Yesterday I discussed 4 areas of self-care that I am going
to focus on: sleep, diet, water, and exercise.
I accomplished my daily goal in 3 of the areas. I was sugar, alcohol, and wheat free for the
11th day in a row; I got 7 hours and 5 minutes of sleep; and I drank
a lot more water (I was running to the bathroom all day!). I did not workout yesterday because it was
dinner prep day and I did not have time.
My work day started yesterday at 6:00AM and I was in the kitchen all day
until quitting time at about 9:30PM. I
am off today, so I will be able to exercise today.
My weight is stable.
I’d like to start losing weight as I really want to be between 150 and
160 pounds for the rest of my life. I feel
and look great at that weight. I believe
if I can consistently get 7 hours of sleep, drink enough water, stay off the
sugar, and don’t overeat everything else I will start losing weight. How can I not? This is a physically demanding job. I am going to maintain this plan for a couple
of weeks. If the weight doesn’t start to
come off I will have to be more disciplined, as in counting calories or
something like that. I’d rather not have
to add that much structure at this point, as I am already living a very
structured life, but if that is what it takes, that is what I will do.
It's a rainy day in New Hampshire. Instead of playing outside I think I will go
exploring. My plan is to get in the car
soon and head out into the countryside to see what I can see.
Carla and I have been the innkeepers at the Bernerhof for 6
months. We took over at 8PM on December 31st,
when the previous innkeeper took off for his next gig right up the hill. To say it has been a learning experience
would be an understatement. The most
important things we have learned are the big-picture things.
First, I like being an innkeeper. I like meeting new people
every day from all over the world. You never know who is going to walk in your
front door. 98% of our guests are
wonderful people. Every now and then we
get an Oscar the Grouch, but we have learned that if we keep on smiling and
keep on being kind and gentle, even the grouchiest grouch relents, smiles, and
concedes that they are, indeed, enjoying their stay at the Bernerhof. I like cooking for our guests, maintaining
the inn and the gardens, working with our staff and vendors, and in general,
running the show. I find the work interesting
and rewarding. I like getting great
reviews, but I still have a moment of panic whenever we get a new review and I
haven’t read it yet. We haven’t received
a bad review yet, but you never know when you might have ticked someone
off. Knock on wood, so far, so good.
Second, we’ve learned what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to have dinner service and we
don’t want to have a bar. While our
guests love our dinners and they really enjoy the bar area, it’s just too much
for us. Innkeeping is totally
manageable, with the exception of having to tend to the guests in the dining
room and bar in the evenings. The bar,
in particular, gives our guests a place to hang out and feel comfortable. They like to sit around and enjoy a cocktail
and each other’s company. There is
something about our little bar and den that makes our guests feel welcome and
comfortable. We will have to be creative
in our efforts to achieve that same sense of comfortable and relaxing space
without a bar, but I think we can do it.
We both want to wind down in the evenings, not wind up. Having dinner and bar service in the evenings
requires us to keep our energy up all day and into the night. It’s not healthy. It’s not manageable. We have a bar tender/server on weekend
nights, when we have dinner service, but that doesn’t relieve us of the duty
being on-point. It’s still our jobs to
ensure the guests’ happiness.
Third, we won’t buy and inn with existing dinner service and
then end dinner service. Guests expect
to come back to an inn and get what they had before. When they don’t get it, they are disappointed
and it increases the odds of a negative review.
Reviews are everything to the small inn.
We bend over backwards when we get a guest that has been here before and
make certain they leave happy. Things
have changed, mostly for the good, but in their eyes, somewhat for the
bad. We don’t let guests walk behind the
bar and get their own drinks, for example.
The previous innkeeper did. We
don’t serve German food. It’s been over
12 years since German food was served here, but guests still come back wanting
German food. If an inn has dinner
service now, we won’t buy it. We want nothing
to do with it and we don’t want to disappoint previous guests.
We need to be able to afford a housekeeper. When we started, we cleaned rooms if we weren’t
very busy and the harsh reality is that when you are in a guest room cleaning,
particularly when you are cleaning the tub, you can’t do anything else. You’re up to your elbows and knees in
cleansers and bleach and you’re totally focused on making sure everything looks
perfect. It is really disruptive to
answer the phone, meet with a vendor, take care of another guest’s needs, or
anything else. I want our inn to be big
enough that it can afford a housekeeper.
I’d rather spend a couple of hours every day figuring out how to keep
occupancy high enough to afford a housekeeper than clean rooms. If we do it right, a housekeeper will be the
only employee we need. The rest of our
help (repairs and maintenance that we can’t do on our own, snow removal, heavy
landscaping, etc.) will be hired as contractors on an as-needed basis.
We need to learn how to market and advertise
effectively. We have not gone to any of
the many seminars or chamber meetings that are available to us. It’s time that we started doing such things.
I guess that’s it for now.
I’ve got to run. I’m running out
of morning and I want to have a full day of exploring.
Have a wonderful day!
No comments:
Post a Comment