told them.
A new prescription, 2 pills, 3X a day, 5 days until I'm out.
Home to bed, take my pills, pass out.
Today, still exhausted but better able to manage reading a book, keeping on schedule with my pills. This will pass, for sure, but it's been so long since I've been myself, well, alive even, that I've forgotten and how will I know when I'm well again? Time will tell. Tomorrow, a double, merely have to survive and get through it...
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Friday, last week. Started the day poorly, and it only got worse, by the time I let off work I knew I was in trouble. Thought I could sleep it off, no, it was hunkered in.
All week, fever, chills, exhaustion, cough, runny nose, phlegm, yellow, green, white, sleeping 16, 18 hours a day....
Wake up, dizzy, exhausted, by the time I finish my first cup of coffee. Then back to bed.
All week. I'd bought a treat at the Co-Op, sausages, Duck ala'Orange, I Iove duck, what could go wrong?
Whatever could, did, these met no expectations.
For the rest of the week, nothing but soup and lots of juice and tea. I call in sick to work for a day. It's been 40 years since I've called in sick, anywhere, and this isn't the worst I've been, but damn, I just can't do it.
Those shifts I show up for, still exhausted, way too tired.
Yesterday, morning, I go for breakfast. I have to eat, at least once this week. At the old hotel, their breakfast restaurant, the Hotel that promises to deliver a much better experience than in fact it ever does. Eggs Benny. And they arrive, only, they're like some 8th grader on his way to shop class got lost in a home-economics class and turned this in as his day-end project. are these eggs? really? push them around with your fork...maybe, scrambled? boiled? from a paste? powder? and where's the hollandaise sauce? round-cut hams peeled right from the plastic, crunchy-plastic english muffin (rinse and reuse?), hashbrowns overcooked and salted, more an inedible garnish than a side. I rarely enjoyed breakfast before, this fuckery confirms why.
I say nothing, push it around my plate, annoyed that this fuckery is allowed to pass for cooking, then home, nap, work.
***
Today, off to get some groceries. A few. Then back home, then out to eat a big lunch. And I eat it, then a long nap, and then up - now up, and I'm suspecting, given my appetite, that I may be on the mend, but no overdoing it now, watch a movie, relax, and we'll see on the morrow...
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I've been the wing-nut on the corner holding up a placard and saying this all along, so it's nice to finally get a little validation:
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/politics/covid-19-lab-leak-cia-ratcliffe/index.html
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Zuckerberg has stopped fact checking, to allow for the global spread of misinformation.
And Elon Musk owns twitter, to help promote the global spread of misinformation, with a far-right leaning skew.
Then there's this. Chatham Asset Management. An American Company that owns a 66% share in all of the following newspapers.
- National Post
- Financial Post (administratively part of the National Post)
- Belleville Intelligencer
- Brantford Expositor
- Calgary Herald
- Cape Breton Post
- Chatham Daily News
- The Chronicle Herald (Halifax)
- Cornwall Standard Freeholder
- Edmonton Journal
- Kenora Daily Miner and News
- Kingston Whig-Standard
- London Free Press
- The Gazette (Montreal)
- North Bay Nugget
- Ottawa Citizen
- Regina Leader-Post
- The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
- Sault Star
- Sudbury Star
- Timmins Daily Press
- Vancouver Sun (not related to the tabloid Sun newspapers also owned by Postmedia)
- Windsor Star
- Calgary Sun
- Edmonton Sun
- Ottawa Sun
- The Province (Vancouver)
- Toronto Sun
- Winnipeg Sun
- Airdrie Echo (tabloid)
- Bow Valley Crag and Canyon (tabloid)
- Brockville Recorder and Times (broadsheet)
- Chatham This Week (tabloid)
- Clinton News-Record (tabloid)
- Cochrane Times (Alberta) (tabloid)
- Cochrane Times-Post (tabloid)
- Cold Lake Sun (tabloid)
- Drayton Valley Western Review (tabloid)
- Edson Leader (tabloid)
- Elliot Lake Standard (tabloid)
- Fort McMurray Today (tabloid)
- Fort Saskatchewan Record (tabloid)
- Goderich Signal-Star (tabloid)
- Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune (tabloid)
- Hanna Herald (tabloid)
- High River Times (tabloid)
- Hinton Parklander (tabloid)
- Kincardine News (tabloid)
- Kingston This Week (tabloid)
- Lakeshore Advance (Grand Bend; tabloid)
- Lloydminster Meridian Booster (tabloid) sold to Lloydminster Source Ltd
- Mid-North Monitor (Espanola; tabloid)
- Mayerthorpe Freelancer (tabloid)
- Nanton News (tabloid)
- Owen Sound Sun Times (broadsheet)
- Peace River Record-Gazette (broadsheet)
- Pincher Creek Echo (tabloid)
- Sarnia Observer (broadsheet)
- Sherwood Park News (tabloid)
- Simcoe Reformer (tabloid)
- St. Thomas Times-Journal (tabloid)
- Stratford Beacon Herald (broadsheet)
- Vulcan Advocate (tabloid)
- Vermilion Standard (tabloid)
- Whitecourt Star (tabloid)
- Winkler Times (tabloid)
- Woodstock Sentinel-Review (broadsheet)
If you ever wondered why these newspapers continue, in mass, to complain about Trudeau and recommend Pierre Poilievre as the only choice in the upcoming election, this is why. Note how many newspapers they own in Alberta. Pierre Poilievre has no qualifications, has been "compromised" by the Russians, and - with no experience and a treasonous nature that is second hand and makes him a shoe-in for Canada's Sycophant in waiting; they will continue to espouse him as the "only choice". Mark Carney, with a list of qualifications that would make most Presidents and World Leaders envious, is advertised as being an "inside liberal".
None of this is true, but we've allowed the Americans to infiltrate and control our media - almost entirely, and so while you'll never find a Canadian Owned News Outlet endorsing or even considering Poilievre - or Smith - their base is dependant almost entirely on US owned media, which have proven as adept as trolling as the Russians.
Anyways, if you want accurate, unbiased Canadian owned news, well, your list of options is considerably shorter:
- https://www.cbc.ca/
- https://www.thestar.com/
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
- https://www.ledevoir.com/
- https://thetyee.ca/
We're in trouble. If your getting your news from anywhere not on this list you're being played. Alternatively, there are some good, relatively unbiased newspapers abroad, but most of them aren't paying attention to Canadian Politics.