Strong Words, Softly Spoken

I take my title from a pretty great short story by Stephen King.

Last night I had an incredibly bizarre, yet incredibly vivid dream. In my dream I walked into the Macaroni Grill and decided right there on the spot that I was going to work that night. Yep…went in and took a look around and then Kevin Darubo (who isn’t even a manager there anymore) came around the corner and I said “Kevin…” and he said “you can go in section 18.” So I get in this section and realize it’s a 2 table section (although if I’m remembering correctly I *think* section 18 was actually the bar – Ginger help me out here) and I was irritated that they’d stick me in that section. Granted I walked in when it was getting busy and got the only open section in the restaurant but even in my dream that section was a complete waste of my time. Hmph!

All this to say…when I was actually serving I used to have serving dreams all the time. Most of them involved me being in the weeds and not be able to catch up. Or me being at work and realizing I was the only person on and the restaurant started filling up. And it’s just interesting that here it is 3 1/2 years since I’ve worked a serving job, still having serving dreams. Although I’m afraid this one is because of my fear of the economy causing me to be laid off and having to return to serving and not being able to pay the bills. Gotta love how your mind works that way.

So, I’m going to SPAIN! Well, correction…Alex & I are going to Spain. In 3 1/2 weeks to be exact. We leave March 15th and come back March 22nd.

The short (or long) story is…I got a phone call last Friday from my co-worker Cathy telling me that we (my company) had won 2 trips for 2 (All expenses paid!) to Spain from one of the radio stations because we had spent so much money with them in 2008…and my boss picked she & I to go. I’ll probably never forget that moment because I was walking through Walmart with my mother gathering up things to make Alex some valentines cookies and when she told me I started jumping up and down and bouncing all over the place. So she tells me this…then drops the bomb that while we won the trips, we also missed the deadline for having our names to the travel agency so she wasn’t sure that we would still be able to take them. Sigh. We wait for news. Then she gets an email saying it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Double sigh. I was pretty depressed. Especially since we watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona Saturday which takes place in…yep…Spain.

Monday comes and we’re just waiting for news. Alex is texting me all day long asking for updates and the longer we waited, the more pessimistic I became. Finally about 3pm I walk into Cathy’s office to hear her saying “thank you, Grant, thank you so much.” She hangs up….we’re going to Spain. Except there’s a little snag, she says. Since we were late, we have to pay the difference of the flights since they’ve gone up in price and that will be about $250 each. Are you kidding me? $250 for 7 days in Spain? I’ll take it! Another snag…neither Alex nor I have passports. And we leave in 3 weeks. Oops! Monday night we spent running around to our parents houses digging out birth certificates and getting passport photos made.

The really good news? Tuesday they call to say that they’ve booked the flight and it’s going to cost each of us less than $50. Yes…the flight went from $250 to only $50 per person. God loves me!

I think the thing that really gets me is how this whole thing has worked out so well. The week we’ll be gone is always my slow week at work. Alex can’t take off the first 2 weeks of the month, and work picks back up for him the last week of the month…so that timing was also perfect. AND..Cathy’s husband works out of state and his company makes them take mandatory vacations each year and it just so happened that this week was already his mandatory vacation week. It’s just fate.

Ok, so some details. We’ll be going to Marbella, Spain, which is on the Southern coast of the country. While we’re there, we’ll be going to Morocco for a day (which is in AFRICA!) and we’ll only be 40 miles from the Rock of Gibraltar. On our way out of town, we have an 8 hour layover in NYC so we’ll get to venture into the city for a bit. And when we come back, we fly through Paris. So basically, I’m going to be traveling to 3 different countries and 2 different continents. Can you say EXCITED??????????????????

Let me end this with a little disclaimer saying that the title is supposed to say “Look out Spain, here I come!” I used the google translation service to come up with that sentence so if it really says something like “Your mama is fat and I kicked your dog” then Google has some ’splainin’ to do.

THIS POST, that’s what!

God, this is depressing. 600,000 jobs lost in the month of January. I should be on my knees thanking God daily that I still have a job to go to instead of complaining about getting up at 7:30 every morning. And praying that I have to get up at 7:30am every morning for a very long time. I’m really at a loss over this economy. I have all these plans that are entirely dependent upon being able to afford to do them. It’s really putting a damper on making life decisions – like life has to be put on hold. I don’t like not having control over my life…so this economy and I are likely to have a bit of a scuffle before all is said and done.

I saw Rachel Getting Married over the weekend. Excellent, excellent film. I also saw Frost/Nixon for the 2nd time. I can’t say enough good things about that film. I think it’s possibly my favorite film of last year. I mean…I don’t know, I really loved The Dark Knight. Not many films captivate me enough to see them 5 times in the theater, but The Dark Knight did. And I think Frost/Nixon might be right up there with it. Frank Langella was so great and I hope he wins the Oscar. I’m not sure he will, but I think he should. I mean, Mickey Rourke was good…but Frank Langella was great.

I also saw Let The Right One In tonight. I missed it when it was playing at Sidewalk because it screened during the Alabama/Georgia game and well, it was the Alabama/Georgia game! Anyway, I got to watch it tonight and I’m really sad I missed seeing it with an audience. I’m in awe that these children were able to play such dark characters so brilliantly. If I’m not mistaken, it took a couple of years to even cast the film because they couldn’t find the right actors. The made the right choices. I loved this film and I HATE that Hollywood feels it’s necessary to do a re-make with big name actors. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll want to see it. What’s the point of a remake? Are American audiences that ADD that we can’t enjoy a Norwegian film with subtitles?? Or would we only be happy with it if it was presented as Saw part 46?

I think we all know the answer to that.