Just like that, a snap of the fingers, a blink of the eye, and we’re almost into 2024 which, to me, means blood oranges, tangerines, kumquats, pomelos (pummellos?), and of course, Meyer lemons. Yeah, it’s raining, dismal, and depressing out there. Grim. Foreboding. Wet. Beyond, beyond the colorful, knobby oil filled orbs we await cherries sometime in early April but if this dratted weather continues like it did last year, the good stone fruit will be pushed back to May. This is how I live my life, I think about the next wave of fruit and what kind of booze to add to it. I get older and the waiters all stay the same age. I’m going to end up as that ancient ass bartender over at Musso and Frank’s in a horrid red tuxedo coat with a bowtie, plastering on a fake smile, and stirring up one of those massive martinis for aging Hollywood people. Yes, the smell of death upon me will be hidden only by mothballs, Speed Stick’s musk flavor, and the faint linger of juniper issuing from my gin breath. This is my fate unless I become a booze rep or segue into real estate. A word of advice for anyone in their twenties who is reading this and still working in a restaurant–Get out while you can. Get a job somewhere that provides a matching 401k, Christmas bonuses, paid time off, paid holidays…I have to remind myself I did this once, I joined corporate America and shit, I was even more depressed then than I am now. However, I do have to say, lunch breaks were nice…But even back then with weekends off I felt like an asshole going out on a Friday night with all the rabble, the common, “normal” people. Working in a restaurant is a lot like being in the army in the way you view others as “civilians.” You work that odd second shift and no one who is part of the 9-5 crowd wants anything to do with you. They hate us because we’re able to get our errands and gym time in during the day while we have energy. We can sleep in if we so choose (unless you have children). We’re the strange people that know more about food and how to eat out than they do, but that information does really nothing for us except to impress other restaurant people and if you’re an overeducated lifer like myself who has at one point been placed in almost every single possible position in a restaurant, you wake up middle aged and wonder what the hell happened and where it all went awry, how it all fell away like sand through your scarred, arthritic fingers.

Sylvester Stallone said life is like being on a train and watching everything flash by. Yeah, pretty much.

I used to get up for citrus season. Ah yes, a young(er) version of your friendly neighborhood bar manager looked forward to all those little round fragrant fruits because it was plain easier than dealing with so many of the others at that time. In my formative years, I stayed away from persimmons and cherimoya, sapote and plums, and now I love them and have grown to be extremely irritated during citrus season. It’s possible because it’s too easy? That’s a distinct possibility. There’s no challenge anymore and part of that is thinking that it’s all been done before, there’s only so many sherbets and weird fermented kumquat syrups I can make…Citrus season also symbolizes winter and for me, growing up in Vermont, the cold and isolation was never really a fun time. When the sun goes away here in SoCal I end up feeling the same way even though the desolation isn’t even close. But still, the sun going down at 5, the restaurant being slow, this nagging head cold, it all allows for the demons to creep in…