I'm as whipped as the slowest guy on the Amistad...

Seventy five hour weeks.

Requires focus, dedication, no social life, doing laundry at 8 am, eating at midnight, six hours of sleep...lather, rinse, repeat.

My day job...oh my dear God. Cooking with garage sale equipment..chaos, drama, everything is a surprise, which equals a fucking rush/emergency.

Restaurants are either sick, or healthy. This one...pretty much has a wet hacking cough and shingles.

Doing all I can to turn things around for the cafe, but the owner, great guy, but NO restaurant experience, is hemorrhaging money at this point. Unwilling to make the "Healthy" concept of the place a little more palatable. Dripping with irony, no?

"We opened this place to make a difference in peoples lives through healthy eating and education." He told me that yesterday, after I tweaked a dry, hard, organic peanut butter cookie recipe into something, soft, gooey, and good. Made a batch of thirty and sold 20 in a half hour.

"Just trying to get people to come back, and make you some money, boss. And it worked."

"If we wanted to make money we could have opened up any kind of restaurant." He actually said that. The fact that the majority of these enterprises fail is totally lost on him.

We even hired a GM with experience. We speak the same language. She started three days ago, on fire and ready to roll.

The toll is already showing. Now she wanders around mumbling to herself in amazement, her eyes glazed.

The other job...great. Greatness all around.

Started on the fry station a few days ago, now moved to hot sandwiches. In a week...that's, well, pretty damn good.

Told my Chef my two year plan. In two years, I was going to be his Sous Chef.

He smiled. "I don't see why not..."

I'll take that as a plus...