Working at Wildfire

Aaron in his Maintenance uniform

Finally started work! It has been a long 3 weeks of waiting!

 I am the hostess so I greet the guests when they walk in the restaurant, grab some menus and show them to their seat. I then "Mis En Place" the table depending on if there are kids or not (taking away wine glasses, getting crayons and colouring in paper) then I introduce them to their server. I screwed up a few times because I am supposed to seat guests in particular sections of the restaurant and I kept getting the sections wrong so not all servers were getting tables... woops! But I got it by the end of the night. I thought it was crazy busy last night as we had just under 20 tables come in through the night but the girls were saying that is quiet and it will be crazy around Christmas time... Great! I am freaking out slightly...

The training for Wildfire was great! We did menu tasting and my favourite was the rack of ribs. The meat just slid off the bone it was AMAZING! They also have haddock which tastes like snapper, rainbow ravioli, risotto, lamb shank (also delicious!), salmon salad and much much more! We also did wine tasting as we are trying to upsell the wines and recommend the best one to compliment the guest's meal. So we tried 16 wines! Which included Cabernet Sauvignon from McLaren Vale (SA), Chardonnay Viognier, Syrah Malbec, Wishing tree Shiraz from Margaret River (WA), No Time Old VInes Garnacha from Spain, Valpolicella Ripasso, Fontella Ghianti, Wine by Joe Pinot Noir, Schug Chardonnay, Wine by Joe Pinot Gris and Canaletto Prosecco. Pretty lucky hey!!



Me in my Wildfire outfit

 I have been working 4pm-10pm which is pretty crap as Aaron works 7am-3pm so we literally pass each other on the road as he comes home and I go to work. And I am asleep when he leaves and he is asleep when I get home. So I have asked the boss if I can have daytime shifts. I have the next three days off so that is good. Aaron and I can finally have dinner together! I am working on Thursday during the day serving!! The manager Scott said he is impressed with my wotk (why wouldnt he be?!) so he is going to have me try serving yippee! Then I am working 5pm-11pm on Friday, Saturday & Sunday.
I also attended a two half day orientation for Panorama which involved a lot of team building exercises like taking your boots off and grabbing some elses and finding that person... Nightmare!! There was like 100 of us and it wasnt very well thought out.. Took forever just to find a matching boot because someone else was looking for the same boot!

We tooked a lot about safety and a guy from maintenance told us of how he had been in an avalanche in the back country and only his fingers were sticking out of the snow. Crazy! No back country for me!!!! I havent even been up on the slopes yet! Am going to go to the ski school and ask if I can book in a lesson..



My Spaghetti Squash concoction



We also talked A LOT about Occupational Health and Safety which was a tad boring but the procedures need to be known.

Aaron and I went down to Invermere a few days ago and stumbled across a shop called Grants. It was amazing! They had grass-fed chemical free meats! We bought some Elk sausage and it was SO dark!! Almost the colour of dark chocolate! I cooked it up last night and made sausage stuffed peppers (capsicum) and they were pretty awesome. Elk tastes like beef and lamb mixed together so pretty tasty!

We also bought some spaghetti squash which they dont have back home and it is like a pumpkin that you stick in the oven and it turns all stringy and you use a fork and empty out the pumpkin and it looks like spaghetti! So we had that for tea two nights ago with a marinara sauce. Yummo!

The elk sausage stuffed into capsicum

Crossfit in winter = SUPER CRAZY!

Yesterday afternoon Aaron and I had this crazy idea to workout in this insane weather.. To warm up we jogged down from our floor (4), then sprinted up then jogged back down... After this the feeling in my fingers and toes started to come back but I was far from warm.. We then went outside to set up the rings for muscle ups (i attempted kipping pull ups but my muscles seemed to fail so I did strict pull ups) Aaron was of coure fine besides the fact he couldnt feel his fingers. We then did 60 double unders however our ropes had frozen so we had to stretch them out and warm them up.. This was VERY hard outside as the cold air was not only forming icycles in my nose but also in my lungs which wore me out very quickly and made me want to curl up in the foetal position by the fire.. We then did 12 box jumps onto a picnic table which warmed me up the slightest bit. Then we jogged up the hill to the gym which took the longest 10 minutes of my life! It was SO cold! My toes had frozen up as I was only wearing my runners, I was wearing my gloves, two shirts, a jumper, long johns, trackie pants, two pairs of socks and ear warmers. We were puffing out icy smoke like chimneys and got tired easily, having to stop several times. We finally got to the heated gym.... mmmm heated... We attempted the Airforce WOD but it was hard as they olympic bar bell was being used and they only had barbells with weights that didnt spin. I ended up finishing in 18:26 and Aaron 19:23. Now that we were nice and sweaty we walked home in the dark (only 5:15pm) so it was even colder.. yippee! Next time we have decided to not bother about going to the gym and just fill up Aaron's aqua bag and doing workouts here. The aqua bag fills up to about 35kg. I am just going to stick with body weights exercises like double unders, push ups, sit ups, handstand push ups, burpees, etc. inside!!! We spent the evening coughing as our lungs defrosted...  There is a ski tournament on here at the moment and there are people going for jogs everywhere! Clearly it is just something that will take some getting used to!

Continuing on cold topics, Aaron's first day at work went well. He got so cold that he had to come home and grab warmer socks! A lady at his work told him it takes approximately 3 weeks to acclimatise to the weather.. HA! I will let you know how that goes. So Aaron spends his days scraping snow off foot paths, shovelling it to the side, scraping snow off roofs and pouring salt on the ground to remove the snow.

I met my boss today, Scott. He said I have the hardest job as hostess... yay! I have to manage the floor pretty much. Seat people as they come in and make sure they are spread out so that the waitresses dont get too many tables at once. A little nervous. I start Monday so I will let you know how my first shift goes.

I also bumped into Nicole who interviewed Aaron and I in Brisbane. I am heading to the resort now to go chat with her about ice hockey. She mentioned in our interview that they play on Sundays and I SO want to give it a go!

Until next time!

(The 1st photo is our warm up area, 2nd and 3rd are of the path from staff accommodation to the resort)