After being closed since the 25th, I returned to the restaurant today to receive deliveries, do some organizing and paperwork, and just generally get set up for the month to come.

I'd actually managed to resist coming back here to check to make sure everything was okay during my days off, so of course I had visions of fires and floods running through my head as I opened the door.

No water on the floor, no sign of fire damage, so that was good. But as I entered I noticed a lot of stuff all over the floor, menus, pens, cups...that kind of stuff, and my first thought was that we'd been burglarized.

But the register and other obvious targets for thieves were untouched. There were these plastic shavings everywhere, and as I looked around I found a jar of Nutella in the floor drain that had it's lid gnawed clean through by something. And just as I started to say "what the..." out loud, something furry whizzed by my head.

Squirrel!

It was scampering around up in the vent hood above the hot line, so I went around and opened all the doors and grabbed a broomstick with which to politely suggest that Mr. Squirrel go find another place to squat.

It became evident how the squirrel had gotten in as I tried to move him out. The lip under the front edge of the hood funnels air from outside up into the canopy to prevent the powerful fan from sucking out all the air from the dining area, and the squirrel had somehow gotten into the air intake on the side of the building, crawled through the vent tunnel, and come out the other side with a fierce craving for Nutella.

After a few good swipes with the broom, he seemed agreeable to the idea of going back the way he came. I heard him running around up in the ceiling for a minute, and then appeared to head out, although I didn't actually see him on the outside.

All day, of course, I've been listening to see if he comes back or emerges from some hiding place, but he's either gone or is a really quiet hider. I stuck the broom handle all the way up into the vent and set the flashlight nearby at the ready, but never got the chance to use it.

(Sadly I didn't have the presence of mind to take some cell phone pictures while doing battle with the varmint, and I half hoped he'd return just so I could snap a couple shots for this post. But I'm glad he didn't return.)

...my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote. -- Carl Spackler

Off to Home Depot for some chickenwire or something to put over the air intake.

At least it wasn't a fire or flood! Thanks for reading. Happy New Year.

We are winding down here at the ol' Burger Shop. Today was a very busy one--felt like a Friday--but we are conscious of the fact that we're going to be closed from 12/25/09 thru 1/1/10, so are running things out, trying to not over-prep and have to throw stuff away, ordering very little, and all that jazz.

I'll have to come in at some point that week to do inventory, set up next month's stuff, and receive some deliveries to start gearing up for when we get back, but I'm really excited to not work for a week. First time I'll have had a real day off since July.

Happy holidays all, and thanks for reading!

Being a cook means having an enormous amount of dedication. The money and the hours suck. The work is physically demanding and never ends. You have to really be dedicated to the craft of cooking, the idea of doing it well, always improving, and have a silly amount of pride in what you do.

As I left work the other day, I encountered this guy, a sushi chef at the Japanese place around the corner from Edzo's, cleaning his sharpening stone on the concrete in 13° weather, scraping it against the pavement in order to get all the metal shavings out. Now *that's* dedication.

In my mind, I've written a sign and taped it to the front door dozens of times already.

"Sorry, Edzo's is closed today due to xxxxxx. We apologize for any inconvenience".

I've never had to actually write the sign, but it keeps popping into my head, just when I least expect it. I wrote two of them today, mentally.

The first one was when I started grinding the meat this morning. I usually get in early and cut up the large pieces of chuck that I get, then let them sit in the freezer for a half an hour or forty-five minutes before grinding them.

Today, due to the fact that I was having printer issues, the beef sat in the freezer longer than usual. And then, when I started grinding it, I nonchalantly tossed in a piece that was almost all solid fat. The grinder, which has never skipped a beat, didn't seem like it could handle the job. Of course, I forced the issue, jamming the pusher down hard on the stuck piece of fat.

The grinder made a god-awful noise and then just.....stopped.

Arrgh. Fear! Scary empty-stomach feeling. I realized that I had no backup plan for a busted grinder. No beef = no burgers = Edzo's closed. As I disassembled the grinder, my mind started wondering how much ground beef the nearest Dominick's would have in stock at 7am on Sunday morning, and then started writing a sign; "Edzo's is closed today due to mechanical problems".

Disaster averted. Took the grinder apart, removed the frozen chunk of fat, put it back together, and it started right up, good as ever. Lesson; have a backup grinder on hand just in case.

Later, as 9am rolled around and only Oscar had shown up and clocked in, I started to worry (as I always do when employees are late) that the rest of today's crew wouldn't show up. Luis and Norberto were both ten, then fifteen, then twenty minutes late.

In my mind, when this happens, I always fear the worst. No call, no show, they're quitting. And then I start to figure out what I'm going to do once they don't show up and don't work for me any more. And sometimes, I compose signs in my mind, since if two of the three scheduled employees fail to show, we're going to have a heck of a time operating that day.

Handling late employees is a weak spot for me. Managers of small operations like Edzo's live in fear of employees (especially good ones) not showing up for work, because with so few employees, one no-show can really make the day (and subsequent days, weeks, whatever) difficult.

So when someone oversleeps, or just fails to leave enough time to account for late busses or trains, and shows up forty-five minutes or an hour late, I'm generally just so relieved that they eventually did come through the door, and that I don't have to go through the hiring/new hire/training process again, that I tend to be too laid back about the lateness.

It's a hard thing. I have to force myself to ignore my relief and gratitude that they didn't just outright blow me off, and act more stern and put out about the lateness than I'm actually feeling.

I did it today with Luis, who has come in more than a half an hour late two consecutive Sundays. Even though I wanted to hug him for eventually walking through the door, I angrily told him that he needs to leave more time on Sunday, since the trains don't run as often, and that if it happens again, he's going to be out of a job.

And I did it again today with Norberto, who picked up his phone when I called him a half hour after his scheduled start time and sleepily asked me what time it was.

So....no signs got posted today. The beef got ground and the employees who portion and cook it showed up. But I did double duty composing the signs in my head.

Just in time for all your holiday shopping needs. Come and get'em! Hard to tell from the crappy cell phone photo, but the one on the left is either dark brown or blue/gray (depending on the light) and the one on the right is kind of a mustard yellow. They're nice organic cotton pre-washed shirts.

Now available for the low, low price of just fifteen American dollars. Tell all your friends.

And...for a limited time only.....anyone who purchases an Edzo's T-shirt will also get a FREE piece of hot dog gum!

Luis is one of my employees. He's one of those guys who's just always in motion...talking, joking, doing twelve things at once, innovating.

I came to employ Luis because he works next door in the evening as a busboy, and he came by about three times a week while I was working on the space, asking for a job. I asked Rodolfo about him--Rodolfo is proving to be an apt HR person as far as vetting potential new employees--and was given a good report, so I signed him up.

He's quite the little hustler, Luis. But in a good way. Almost every day, it seems, Luis is working on brokering a deal to swap food with one of the other nearby restaurants. He works next door, of course, so getting pizzas and pastas from them is easy pickin's. He also knows his way around over there, so if we're temporarily out of garbage bags, eggs, or whatever, he just goes over and gets whatever it is we need (we pay them back).

The other day, he set the record for back-door-restaurant hustling. He traded four burgers for a large pizza with mushrooms, pepperoni, sausage, and onion in the morning, which we all feasted on. Then, when we had a backed-up drain under our dish sink, Luis suddenly just disappeared for a few minutes, only to return with some Asian guy and a power rodder. I guess the guy works at the Japanese place around the corner and somehow Luis knew the guy had the right tool for the job.

The worked on the drain for a while, and then Luis pulled me aside and quietly told me that the guy would probably want something in exchange for his time and the use of his tool. I was prepared to pay him (you know, with actual money), but after fighting the drain for a while with his handheld rodder and having no luck, then wheeling in the big one and finishing the job, the guy just wanted a few burgers.

He left with his rodders and a few minutes later, I sent Luis over there with a sack of burgers for him. Of course, when Luis comes back, he's got a bunch of fried rice and some pepper steak or somesuch. Hustler.

He's also one of those guys who never stops eating but weighs like 130. This might be explained by the fact that he never stops jabbering, joking, or just generally moving around. He's a hard worker and a pretty bright guy, but his energy level and his ability to figure out ways to get stuff done (and just get stuff) makes him a really valuable guy to have around.

More examples of Luis' powers; he's managed to get me to make a custom internet radio station for him featuring the music of Los Tigres Del Norte. Only because I could not bear to listen to another morning of radio 105.1 Que Bueno, the worst morning show in the history of broadcast media. He got sick of buying coffee on his way in to work, and trying to mooch it from the Trattoria was proving difficult, so he showed up one day with a used Braun machine from Village Thrift and a can of Folgers.

The amazing thing about this guy is that he's so charming and nice about everything, that he manages to hustle up all this stuff for himself without ruffling any feathers or stepping on any toes. In fact, everyone seems to love it. He's one of those guys that people like setting up with stuff.

If you come into the restaurant, look for him. He's the guy in the paper Vienna Beef hat. He prefers to wear these cheesy paper hats that I have instead of the standard issue baseball cap, for some odd reason.

(Oh, the hustled-up rodding job didn't take, of course, so I've now got a guy coming out tomorrow. A real guy. Who I'll have to pay. With money.)

I've felt like I've had a slight fever most of the day today and have occasionally been a bit dizzy, so I'm heading home early tonight and going straight to bed, swaddled in sweats and a big comforter, to try and sleep/sweat out whatever might be going on.

I live in fear of getting sick or injured. If I do, I'm not sure how the restaurant would continue to run, and if we had to close due to me not being able to work for any extended period, that would be the end of Edzo's, I think.

Not a pleasant note to end on, but I'm not in the mood to write more now. Back tomorrow.