who are you

It's possible I've been working at the grocery store for FAR too long, but lately I've been more irritated than usual. In particular, there are three "customer profiles" who have really been on my last nerve lately:

1. The 8:00am Sandwich
I will never understand the customers who come in just moments after we open and ask for a sandwich. What is the thought process behind these orders? Does one wake up in the morning and think, "Hmmm, I think a pepper turkey sandwich with honey mustard and avocado would be the perfect companion to my cappucinno to really start this day off right"? Why in God's name do you need a hot pastrami sandwich on a sourdough roll in order to read the New York Times? What's wrong with just a croissant? We sell those too, you know.

2. The Food Critic
Things I hear almost every day:
"Your tuna salad is too sweet."
"Your oven roasted turkey is too dry."
"Your curry chicken salad needs more curry."
"Your curry chicken salad has too much curry."
"Your roast beef is too rare."
"Your ham is too fatty." etc, etc ad naseum.

Listen up, folks. If you don't like our food, don't buy our food. Get your potato salad at Andronico's where they don't put celery in it. I'm not going to stop putting bacon in our pesto chicken pasta just because you don't eat pork. If you're going to be so damn picky, brown bag your lunch and leave me alone.

3. Homo Impatientus
OK, this one really gets me. Imagine me making a sandwich for a customer who is standing right there. I'm wearing gloves, slathering mayo, slicing corned beef. And then I hear, "Excuse me? I need a BBQ brisket sandwich". I turn around. Surely, the brisket customer is not talking to me as I am obviously helping someone else. No, no they are definitely talking to me. What is it about the sandwich half-made in front of me that makes this customer think I am free to help them right this very minute? Do they think I am bored and therefore just making sandwiches to pass the time? Do they really anticipate me abandoning the customer I am helping at the moment to tend to their beck and call? Yes, as a matter of fact, they do.

Ah, Palo Alto....

wind in your hair

I just found out I'm being given zero dollars to set up my classroom this year. This is a serious bummer because I need books for my students in a major way. I can't very well teach an English class with no freaking books in my room, can I? Gosh, money sucks.

If you have any young adult novels you can donate to my cause, I would seriously appreciate it and would probably bake you cookies. No books but you have some extra cash? Consider adopting my classroom so I can buy some much needed supplies.

dream me a dream

A literary update, if you will.

Vacation Readings So Far:

• The Confessions of Max Tivoli - Andrew Sean Greer
• Water for Elephants - Sarah Gruen
• The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

Up Next:

• Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• A Long Way Gone: Memiors of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah

I've mostly done a lot of beach lounging and jewelry stall perusing and have been thinking in broad, vague terms about my classes this year and things I need to include on my syllabi and so, really, this vacation has been just splendid. I managed to convince my parents to leave the sanctuary of the pool and venture into the Iao Valley yesterday and we took some incredible pictures of the Iao Needle and wandered through the Heritage Gardens.

I'll try to get all of the pictures up on Picasa this afternoon.

Back to reality tomorrow night and then back to Davis before I know it. Crazy summer, indeed.

ready to be

Vacation is going well. Back on Saturday!

taciturn

I've had a few things I want to write about lately, including bad fashion at the gym, all things Harry Potter, my new boss at UCC (!!!) and word association games at work, but I'm just so tired. And I'm sort of sick of blogging. I don't know. Maybe later?

driving the darkness away

I love teaching with all of my heart, but it's really hard sometimes. Maybe that's why I picked it?

I titled my blog The Daily Grind because I felt it represented the mundane aspects of what we do. The movies love to show teachers winning the battle against poverty, low expectations, and hopelessness. I knew going in that teaching is far less about cinematic presentations than about the daily grinding towards a goal. The Apostle Paul encouraged us to press on towards that goal, and by press on, I suppose he meant take it one moment at a time... -Mr. McNamar @ The Daily Grind

i aint got the time

By popular demand, here is a brief list of some good books I can recommend just off the top of my head. Most of my library is actually packed up in Davis, so this is, of course, not extensive. But if you're looking for some good poolside reading this summer, it's not a bad place to start.

• The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
• The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
• Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
• Wicked, Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire
• Memiors of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
• Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
• The Namesake - Jhumpra Lahiri
• Brick Lane - Monica Ali
• Song of the Cuckoo Bird - Amulya Malladi
• The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
• The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
• The Magician's Assistant - Ann Patchett
• The Glass House: A Memior - Jeannette Walls
• Old School - Tobias Wolff
• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
• The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, & Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde

I, of course, have an enormous stack of books to read in Hawaii, which I'll report on when I get back home.