A bit of this...a bit of that...

Greetings to all near and far!

With this fine publication, "the los angeles nibbler," I begin my third odyssey in the blogging world (powerupgambia.blogspot.com; xanga.com/jzutz). I can hear you scoffing at the title from here. You're thinking to yourself, "Why is this Stanford-educated nitwit not using capitalized letters in the title of her esteemed blog?" The answer is quite simple. In Los Angeles, style supercedes all and so you may as well just throw that degree onto Santa Monica Blvd. so it can be run over time and time again by manaical Southern California drivers because in this situation, lower-case letters are cool.

My purpose in starting this blog is simple. I have moved to Los Angeles to train for my first foray into the working world as a manager for the Hillstone Restaurant Group. I will be learning the ropes here in Century City for the next three and a half months and will consequently be placed in another one of the company's 49 restaurants. Though living on the left coast is not new for me, working 11-hour days at odd hours is, and so I have found it increasingly difficult to update everyone on my status. Ergo, the birth of the los angeles nibbler. It is my intent to provide a little bit of this and that (as this post's title would indicate). I hope to keep you informed about my worklife, as well as my adventures in the City of Angels.

I have been gainfully employed for three weeks and I have already learned a great deal about the restaurant industry. For instance, it took me approximately 10 minutes to learn that gravy boats are indeed the worst possible way of serving salad dressing. As if the gravy boat, a silver vessel that must be polished every day, yet still looks as if it was retrieved from the sunken carcass of the Titanic wasn't a bad enough idea, my restaurant complicates the lives of servers and managers alike by insisting that the boat must be served on a plate with a spoon. The gravy boat slides all over the plate causing the dressing to slosh around (especially if it is one of our less viscous dressings) and inevitably, you will lose either the spoon, the boat, or both. On my second day of server training, I did just that. As I wove through the bar area on a busy Friday night, a guest jumped back suddenly into my path. My lightening-quick reactions dodged this shifty patron, but the boat flew off the plate and blue cheese went all over the black granite floor. By some random stroke of God, none of the stuff landed on a customer but it was the beginning of a dark relationship.

Other than the gravy boats, I'm beginning to appreciate the whole business. I have already completed server and greeter training and next I move onto unit accounting and bartending. Server training has by far been my favorite stage, but I think that's because on my first day I was blessed with the good fortune of serving sushi to Leonardo DiCaprio. Which brings me to my next objective in this blog- celebrity sightings will always be novel, and always will be mentioned.

I am actually enjoying life in Los Angeles a great deal. The whole city is like a big zoo to me, and all of the people in it are exotic animals. I can't help but look at them as if they are Siberian white tigers or giraffes or something. They just dress so...oddly...and do such...strange things. Today I watched a woman run around an entire intersection and go back the way she came. Tomorrow who knows what will happen.

In any event, I hope you all will join me as frequently as I post. I will admit that my hours are strange and quite often, I crawl home from work at the wee hours of the morning. But I am very excited about this opportunity and can't wait to welcome you all to savor my glamorous S0-Cal life.