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"I hate it when people use lame excuses like 'My dog died.' to just skip work. Not like you can say 'My Mom died.' when she's sitting right there." - One of our new servers, Gabbi, to Kat's son while at work.

Thursday, 4-27-23: My first trip to the midcoast of the year. Celtics win! Do I have to go to work?
It'll be bedtime soon unless things at work get busier and I'm needed. It's 2308, and closing time is less than two hours away so I think I won't be needed.* Maybe? Hopefully! It is kinda busy there now, but not packed and Katherine does a good job running that shift. I hate running the Thursday night shift because I also do Friday and Saturday so that's three consecutive nights of working until 0200 (closing at 0100 all three nights.) I've done it before and I'll do it again, but it's less than ideal.

Thursdays lately have been getting better. Not as busy as they were a couple years ago, but not too far off lately. We had a long stretch where our Thursdays weren't great, but the last few have been really good. Last Thursday went really well, and this one is ahead of that pace. Oh Jesus, hell ya! Last Thursday my awesome wife and I went down as customers and had fun. We planned to only stay a couple hours, but we ended up closing the place down. Woke up a little hungover last Friday, but not horribly-so.

Kat was indecisive about going down tonight. She said she might wanna go, I said okay cool, she said nevermind it's bedtime, I said okay cool, and then she decided she wanted to go. By then I decided we weren't going so I made a second rum and Coke and settled in to watch game 6 of the Celtics-Hawks round one of the NBA playoffs. I told her I'd meet her down there in a half hour, but she got all pissed off at me and went to bed. OMG WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! Sometimes having a wife totally fuckin' sucks way to be a heel and blame me for something I didn't even do.

I'm glad we didn't go. It probably would've been fun, but we would've blown 50 bucks. Plus we would've stayed up too late and I would've wanted to go home unless I got really drunk hehehe. Then I'd be hungover and not productive tomorrow. I'm glad I got to sit on the couch and write my useless thoughts to almost no one. Plus I can listen to channel 1928, 80s music, in relative peace. Down at the bar some slapnut would've been singing a crappy karaoke song. Oh, I also watched the Celtics beat the Hawks so they advance to the second round of the NBA playoffs and will host the 76ers in a few days. The Celtics have a really good team and finished as the second-seed in the entire division. Not bad! Atlanta was a 7th seed, and the 76ers are a 3-seed. I used to not give a crap about the NBA, but I've enjoyed it more in recent years. It's a faster-paced game with much more scoring than other sports inluding MLB. I still love baseball, but not as much as I did a few decades ago...

^Tatum = fuck yeah!

I went down to the midcoast today for a nice visit with Mom, Dad, and Jason. It was my first trip down to the ol' homestead in 2023, and my first visit with Mom and Dad since maybe 5 months ago. OMG I SUCK! Mom, Dad, and I had a nice lunch before Jason rolled in and then Dad, Jason, and I went into the woods to trim back some apple trees at "Lot 88" for a couple hours. We would have done more in the woods, but we heard thunder and ominous clouds appeared at the same time. Good thing we bailed out of the woods because it started raining not long after.

I'm glad we got into the woods today; I need to do more of that this year. I'll try to do some turkey hunting next month with Dad and *maybe* Jason. None of us give a crap about turkey hunting like we do for deer hunting, but I think it can be fun and in the past I've had some great times on the chase for a Tom turkey. I like the better weather (on average) and the fact that they're not nocturnal so you can hunt them during the day. Plus they're incredibly vocal so you can hear them coming most of the time (but not always.) The turkey season runs through all of May, but by the end of May it usually gets kinda hot and very buggy so going earlier in the season is the best.

Last year at this time I believe I had "fired" my parents from my life so I didn't go down to visit them at all or do any turkey hunting. What a bunch of crap! Mom took a verbal turd all over my wife regarding the disaster that was having Doug back so I pulled the plug on it all. I was tempted to pull the plug on my marriage as well, and I've almost done that a couple times already, but I know it's not the right thing to do because I still love her. She's half-crazy at times, but I'm quite flawed as well and we're great for each other. She frustrated me bigtime tonight, but I don't want to haul on her. Who knows, maybe she'll decide to haul on me!

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Wednesday, 4-26-23: I actually clocked in for work.
Tax season ended just over a week ago, and at this time last week my awesome wife and I were just getting back from a nice, short getaway down to Bar Harbor. We left Tuesday later PM on the 18th after I finished up with my last tax client and Kat was done babysitting 1.5-yr old Damon, and we checked in easily enough. Bar Harbor isn't very busy this time of year so a lot of places in town weren't even open for supper. What a bunch of crap! I even checked ahead of time to see what might be open, but the Interweb sometimes lies, damnit. We did find a place to eat that was too crowded with not the best service or food, but good enough.

Our actual anniversary was one week ago so we had a nice Wednesday last week. Breakfast at our hotel was actually pretty good for the "free" hotel breakfast (THERE ARE NO FREE LUNCHES!) and then we went into town to shop a little before going to Acadia to drive the Park Loop Road. I was going to take my Sweet Pea to Thunder Hole, but I drove right by it. What a bunch of crap! It's a one-way road so there was no going back. Oh well, I thought Otter Point would be nice until I missed that one as well. I SUCK! We did stop at a nice lookout point to walk around some, though.

I thought there's no way I can screw up getting us up to the top of Cadillac Mountain. I've done that before (many, many years ago and before Kat and I met) so I actually know the way. Too bad we got to the road that leads up to the top, and it was closed.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

^I SUCK!

Oh well, we still had a lot of fun and we got into Ellsworth in time to have a really awesome lunch at Helen's. That restaurant is GOOD. It was much better than the place we ate at the night before, and it was a better price as well. Their desserts are the best, too! On our way home we stopped to shop at a really neat antiques/specialty shop off 1A just a tad outside of Ellsworth:

That's a really neat store that doesn't really make sense. It's like a huge yard sale with various and incredibly interesting different rooms. We found a couple cool things to buy before we headed home and got ready for work. Kat was the trivia host and I was the assistant. Normally it's Jay and Zack, but Jay wanted a day off so we did it. Working on our anniversary?! Why not, we work almost every day anyway and it was kinda fun. I'm too stupid to figure out how to use the timer feature on my cellphone, though. What a bunch of crap! Thankfully 18-yr old Zack was there to show my borderline old ass how to get it working.

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Sunday, 4-16-23: Booked for anniversary.
I just booked a place for my awesome wife and I to stay on Tuesday night and into Wednesday, the actual day of our 8-year wedding anniversary. We'll work on Tuesday and then we'll scoot out of here, and I'm hoping we can get out of town late PM. It's the final day of tax season, but I don't expect to have too much left to do. I did some extensions for people already, and I finished 136 tax returns with only a few left. Last year I did 180, but I think I did over 20 of them AFTER the deadline. THis year I'll end up around 140 so since I only have a few left, and I'll probably end closer to 150-160 by the end of the year. Down some, and that suits me just fine. Sometimes it feels like even doing 150 is too much, especially with the restaurant gaining momentum and needing more from us than ever over the weekend. Some of the extra ones I did last year were really easy, too. Just Maine filings for stimulus checks so I'm glad to not have those ones again.

Sales weren't HUGE this weekend at the restaurant, but they've been good. We had amazing weather Thurday through yesterday including 70-75 degrees both Friday and yesterday. Oh Jesus, hell ya! When it's that nice outside, especially for the first time of the year after winter, sales will drop. People can go to places that have inviting outdoor eating or they can just stay home and cook out. Kat and I spent some time outside yesterday, I jogged 1.5 miles Thursday and Friday, and we also went to have lunch at one of the local "entertainment" venues yesterday. I won't name the place, but it's probably easy to figure out where it is when I finish my review.

We weren't planning to go out at all for lunch, but we were in the area and have never been before so we thought we'd give it a try. First, the entrance is totally ghetto and 100% uninviting. You almost have to go to an area that looks suitable for deliveries and trash, not for customers. I can't even imagine being a female and doing that bullshit at night.

We get into the place and no one on the staff is in any kind of uniform at all. Fine, lots of places do that. However, we might not know who is there to help us and who is there as staff. No name tags, no nothing. It wasn't busy so we were able to figure it out. They have paper menus on the tables, and you have to go up to the bar to place your food order. The manager on duty said they were working on getting servers hahahaha.

I asked for a Coke and a water, no ice for my awesome wife. Of course the dude pours water with ice. What a bunch of crap! He also didn't know how to ring up our basic food order of loaded nachos and a chicken quesadilla. We go back and sit down, and we get to hear music playing that sounds like it's dinner music for a formal wedding. This is supposed to be an "entertainment" place by the way. Stage for when they do live music and whatnot, and pool tables among other "entertainment" options.

Just after the bartender (if you can call him that, seems a stretch) rang up our food the "cook" came out to say they didn't have chicken breast only fried chicken. Breast is supposed to be used for the quesadilla so we went with what they had. Not much of a choice, though. It took 22 minutes for our food to be done, and the guy trying to bring it out had no clue where to bring it even though we were the only people at the tables with no food. Only a few other people were in the tables area.

The chicken quesadilla was $12, and it sucked. No salsa or anything, just chicken and cheese. The loaded nachos did have a good flavor, but all the cheese was lumped in the middle and the amount of veggies was really meager. Most of the chips on the bottom were still just the plain chips with no toppings at all. What a bunch of crap! No plates either, but we did get napkins and silverware. We saw other people getting good on paper plates, and they serve the booze in solo cups. They also use the solo cups to cover the liquor bottles. OMG WHAT A GHETTO BUNCH OF CRAP! It was definitely NOT worth the $29 for the food and my soda either.

^Competing business not far away sucks at being a restaurant and an "entertainment" venue.

Seeing how bad the competition can be at doing this restaurant thing made us feel a lot better about our own place. Compared to them we're great at what we do. Actual staff with name tags, table service, better decor, cleaner, nicer looking. (Don't even get me started about the bathrooms at this other venue. Horrible!)

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Thursday, 4-06-23: A colonoscopy = NO.
My awesome wife had to get a colonoscopy done today. It's been on the schedule for quite some time so we've planned for it, at least as best as possible in tax season and while trying to run a new-ish business. She has underlying medical conditions that make it more complicated so she had to have her last meal later on Monday and switch to fluids and a lot of uncomfortable meds since then. You gotta be purged out pretty well for when they do their inspection, and she followed all of the instructions and did great with it all. Clean bill of health for her = Oh Jesus, hell ya! It's especially important for her since she's had cancer in the past.

Seeing how uncomfortable and how hungry she was sucked. A lot. Then, to make matters worse, you're only doing it so a doc can shove a camera up your ass. What a bunch of crap! I'm very proud of her for doing it because I don't think I would have. I don't want to starve myself for a couple days and shit my brains out (slight exaggeration) only to have a camera look up my poop-chute. Do they look for anything besides cancer? How common is colon cancer? Guy looks it up...

Okay so according to the Interweb you're most likely to get it when you get old, and of course that makes sense because when you're old you are closer to death. How do most people die? Body fails, and sadly cancer is a huge part of that.

Put another way 1 in 23 men will be diagnosed with colon cancer, and it's 1 in 26 for women. For me the odds of getting it don't reallt start to jump until age 65+ so that begs the question. Is it worth getting an ass-exam so they can look for cancer?

HELL FUCKING NO!

I'd rather die of ass-cancer than have to get a camera probed around in there. I don't care very much if I die because no one lives forever. Living forever would actually be terrible because everyone around you would die so you'd have to constantly make new friends and when all your best friends die what's the point of it all?

I'm hoping I don't die of ass-cancer, but if that's how I gotta check out oh well. I'll take my friggin' chances at this point.

I'll bivoiac pretty soon; poor Kat was exhausted from her colonoscopy so she's asleep now. She had a good supper, her first real meal in three days, so hopefully she can get some good rest and feel better tomorrow. We have to go to Lewiston tomorrow for another important appointment of hers that's been pushed back twice already. Then we both work tomorrow night so it will be a long day. I watched some news and then I shut the TV off entirely. Donald Trump got charged with something like 34 counts of something or another, paying off a porn star, bad business, etc. That's been all over the news since he's planning to run for president again in 2024.

Trump is a scumbag, but so is Biden. These legal charges against him seem pretty flimsy and entirely politially-motivated so who knows, it might help his run for president into 2024. It's really sad how his haters will stoop so low to try to get rid of him politically. The epic failer that was his farce impeachment trial when he was president is a prime example of that. All this crap about a stolen election from 2020 is probably true as well. He's so despised by half the populace that they cheated to keep him out of office and they continue to do so. What a bunch of crap!

I'm not a huge Trump supporter because he cheated on his wife (probably A LOT) and he's a narcissist. However, he's leaps and bounds better than Biden and his "Make America Great Again" campaign really works for me. When he was in office he actually did try to follow that slogan, too. I can appreciate that because good economic policy is always the goal, especially now that we own a business that needs to do a million dollars a year in sales just to *maybe* break even.

Alright turds, all two of you who read this trash pile, I'm gonna try to get some sleep. I'll need it because the next two days will be long ones before we get a little reprieve on Easter Sunday. I don't give a crispy shit about Easter, but I am looking forward to a rare Sunday off from work. We're closed so we don't have to worry about people calling out sick. Oh Jesus, hell ya!

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Wednesday, 4-05-23: Tax season ending soon.
I've finished 116 paid tax returns, and I have another 10 that are in a holding pattern either awaiting payment or signatures but essentially done. Last year I did around 150 by the filing deadline so I'm close to that pace. There are only 13 days left until the April 18 deadline, and I don't really have too much on my calendar at the moment. I think I only have 4 or 5 booked appointments right now. However, I think another 15-20 will call, email, or show up at some point to try and finish before the deadline. I also have a few clients who don't give a crap about the deadline and will file later in the year.

Today has actually been a very easy day, and so far this week hasn't been that overwhelming. Oh Jesus, hell ya! I only had one tax client at the desk at 1100, but I was there for about 3 hours working on other stuff, talking to a client on the phone, booking a couple appointments, e-mails, etc. Piece of cake overall, and I had time to get my swell on in the downstairs bootleg gym before writing this crappy update that two people will ever read.

The restaurant had its best month, ever last month. Oh Jesus, hell ya! We aren't actually making a profit yet, but we're trending in the right direction. Last month was about break-even financially so we covered all our costs with the revenue we did take in. THis month got off to a great start both Saturday and Sunday, but yesterday wasn't that good. (Tuesdays never are!) Wednesdays do well with trivia, but the forecast is for rain and later on dropping down to 32 so there might be some freezing rain. OMG WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP!

We've had a few chilly days lately including today where we didn't get out of the 30s. Yesterday was a decent 55 so I went for a mile jog; I won't go for a jog again for days. Next week looks GREAT with midweek next week temps expected to get into the low 70s. Oh Jesus hell ya!

Easter is this coming Sunday, and we won't even open the restaurant. We were open last year for Easter and we didn't do very much business. No sense being open and losing money. Plus the break will be nice. We've worked every Sunday every day this year. Hell, we've worked every DAY this year. WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! Some days it's only 3-4 hours of the day, but other days it's 12-16 hours so it averages out to a lot. Gotta put in the work to make the business succeed, right? Maybe in the near future we can actually start taking a pay check from the restaurant again.