Five years ago, a reader found my blog quite by chance during an extraordinarily dark time in her life. She had no real interest in the restaurant world, but my stories about customer and co-worker antics, she said, made her laugh at 2 a.m. when she couldn’t sleep. That laughter, she noted, was the start [...]
As I sit on my sofa with two of my three dogs, half watching a “Twilight Zone” marathon while trying to keep paws off my keyboard, I have to marvel at a year gone by so fast, at a year during which I have worked too hard and not written enough. It was a year [...]
Overheard anywhere in the U.S. except SoFla: A young man is in a checkout line behind a woman with a small dog quietly sitting in her grocery cart. The woman is behind me. I am paying for my purchases. “Wow, they let you bring a dog in here?” he asks. “Yeah, as long as he’s [...]
It’s true, the girls won their Halloween Costume contest in these get-ups. Happy Halloween!
I live two blocks from Fort Lauderdale Beach, just off A1A, and yet I had not actually seen the beach since Sandy waved a brief hello on her destructive travel north. Since Thursday night, I have been more concerned with when my power would come back on and how best to navigate a normally 20-minute [...]
Take one best sister friend from Montana, add her two beautiful daughters, fold in a Fall wedding for one in Tahoe, and poof!–the perfect opportunity for a sliver of a vacation. I don’t know the last time in the past five years that I’ve gotten away, away–really far away from SoFla to someplace entirely new. [...]
I filled my car up last week–twice. I bought so many rounds of Laughing Cow cheese that requires no refrigeration, I laughed at myself. I bought half a dozen packages of gluten-free rice crackers–at full price, which I never do. And of course, the requisite 12-pack of toilet paper rounded out my purchases because someone [...]
I know. It’s been more than a month since I’ve written. I should have written! I meant to, but…but I didn’t. Guess I’ve been away far longer than I realized. But I wrote postcards! I know, I didn’t send them. Well, here they are as one, all those postcards that I really did mean to [...]
One day you’re having the experience of a lifetime during Kentucky Derby Week, and the day you return to work from the experience of a lifetime, your GM says this: “From now on, you’re doing all of our private events.” Oh. Okay. Okay? I have enjoyed the past three years working as a bartender and [...]
I’d love to have another opportunity to visit the rolling hills surrounding Louisville, Kentucky, Derby Week or not. The gentility and hospitality of everyone we met matches the area’s beauty, and I could not help but say a thousand times or more, “I’m not in SoFla anymore.” I’d love to have another chance to spend [...]