Tuesday
” things. I need a hobby or 10 that involve more than reading. I can reading about things, especially food related things, till I’m blue in the face but sometimes you just have to “do”.
What am I going to do first. I’m not sure. I saw a homebrewing kit a Williams Sonoma so I may start with that. It would be a great way for me to get the stuff I need to intially homebrew on a semi-regular basis, then I could get better and bigger supplies for it if its something I want to do more of.
When it rains, it pours??
My luck seems to have continued since the last blog post. Shortly after that blog post I had three more interviews; one which offered me a job and another which as of last Sunday (May 1) MIGHT be offering me a job per one of my friends who works there.
Job number 1 is at a catering company in Grand Rapids called Applause Events and Catering. When offered the job, Chef told me that it would start off more part time but then eventually start getting more hours. So far it’s gone pretty well. My first day on the job I cut up and julienned around 40 lbs. of orange peppers, then wrapped asparagus in smoked salmon. Day two I got to go on a trip to the Frederick Meijer Gardens for an event that was originally quoted for 400 (but eventually ended up being closer to 350ish). It was a blast! I showed up to work that day to a scene of chaos as everything was being figured out. Once we got to the event we got around to setting up and plating first the salads and then the desserts. At one point we were all ushered out due to a fire alarm going off which put us behind schedule. Pretty much anyone standing around, whether it was Applause servers, the freelancers, or The Garden staff, got recruited into helping us plate everything. We made it without much of a hitch though.
Then we got ready for the assembly line. For the uneducated, let me explain how it goes. Most times for big events like this (especially with a catering or banquet service) the food isn’t cooked ala minute, it’s cooked (or at the very least par-cooked) before and then gets reheated (and/or finished cooking) at the event. From there we line everything up, plates get passed down, the individual elements get put on, the plate gets wiped and then it gets covered and put into the hot box. It may not sound like it, but it’s a pretty epic process. Shortly after that I was sent back to the home base to help out with dish duty so I’m not 100% sure how the rest of the evening went.
So far I’m loving the job, the people are nice and its work I could see myself wanting to do for a while. It’s not enough hours to make it affordable enough to quit the grocery store but that’s alright because I do still like working there.
Still not sure about any details on the second interview though. A friend from school who works there commented on my Facebook asking if I was starting work there. Upon replying that if I was then it was news to me she said 
that she saw my name on the schedule under “trial run.” So who knows, maybe I’ll get a call from there too. That’s the point that I’ll really have to weigh two unknowns against each other. I still have no clue how much either job may be able to give me in the long run and for once money is the issue with gas as high as it is. Well money, and the fact that the job situation is to the point where its essentially a career. I’m to a point where I have to make decisions based on how it could affect me in the long run. Essentially I’m to the point where the childhood illusion of thinking you know everything when you’re an adult has been shattered.
Likewise, I feel like I’m in a rut and being single allows me to look into the possibility of moving to another city. I don’t feel like I’m being held back. And believe me, despite what the Ex said I DID feel like I was being held back from ever considering moving. At the same time, I think I secretly do love Grand Rapids and want to end up back here if I were to move away (well unless I ended up in NYC, San Francisco or Chicago. but two out of three of those can’t really happen).
The point is that I’ve been wanting to go to the Film Festival for at least 6 years but kept putting it off for some reason. I’ve always made an excuse for what apparently was my laziness in trying to go. There are many things I keep saying I want to do and keep “putting off”: Homebrewing beer, cooking mussels, making pasta from scratch (okay, so I’ve done those two), going to Cedar Point, going on vacation, and many others. I’m at a point where I want to stop putting stuff off that I want to do.