It's been a nice day

Cool things

I'm not sure how well I have been keeping you up to date on my employment, but for the record I am working as a waiter (once again). To start things off, here are some things that customers do that make me (and presumably other waiters) happy:

1. Wait to be seated
2. Be polite and understanding
3. Pile up dishes at the end
4. Control children
5. Not make a mess

#1 is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to being a waiter. If you do this, what you're saying to me is that a) you think you're better than everybody else, b) you do not have a single morsel of respect, and c) you do not want good service.

I'm a waiter - it's literally my job to provide good service to customers. If I'm busy and you decide to seat yourself down, I will not know that you are there until you walk up to me two minutes later and demand a menu, stating that you have been "seated for several minutes now without any service."

#2 is more of a general life tip than anything, but it applies doubly so when it comes to the service industry. If you're making things as easy as possible for me, I'll feel more inclined to a better experience for you.

If you do #3, you might be doing it in a way that's "inefficient" for the waiter to pick it up, but it's the thought that counts (it really does go a long way, at least for me).

#4 is slotted lower in the list because I get that children are hard to control and hard to get away from. Not everybody can hire a sitter and children are just... messy. I don't mind cleaning up a messy table, but if your kid is flinging food against the wall or sticking it in places where it shouldn't go, please control your kid. Maybe this means taking away the food or spoon feeding. If your little one starts throwing a tantrum due to this, then maybe he/she isn't the greatest to take out to eat. Pick up.

#5 - kinda hard to do since you naturally are more carefree with your mess, but very appreciated. Makes it easier for us to clean the table.

Alright that ended up being longer than I thought, so I'll just tell you the cool things that happened today from work. A customer arranged droplets of water on the table so that they formed a heart, and I think that was pretty neat. Thanks for being cool random stranger! Another neat thing that happened was when I was actually going home from work. The bus driver was super friendly, despite the bus being absolutely packed, and he even got us to play "If You're Happy and You Know It" for a bit.

When I finally got home I found my tenant's cat loafed up on the front lawn, and I sat down in one of my tenant's comfy lawn chairs and she jumped up and I patted her for a bit. That was nice.

Finally started that workout

For a while now I've been disappointed in my body and how sluggish I've become. Maybe it's the large amount of fast food ingested since summer started, maybe it's the hours spent lounging at my desk and in bed. Most likely the cause of my "sudden flab" is a combination of the two.

Putting the reason aside, I used the sight of my belly jiggling as I walked around my house as motivation to get in shape. My first day consisted of me failing to do even half the reps featured in the Ab Ripper X routine, however I swore that I felt my abs were already transforming into the six-pack that I coveted.

I remember from somewhere that it's not good to do the same workout for a group of muscles daily, and that knowledge was cemented by the slight pain I would feel in my abdominal region whenever I sneezed or even when I walked. I held off until two days later, and I did the same Ab Ripper X routine after getting off work.

It felt like I was doing better and I was immensely proud of myself. Things were looking up, and I should have kept looking up because when I looked down in the mirror I was greeted with the sight of a psuedo-double-chin (am I using my hyphens right here?) I grew dismayed, and my spirits dropped.

That double-chin thing actually happened today. And today, I found the will and motivation to complete a different routine. A few hours ago I tried to complete the Cardio Challenge of the Insanity series, and while I struggled to finish each rep and skipped a whole bunch, I saw it through to the end.

I struggled. I found myself sweating more than I ever have (in recent memory at least). For the entire half an hour every breath was laboured, every movement was done tired to the bone, but at some point, when I realized that I was sweating profusely, I found joy.

That was my moment of liberation. I feel so happy knowing that I can work that hard and I know that I will be able to reach my goal.

tl;dr: so yeah I finally started doing that workout thing and work was alright