Four full days of work are now under my belt. In the morning, which will be over by the time you all read this, I am running the morning breakfast alone. I will be the only cook there. Just me. All by myself. Uno chef. Yours truly. It won't be too hard. The only thing that has been difficult is learning how Chef Frances wants everything. She does a lot of things differently and it has to be done right the way she wants it, so there's been some tense moments. I figure the first couple weeks will be like this until I know everything well. The kitchen has been a little unorganized, but it's mostly the way we want it now, so I hopefully won't have to go looking for things in 5 different places. Despite the stress and tense moments and 10-11 hour days this week, I'm still excited to be here and to hopefully learn a ton.

The past couple nights I enjoyed a couple campfires. There was an employee one that was ok, then there were some guests that had one that me and a couple of my dining room staff went over to. That one was great. There were two small guest groups with people from all over. One group of two ladies was from Vegas. One is a police officer and the other a bar owner. I think it was a mother/daughter kind of thing. I swear the police woman was on Cops once. The other group was 5 ladies who all came together for a vacation. The grandma from Vegas, the mom from Florida, the daughter from college somewhere, and the other daughter lives in England. They had dined here a couple times so we were familiar with them. Anyway, they were a hilarious bunch of people and it was a fun time sitting out on a nice night around a fire. They all came in this morning for breakfast and said hello.

It's nice to meet guests here and find out where they are all from and why they come here. Some have been here before and love it, others have been in the area before but not to our resort, which was the case with the Vegas ladies, who always come up to the St. George area every year for a nice vacation. I met an older gentleman from Seattle who was taking a long trip and was staying here for 4 nights. He and his wife will then head down to Arizona, possibly stop at the Grand Canyon, then visit a museum of natural that he is excited to see that has exhibits on how the area was formed and all that. They have a couple other stops planned and will be on the road for a good little while.

Things are going good. I'm getting plenty of sleep. I'm up at 6:30 and into work at 7. Right now I work till about 1 and then have a couple hours off to rest more and such before going in from around 3 or 4 till 8 or so. Once more kitchen staff get here and get trained, I'll work more just mornings, but Chef Frances wants me to cook with her a lot, so I'll be doing a lot of everything. Right now I'm just trying to master all I can so I solidify my spot as a leader in the kitchen. Frances has tons of confidence in me and has told me how she really, really, really wanted me to come down here and that I am perfect for the job. She said even before talking with the chef I worked with before she picked me out of 50 applications for the job. I certainly don't want to let them down because they seriously can't stress enough to me how much they wanted me to come down and work and learn and be a part of the kitchen this year. I will say though, it feels good to be wanted and appreciated...especially after some of the jobs I've had *cough* Sundance and Seven Peaks *cough*

Feel free to write me letters.

Jon Meier
C/O Zion Ponderosa
P.O. Box 5547
Mt. Carmel, UT 84755

Oh, and this song is dedicated to dad. I'm sure he's singing along right now. If he's at home, I'm sure everyone is singing along right now. You'll have to add your own "woo hoos" in the chorus ($20 says he already has).

This morning I went in for my first day of work back at the resort. It went pretty well. It looks like the morning will be similar to what it was before, except that I have real authority this time, better pay, and I will learn tons more! Right now, things are really slow, but they will pick up a ton real soon, which is good because this gives me some time to adjust to everything before I'm expected to run it all. I think by Friday I'm expected to be able to pretty much do it all. So it will be a very fast week. Since very few employees are here so far, I'll also be helping out at dinner, so I'll go back in for that in a few hours. I heard it snowed up in the Provo/Salt Lake area today. Nothing like that down here, but it is quite chilly and windy today. I am bundled up with lots of blankets and 2 of my comforters to keep warm at night. I'll also put socks on tonight and sleep with my hoodie. That should solidify my comfort.

So far, everything is good down here. I have chef pants and chef coats and once I can afford them, I'll get some good kitchen shoes. Don't want my good shoes ruined. That's about all the news today.

3 years ago, on a day trip up from the resort I was working at,  I went to find housing for the fall semester. I had only a couple hours to search before I had to pack up and head back down to work. In that time I looked at a couple different apartment complexes on the west side of campus. I had already decided I did not want to live south of campus due to the overpopulation in that area. I remember the first place I looked at. It was nice, had a fair amount of space, had a pool, but had an electric range. The price was great, the location great, and I put it at the top of my list. The same people who managed that complex also managed a different complex two blocks over. It had just been changed from women's to men's housing (though they rent to couples in the summer) and because of the change, it was not familiar to many people and had some spots left. I went and looked at it. The downstairs apartment I looked at was not the greatest, but the location was even better, it had a washer and dryer in each unit, and it had gas burners. The price was more than I was looking for, but I decided to sign up. A little over a month later, I moved into what became not just my apartment, but my home.

The first year in Apartment G was a struggle. I returned to my campus job, where I was laid off after the Christmas break. I tried as best as I knew how to keep afloat. I took a door to door sales job selling attic insulation that was mostly or fully rebated by the local utility companies. The pay was good, but the job itself difficult for me. I was still feeling some major mental and emotional effects of the chronic fatigue I had experienced the prior year. At the time, I thought I was ok and could make it on my own, but I was very young and quite immature. I really had no clue what I was doing. After a good two months of pay, the rebates changed, forcing our business to basically shut down, leaving me once again out of a job. I applied for many, many positions. The economy had been great in recent years, but was dead when I needed work the most. For the next several months, I lived off of the extreme generosity of friends and family. Finally, I had to resort to desperate measures to avoid eviction, homelessness, and starvation. My pride would not allow me to fall back on moving home and I was in a relationship, that, although was very volatile for my situation, I refused to end. With seemingly nowhere else to turn, I went to my bishop. Bishop Gray. He scrambled for me and helped me pay my rent. A conversation with my good friend Eef had me applying for food stamps. I did not want to rely on these means for long, but my job search brought me nothing.It is difficult to accurately describe how I felt at the time. One part of me knew that I had to get into a better situation, but the other part of me wanted to keep me down, to let me wallow in the absolute misery I was really in. Through the grace of a being greater than all, despite the shackles of misery that bound me and the crushing circumstances I let myself endure, month after month I still had my apartment.

A July firework stand provided some relief. It bought me a few month's rent while I tried to find sustainable work. Finally, at the end of the year, I was given a job at the Sundance resort. Unfortunately, I was ill prepared to return to the full time work force. My depressed attitude throughout the year had me beaten down. I was excited for my work and I tried very hard to perform my duties well, but I needed to feed from the positive energy of others, and in the kitchens at Sundance, I was completely on my own. Making matters worse, all my co-workers were Hispanic, and though they all spoke pretty good English (some were born here in America), they would speak in Spanish. It did not take long before I had no clue what was going on, things went South, and I was let go from my position.

I'm not sure exactly where it happened, but somewhere between getting that exciting Sundance job and having that opportunity taken from me, something clicked deep inside me. I began to be a little more self aware and realized that I was wasting my life. It was at this time that the story of last year's summer began. If you follow my blog, you are familiar with this story, if not, I will summarize. In April of last year I finally got a real job that would last. I was hired as a supervisor in the food department at Seven Peaks Water Park. A combination of things led to me turning my life around completely. That dating relationship that was hurting me was let go of, I read the Book of Mormon through, I paid off my debts and freed myself completely financially, coming off the food stamps and making my own payments on my housing. For the first time in a couple years, I was legitimately happy. Since that time, I admit that I have been far less than perfect in continuing in that level of happiness. I have been gainfully employed all year, though my financial planning and priorities have been in need of some improvement. I got back in school and have completed two successful semesters as a part-time student. Tomorrow, I come full circle and having moved out of my apartment now, I will move back to the resort to pick up where I kind of left off, except that this time, I plan on doing things right.

During these past 3 years, my apartment saw me through it all. No matter what kind of day, week, month, or year I had, each night, I went home to my apartment and to my cozy bed. My apartment saw me smile, laugh, frown, cry, shout for joy, shout in anger. It saw me dance, cook great recipes, establish lasting friendships, and it hosted many guests, ranging from home teachers to student athletes. My apartment was my friend and my apartment was my home. My refuge.

So long Apartment G, I will miss you.

Saw this on Facebook a minute ago and thought I'd share it (it's been chilly here lately)

INSTALLING SPRING...
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Installation failed. Please try again.
404 error: Season not found.
Season "Spring" cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable in Utah. Please try again.

 

Anyway...the past 2 days have been an utter nightmare. I packed up lots of stuff and was getting rid of things slowly over the past week. I thought today would be fine. I figured I'd finish packing and move out, go to graduation, then finish the cleaning check and be done. Well, the only thing that went to plan was graduation. I went and watched Phillip graduate today, then went straight home a minute or so after he walked across the stage and we hooted and hollered. I absolutely refuse to relive the nightmare of the rest of the day, but I will summarize it. Between former roommates, current roommates that just moved out, me, family, ex-girlfriends, friends and who knows who else, I acquired more stuff than I could ever need. I found that most of the big items I had were the things I had bought or brought home. All of the little things, which made up 90%  of the stuff I didn't need, came from other sources. As I emptied every nook and cranny today, I realized I had to just get rid of it all. So, I went on craigslist and placed an ad in the free stuff section that said I was putting tons of stuff out on the porch and if you wanted it you had 5 hours to come look through it all. I put out my tv stand, a microwave, clothes, toys, books, hangers, an old wireless G router, and tons more. Essentially anything I either would not need this summer or on my mission, or things that I had no room to take with me. we could have kept a few things, but I have no storage space anywhere, so in the end, I just gave it all away. There was no shortage of people who either saw the ad or saw the big "FREE" sign I put out with an arrow pointing to the massive rows of things. I actually feel good about it. One guy, a very pleasant man with an accent from somewhere in the middle east, even took all of my canned goods that would expire the end of this year and said he would take them down to the soup kitchen. Because I only had a limited bit of storage space which I can only really use temporarily, I only kept kitchen hardware. No food. I gave that guy the dry goods and I gave Evan and Phillip my eggs, milk, and frozen food (which was just popsicles, popcorn shrimp and some corn dogs I bought to get me through this week). I'm glad that so many people were able to come get some good quality stuff for free. 

The inside of my apartment was a disaster. I was supposed to do a cleaning check at 4 and be out of the apartment. At 4:20 when they came, we still had tons of stuff inside. They said they'd come back at 5. At 5, we were just taking out the last things. Thankfully, I live with the owner's son, Brandon, who is in Idaho until tomorrow and isn't doing his cleaning check till Monday when he switches apartments. So, they gave me till then. Mike, Annie, and Evan (a little) helped me clean as much as we could until about 6. The guy will check it out in the morning and call me to tell me what needs to be done to pass when they officially check it off on Monday. I think all I really need to do is wipe down the fridge, one cupboard and then do one window and possibly the kitchen floor. Whatever I don't do they will charge me for and take it from my deposit. To be honest, I plan on doing all I can Monday morning before leaving for the resort and then just letting them charge me if I can't finish. 

I know I made it seem like it wasn't too bad, but today was the absolute most stressful Friday of my life. Thankfully, tonight we went to a baseball game with Phillip and his mom (who is visiting for his graduation). His mom is so much fun. Phillip had duties to attend to during the game (this was his last time working ever for BYU), so I sat with his mom and we just talked the whole time. I would explain the game and then we'd talk about sports in New Zealand and food in Australia and other fun stuff. Some day, I plan on moving to New Zealand and living at Phil's place. I'm practically part of the family. 

I'm up at Grandma's now. We were going to get here at 5 and go out for steak, but we changed that plan long ago today. We ended up finally getting here at about 11 pm. As if we weren't stressed enough from today, traffic was at a standstill so we exited and took state street to Lehi then got on the freeway.

I'm going to enjoy 2 days of no stress before heading down to finish moving, pack up the car and go down to Zion. I'll certainly miss people up here, but I'll be up at least once this summer. 

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten my tribute to my apartment. I'll get it on here soon enough.

Today I got my official start on finally moving out of my apartment. I spent about 4 hours or so packing up what I could pack and getting rid of what I could today. I emptied my suitcases of their storage and got all of the boxes I've been saving out so I could get an idea of what I'm dealing with. My plan is to head down to Zion's with just a couple suitcases. I have used my hard shell suitcase to store all of my personal things to save like cards and pictures and newspapers and things like that. I'm hoping to find someone in the family this week who will let me store that and a few small boxes for awhile. I am packing up my non-perishable food for Mike and Camilla to have. I'll also put together a college starter kit for Camilla so she won't have to spend too much money on kitchen supplies.

It hadn't really hit me until the last couple days that I am really leaving. Today with the packing it kind of hit like a freight train. After nearly 3 years in this apartment and in this ward, it's crazy to think of how different things will be. It's more than just a move. It's a huge lifestyle change. In a matter of one weekend, I'll go from a big town to the middle of nowhere. I'm leaving all of my friends behind. But, all the not-so-positives aside, I'm really excited. I'll be working in a kitchen again, running the morning operations and learning all I can about everything culinary so I can become a chef. I'll be working on becoming certified in the ACF too, which is really exciting for me. This summer, I'll be saving up practically all of my pay and FINALLY submitting my mission papers. This summer, some of the best scenery in the country will be at my disposal for me to explore. I'll also get to cater Amelia's wedding and spend a couple days at home. This summer is going to rock.

Stay tuned this week for the tribute post to my apartment.

I finally got my hands on pictures from the Iron Chef competition. I also threw in the group picture from the Food and Candy expo. Also, if you did not read my latest post, scroll on down and check it out, you won't want to miss the link to my youtube premier.

Classes are over and all that remains is finals and moving before my summer begins.

But, before I even get to all that, I have lots to share. First, my youtube premier. For public speaking, we had a group project where we had to make a video. We took a commercial about adoption that aired between conference sessions and made it into a documentary about our teacher, who we call Coach, because she's more of our public speaking coach than a teacher. There are things you need to know before watching the video. First, in demonstration speeches throughout the semester, she told us all the truth about the first thanksgiving; also, she told us how she had 3 black cats growing up, and they all died, so she was the bad luck instead of the black cats; next, she gave a speech about flag burning and how she thinks it is ok, and finally, she went sky diving once before. Oh, and she is extremely energized and crazy...in a good way. Basically, lots of it is inside jokes, but you can still enjoy it. What impresses me about it is that we had only 45 minutes to film everything and the battery was about to die on our camera, so everything is completely improvised.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF6cYA0wkls


This week went by quickly. All of a sudden it's time to start packing and take finals. Today though, we had the annual Physical Facilities Student Appreciation BBQ. Vehicle Rental, where I work, is part of physical facilities. Physical facilities is one of the most important departments. Essentially nothing happens without us. Grounds, custodial, all the shops (electrical, paint, auto, carpet, woodwork, etc.), the motor pool/vehicle rental, central heating and a few others are all part of it. Physical Facilities employs thousands of students. Anyway, every year they have a bbq on the soccer field. It was great fun and free food. They gave out lots of cheap prizes like frisbees, cups, thermos cups, hats and stuff...whatever surplus they could get from across campus basically. I won a shirt and I picked out a Cougarettes shirt, which I am proudly wearing right now. It's from their dance camp last year, but, I figure since I supported the Cougarettes a lot this year and went to parties with them and hung out with some of them, I should have a shirt from them. My life is now complete.

After eating 2 chicken sandwiches, lots of fruit, chips and a huge chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, I went to the tennis match next to the soccer field and had some pizza and enjoyed some good tennis. In all, it was a good day for free food. Today is also 75 cent California Cheeseburger day at Sonic, so I'll see if I can't talk Mike or someone into going to pick some of those up for dinner. We've been enjoying those for the past month since we found out about the 75 cent Thursdays. They are big and filling, so 75 cents is a good investment for us.

All you folks back home I hear are excited for your package to arrive. Inside you'll find a duffel bag, a shoe bag, some small BYU hand towels and a larger, nicer BYU hand towel, several t-shirts, most of which are new (I think only 1 is used), a hoodie, a BYU insulated can holder dealio, 2 sets of BYU Basketball player cards, a bunch of white BYU pom poms (which were waved proudly during this record-breaking basketball season), 2 tins of mints and 1 tic-tac type of container of mints. There may be something I missed, but I think that is all of it. Let me just say that I sent these things home for ALL OF YOU to enjoy. I did the best I could when getting these to get smaller sizes so the girls could share them. Especially the hoodie. I like that hoodie a lot, but I know how much you guys like BYU gear too and it's not so easy or free for you to get it, so I got you a small to SHARE. By the way, Angela, the mints aren't the same type as the ones you love, but they taste SO good. SOOOO good. I think they're better than those ones from Simon.

I thought there was something else big to talk about, but I can't think of anything else. Send $$, that's always important. Always look before you cross the road, and if you don't do that, always look before you cross your mother. That's important too. Hmm, I guess I'm finished here.

Enjoy the song by Cher from her recent film Burlesque (which you should not watch).

I have a special treat for you all today. If you read my last post, you probably wish you could have seen the rain delay skits I talked about. Well, thanks to smart phones and youtube, I have just that. Enjoy a compilation of a few of the skits performed by BYU and Air Force this past week during a baseball rain delay.

This week we saw a lot of sports. The end of year prizes were given out for Cougar United Tuesday at a softball game doubleheader, so we went and picked up our stuff and watched a game and a half of softball. The next night, Wednesday, we watched a baseball game. It was delayed by rain, which we thought would suck, but, we learned that apparently baseball teams entertain the crowd during rain delays. The teams would go back and forth doing skits, possibly challenging each other communicating via writing on a baseball and throwing it between dugouts. We saw a good dozen or so hilarious skits during the hour and a half delay. They ranged from fishing to bowling to curling, which was great because our player slid down the sopping, freezing cold tarp for that one. It was entertaining, and then we went on to win the game pretty solidly. We took Friday off from sports because we had spent hours out in the cold through the week. Then, today was the football spring game. It's been on and off snow and rain for the past several days and last night, and last night we got a bit of snow on the ground. The snow continued to fall throughout the morning. So, we finally got a snow game...we just never expected it to be a spring game in April. The snow didn't stick to the field, but it fell for most of the hour and a half game. It was a good game and the underdog white team came back to win on a 2 point conversion in overtime.

The snow has continued on and off all day. We'll warm up a bit around Monday I think. I spent most of this week outdoors between work and games, so I'm ready for some warmth again.

Just wanted to put in my two cents about the government shutdown avoidance. Pray hard or we're all gonna die. And, I don't know how much you all know about Planned Parenthood, but my public speaking teacher knows tons about them and despite all the crap they say about women's health and such, their number one focus is abortions. They have somewhere around 800 abortion clinics across the nation and their business model is basically to promote teen pregnancy so they can make a profit off of it. They talk about women who haven't been to a doctor in years. Well, if they are healthy, there is little need for that anyway. My teacher had a friend who went to a Planned Parenthood because they are supposed to have all sorts of information for planning parenthood. They had NO information and had no advice to offer. So, as far as I know, don't fall for anything they say about women's health and actual planned parenthood. They are only concerned with abortions and their funding...a HUGE majority of which comes from the government.

Well, the past week has been very packed full of lots of fun things and I've tried sitting down to write about it all, but it has either been too late at night or I did not have time to sufficiently cover everything. Hopefully I can get it all in now.

The trip to the resort went great. Annie and I drove down Friday evening and spent the weekend there. They put us up in a nice cabin suite complete with bathroom with shower, a queen bunk bed, tv w/cable, mini fridge, and heat/ac. After a good Friday night's rest and a great breakfast, I met with the chef and went over everything important. I got chef pants and chef coats and toured the kitchen and got an idea of how everything will work. After that Annie and I went out an enjoyed the amazing weather. The morning and early afternoon were very warm. We played tennis, billiards, ping pong, horseshoes and I showed Annie the resort. We had a good lunch, nap, and dinner and then watched UK lose their basketball game. After another good night's rest we had breakfast, packed up and headed back to Provo. Less than 50 miles from the resort we found that it had snowed that night. The further north we got, the more snow there was. Turns out, the storm was pretty significant. Provo got between 4 and 6 inches, areas in the southern parts of Utah and Salt Lake valley got as much as 8. The ski resorts got plenty as well. Most resorts will stay open through the next few weeks, with one saying they will be open until Memorial Day. All in all, the trip was great. Our only cost was gas and 2 fast food meals (one on the way down, one on the way back up). It was nice to enjoy the serenity of the resort and have no obligations.

The other big thing I did this past week was attend a Food and Candy Expo sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists. There were 130 companies with booths set up, most of which had samples and other swag. The companies ranged from flavor companies to spice companies to freeze dried food companies, food fortification companies, food color companies, food technology companies and more. I brought home product samples of flavored drink mixes, chocolates (even some probiotic chocolate), cookies, candies colored by different companies, caramel corn lots of pens and more. At the event, I sampled salt reduced/alternative foods, freeze dried pineapple and all sorts of different products. It was really neat to see just how HUGE the food science industry is. It's one of the few industries completely unaffected by the recession and an industry where you are guaranteed a job when you graduate. I talked with a guy about all my culinary background and he said that the industry definitely needs more people who know food and not just science. Maybe one day I'll become a corporate chef or something. We'll see.

That brings me to the cool thing I learned at the resort. This summer I'm going to be working towards certification with the American Culinary Federation. Basically what that means is that I will learn the things necessary to get a certain certification. It's essentially a culinary education not at a school. Sort of like an apprenticeship studying under a chef. The certifications start at certified culinarian, then go to sous chef, then executive chef, then the coveted master chef. I would like to become an ACF certified Sous Chef first, but that will take some time. One day though, I for sure want to be certified as a Master Chef...but that's years and years away.

Check out these cool cookies I had at the food and candy expo. They are fruit flavored and have a very light texture. They're pretty awesome: Vosswinkel Cookies

Oh, and to Angela back home: As I was on my way home today I was going by the duck pond and there was a duck diving under just like your facebook profile picture. He/She/It was kicking it's legs to get further down. Thought it was hilarious!

I love April Fool's Day. The newspaper has a good prank, everyone gets engaged on Facebook, and this year, we had the best weather day of the year, which, funny enough, is kind of a prank, because tomorrow the winds will blow and by Sunday morning, it'll be raining and snowing again. Everyone complains about cold days and snowstorms when "it should be spring!" But, I welcome those storms. The day the storms stop and it's sunny and warm every day is the day that the cool spring ends and the hot, hot summer begins.

Today was really a phenomenal day though (and it's not even over yet). The low was 47 and the high should peak around 65 or higher. I busted out the shorts and t-shirt and walked to work. It was perfectly chilly. The temperature where you don't need to wear a jacket in the morning and have to lug it around on your shoulder the rest of the day. Work was a breeze. This week has been average and fairly slow. We had 2 trucks scheduled by the Provo Temple to go up to the Ogden Temple, which is closing for a MAJOR renovation, to pick some stuff up and bring it to Provo. So we spent the day making the old trucks shine. It took a good few hours and when they were done we felt proud. When people talk about the Ogden Temple renovation, we will tell them we helped with that (even though we have no clue what they are picking up in the trucks).

In a couple hours, I'm heading down to my resort with Annie. I'll meet with the chef, do some hiring paperwork and in the morning they want me to work in the kitchen to get an idea of what I'll be running when I go down at the end of this month (HOLY COW, IT'S APRIL!). We'll enjoy the resort and warm southern weather and then come back up Sunday. No worries though, I will be catching up on conference when I get back.

Today really was great. The weather invigorated everyone. On my way home from work, I saw about 100 times more people than I usually do walking home on a Friday. There were people on the grass studying, people on the grass sleeping, people out walking, people out running, a group of dancers practicing dance, a yoga group stretching, people talking, and most pleasantly surprising, everyone was smiling. There was a real energy to campus this afternoon. It was refreshing because the weather isn't the only thing that turns cold in winter. The residents here do too.

Enjoy the songs today.