Ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, loyal readers, if you haven't heard the news from me otherwise, I've been laid off.

This is the second corporate layoff I've endured in three years, and you know what? I'm getting off that merry-go-round. I'm tired of corporate b.s., tired of being last-hired-first-fired, tired of living in perpetual paranoia. I only had that particular corporate job to pay the bills anyway, it's not like I had any emotional attachment to it, so sayonara.

However, I still have to pay the bills.

So I've gone back to the restaurant industry.

Let's be honest, that's a fancy way of saying I've gone back to waiting tables. But I prefer waiting tables to what I was doing before. It's hard on my feet and back, but easier on my ass, and I don't have to spend large portions of my day trying not to look bored. (Bonus: I'm already losing weight!) The money is okay for now; I'd like to be earning more, but I think that we'll be able to pay the bills in this way.

I'm hoping to leverage this waiting-tables thing into a real stake in the restaurant industry--management, menu planning, even one day having my own place.

Or becoming a bartender. Right now I'd totally settle for being a bartender.

So how does this affect you? Because of the reduced income, husband and I are moving to the city where he works, where rents are cheaper and he won't have a soul-sucking commute. I'll work at my current restaurant until we move, at which point I'll just get a new gig in the new city. But that means we'll be, of course, MOVING.

So in the next few weeks, I'm going to be eating down the pantry. Look for creative recipes involving things in the back of my cabinets.

After that, we'll be tightening our belts a little, so you can look forward to creative recipes involving very little money.

(I've already switched to two meals a day, instead of three--with all the hours spent on my feet, I eat a big breakfast, wait tables through lunch, scarf down something around 4, wait tables until 10 or 11 pm, then collapse from exhaustion. See above re: losing weight. But hey, that's already one meal a day I don't have to worry about or pay for!)

For the upcoming week, I'll be making a lot of things with tomatoes.