Tomorrow will be my first day as a full–time employee at Amazon. Obviously I’m very excited to get started, but slightly sad to be ending my stay at home with Jessica and Ava. I’ve been home for three weeks now and it’s been great, especially since I didn’t get any time off when we moved here from San Diego. Although the first week or so was all about finding a job, I’ve been able to relax for the last week knowing that I’ve already been hired and will be starting on the 25th. I was originally hoping to start on Wednesday the 20th, but because of Presidents Day on Monday they weren’t able to get my background check back in time.
In order to celebrate, Jessica and I went out twice this week, which has to be a record since having Ava. We had dinner at Aqua, which is El Gaucho’s sister restaurant that I used to work at years ago, on Wednesday night. Dinner was excellent and it was great catching up with old friends that we haven’t seen since before moving south a few years ago. Then last night we had dinner at Assagio, which is our good friend Michael Rico’s new spot. It’s a really nice place that’s been around since 1993, and Michael is soon going to be taking over as General Manager, so we wanted to check it out. Dinner was great, then we went to a small concert at the Crocadile a few blocks away. The Neighbourhood, which is a small new band from L.A., was playing and tickets were super cheap so we decided to go check it out. It was a lot of fun and a nice way to end my time off.
Tonight I’ll be bartending at the main bar at El Gaucho, which is a first since moving back to Seattle. One of the bartenders was desperate to get the night off so I offered to help out. Normally when I fill in at Gaucho I’m downstairs in the Pampas Room working a private party, but tonight I’ll get a chance to see a bunch of my old Sunday regulars. All–night happy hour on Sundays was my old shift for a long time so I’m excited to get to do it again. It’s also a cool way to celebrate my Dad’s birthday today, considering that he was a regular at the old El Gaucho, which was the only reason I got hired there (many years ago) in the first place.
Tomorrow morning I have orientation at Amazon for the first half of the day, then I’m assuming I’ll get to start setting up my desk and laptop in the afternoon. This should be a pretty easy week in terms of work but I’m very excited to get things going. I still can’t believe how well everything has turned out, but I’m not taking anything for granted. I’m going to continue studying daily for the foreseeable future to make sure that I’m on track at work. I always feel like I’m one step behind where I need to be in terms of coding skills, but that’s what keeps me hungry and moving forward. I’ll definitely be doing a post sometime this week to talk about how things are going. Until then, Happy Birthday Dad!