What do you all think about these poems I wrote tonight.

Feeling you start to work your way inside

my mind and inner thoughts

Accessing the interior of my consciousness

Stepping around inside

Like a cave

Darkness

Light

The sunshine of fresh perspective

Differences overcome

In the eye of the beholders

Finding new things

Treasures from the other side

Moving forward

Plans made

Thoughts accepted

New patterns felt

Better lives with all in them

Relationships

The ultimate giver, learner

Forever

Love blossoms inside like a hidden jewel

Waiting for a time to make its purpose known

When it shows you the secrets it offers

The meaning is then whole

Or you lose perspective

And find yourself in a hole

Lonely and alone

Searching for who you are

Is hard at any time

Only through relationships

Can you combine

And use talents for sublime

Enjoyment is first priority

Life should not be lived

Unless with friends loved

Connections both useful and helpful

For life and the world

It’s our goal but how does it unfold

To help or to hurt is in the eye of the beholder

Beyond our grasp

Tis better to burn out than to fade away

And love is better lived than lost

Here’s to the chase

That will likely be haste

And the taste of excitement

Of happiness found

Is the use of "eye of the beholder" contradictory in these poems. And more importantly, doesn't the last paragraph of the second sound like a proper toast.

-Nuge

4^th of July

The time had come, the busiest day of the year was here and we were ready…sort of. I had stayed up until three or later, three out of four of the days leading up to the fourth and worked exhausting server doubles, at a packed restaurant. I also got to take a few hours off here and there and would get off early on occasion. Jim and I went fishing during one of my breaks and he caught a beautiful brown trout and we both got numerous bites. We would have five servers, five cooks, and two bartenders for the fourth. When I got to work I was still feeling the drunk from the night before. Katie stumbled into work after crashing at another local ex-boyfriend’s house the previous night and Hadley looked hungover as hell. Clint had gotten wasted and had the day off so he was partying. We got to work around 9:30 and made some signs before the parade. We had bought some water balloons and right as we were fixing to fill them up Shane the Sheriff comes in the back door of the restaurant and tells us to throw them away. When questioned about why we had to throw ours away when everyone else had them he stammered, “because I don’t want you hittin’ any random people.

I got on the back of Clint’s truck in the blazing sun and wondered if I was going to make it today. Clint had a couple of beers in the car, so I chugged one and got back out on the float as we came around the corner there was a cop. He had some bottled water and the girls asked him for it because they were parched. He threw it up on the truck and we split it. We told him to come by for some pizza. As we came across Main Street there were thousands of people lining the sides waving flags and watching the parade. There were also volleys of water and water balloons from the tops of the surrounding buildings. We were going to get soaked. Katie had tied a bandanna around her for a shirt and was looking good, Hadley had a tank top on and a skirt. I was shirtless and had a red bandanna on. We yelled about Big Boobs, Jager Bombs, and Happy Hour and then we got soaked, as we came around Kip’s Grill, we got caught in a crossfire, I caught 2 balloons and returned fire scoring two hits. As we went by RJ’s on the way into town he soaked us with his garden hose. The girls went to shower before they came back to serve and were late getting back, I was still prepping as the doors opened. This was going to be nuts. We were full up from 12 until 8, busy as hell, and we had a new waitress Brenda who did great. I was working upstairs and on the deck, it was like running a full marathon. Everybody got served, a couple of tables got screwed up but all in all it was a good day. I made $90 in tips and did $622 in sales.

Hadley came in after she had gotten off right before the kitchen was set to close and started yelling at the kitchen staff when her food wasn’t coming out. She slapped my ass twice during work, and the second time I replied “fucking Hadley”. Daniel chewed her out she got her food and left. It took a while to finish everything up and Brooke got pissed that Katie got cut first but I talked to her and it was cool. The best part about the setup and the day is that everyone helped each other out. It was teamwork at its best. Jim had food flying out of the kitchen and all the servers helped each other out when they had the time and everyone did well that is until after the bars closed.

Night of the 4th

Late the night of the fourth Sam’s sister and her boyfriend who were in town got into a pushing match. He tried to kick down our door and Jim and Clint went apeshit on the guy. Jim chased him around the house, and he hid underneath the porch. He crawled in the doghouse. Eventually he came out, and Clint pursued him. Clint walked around the block and found him and kicked his ass. He took him down with a couple of shots to the head, and kicked him while he was down. I heard this second hand having gone to bed before any of this started. The dude came over the next morning and he looked pretty...no reall rough, you could see that he wasn’t walking very well, and his mouth was pretty fucked up and he kept stammering about some guy in South Fork that was a meth head. This guy was a real piece of work. He got his shit and left, like I said, you fuck with the house you get the fuck out.

Later we heard varying accounts but the most common was that the guy had run, yes run out of town 22 miles to South Fork that night. There were more stories from the night of the fourth. Some guy that lived in South Fork and came to Creede to party took a bunch of pills and drank a bunch and ended up passing out in the middle of the highway through town. After that a couple of locals that were hanging at the Halfway House earlier in the night found him, took his knife, and threw his shoes in the flume. After the local Sherriff Fred almost ran over him, he picked him up and took him to the hospital. The kid (I believe he was underage) ended up that night at the hospital in Del Norte. The dude who got f'd up at our house, apparently knew this kid.

Layover

Mac’s was closed the day after the 4^th for repair and recovery. We had run out of pizzas and a number of other items. The 5^th was a day of rest. In the afternoon Sarah, Alesia, Dani, Megan and I had gone to Kips and run into a vinyl connoisseur named Chelsea and her boyfriend Matt who Megan had told me previously about. They invited us out to their cabin up Bachelors Loop. We arrived at a rustic cabin in the woods. It was beautiful. We drank rum, smoked cigarettes, and did a J. Clint showed up with Wanda and the kids with a box of fireworks. After an hour or so of fireworks we went back to town. I took a shower and headed to Tommies to party. I was really drunk and danced for a while with Mel our other bartender. It was a good time and the Dewayn Brothers were a great bluegrass band. I talked to their guitar player for a while and they had played Galileos in Oklahoma City with my some of my friends’ band Tall Cotton. I went up to the bar for another drink after the band wrapped up and tripped and broke the BBQ sign at Tommies. Chelsea grabbed me, propped me up and stuck her thigh right into my crotch holding me up. I staggered outside and down the street to Mac’s and somehow got back home. Once I got home I pulled out the bong and as I did this I got the bright idea to go see if the theater chicks were partying at the bordello. No such luck, so I drove back home and crashed hard.

The next day of work was rough. We had to do a major cleaning of the restaurant and once again were prepping as we opened an hour and a half late. I felt bad but maintained. There was another band playing at Tommies that night so I went back to the Halfway for a nap and a shower.

So its taken me 4 months to do another post. This can hardly be considered a regular blog and it feels really weird to write. That's probably a bad thing. I've been getting though the dui bit. I'm almost out of debt and probation is rolling along. Besides that I got promoted at work and have been bustin ass there. It sort of/really sucks to be working for a big corporation though, but at least I'm not super micromanaged, just super overworked. Its kind of ridiculous how corporate america is so cutthroat. I work at a small bike shop and the solution to anything is cutting hours. Half of my mechanic hours besides me got cut this week, which means I have to do triple the work, and work that I booked thinking I had more staff will be late. Which means I have to deal with all of the blowback. Needless to say its been exhausting and I should be making more money.

None the less life is good. Still see most people I know here with regularity. Still partying some and failing. But eventually the ship will be righted soon. Anywho, here's the next verse, some have been clamoring for a bit. Lets be better about this here thing. I miss you kids. This analogue kind of dovetails with where I'm at right now.

-Ninja

Pit’s Open

The last few weeks were pretty hectic. We completed all of the projects done to open the full kitchen a couple of days before the 4^th of July, the craziest week in Creede. Picking up a new menu took some time and we were happy to have a few days to warm up to it before all hell would break loose. We made a couple of mistakes due to computer malfunction and missed orders. Kate our beautiful blond waitress decided to quit a couple of days before the fourth after she heard a rumor that Laura blamed her for an order that disappeared. It’s a shame because Laura loves Kate and never blamed it on her, because the computers shut down and that’s what lost the order. Laura and Daniel were very concerned about it, and were very sorry to see Kate go. There was very little communication with her. Things at the restaurant were going very good, we established sections with a total of almost 20 tables, including three stories of stairs. I made totals of $50, $70, $91. Running food was like running a half marathon. At 8800 feet, it’s an exhilarating but exhausting process. In the morning we would do prep, Jim and Sam would throw pizzas. I would cut up lettuce for salads and do prep work and the girls would clean or we’d make ice tea. Whenever someone was hungry we would get breakfast sandwiches from The Old Firehouse down the street from Mac’s.

Katie was also a very good waitress, she wore the cutest little outfits and it was mostly about the clothes for Katie at work. And man did she work it. That girl made $130 to $230 in a night and did more sales than anyone. On occasion I’d see Katie jump behind the bar and bartend. She said she had bartended while she was in college living in Fort Collins, but it was a little much and Megan only cared for it as much as she liked checking out "brown Katie's" ass. In a moment of weakness one drunken night, when Katie was going to pass out at the house I had told her she could come down and crash with me. Katie said maybe another night as I remember it, but it was one of those cloudy drunken nights, but Katie and I always liked working together and in hindsight I'm glad that didn't happen. Katie had her own man issues. She had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years. They had been calling each other recently and it was turning into a seesaw affair, he really being a dick about everything at least that's what Katie said. Katie was a party girl as were most of the girls that lived and worked at Macs. Head games were certainly a strong current in Creede. Katie had been playing them with RJ, who was the bouncer at Mac's. RJ was a good enough fellow, he was big and burly and could kick a man's ass if he needed to, but like most burly men, he was a bear inside. He had been trying to hook up with Katie all summer, and to my knowledge, it might have happened. Kind of depends on who you ask.

After working with Hadley I began to realize she was trying to play mind games with me. Hadley was a good waitress and she made decent money, but there never really was a time I didn't see Hadley with a can of red bull in her hand and those hollow eyes. But she would try to intimidate me because her boyfriend Rory was a cop and knew the ins and outs of the police force. She would always tell me that the police were going to stop by the house sometime soon and bust people for underage drinking. We let the girls drink but kept it on the absolute down low, and none of their underage friends were allowed at the house. Hadley was under 21 and had partied at the Halfway House quite a bit in the past. Hadley liked to start rumors and cause controversy and there were plenty of rumors about Hadley. I had heard from Kirk, a bar patron that she had stripped naked and done some stripper performance in front of a crowd at a bonfire party. I heard others describe Hadley as a “black widow” she was certainly good at producing discord and causing drama, a real life Isis figure. If Hadley ever had power it would be a bad deal for everyone. She was 20 and was not allowed at the Halfway House.

Lovely Ladies

My nights had been fulfilling as well. I had met a whole cadre of new people to party with. I hung out frequently with some of the bartenders at Tommies. I had also met a team of musicians in local bands that played open mic nights and shows at bars. I had played in a band when I was in college. It was formed in the summer of ’01 when I lived in Bozeman, MT with a bunch of friends from Sewanee. We were called simply, “Tweeter”. We started playing open mic gigs at the local bar in Bozeman. We covered the classics. Then, when we went back to school in the fall, we formed an electric band with drums and played slow drawn out classic rock covers, we were called “No Credit, No Problem.” You might have heard of us. These guys Rayland and Rusty who wanted to start a band were pretty cool. Rayland was the son of Bucky Baxter, who had played guitar for Bob Dylan during the “Never Ending Tour” in the late 80's and early 90's. I had seen them play at an open mic gig and they were pretty good, and there were plenty of ladies who liked to dance. Rusty was about 40 from Florida, and looked like he belonged driving boats with his porn stash. But he was pretty funny, and I could stand hanging out with him. Ray worked at Kip's with a load of the hottest girls in town, but more were underage. Ray was kind of the town chick magnet. He meshed with every group of people, and his dad was a minor local celebrity (whether or not he deserved it) in these parts.

One night at open mic night I ran into Brad a local who had been over to the Halfway House and a nice looking blond named Tanya. Tanya and I danced to some Sublime, and as I went back for another drink she stuck her hand down the back of my pants and pulled me back on the dancefloor. She was from Chicago, and that’s just about all I know of her. Brad, Tonya, Malcolm (rastaman), and I drove a little out of town listened to some Beck and burned a blunt. I tried to get them to come back and party, but no one was partying at the house, so I just went to bed and they left. I didn’t really know what to think, Brad was married and Malcolm was in a relationship. I definitely had a chance but I wasn’t going to push anything. That’s how you get into messes.

The most elusive group in town had to be the theater people. They were labeled as gay by some in town, and definitely some were but I had not been able to crack their circle until Jacob started working at the restaurant. Jake was an actor for the theater. He was from Fort Worth and Daniel and Laura had told me he was gay. But, after work one night we were on the deck, and he started asking if there were any gay guys around because he hadn’t seen any and then...told us he was straight. It was pretty awkward. On his first night 2 days before the fourth the power went off for 2 hours at the restaurant. We were able to continue putting out food and everything ended up fine but it definitely made for an interesting night. People were partying at the bar and eating all over the restaurant in the dark. That night I ended up following Jake over to Tommies, and chatting with some theater chick friends. One was named Natalie of “Nattie” as most people called her because of her massive dreadlocks and a petit blond named Sappha from California. She was pretty smoking and we had begun talking about going fishing soon, but she also worked at the local gas station for extra money. She had a boyfriend in California but ended up flashing some folks on the deck that night. Unfortunately, I missed the action. We partied and smoked nuge for a few hours and called it a night. I learned after the fact from one of her friends that she had to keep her from doing something she'd regret that night. It was good to be single, but its really hard to think about starting anything serious after you've been with someone for 6 years and the theater kids naturally seemed pretty crazy.