please enjoy this picture of my cat in a tie.

Straight out bragging here. I buy boxes of full size candy at Costco and give them all out. I live on a corner in a really nice house and light up the yard with inflatable ghosts and spiders and pumpkins so everyone knows there is candy here. Lots of kids get driven to the neighborhood (we see the cars) and I have a…

Celtic Studies nerd here... actually Hallowe'en has traditionally been a time of giving bread or treats to the less fortunate. In medieval Britain and Ireland, the poor would go souling, which is going house to house and offering songs or prayers for the dead of the household in exchange for food, or guising, where…

I passed out candy for the first time as an adult last year and it was SO FUN. So many little Spidermen. So many sweet princesses. So much candy. Halloween is the BEST.

Sadly, I think it is only blatant racists who are "among the dumbest members of society." Smart racists just know how to disguise their racism; those are the guys in the upper echelons of society who talk about welfare being for "lazy" people.

I was a bartender once at a dive bar, where one of the specials was pints of PBR for $2, and a pony (about 5 oz) for $1. One night this young guy comes in and asks what a pint of PBR costs. $2 I say. He hesitates, and asks if there's anything cheaper. I say we have 5oz glasses for $1. He asks for one of those, I…

We had a regular couple at one restaurant I worked who were South Asian (not sure which country they were originally from, but based on their accents I'm willing to bet they had been born elsewhere) who we used to legit fight over. When they'd walk in, the servers' eyes would all simultaneously light up.

Every Friday night, these two wonderful women come into the restaurant I work at at about 5pm and stay until 8:30 or so drinking and chatting and relaxing after a long work week. They always have kind words for my coworkers and me, and they are genuinely interested in seeing me pay for graduate school - so much so…

I've written about this one place I used to manage before; a great fine-dining joint in a small Puget Sound town, attracting guests with loads of money and and sometimes loads of entitlement. But for all of the craziness that happened, there were moments of kindness and generosity that made it more than worthwhile.

Celebrity Edition!

I do have a resturant revenge story but it is not against the customers, it is against the manager.

Since my tale of how I flew to Canada to get laid failed to even get me out of the greys last week, I'm going to tell you EXACTLY how my Canadian beau broke up with me when I got there. It's pretty raunchy and I apologize in advance.

I was dating a guy from high school who attended my family's church. I was barely 16 and hadn't decided to give up the v-card yet (he was 3 years older). He broke up with me because I "made him masturbate in the shower" which was, in his mind, a sin. (I'd like to emphasize the fact that he didn't break up with me…

I got this.

Things hadn't been going well with Mr. JackAss for a couple months, but I had decided to stick through it during the holidays. Then, one afternoon, he offered to let me drive his Jeep. I shifted over to the driver's seat as he walked around to the other side. I adjusted the seat, and checked the mirrors as…

I went to college at a very conservative Baptist university (for reasons) and at the sweet, naive age of 19 started dating this guy who was in the Biblical Studies program to become a pastor. I was all pumped about this guy and my first big girl relationship and thought this might be the guy I'd eventually marry.…

This is how my dad broke up with my mom when they were still teenagers. It should be noted that they did get back together, get married, and eventually had a long overdue divorce for which everyone is better off.

Going up, my parents were were divorced and never communicated directly. I got bounced back and forth between them a lot. Always based on what my mom needed. Fuck my social life or grades or stability. If being a parent started to get too hard, she'd ship me off to live with my grandmother or father. She'd get lonely,…

Before I left for a semester abroad in London, I planned to break up with my boyfriend of six months, Chris. He was a class A asshole— case in point, he had a tattoo of a leprechaun playing the bass guitar with one foot in a pot of golden beers on his upper arm. He was a huge stoner (OK full disclosure...so was I) .…

One day I overheard a girl yelling at a boy on the (pay)phone with the same name as my boyfriend. Being a one stoplight town, I was curious and asked her his last name. Turns out, she was yelling at her/my boyfriend. We hitchhiked to his house (with a super creepy dude) and upon knocking on the door, discovered he was…

This isn't a story about me being broken up with, rather me breaking up with my boyfriend at the time. Our 2nd anniversary was coming up and I had just realized that I was in love with someone else, a woman to be exact. Well, he didn't know this yet and my 19 year old self thought the best time to tell him was when he…