Wenesday, April 21, 2010

Hi,

I am so excited, Stephen’s back tomorrow.  He’s my weekday housekeeper and handyman that I had to lay off in January.  He’s such a good guy, meticulous and great attitude.  He was such a help last summer and fall, my mind’s already in over drive coming up with projects for him.

I finished cleaning up Betty’s woods last week from all the winter damage and then we had that wind storm last weekend.  I hope when I go out there I don’t find another mess.  For a city guy, I certainly have cut up my fair share of trees this spring.

I had three comments for my last post, one was from Jessi right down the street at Light of Life, a great organization that helps the homeless people and abused women.  Their administrative offices are right down the street and they have an outreach for abused women in the neighborhood and you would never know these services go on here, they keep such a low profile.  And the men’s program around the block, the only way you know they are there are the guys smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk, if it wasn’t for that, you’d never know they were there either.  Not only do they do great work, they’re good neighbors.

And the other two comments were from people trying to get me to post a link to their web site.  Dish network again tried and some travel agency.  All they do is say something to the effect “Great blog” and then a link to their site.  Talk about cheesy attempts for free exposure………..

Talking about “cheesy attempts”, ModCloth definitely is not cheesy.  They sent me a link to their new clothing line that they shot many of the pictures here, they even named a dress after The Parador (of course that one is already sold out, did you guys have any doubts?) 🙂  Here’s a link to “my” dress, the Parador.  ModCloth is a Pittsburgh based clothing design and sales of retro styled woman’s clothing.  Very cool stuff, you should check them out, they only sell on line.

Kevin C was here yesterday starting work.  I don’t remember if I have talked about him or not, but he’s opening a line of charcuterie (spell check didn’t recognize that word) in the Terminal Shops I think towards the end of May.  The Terminal Shops is the old produce terminal on Smallman Street.  For those of you from Pittsburgh or familiar with The Strip, it’s that long brick building that’s anchored on the east side with Contemporary Crafts. The URA owns the building and when Apple somebody moved out (Apple delivers grocery items to offices, homes, etc-but they merged with one of my favorite stores in The Strip  Right by Nature, a local health food store with very competitive prices and Apple’s space became available), the URA is renting out stalls for local vendors.  I assume they are setting up something like The Readding Terminal in Philly, but on a smaller scale.  Anyway, Kevin needed a licensed commercial kitchen to prep all his foods and asked if he could use mine.  His hours are flexible, so he works around when I need my kitchen for breakfast.  Nice guy and seems pretty passionate about what he’s doing.  I’m glad to help out another small business, particularly a start up.  I had so many great people help me when I first opened The Parador in Florida, Wanda, Lou and Nancy come to mind immediately and maybe one day I’ll pass their stories on.  What great people and I didn’t even know them before I opened my first bed and breakfast.  By the way, charcuterie refers to people that work with meat, like pates, galantienes and different kind of dried and cured meats like gourmet prosciutto.  He’s planning on using all local and organic meats.  As Kevin progresses, he’ll be in this blog on a regular bases and when he’s ready to open, I’ll definitely give you the details.

Have a great day, it’s beautiful weather here,

ed