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My Keys Journey … Part 4

August 8, 2013

My Keys Journey … Part 4

July July July …. Oh my where has the time gone? Have I really been living here for 3 months already? I wouldn’t have believed it if my bank account didn’t tell me yes you have paid your rent 3 times. I love my little house! I know I keep saying this but it’s true, I keep finding more and more ways to be creative and make use of the small space that I have.

I ended up going to Smathers beach to watch the fireworks for the 4th of July. They set them off on White St. pier and they were sponsored by the Key West Rotary Club. I don’t think they have the funding like they should, the show was pretty small compared to what I am used to seeing at home at Memorial stadium or even bigger if i would go into Chicago at Navy Pier. I would have liked to have seen bigger ones since they lit up the water so nicely but a girl watching them from the beach should not be complaining.

For my birthday am some of you know I started writing this ongoing story about my journey to the keys. After spending the day at Fort Zach I took myself out to dinner at Ambrosia a sushi restaurant here on the island. I was absolutely amazing. Started out with Miso soup and that had a nice mushroom surprise in it! I had never had a miso soup with mushrooms in it. Next was my favorite roll … Every new sushi place I goto I get the Shrimp tempura to start and I can tell from that if I like the place or not. They defiantly rate in the top 5 places I have ever had that. After dinner I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. Go home? No one wants to do that on their birthday. I saw on Facebook that my friend Kathryn was at a bar off Duval St. called Virgillios. Now I say friend loosely since we had only talked on Facebook and Twitter so far and had never met in person. I sent her a message and asked her if she would mind if I joined her. She said come on down and I headed that direction.

I am so happy that I did! She is the sweetest gal and I also got to meet her now boyfriend Jack. The place was packed and we were sitting near the back just listening to the band. Every once in a while they would get up and dance. I need to be practically drunk to be alright with dancing in public. I was very happy to just sit there on the sofa.

Kathryn invited me to another event that happens once a month here in Key West, Girls Night Out! That was a lot of fun and my other friend Whitney ended up coming so that was a lot of fun. For the first time since I have lived here I actually didn’t feel out of place. Did I find my people? I hope so! After the Girls Night Out event we headed over to a locals spot. It’s the bar inside the Gallion a timeshare here in Key West. That is a place I have been back to a few times, they have an amazing view of the sunset!

Later that week I was invited to another event at the Hyatt for the Key West Business Guild. That was a great place to meet some other people that are living and working here in Key West. I do have to say the food was really good and the chef is not to bad looking if you know what I mean! The Hyatt has a great view of the sunset and I got some amazing photos. I will have to go back there for another sunset!

More to come next week!

Peace, Love and Tweeting! -tOr

My Keys Journey … Part 3

August 3, 2013

My Keys Journey… Part 3

Finally after 3 weeks of job searching I got an interview at another hotel here in Key West. The first interview went great! I knew I had the job in the bag. They emailed me later that day and asked for some of my references and if I could come in for a second interview. During my second interview they asked if I had any questions. As a matter of fact I do, I asked about the clocking in and overtime. They do follow all the rules and guidelines and I happily accepted the job. I have now been working there for a month in the reservations department. Last week for my birthday they bought me a cake and sang Happy Birthday to me. I turned bright red as I usually do in any of those situations.

I am starting to adjust to life here in Key West and think once I make a few friends I will really like it here. It’s always hard when you are somewhere and you don’t really know anyone. I do feel like I am very independent and I will be fine it’s just not so much fun right now. I do LOVE coming to the beach. There are 4 beaches on the island. Smathers beach on the northern part of the island closest to the airport. Higgs beach next door to the Casa Marina, Southernmost beach at the end of Duval St. and Fort Zachary Taylor where I am now. You do have to pay to get into Fort Zach since its a state park but I personally think that keeps some of the not so lovely people away and I am fine with that.

Every weekend I have off work I wonder oh crap what am I going to do this weekend. Yes I know I should be excited about having time off in Key West the possibilities are endless but things get a little boring when you are always alone. I did a Jetski tour with the company at work and that was a lot of fun. I had not been on a Jet ski since I was down here in 2011 and flipped it with my Mom on the back. So need less to say I was not thrilled about the idea but I knew I need to as some people say get back on the horse. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun. It was about a 90 minute tour, we went along the Gulf side of the island under the bridge by Boca Chica and to a sandbar that we were only in about 2 feet of water. At that point we were able to get off the Jet ski and play around in the sand. After that we headed down the Atlantic side of the island, stopping at Southern most point and Fort Zach along the way. Overall it was something I needed to do to loose my fear of them in the ocean.

Another thing I did was drive up to Bahia Honda state park. I was told by quite a few people this was a not miss thing to do and they were right. The park itself has 3 beaches, 1 is very shallow and great for kids, the other is on the other side of the parking lot and really nice view looking at nothing other than ocean and the last is on the other side of the park you actually have to drive there and that was my personal favorite one. Pretty sandy compared to Fort Zach and not a lot of sea weed like the others.

Part 4 coming soon!

Peace, Love and Tweeting! -tOr

My Keys Journey… Part 2

July 22, 2013

My keys journey… Part 2

I think this is turning into a weekly event, Me coming to Fort Zach that is. As I sit here at my picnic table I can’t help but think how lucky I am to get off work and in less than an hour have gone home, changed and I am sitting at the beach. I know people dream about this stuff all the time but don’t actually do it. But enough about today and back to my story of how I ended up in the keys. I had about 10 to 12 hours of driving ahead of me.

On my way down all I could think about was that I am starting this new life in a place that I don’t really know anyone. I did have 2 people that I had met while I was on vacation in Key West the last time in 2011 and I kept in contact with them. The first was Tim, a guy I had met at the local hotel bar and he is what I call a yacht mover. He travels all over the world picking up these sail boats and taking them anywhere the owner wants to meet them. What a job right? Sometimes I think about taking a sailing class or something so I would know what half the stuff he is talking about is. The second person I knew down here is Barbie a women I would always talk to on Twitter and finally met in person and she is just like me, 20 years later. Decided to move down here on a whim, met her husband and is still here 20+ years later. I think about it all the time “Is that how it’s going to work out for me?” Will I meet someone and this is where I will stay? Guess only time will tell. I finally make it to Key West, drive up to the house and meet Mirco. Well I’m still alive so I guess you know that by now I wasn’t killed and left in a ditch on the side of the road. He was actually a very nice guy from Serbia and the part about helping me find a place to live was I can live at his place that he was renting. This is where Iva and David come into the picture. They own the house and like most places here in Key West there is a small little house on the back. Back then it was where the help would live but Iva likes to refer to it as the Goat Shed. Yes I said Goat Shed, now I know what you are thinking. This girl must be crazy to think she can live here right? Well my Goat Shed has very nice wood floors, AC and a bathroom. Not your typical shed I think. The place is small but it is the perfect size for someone who doesn’t actually have any furniture down here. I love my little house, the first thing that I had to get used to was showering outside. This is not exactly normal where I come from so you can imagine my shock when I had to take my first shower. I have to be honest I actually kind of like it now and think its cool. It’s great on days when I come home from the beach and I don’t have to worry about getting sand everywhere. Iva is in the process of building another shower on the other side of my house so I have more of a deck and a shower to myself. The one that I am currently using is used by anyone that wants to rinse off after getting out of the pool – hot tub. The best way to describe it is think of the size of a normal hot tub and double it. This thing can be heated up to 103 or as low as 65 degrees.

After a wonderful relaxing nights sleep I set out on the town to find myself a job, resumes in hand. I must have passed out what felt like 1000 but was more likely 25. I ended up going out with one of Mircos friends, Ljubomir on Friday night and got to meet some other interesting people. By Monday I had been out to the bars, relaxed on the beach and remembered why I decided to move down here. My job hunting game plan was if I give my résumé to every single hotel on the island 1 was bound to hire me right? I was correct, I went into a hotel around 10am got an application and was sitting there filling it out when the general manager walked in. I was interviewed and hired on the spot. I should have thought something might be fishy since they hired me so quickly and wanted me to start the next day. I was right… There were quite a few things wrong with this hotel. After working there for only a week I knew the writing was on the wall and I needed to look for another job and fast! To me it seems like they were past their prime and really needed some major remodeling to be charging the prices they were. In my opinion the quality just wasn’t there. From what I have heard they used to be the goto hotel for lesbians and when the economy crashed they decided to make the hotel all welcome about 4 years ago. Yet when you look at the make up on the staff only 3 people are male and out of that only 1 is straight. When I was making reservations I would have people that were really upset that the hotel allowed men and didn’t understand why they changed the policy. That whole thing just irritated me to begin with. If you are gay or lesbian all you hear about is they want equality and they want to be treated equal but when it comes down to it they don’t want to vacation with a couple who is straight? That just doesn’t add up to me I think some people don’t understand that they are take a step backwards in a way. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure you know that I would never judge someone by their sexual orientation or what ethnicity they are. It seems to me that Key West is a very large melting pot for people from all over the world. Another thing that just drove me nuts was they were breaking major labor laws. When they did payroll if you clocked in at 11:52 for a Noon shift they would just put on the payroll sheet that you clocked in at 12 noon. I understand its only 8 minutes but its the principal of the matter and if you add it up like I did it was almost 2 hours missing from my first check. Something else that they were doing is not paying overtime. I can understand sending someone home early so they don’t get any overtime hours but if you work the time you should be paid for it. I pretty much had decided that this was not the place for me to work and I needed a new job. It was another great learning experience that I will remember if I am ever managing employees and or running a business.

Part 3 coming soon!

Peace, Love and Tweeting! – tOr

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