Too Cool to Be Working For Yourself

Before I left Best Western, I printed out several Grocery Lists, worksheets & other documents such as this one-page calendar:

The orange dates were our scheduled days off (Mondays & usually also Tuesdays) & white were our work dates with which brewery listed.  The other colors were special dates.  Notice how much less white space after January.

It was a pretty good schedule that Kate had setup for us.  She added a page to our website (above) to make it easier to find us.  

We could now wake up later, enjoy our coffee in the living room of our house together & have plenty of time to get ready for our afternoon/night tasting room setup.  

Generally, we'd leave around 3pm or so (the same as OB Market on Wednesdays) & drive out to La Mesa, Miramar, Sports Arena or Bay Park to pop up for the dinner crowd.  We'd be home usually no later than 9 or 9:30- basically working second shift.

I hadn't worked those hours in years.  And after working first shift at Best Western & third shift at the Inn at Sunset Cliffs, I loved having my mornings & lunch hour back. 

Our very first tasting room pop-up after "retiring" at Bolt Brewery in La Mesa, February 4, 2016. 

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Another valuable asset I acquired from my final working days at Best Western was an ice machine.  After getting ice from their machine on the third floor for over two years, I knew I had to find a new source after I quit.

"You should just make your own," my co-worker, Escalante, had said one day at the front desk.   "Get your own ice machine."

And that's what I did.  I found a small red, indoor/outdoor one online for $169.  Then I realized that I needed somewhere to put all of the ice I was making so I bought a chest deep freezer at Home Depot for around $240.  

Two small investments that I made with my last paycheck from Best Western, that paid big dividends & lived in the spare room of our house for years to come.