Tipping (not cow)

 Yesterday I took a little walk and wound up in a coffee shop, thinking a cup of coffee and a cookie would be nice, even if I was sure it would be overpriced. That's just the way it goes. The place was nice, kind of old-fashioned looking, lots of that prerequisite for downtown hipster dining--exposed brick. Two young ladies behind the counter were chatting idly.  I asked for a cup of coffee and a certain type of cookie. I was handed the cookie on a plate and the self-serve coffee cart was pointed out to me. 

I got a cup of coffee--and I mean a "cup." As in, a small traditional coffee cup barely capable of containing one generous slosh of coffee. I sat down, ate the cookie, drank the coffee. As I rose to leave, I noticed a sign on another cart by the wall that read, "Please help us by clearing your own dishes." 

Feeling rebellious, I left without doing so. My reasoning was that I had added a tip to the debit card screen--there were instructions there to guide me: 20%=GREAT service. 15% GOOD service, 10% adequate service, or something like that. The amount wasn't actually calculated for me.  At the time, I thought, well, I'll go with 15%, which is my default tip anyway. So, I tipped about a dollar for basically being handed a cookie and told where the coffee was, and then asked to clean up after myself. 

I don't care. I understand that the two young ladies were probably being underpaid and tipping is more or less built into this particular economy. It's just that it doesn't really make sense. 

I didn't plan this, but it so happens that later I was looking at Google maps and I saw the coffeeshop and decided to read the reviews. The usual.  A handful of effusive, breathless 5-star descriptions, a bunch of 4-star, a handful of 1 or 2 star, these being cases where the customer asked for a Big Mac and was told they would have to go to McDonalds, and other stuff like that. 

I decided to write a review. I was very generous, but I did mention the tip business. This is just because I feel the tide turning on this and I wanted to raise the volume a little bit. Food industry workers need to be paid more. This is obvious by the number of help wanted signs you see everywhere. But, workers should be able to make a living without relying on something as random as customer tipping, where they are penalized when business is slow, or penalized when the kitchen is slow and customers get upset--all these things, and more, are unfair. 

Am I wrong here?  Of course I am. 

Night Life

 For me, there is not much night life downtown. There's a couple of Netflix binge episodes I turn to before staggering to bed, and that's pretty much it, most of the time. Here is a picture of downtown, though, taken a little less than an hour after sundown on a Wednesday night (Feb. 9,) featuring about two human beings and as many cars. This is about two and a half blocks from my apartment building. I must have been going to the store. 

I've never eaten at Pickleman's.  It's one of those sandwich stores that serves them up each built upon its own laterally bisected loaf of bread. They're into bread, and I hear you get about fifteen choices of what kind you want your lunchmeat on. Too many carbs. Not a fan. 

Speaking of carbs, here's the real culprit . . . never been in here, either, but it's nice to have just a little taste of New York. 

Starting Up

First I add here, just for documentation purposes, (which I have found helpful in the past,) that here on day 8 of the virus, I am almost completely restored to what passes for normalcy nowadays. A home Covid test produced negative results, so it was just some nasty bug.  Very nasty. There's also a chance it was a Covid variant, since the symptoms aligned perfectly, and home tests are subject to false negatives to a greater degree than "real" tests. Whatever. 

Further, the grand "go car-less" experiment continues to work. We do have the one car, a nice 2013 sedan, so we're not talking radical lifestyle change here--just a bit of tweaking. I enjoy not owning a car. It fits in nicely with my not owning a house. Maybe one has to be old to feel it, but this ownership thing, this Feng Shui nightmare, is not only not what it's cracked up to be, but is a somewhat negative force. 

The downtown move is working. Pictured, above, is our patio, or courtyard, if you will. It's no suburban paradise, true, but I really like it. Sitting here, I can look up and see four historic buildings, all art-deco, all very calming, somehow. At the time this picture was taken, we just underwent a severe wind event. I had just installed that basket with the vines draping off, and we're working on putting some lights there along the brick wall. Being able to step outside for some fresh air, look up at the sky, more than makes up for the lack of a dramatic downtown street view or vista. This is more practical and realistic, though I admit the photo ops are a little more scarce. A pair of peregrine falcons nest on the opposite wall of the building to the north (left) in this picture, so occasionally we will see one or both of them swooping around for a meal.  I just read they are the fastest animals on earth, known to achieve speeds during flight in a dive, of over 240 miles per hour.  That is seriously impressive.

More on the downtown thing: I have acquaintances who don't understand why I wanted to move downtown. I'm kind of done explaining it to them and they will probably never understand that once the initial adaptation is accomplished, this feels very neighborly and safe and far, far more interesting. I couldn't stand to be back at the old house, sitting there wondering what's going on in the world that I can't see. Kansas City is, of course, no New York, or Boston, or LA, but it's big enough, and I have no more intention of defending it in that regard than I have of explaining the allure to my aforementioned friends. Life's too short. I think you do have to be kind of old, at least, to fully understand how profound a statement that really is. 

I will end this by reiterating just how good it feels to almost be over this goddam virus. 

Day 6

 Yes, believe it or not, the virus is still working its magic on me. Just to a lesser degree. This morning we both took a home Covid test, and both turned up negative.  So it is something else. I'm better today, in fact I'm getting ready to take a walk outdoors, but I have to say this is the longest I've ever had to endure the worst phase of one of these viruses. In my experience, the worst is always over in three days. So, yeah, this is Day 6. The good news is I'm getting plenty of rest.  

It's hard to come up with a worthy blog post based on a week of days spent sleeping and/or moaning and whining and/or puling. The wind has died down to normal levels, and I say normal with some reservations because up here atop the north facing river bluff the wind freight trains in across all the open space above the ancient river bed, unhindered by trees or buildings, and then finds itself being funneled and multiplied by the halls of downtown buildings. But we're used to that. Chicago isn't "the windy city." It's one of many, I suspect.

I'm better. I'll try to be more present. Time for my walk. Or maybe I'll take another nap. 

The Epizoodic

 In a world where we actually have no control whatsoever over the various forces around us, we turn to explanations, theories, and so on, to discover the ruling principles under which we so laboriously toil. Two days ago I mounted a hanging basket (sort of) on the far brick wall surrounding our patio. I had to drill holes in the grout between the bricks and sink a metal screw part way into it--this was to hold up the metal basket. 

The building is 90 years old. As I drilled the first hole, I had to push pretty hard, as the grout was hard, but at some point, an inch or two in, a puff of fine, white dust shot out of the hole, around the drill bit, and right into my mouth. 

24 hours later, I get a pain in my chest, and congestion. It feels like one of the final stages of the flu, whenever I used to get that, only without the preceding post nasal drip, sore throat and runny nose. Just went straight to the bronchial tube. Given the lack of other symptoms, I'm worried that the century old silicate dust (not good for you) got in my lungs and now I'm going to get some kind of exotic ailment.  

So now, day 2, and I'm actually relieved, somewhat, that I now have the more commonly experienced symptoms of a virus--fever, head congestion and headache, body aches, chills, and still the crap in my chest that hurts like hell when I cough.  But it's a known quantity, and at least up until now, always passes. I just haven't been this hammered for a long time. My head is swimming, and I'm sure this post is rife with grammatical errors and logic fails. 

I'm looking for pity here. I don't often look for pity, but I am so piteous it's only right to do so at this point. 

I should probably go out for a walk soon just to get the blood flowing and maybe clear the lungs out a little bit. The wind is blowing HARD. The basket I hung on the brick wall has vines draping down from it, and at the moment, they are perfectly horizontal, flapping and quivering like a battle flag. I'll probably stay inside. 

If you're here, reading this, thanks for visiting the blogger.com site. I apologize for any inconvenience. Of course, it's not like you had to walk a mile to get here--it's just clicks and stuff. Very little energy required, though I'm about to conk out from the effort of writing.