Two Things Tuesday

Ah, Alliteration. I love it! So, what are my Two Things this lovely Tuesday?

1)I got a job! When I decided to move to Pittsburgh I decided that I was going to go back to the restaurant business. It flexible, it's good money, it's familiar, seemed like a good plan. In case you didn't know, I worked for Outback Steakhouse for a long time. I worked at 4 different stores in 3 different states over a period of 10 years. When Riley was old enough to go to kindergarten I found a day job and quit the restaurant biz. I talk about my Outback love in this post. Anyway, I found out that a brand new Bonefish Grill was being built close to my new home in Pittsburgh. My brother, Paul, is in training to be a proprietor at a new Bonefish Grill in San Diego, so I mentioned to him that I wanted to work at the Pittsburgh store to see if he could contact them and put in a good word for me. He found out that the store was set to open mid-January and told me that he would contact the management team as the date got closer. Over Thanksgiving my dad mentioned to me that the store was taking applications. I hopped online and filled out an online application. I figured that they were getting a zillion applications every day and mine was likely to get lost in the shuffle. I figured I would wait a couple of days and if I hadn't heard anything I would call them and have them pull my application to look at it. I got a phone call 20 minutes later asking me for an interview. Because I am in Kentucky and they are in Pennsylvania I knew that a face-to-face interview would be hard to arrange. When I talked to the manager I asked him if he would be okay with a phone interview but also let him know that I would be willing to travel up to meet with him if he needed me to. He was fine with a phone interview so we talked the next day. He offered me a job and I took it. I start training 10 days after I move and I'm really excited to be back to the restaurant business. Bonefish Grill is going to be a new environment for me, but it's owned by the same company as Outback so it's still pretty familiar. In the last week since I've been offered the job I have been contacted and congratulated by all the managers (which I think is a very nice gesture). I'm so thankful to not have to job search once I get to town and to be able to focus on getting Riley ready for and settled into his new school for a week before adding in a job.

2) I'm done Christmas shopping I thought I was done Christmas shopping. If you recall I've been a bit grinch-y this Holiday Season, but I was pretty proud of myself for having all of my Christmas shopping done and everything wrapped by December 8th. I will admit that wrapping the presents and watching ELF this weekend has helped my be a little less grinch-like, but I'm still looking forward to Les Mis more than anything else this Christmas. Anyway, I thought I was all finished shopping, but then changed my mind. I decided earlier this year that Riley and I have the unique opportunity of creating some new Christmas traditions since it's just the two of us now. I have heard a lot about the Four Gifts Concept lately. Basically you receive four gifts for Christmas-something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read. Riley is blessed to have a whole lot of people that love him and buy him lots of amazing gifts for Christmas. He is an only child who now has divorced parents so the potential for Christmas to get out of hand is huge. I decided to go with the four gifts concept with maybe more than one thing in a category or two and then, of course, a few presents from Santa. I did pretty well until I got to the "something you need" category. This kid needs nothing...trust me. His big "something you want" present is a Wii and I got him a few games to go with it so I thought the games could go into the "something you need" category, after all, you can't play a video game system without a video game, right? It's reaching, but it could have worked. Then I realized that we are moving to a state with snow, and lots of it from what I understand. So, Riley needs a little more cold weather gear. A hat and gloves specifically. I was musing about how he needed a hat and gloves in the car when he so sweetly said that he wanted one of those animal hats with mittens attached. Specifically a bear one. Like this. Honestly, I don't think he will ever wear it, but if I can find one in town I'll get it for him. He may or may not have me wrapped around his little finger.

Anyway, those are my two things for today :)