catching up

Jeez, where did I leave off? The last time you heard from me, we were up in Frederick, MD (a.k.a. Nothing-to-do-up-here-ville). Hub was working at a restaurant in town which he had grown very tired of (to put it lightly). I had a part-time retail job in town (was also growing tired of, but what retail job doesn't do that to me?), and a contractor-ish design job with a place in Annapolis, MD. In September we adopted Percy our toy parti poodle (a.k.a. Perce, Perce-Perce, bubba, bubby, etc.)

So, fast-forward to end of October/beginning of November. TK gets an out-of-the-blue message from a lady who co-owns a restaurant in D.C. with her ex-husband. Hub had (before we ended up moving to Frederick for his job) interned for a day at this restaurant for the chance to work there. He had ended up not taking it (thus, the job in Frederick instead), because he wasn't "feeling it" at the time. Just not the right time/place whatever you wanna say. They had been very interested in him though, and had seen his food blog. So now, the head-honcho chef there was leaving to start his own venture, and they were looking to fill the position. They had kept him in mind, no doubt.

It was a pretty short "interview" process over a couple of weeks, where he's go down to D.C., do some dishes for them, talk about ideas for staff, food vendors, and so on. We kept it a secret from both of our jobs for all of November, just because it too early to start announcing to them, "hey, we're leavin'!"

As for my job - I was SO happy to leave that part-time job. I don't know if it was just that store, but - us employees never got breaks. As in, never. As in, working 7 hours straight on the floor. Now - it wasn't the hardest job to have by all means. But having to stash away and choke down junk food/water bottle at my register before the next customer walks up, wasn't very uplifting. There was never any way to bring real food with you on the floor, like an apple. And no-one (including me) never said anything about it. I think it just boiled down to everyone having the attitude of, "well it sucks, but I need the money, so I'm just going to deal with it, and find a way out a.s.a.p." Which was true for me as well, since I did have the other design job.

So we stayed at our jobs until the last part of December. What made the whole moving process weirder was that mum and dad had come to stay with us again, per their annual vacation-time period. I had already started to pack up things by myself while they were here, since hub was swamped at work with the Christmas crowds the whole month.

After we left our apartment in Frederick, we ended up staying for a month at this lady's house in D.C. who is a friend of hub's new boss. That's a whole other post though!

So now, we live in an apartment in D.C. and are finally getting settled, everything out of boxes finally. My design job hired me full-time, which I am SO thrilled about. I design for a business that interests me, I work with a small group of great people, and I get AN HOUR for lunch. Yay :) I'm the only graphic designer there, so I am pretty much "the face" of all of the advertising, packaging, in the respect that I design/create all of it. I'm always working with the CEO to create tons of new projects. It's pretty cool to walk into one of their stores, or go onto their website and see my "work". They're planning to expand this year - right now they have 5-6 stores. Pre-tty cool stuff.

Hub is busy as the Executive Chef of the restaurant, and working on writing his own menu. This place he's at (I heard from him) is known as a "springboard" restaurant for young/new talented chefs. It's a place where it's his food on the menu, not someone else's. It's pretty awesome. :) People are sitting at tables, eating TK's food! I definitely see it as a door to something more in the future, whatever he wants to do.

 So we're just busy busy. OH! My 26th birthday was this past Wednesday (6th). It was pretty quiet, since I have to go to bed earlier these days, and hub gets back at around the same times. So it was just me and the pooch. But at work during the day, the crew threw me a little surprise "party". I was called upstairs to the CEO's office for a "marketing meeting" and instead was greeted with everyone singing Happy Birthday, a card, a small creme brulee, and tea sampler set gift! It made my day. :)

So, so far so good. Hub said that tomorrow (Sunday - his usual day off now) we should go somewhere for my belated birthday. I have places in mind, but I know how these things usually go - we sleep in, because he never get enough sleep. And then our time to do stuff is cut short, and then even shorter now because things close earlier on Sundays. So, we'll see!