its all coming together

I officially start my job tomorrow. I have trained for 4 shifts and think I'm ready. My new restaurant, in the words of the adorable chef Nick, "is nowhere like you've ever worked before and nowhere like you'll ever work again". There is not one staff member who will tell you its not the best restaurant gig they've ever had. The servers, who are all around my age, have been there from between two months to five years. I have not heard a single complaint. There is no manager. I'm going to repeat that for those of you who have worked in restaurants and understand the weight of this statement... There is NO manager. We control the computer at our own disgression and are simply on a trust system. There is no one barking at you, no one watching you, no one judging you. Tom is the owner. He's a really nice guy and likes the restaurant ran the way he wants it. Everyone runs it that way and therefore, Tom only pops in once in a while. In my four shifts so far he's been in the restaurant for a total of five minutes. There are two shifts. Lunch and Dinner. Lunch starts at 11 and ends at 3. We open for dinner at 5 and that ends at 10. You're either on a the lunch shift or the dinner shift and sometimes you may be asked to do a double where you serve for both. Keeping in mind the law of relativity, I will be making "good money". Let us all remember that $300 dollars of NYC money is equal to $150 dollars in Denver, CO. When one walks into my restaurant, which is called Trattoria Stella (the west one, there are two-google it), they are met with the aromas of roasted garlic, sauteed italian herbs and truffle oil. Not a bad place to be for five hours. If you can't tell, I feel like I've really hit a jackpot here. I think I've found the best serving job in the country. My co-workers are all amazing and I've been feeling pretty guilty knowing that my plans are to leave at the end of the summer. Part of me wishes I didn't like it so much. I'm getting attached quickly. I see Rachel has told you about our mountain adventure. The funny part about that is while we were choosing where to hike for the day, there was a ten minute period where we were set on hiking up Mount Evans. Mt. Evans elevation in 14,122 feet..or around there. To put this into perspective, Mt.Rainer in Washington is the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states. It is also a fourteener, I believe, being only a few hundred feet taller than Evans. The city of Denver sits a mile high above sea level at five thousand and something feet. Let's pretend that once you are in the foothills you are at around 6,000 feet. To hike up Evans, you must climb approx. 8,000 feet to the summit. You can drive, but those of you who know me (all of you), know that I would find this prospect unacceptable. I will drive it after I've arrived at the summit on foot which I am absolutely determined to do this summer. But back to numbers...for a comparison...Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain in the world, summiting at 29,035 ft. It sits on the borders of Nepal and Tibet. Base Camp on the Nepal side towers over any American peak at 17,500 feet. This means that a climber must rise over 11,000 ft to reach the top. Mt.Everst is obviously a million times harder and more dangerous to climb, but all I'm trying to show you, is that the distance in vertical feet from Denver to the top of Mt. Evans is FAR MORE THAN ONE DOES IN A LEISURLY HIKE. Thankfully, our trusty pal Betty, turned on her serious face and told us today was not the day. Since then I've learned that you can't even hike up there until the summer because there is still too much snow on the trail. I've also learned that you need to leave very very early in the morning. Like all tall mountains, and I should have known this, there is a "peak" time. Not a prime time, but a time in the day which you must reach the top and begin your descent because weather conditions high on the mountain after this peak time deteriorate and make for an unsafe environment for those who are not mountain goats. We decided to hike in Boulder instead. We climbed a small peak that was slightly over 8,000 ft. Well my friends, let me tell you, that even if we HAD gone to Mt.Evans that day, we were NOT gettin to far! To hike up and down Green Mountain took Rachel and I five and a half hours! It was extremely difficult at times and there were moments when I wondered how long it would take a rescue team to carry me down the mountain and transport me to a hospital. There were several bits of the trail coming down that seemed a bit dicey and I couldn't believe the trail didn't come with a warning! There were a few trails you see, and we chose to come down a different one than we had climbed. Dogs weren't allowed on the one coming down...let's put it that way. Next time I'm going to recognize that this means that if you attempt this trail with no thumbs for tight, holding on for your life, gripping of rocks, you probably won't make it down the mountain without serious injury at best. I will tell you though that since the moment we made it to the car, all I've wanted to do, is do it again. And eventually, this summer, I am NOT leaving Colorado without standing on the summit of Mount Evans. You can always see it from pretty much wherever you are as long as your facing West so I can only imagine what you see when you're standing on the top. Rachel is on her way home and I'm not even dressed for the day so I bid you adieu. lj

MOUNTAINS!!!!!

After 2 weeks we finally made up into the mountains!! Planned on going for a hike and ended up being up there for 5 and half hours. We climbed up for 3 straight hours. It was called Green Mountain i think and had an elevation of 8,144 ft. high!!! We couldn't believe we got that far. What we didn't realize that once you get to the top it is not easy to get down. But the view was worth it all. And all the sounds were incredible. From honking horns to nothing but birds and wind was extremely cleansing. However after about two hours jo and i joked if we could get a cab from where we were haha. Little sore today but when one of us even slipped a little you better believe the other one was right there. I guess you learn to appreciate what you have when they almost fall off a mountain!! Dad... you would not have believed the drop offs. I tried to get some pictures which you might not even be able to look at! It was insane. The snowy mountains looked close enough to touch. I never thought I would see anything like it in my life. When we got down finally we looked back and couldn't believe we did it. The best things in life are free =) So today Joanna has her last training shift at her restaurant and I'm going to help Betty's boyfriend Scott clean out his office. Organizing is my favorite haha. Back to grind of job searching tomorrow. Hope everyone has a good Sunday. Love, Rach

ok "followers"

So little does everyone know that Rachel and I both own our own diaries. This means that we are not writing in this blog everyday for our health. We do it for you, followers. Because we want to take the people we love and have them ride the wave with us. However, if no one besides our mothers (although yes you're most important) comments....we have nothing left to believe that no one else is following along with us. Please don't leave us in blog world alone. IF you're reading the blog, give us a little shout out once in a while. please. thank you. lj

Happy =)

Very happy for Jo that she found and got hired exactly where she wanted to work!! They loved her right away of course, and I'm really proud and happy for her. I told her today that I have to get a job because it's not fair that she has to share her money with me. I told her that she should be able to buy herself things with her money. And she replied, "No Rach, we're a family." Most amazing thing anyone has ever said to me. I feel extremely lucky. Hope everyone has a good weekend. We're hoping to go hiking tomorrow!!!! Rocky mountains here we come!!

lesson to learn

So after my mom called me and I reread last nights blog I think I and perhaps some of our followers have learned a valuable lesson.... don't drink and blog. C'mon mom, it wasn't THAT bad...

real life in Denver...take 1

Well I've finally done it. I'm gotten myself one of those job things i've been talking about looking for. It's a this fantastic little italian place a five minute car ride away. I get to wear whatever I want, there are no managers, and the people I work with are absolutely amazing. I had my first training day today. I went really well. The staff who were training me were actually shocked at the questions I was asking them about the menu.... I guess i've been trained well. I trained on the floor as a server tonight and tomorrow I'll train as a host and on sunday I will train for brunch. As for Rachel, we are fingers crossed, waiting to hear from Meade St. I can't imgagine how its not in the bad. Who wouldn't hire her? They'd have to be nuts. I think she'll totally be fine it just might take her a coulple of days longer to land on a good one but she always finds em. I'm no longer financially too worried about it. Hell, if anything I'm worried that the adventure could end here since we both absolutely love Denver. We will see what happends. I LOVE my job. i start officially next week. Good food, great people, good money. What more could i ask for. More to hear about tomorrow after training shift numbr two. I will talk to you all then. lj

Life is good

The ducks are lining up =) Denver is awesome. Biggest adjustment: Getting used to walking down the street without having to dodge people haha Off to get our bikes tuned up and donate betty's old stuff.

craigslist.where

It's very hard to look for jobs on craigslist when you're unfamiliar with the area. My tactic is to walk up and down a local, busy street and walk into every place I see. I had a dream last night Rachel and I took on a 200,000$ loan. -lj

Lobster face and arms

I'm red... on my face and arms...it huuurrts me. Totally worth every minute. Such a fun fun day =) On the Job hunt tomorrow... wish me luck =) xoxoox nite all

the great outdoors

So today we were finally able to play outside. We've been here almost a week and the weather has been awful the whole time, which is extremely rare for Colorado. The day started with meeting Adam, Rachel's friend from Buffalo who lives here, and Andy, his roommate for brunch at a place called Hi-Lo. We chose this place for brunch because of their super awesome totally cool brunch special which was three for one drinks. Three drinks for the price of one. We ordered the first round and received some very generously high in alcohol drinks that were also very large. Cheers. Denver is fantastic. I opted not to finish mine because I knew there was a fun day in the park ahead and did not want to get sleepy. My comrades however, continued to drink and be merry and all three of them ordered a few more rounds since, hey, it was three for one anyway. Then the bill came. $110. This must be a mistake! we say. After all, it IS three for one drinks and this waitress obviously forgot to push the "brunch drink special" button on her Aloha (restaurant touch screen program) and accidentally charged us $7 for each individual drink. We politely told our forgetful waitress that we were charged too much. Turns out..our bill was correct. The reason our drinks were so generously high in alcohol and very large was because the drink special is very sneakily three IN one. Three drinks....one glass. Our table had actually consumed 27 brunch drinks and were only charged for 9 at $7 a pop. Very very sneaky. Now that I think about it, four people that consume 27 drinks before one in the afternoon deserve to get ripped off, so I guess I'm not that mad. After brunch we went to Washington park where Julie, my americorps life partner, met us and we played frisbee and football all day while lying in the sun with Beau the dog and drinking cold wheat beer from the can. Yet again, I decided to consume only one beer. However there were no beers left when we headed home, so you do the math. After a few hours in the park and some pretty nice tanning time (burning time for Rachel, Adam and Andy), we all went to a nearby place for dinner. I had the BEST beef brisket sandwich. The secret to this sandwich....the mustard. And very beautifully cooked meat. I couldn't finish it though due to me appetite that has been decreased from the altitude. But let me tell ya... it was really really good. More good news today! The first restaurant I gave my resume to, Trattoria Stella, called me today and left a message. I called them back and left a message. Awkward. I'm thinking I might just walk in there tomorrow or call again. I really want to work there. Cute little italian restaurant... and no uniform. Thats the kicker. Totally looks like my kinda place and i felt i should work there that first night we were here and ate there. Wish me luck everyone cause this job would be pretty perfect for me, Alright I think thats all for today. It was a good day. My girlfriend looks great with a tan so for the next week or so I'm sure she'll figure out that she can get me to do anything she wants good health to all my friends and family lj