Not what I signed up for

I'm starting to feel like my husband: a lot of good interviews, no actual full-time employment.

Except that I am, technically, employed full-time: but not at the job I want. This wine bar gig is not what I thought it was. I thought I'd be working at a wine bar/bistro, with coffee and tea and such. Instead, it turns out I'm working at a Starbucks, with wine. There's very little waiting on tables, and almost no discussion of wine or food. Mostly, I spend my days at a cash register, calling out for people to come pick up their latte. NOT what I want to be doing, and very definitely nowhere near the amount of money I was making before.

So, back to the drawing board, I guess. I'll stick with it until I can find something better, of course, but it's sucking my will to live. I had a great interview/try-out night of working on Friday at a place I'd LOVE to work, but story of my life: they don't have anything full-time available at the moment. They might be able to wrangle two nights a week to start, which is better than nothing, I suppose. But still. Why is it so difficult to find a full-time job at a decent place out here? Is there really that little turnover?

One of the baristas I work with at the wine bar knows people around town, and says he might be able to hook me up with something. He named two restaurants near the top of my list of places I want to work, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm also sending my resume back out. If this keeps up, I may have to move back to Boston just to work.

The good news is that mom-in-law is doing much better, now that she's at home. She may in fact have several weeks (or possibly even months) left, instead of the 2-4 weeks the doctors originally gave her. Hubs is coming back later this week.

Furniture accumulation

Now that we're mostly unpacked and situated, we've begun the process of accumulating the bits of furniture we got rid of in New England. And because we're living in a one-bedroom apartment, we're almost done. Between craigslist and Goodwill, we've gotten:

2 black Ikea leather sofas, $260
1 black Ikea coffee table, $45
1 black Ikea TV stand, free
2 black DVD shelves, $35
1 metal wine rack, $150
1 black wood dresser, $350
1 Ikea Expedit bookcase, $80
2 barstools to use as nightstands, $30
1 black side table, $10
1 small stool to use as side table, $6
2 desks, $15 (total! from Goodwill)
Office chair and lamp, $129 (Staples)

For a grand total of a little over $1100. Not bad, huh? Not including the cost of renting a U-Haul cargo van, twice, for the sofas and the desks. (Another $130 there.) There is an amazing Goodwill just a few blocks from the apartment; I'm very excited about that.

The only things left to get are dining chairs, maybe another bookcase, and possibly a futon or day bed for the office, since the leather sofas aren't really long enough to sleep on. I'm considering going back to Goodwill and getting a chair at a time, for a collection of 7 or 8 all different ones, rather than holding out for a set that might sort of go with the one original chair I have left.

Also, we've gotten most of the pictures hung. So we're pretty close to being done.

One final thought: this process of buying used furniture, then getting rid of it all, then moving, then getting new furniture is, of course, a logistical hassle. But I realized it's also an opportunity to continually redecorate. The furniture we have now is very sleek and modern and dark, a far cry from the overstuffed mish-mash of things we had in New England, and the two-households-merged-into-one chaos of San Diego. We never have to worry about rearranging the furniture, or reupholstering, or redecorating; we can reinvent ourselves every time we move.

Terrible news, and a job offer

The view of Mt. Rainier from my apartment building

Across the bay; downtown is immediately to the right

Sorry for the radio silence the last couple of days, a lot of things have happened.

First, my mother-in-law is critically ill. My husband flew out there Saturday morning to spend what time she has left with her. I stayed behind to work (and because I can't leave the cats alone for an indefinite period of time), but I'll be joining him as soon as he feels the end is nigh. My stepson is flying out this weekend.

So, there's that. She's an awesome lady, truly like a second mother to me. I'm sad, I'm worried, I'm stressed about all these expensive last-minute plane fares, and I'm in a strange city alone.

Fortunately, I have two jobs now. One is as a back-up server at one of the Northwest's top restaurants--but that's strictly on-call work, maybe two or three nights a month right now. The other is full-time, at a cute little wine bar in Fremont. I started there yesterday, and it seems like it will be a lot of fun. But I haven't worked in basically seven weeks, so now my feet and my back have to re-learn how to function. I feel worn out already. (It doesn't help that we found out about my mom-in-law, and I got the job offer, on the same day. Talk about a mixed bag.)

With DH gone, there probably won't be too much cooking going on here. I'm going to eat all the perishable stuff first, in case I have to fly out in the middle of the night on short notice, and work on finding a reliable catsitter.

On an unrelated note, we had a superb day on Friday. Sixty degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. You could see all the mountains around the city that are normally obscured by cloud cover. See pictures, above. I could get used to this sixty degrees in February thing.

Job developments

Instead of having one full-time job and one on-call-sometimes job, now it seems I have two on-call-sometimes jobs and one full-time job offer. The wine bar called me and said they didn't want me to work on call for the other restaurant, that maybe I should just work on-call for them as well. Which sounds to me an awful lot like, "I'm offended you want to work for someone else, even a little bit, so you can't work here too." That was two days ago and I haven't heard a peep since.

However, ANOTHER wine bar called me yesterday and offered me a real live full-time job. Which I'm taking. Hubs is leaving for Missouri tomorrow, to spend what time remains with his mom, and I'll be here all alone in a new city with no friends--so I'll need to work. A lot. Also, we need the money. We're also flying out my stepson for a long weekend, so he can spend some last time with his grandmother. Then I'll need to fly out, last-minute, when the time comes, and last-minute airfares aren't cheap.

So, fingers crossed this new job offer comes through, and I can start working/earning posthaste.

I have a job! Sort of

More importantly, however, we've just received word that my mother-in-law is dying. The latest round of chemo didn't work, and she's been given two to four weeks to live. My husband will be flying out there soon, as will his son; I'll stay here for a bit longer, I guess, and fly out toward the end.

One of my two jobs is the one I want: working at the Pacific Northwest's top restaurant. But I'm only working there as a back-up server, for when one of the full-time servers is sick or on vacation, so it's not regular work. The other is at a wine bar; it's a cute little funky place, but neither job is what I would call a real money-making opportunity. Both are also very different from my last job, which was high-volume, fast-paced, and stressful (but fun and lucrative). The wine bar is extremely laid-back, and the other place is exceptionally formal dining at a very sedate pace--there's one seating a night, everyone gets the same tasting menu with wine pairings, there's no frantic rushing about for anything.

Still, some money is better than none, so I'll work while I can until circumstances send me to Missouri. I also can't leave the cats here by themselves for an unknown period of time.

Pray for my husband and my in-laws. This will be a hard thing to deal with, and I fear our tentative hold on Seattle is going to be tested.

Seattle

The view from the Space Needle

Puget Sound

Yesterday we finally got out and saw Seattle.

By "saw," I mean the touristy stuff. Our search for used Craigslist furniture has taken us over a fair amount of the city, and we've been out exploring, looking for the nearest grocery store/Costco/Target/etc. We've gotten library cards--the library here is AMAZING, btw--and gotten Washington State plates and driver's licenses (both very quick and painless processes).

We needed to take the car in for its 60,000-mile maintenance--yes, our two-year-old Prius already has 60K miles on it--so we made an appointment at the downtown Toyota dealership and spent the rest of the day on foot. We walked down to Seattle Art Museum, which is free on the first Thursday of every month. We walked over to the Space Needle, and saw the view (everything except Mt. Rainier, which was hidden). We made a vow to only ever do things in the off-season, as we were the only people in line and on the elevator at the Space Needle. We walked back to Pike Place Market, where I bought a variety of delicious goodies, including steelhead, Dungeness crab, blood oranges, Meyer lemons, fresh basil, and dried strawberries. Oh, and wine. Then we picked up our car, drove home, and ate most of the delicious goodies.

It was bright and sunny and 50 degrees, a perfect day for walking around. New England is projected to get two feet of snow today and tomorrow, so I left just in time. We've been a bit glum the last few days; I think a lot of that was the lack of sunshine. Getting out and walking around in the sun yesterday helped enormously. I've also gotten some promising news on the job front.

Today it's cloudy again, but that's okay. It's not snowing, and that's what matters.

(And just for giggles, here's the link to my previous visit to Seattle.)

Vancouver (again)

It's been a couple of days since I last posted; we visited Vancouver for a day, and yesterday we wore ourselves out getting some new sofas. More on that later.

We went up to Vancouver for the day because why not? It's two and a half hours away and neither of us are working right now. (A situation that's making me increasingly nervous.) It was rainy and foggy, just like Seattle, but it was fun to get away and walk around in a different country. We didn't see much, a couple of wine stores and a nice restaurant for lunch, and a bit of walking around downtown, but it was enough. It was similar to my last visit to Vancouver, during the epic road trip.

I found a wine store to stock up on Laughing Stock wines, my favorite BC wine. I've written about Laughing Stock before; this time I got a sampling, a viognier, a pinot gris, a white blend, a red blend, and a syrah. We also had lunch at Salt Tasting Room, where we were able to sample a number of extremely delicious wines, none of which I'll be able to find here, I'm sure. We'll definitely be back.

Speaking of bringing wine back into the US, I learned some things at the border.

1. You can buy booze at the duty-free at the border, but you can only bring 1 liter per person, if you've been in Canada more than 48 hours. Less than 48 hours = no duty-free booze.
2. You may have to pay the duty if you buy more than 1 liter per person (which is about $3 per bottle), but you may also be levied state tax, and if you live in Washington state, that means the full 35% extra tax per bottle.
3. Wine is of course not charged the exorbitant WA state booze tax, but is still subject to duty taxes.

For our next Canadian forays, I'd really like to do a wine tour of British Columbia, and in the summer, a tour of the Canadian Rockies. For now, I'll settle for a couple of quiet days at home, cooking.