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Jeff and I want to thank all our online friends that we have picked up from M-Brane and our social networks for all the well-wishes and morale-boosts and expressions of support during recent days as we went through the process of finding a new home to rent in St. Louis. As most people who follow me at all know, we have been living in OKC for most of the past three years (for reasons too convoluted and weird to explain, or at least it seems that way now), but we have been wanting to get out of that situation almost since we got into it and find a home elsewhere. As it happened, we settled on returning to our old stomping grounds in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis. This did not seem the most glamorous option at first, but it was the most practical. Now that it's a reality, we are very, very pleased about it.
We found a fantastic apartment just around the corner from where we used to live, within view of the fabulous Missouri Botanical Garden. Unlike a lot of people who can shop for a place to live, select among some options, make a decision and move, it's more challenging for us. The failure of our restaurant early in 2007 financially ruined us and we have horrendous, unacceptable credit reports as a result. This puts us in the position of having to do a lot of convincing of anyone that we want to trust us to pay rent. Also, we have the added disadvantage of being unwilling to live in A) a dump; B) suburbia; or C) something located more than a very few miles away from probable work locations. But we succeeded--after days of grinding stress--and actually got our first pick of place to live.Our idea of nice digs (that can be gotten for less than $600/month) is an early 20th century brick house with a lot of its original character intact, a lot space, and where we can paint the walls the way we want, and we got that with our new place, the top level of a two-family house in our preferred neighborhood. While our current home is as lovely as can be in our location, the new one will be better and a fair amount larger, too. And it will cost less, too. Awesome.
But that's only one piece of the good news. When we were up in St. Louis to do this housing search, I got an email from my friend Lynn. I met him in 1998 when he was hired as sous chef at the St. Louis Art Museum and I was transferred by our company from the position of sous chef at the Whittemore House to that of executive chef at the Art Museum. We worked for a catering company that manages services at some high-end locations like that in St. Louis. We worked together for a couple of years at the Museum and became close friends. Then he was promoted to a new job running the restaurant at the Botanical Garden where he spent most of the past decade. But just recently, he was promoted again to an executive position at the company's central office. He knew I was moving back to STL and he asked me if I wanted to work for him. The timing could not have been better, and getting to return to the fold is a dream come true. I will once again have a day job that is at an intellectual and aesthetic level appropriate to my background and skill level. And it actually pays a salary that we can live on without needing to scavenge dropped pennies out of parking lots.
Since I am returning to high-end, creative food at long last, I am tempted to start a food blog. I know there are probably too many of those already, but I think I could do one that's more interesting than most, and maybe tie it into fiction somehow. I will wait and see if I have time for it. The new job will not necessarily occupy a whole lot more hours of my week than my current (soon to be former) day job, but it may be a bit choppier of a schedule, so I will have to reorganize M-Brane and my book publishing around it. I think I may consider trying to find one or two of those free slush readers that a lot of zines seem to have (such as my other zine Little Death of Crossed Genres) as a way of keeping control of the slush pile as other things transition. The current design of M-Brane has radically reduced how much time I need to spend just in formatting it for publication, so I think if I had some good help with the slush, then I would be able to take on another task or two and still keep everything in good order.
We found a fantastic apartment just around the corner from where we used to live, within view of the fabulous Missouri Botanical Garden. Unlike a lot of people who can shop for a place to live, select among some options, make a decision and move, it's more challenging for us. The failure of our restaurant early in 2007 financially ruined us and we have horrendous, unacceptable credit reports as a result. This puts us in the position of having to do a lot of convincing of anyone that we want to trust us to pay rent. Also, we have the added disadvantage of being unwilling to live in A) a dump; B) suburbia; or C) something located more than a very few miles away from probable work locations. But we succeeded--after days of grinding stress--and actually got our first pick of place to live.Our idea of nice digs (that can be gotten for less than $600/month) is an early 20th century brick house with a lot of its original character intact, a lot space, and where we can paint the walls the way we want, and we got that with our new place, the top level of a two-family house in our preferred neighborhood. While our current home is as lovely as can be in our location, the new one will be better and a fair amount larger, too. And it will cost less, too. Awesome.
But that's only one piece of the good news. When we were up in St. Louis to do this housing search, I got an email from my friend Lynn. I met him in 1998 when he was hired as sous chef at the St. Louis Art Museum and I was transferred by our company from the position of sous chef at the Whittemore House to that of executive chef at the Art Museum. We worked for a catering company that manages services at some high-end locations like that in St. Louis. We worked together for a couple of years at the Museum and became close friends. Then he was promoted to a new job running the restaurant at the Botanical Garden where he spent most of the past decade. But just recently, he was promoted again to an executive position at the company's central office. He knew I was moving back to STL and he asked me if I wanted to work for him. The timing could not have been better, and getting to return to the fold is a dream come true. I will once again have a day job that is at an intellectual and aesthetic level appropriate to my background and skill level. And it actually pays a salary that we can live on without needing to scavenge dropped pennies out of parking lots.
Since I am returning to high-end, creative food at long last, I am tempted to start a food blog. I know there are probably too many of those already, but I think I could do one that's more interesting than most, and maybe tie it into fiction somehow. I will wait and see if I have time for it. The new job will not necessarily occupy a whole lot more hours of my week than my current (soon to be former) day job, but it may be a bit choppier of a schedule, so I will have to reorganize M-Brane and my book publishing around it. I think I may consider trying to find one or two of those free slush readers that a lot of zines seem to have (such as my other zine Little Death of Crossed Genres) as a way of keeping control of the slush pile as other things transition. The current design of M-Brane has radically reduced how much time I need to spend just in formatting it for publication, so I think if I had some good help with the slush, then I would be able to take on another task or two and still keep everything in good order.
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