Stateside

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Mountain Life

I have been in Durango for about three weeks now. The drive was fairly uneventful. I left Portland at about three in the afternoon and drove for 12 hours. At that point I was somewhere in northern Utah at 3 in the morning and needed to rest my eyes. So I slept for about 30 minutes at a rest stop. Then I continued on and rolled into Durango at about 10 am. It was a beautiful drive when the sun came up winding through the red cliffs north of Moab. The whole way I was listening to books on CD which is a great way to stay awake. The first was "The Last Days of Dogtown" by Anita Diamant. It was pretty good for nine hours. And then I also had some murder mystery.

I arrived on a Sunday and took a long nap while Ben watched the Broncos game. The next day we went to Pagosa Springs, a small town near Durango where there are...You guessed it, Hot Springs.



Needless to say the great artistic shots I took with my designer Kodak disposable were damaged in the processing, however since they are all I have I'm going to put them up anyway. If a picture is worth 1000 words these are worth at least 250.



It is a very idyllic setting, river running past, big mountains around, rotten egg smell from all the sulfur. To get rid of the rotten egg smell it is necessary to drink dark rum, vodka doesn't quite do the trick, FYI.





Also FYI, if you are ever in sulfur hot springs remove all silver jewelry, it will tarnish.

So that was a very nice little rest after my long drive. We came back to Durango and I commenced to job search at local restaurants. This consisted of walking through town till I found the one I liked and turning in an application. I also turned in an additional application at another restaurant that I didn't want just for good measure. Fortunately Seasons of Durango called me in for an interview (actually I just showed up and demanded to see the boss) and after checking my references I was hired, thanks Farhad.

This is the restaurant:



It is very small, 18 tables and privately owned which is a nice change after corporate America. They make a shift meal every shift, the food is really world class and you can have a drink when you get off if you want. The chefs are very good at what they do and I am learning a lot about food. What's the difference between a demi-glaze and reduction??? What does confit mean in Duck confit??? What is Grano Padano cheese or Manchego Cheese??? These are the questions of my working life now.

At first I thought the owner and GM, Karen, was a major bitch. She is a small red-headed woman. I thought she was picking on me a little. Why would she do that when I am such a nice person? ;) Then I realized she just has her pet peeves, once I learned what they were (You do not serve straws in iced tea, you do not throw away bread butts..Those can be turned into croutons you know)it was much better and I also realized she is like that with everyone not just me. Also I have to respect the fact that she works very hard, she is there all the time and she does run a very good business. She smoozes with all the Durango locals that come in all the time even though sometimes I can tell she is thinking, "what the hell do you want you rich ass hole? No I am not going to import that ridiculous sour cabernet from Australia."

Anyway, I'm cool there for now, making decent money and I have the schedule I want.

Other than that we are building a house. I handle all the money. Here is where it will be, I will be taking better photos of course as it goes along.



The weather has been spectacular until a couple days ago. I have been driving around town exploring in Ben's little barbie Suzuki, we call it the Zuk. If you saw my Azul in Costa Rica you will understand how much I enjoy this.





Stay tuned...Last weekend we went on a color tour. This term refers to all of the Aspen trees that grow freely in these mountains and change color in the fall. I have much better pictures for the next post. Cheers!

1 Comments:

At 8:38 PM, Blogger brataloid said...

Yay! Paige, I'm so glad you are both doing so well. Sounds like you are doing fantastic! We're doing pretty well, still adjusting to married life. These last few months have been really challenging, but we're still plugging away. As I mentioned earlier, we're in the process of buying a condo in West Linn. The appraisal came in today for more than we're paying for it so that's a great sign! We hope to close by the end of the week, but we're not sure how realistic it is. Next week we go to Seattle for a Seahawks game with my dad and his new girlfriend. It'll be the first encounter, so that should be interesting. The second week in November we head to New Orleans, which should be really interesting. That's twice this year that I'll finally make it to a city I've always wanted to visit thanks to work (New York this Summer). Strangely they were both struck by tragedy.

It's great to hear from you, keep it up. :)

 

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