Another crazy Saturday night, selling almost five thousand dollars worth up at the wine bar.  There's that point in the night, head down, running, opening a Gigondas bottle at table 53, a five top, one guy wanting martini with blue cheese anchovy stuffed olive, but we're out of them, because barmen are run pretty hard, and then back to the bar and you've got a familiar pretty kind face, happily married, commercial real estate guy, and they all want cocktails, and who is sitting where...

I watch episodes of Chernobyl on my lap top, eating black eyed peace and rice, having some wine to unwind, when I finally get back, letting everyone else go, and the paper work drags on, entering all the tips into the system.  Alone.  Bar cleaning some to do still.  Before the Uber cab home to the apartment.

I wake tired and it's pouring rain, Betsy's up in New York City, I'm headed to work, mom is calling, telling me there's no food, and she's had some wine...  After the shower I pull a box marked winter stuff out of the closet and cut it open, and there's my good winter jacket.  I go out and catch the D6 bus in, waiting under the overhang of the little bus stop there by the curve with the field of the Urban Ecology Center behind me.  Mom has left some voicemails...  My pant legs are wet with the rain by the time I come into the restaurant.

And to my relief, there aren't many reservations made for upstairs, though the downstairs is booked solid.  Which means we will be running at some point...


But at some point, walking in the rain, careful at an intersection, standing aside in the tall grasses to let some Georgetown University girls go by, looking up at the scene of the rainy sky above the row houses of Reservoir Road--did Bobby Kennedy live in one near here when he first came to town?--I get to read my little snippets of blog entries.  They aren't much, Lord knows.  But...

The spider makes a strand, from here to there, pulls on it a bit, attaches another strand.  And eventually, a web begins to form, and in accordance with its own form and the principle of the integrity of the circle, attached to its surroundings just so, it makes sense, and the spider can abide there and its little part of the greater doing its little spider stuff, activities best seen at night, but that depends.

After the drone useless galley slave work of Saturday night, ignored for all but my gopher go get it, Sunday night there is a vibe, a more personal kind of engagement, regulars, neighborhood, comfortable people.

Things are thrown off a bit from the start when Marie Reine brings up a four top of elderly couples who swear they have made a reservation, they are over by the window, but there's a draft, and everyone starts fumbling over it until I cut through...  So much for stuffing olives project.


As the night winds up and then down, I speak in French to a couple of ladies in a humorous way, je vais a la plage, mais il pleut, je suis un jambon, as they sit next to a lady friend of mine whose friend from Sweden is from originally the Dordogne region...   I give away a copy of my old book to the lady who comes and has liver then an endive salad in the corner as she listens to books on tape, and at the end my psychic sense is rewarded for my good treatment of a woman with husband and boys, as she is a celebrity chef, Pati's Mexican Kitchen, come to find out.

But there's something, something about the work of a bar...  valid, honorable...


I can't seem to move before 2:30 in the afternoon to get ready and go do work again, but that's how it goes.