Celebrate the Individuality

I’m fascinated with the mom and pop restaurants. Anything that is not a chain. I’m not even talking about the fast food giants or the many chains that perpetuate the American landscape with fast casual Italian, Chinese or even Mexican food. I’m looking specifically at the local restaurants that people feel compelled to open to showcase their unique take on BBQ, or Vietnamese or deli. I’m lucky that I live in such a neighborhood where local small shops are dotted on corners, where buildings were built in the early 1900s to incorporate the need for a corner restaurant or grocery or business.

I often bring my mom lunch so she and I can visit, but I haven’t been able, apparently, to find a decent pastrami sandwich for her. We’ve been to all sorts of places around my neighborhood, Blues City Deli, Gramophone, Midwestern, Big Baby Q (now closed and that makes me sad) just to name a few, but today she wanted me to take her up to this place in Clayton called Carl’s Deli. She says that dad used to take her there while they were dating. So we went, and she brought along a matchbook that had the info for 2 Cents Plain Deli. Because it is a pandemic, she had me go in and give them the matchbook that came from their original place of business. It was fun to bring them a relic from their past, even if they were a little confused about what it was at the beginning. She was right, too. The pastrami was on point. It would’ve been rude for me to dive into her sandwich, though, so I stuck with my very very delicious roast beef with provolone and horseradish sauce.

Thanksgiving is coming. This will be a slightly busy week due to the holiday and helping mom with her health stuff. I have to take her to the Dr.’s office in a couple of days because she has a torn tendon in her shoulder which makes it difficult for her to roll over, walk the dog, etc. Is she still doing all those things? Yep.

Either way, the day after is Thanksgiving and we should be celebrating with my sister for a brunch. Then she drives out to her bf’s to have thanksgiving with his family. I absolutely want her to have that experience and I am hoping they continue to get along like a house afire.

I had an enlightening conversation with my career counselor today. I let her know I had not been getting any feedback from my resume when sending it out and she let me know there are some flourishes on my resume which might be letting the software major companies use kick my resume out or make it useless. The frustrating part is that I went through 2 other advisors before they could be bothered to inform me of that. This isn’t a make or break, but it is definitely knowledge I should have had before I started to share my resume everywhere. On a positive note, though, I did get along with her really well so I’m excited about that. The downside is the next time she had available to chat was in January.

The rest of my day has been spent hanging out with mom, then drinking some hot apple cider spiked with green apple vodka. I doubled up on the packets because I really wanted the apple taste, but I’m getting spoiled working at the coffeeshop because we use apple cider juice and get it next to boiling. I’m afraid I’m going to have to start doing it the real way because the way I’ve been doing it for years is not getting the job done.