Seems like more than 20 days since I last had a chance to sit down and put some perspective to my ramblings. It has been a full, anxious, and sometime bizarre 20 days. Take for example the day before the soft grand opening…Oh Boy It’s 3pm. I’m sitting in the dining room talking to Kathy, [...]

10..9..8…7….. Throw out the list, discard the budget and don your fireman’s hat. It’s last call to opening night and sanity has been thrown out the door. We are now on the final countdown to June 25th. My days are now spent putting out fires (or floods), solving bad decisions (yes I have made a [...]

Friday- This is an at home weekend. I hop into my car on Friday afternoon and drive home for the weekend, and then I will go back to the desert on Sunday evening. I was doing this every weekend but lately it’s been every two weeks. I suspect that within the next month I will [...]

It’s funny how equipment you need costs so much money, yet equipment you don’t need has virtually no value. Case in point, my rotisserie machine. This thing is a behemoth. It can cook enough chickens at one time to feed a third world country. I love rotisserie chicken but one thing I have found out [...]

And now the stretch run has arrived. Most of my tile work is done. The tilers will come back after the painters are done to polish all of the tile and marble surfaces. The painters are about ¾ done. I will be happy to see them go. The mist from the paint spray gets everywhere. [...]

Spring is truly beautiful in the desert. There is still snow on the surrounding mountain peaks. The air is crisp and clean with cool mornings and warm afternoons. Storms that come through Southern California arrive in the desert as gusty winds and puffy clouds. There is seldom any precipitation unless the storm is very large. [...]

Another week slides by and we are a little closer to opening night. This was a moving week for remodeling. Old walls and equipment were moved out and new walls and equipment are moving in. Money was spent, boy was it spent but by weeks end I had a sense of accomplishment that I have [...]

It is now the middle of March and I am neither ahead of schedule nor behind it. Such is the beauty of having no timeline. Now having said that, I do have some idea of when I want this project to end. I have set the date of April 15 as my “be sorta done” [...]

The best part of the restaurant business is opening a new restaurant. End of story. Nothing is more addicting than the journey to opening night. There is a rush to the hole process that is hard to explain. The process is anything but sane. You spend countless hours dwelling on ridiculous minutia. You worry over [...]