How It's Going...

If it seems that I am neglecting my blogging, please forgive me. I have been spending inordinate amounts of time online…but I’ve been attending to other things.

Business-related things.

Surprise…!

I finally bought a domain name for the café and am working on a website. If anyone is interested, it’s www.oldtowncafescappoose.com. You’re welcome to go by and see what my hours of clickety-clacking away have produced (thank god for the “starter website builder” tool…)

Oh, and I was talked in to rejoining the world of Facebook as well. Had to start up a page for the café…so, again, if anyone is interested, when you’re on Facebook, just type “Old Town Café & Espresso” into the “Search” field on the top, and you should be able to find us. We are a motley crew… :)

So, you ask, how are things going with the new chef?

Incredible. Wonderful. Doubt if things could be better. SOOOO hard to believe.

But there it is.

I’m fully expecting to be smacked in the face with reality, very soon. In fact, when my young chef called the other day to confirm what time he was supposed to be at work, I honestly thought he was calling to quit. No, there would be no reason to expect that…other than the fact that it is exactly the kind of shit that falls out of the sky and hits me in the face on a regular basis. My whole life is about “once burned, twice shy,” since I became a business owner.

But, today…things are good.

Really good.

On top of everything else, I’m acquiring a new (to me) vehicle. Which I am going to go pick up tomorrow.

A mini-van. No more driving the Great White Rumbling Beast everywhere I have to go. Can’t say I’m going to miss that at all…

And Sunday is my birthday. Okay…maybe that’s not so great.

Don’t get me wrong. I love birthdays. It’s just that ever since my age became a two-digit number starting with “5”…well, I just can’t believe I’m that OLD. Or maybe there are days—maybe EVERY day, for at least the first few minutes after I roll out of bed—that I CAN believe I’m that old. Pretty scary, that.

But it is what it is.

Well…that’s the update. Soon…very soon…I’ll come back here and write something real. And interesting.

I’ll tell you all about my continuing love affair with my new chef. Okay…not a literal love affair.

But…well…Life is damned good.

The Next Level

A little over a week ago, I wrote, almost as an aside, that I had gone and hired me a real live dyed-in-the-wool chef. A foodie. Someone who knows how to cook and loves doing it.

And then, yesterday, I realized quite out of the blue that we had reached the third anniversary of our purchase of the restaurant.

So, there it is. Three years into the thing, and I’m finally going to make this restaurant MINE. By getting out of the kitchen, handing the sauté pan to someone who really KNOWS how to operate it, and using his skills to advance my vision.

No more pushing someone else’s dream up the mountain. I’ve proven I can do that. That in itself is a tremendous accomplishment…there have been oh-so-many times in the past thirty-six months when I’ve nearly conceded that, indeed, I could not. Do. It.

The time has come to bleed and sweat and ache, and laugh and celebrate and high-five, not just for something I “can do,” but for something I can love and be proud of. This young man, this twenty-five-year-old in the early years of what I’m sure will be a fine career, is going to help me get there. If we’re lucky, we can have a long, mutually beneficial association. If we’re lucky.

Tonight, sitting in the restaurant, on a beastly hot evening when I was pretty convinced that people would rather walk over burning coals than sit in our poorly air-conditioned dining room and consume pasta, I watched group after group come in, sit down, enjoy a meal. I lent a hand here and there, answered the phone, opened a bottle of wine, seated some folks, schmoozed a little…

And then I went home and left the clean up to the people I pay to do that.

For the first time in three years…

the FIRST TIME

in three years

I felt like I OWNED a restaurant.


And it felt

FU**ING AMAZING.

Happy...

…Birthday to the hubs. Fifty-three years old today.
How old is dirt, exactly?

…Anniversary to the Old Town Café… Three years ago we embarked upon this wild ride of restaurant ownership.

Still haven’t taken a dime out of the place.

But…

The doors are still open…
The bills get paid…
The paychecks don’t bounce….

So we must be doing something right.

Cheers…!