In a recent conversation about our nomadic lifestyle, I explained to someone that our success demands we be nimble in our accommodations and our occupations. For example, in the past two weeks, we’ve slept in four different beds and performed three different jobs.

Joan and I finished a recent pet sit and wanted to celebrate our friend’s birthday. Corinne, my long term friend and Joan’s new roommate came up to join us in Seattle for the weekend. For the occasion, we rented an AirBnB in the Fremont neighborhood which touts itself as the center of the universe. While I’m not sure if that’s necessarily true, it is definitely a worthwhile destination and one I chose so that we could park the car for the weekend and simply walk everywhere.

Fremont is definitely a quirky neighborhood with a 20 foot troll lurking underneath a bridge and a large statue of Vladimir Lenin standing menacingly over a busy intersection of capitalist businesses. I remember having a girl from Hungary on my tour and she was so astonished by the spectacle that she made me stop the van so she could take a picture. She said she hadn’t seen a statue of Lenin since they were torn down when she was a child and couldn’t believe that there was one still standing, let alone in a country that claims to be the champion of democracy.

We visited a speakeasy before heading to an Indian restaurant. Indian food is one of Corinne’s favorites, and I wanted to surprise her with it, but we were all surprised when we looked over the menu and didn’t recognize any of our favorites. It turned out to be an Indian fusion restaurant and while we didn’t visually recognize any of the dishes that were brought before us, we did recognize the notes of curry, star anise, and cumin that make those dishes so flavorful.

To work off all of our food we climbed a undulating series of steps to get back to our AirBnB. I made a note to check this neighborhood out more in the light as there seemed to be several secret stairs I didn’t know about. Fortunately I’d be back to the neighborhood in a month on another dog sit.

At the end of the weekend, Corinne headed home, and Joan and I headed to the airport. Originally, we were both supposed to fly to California to visit our respective families, but a few weeks prior I saw a job posting for airport greeters at SeaTac airport. We set up an interview with the guy running the operation and he said all he needed was someone to walk the clients from the gate to their limousine.

I’d done a job like this before where I was paid to stand in front of an office building and guide people to the waiting bus, parked in front of the building. It made me wonder whether the clients were unable to get themselves on a bus or their assistants thought they were unable to find a bus that was parked in front of the bus.

Nevertheless, the airport job was a guaranteed $200 for the first four hours, then $45/ hour after that, and he said he’d keep us busy for two full days. That settled it. We rescheduled our flights for three days later and booked a hotel across the street from the airport while still coming away with plenty of cash each.

The job was even better than it sounded. The clients were CEOs from fortune 500 companies around the world coming for an annual meeting at Microsoft. It was our chance to meet leaders of the business world, and all we had to do was get them from the arrival gate to their limousines. Everyone we met was surprisingly down to earth and actually seemed entirely capable of arranging their own ride from the airport but clearly someone thought that was outside of their abilities, and we were happy to meet some of our economic heroes.

Joan and I were able to ingratiate ourselves with the event manager as his problem solvers, and in this way, we managed to squeeze over 12 hours of work for the first two days. The third day was an extra we’d already agreed to after our initial interview and guaranteed us each four hours pay even though we only had to escort one person each. Fortunately, they arrived around the same time so he had to keep us both on.

It was nice that it was a half day as we were both pretty exhausted at the end. We headed back to the hotel and took a long nap. The next day Joan headed off to her family and I headed off to work. While I’d been scheduled to fly to California to see my family, I received so many offers for work, I couldn’t turn them down. The pet sits I managed to secure validated that decision all the more.

After being offered work for the next four days, I did a quick search of the Trusted Housesitters site, and I found a house sit matching those dates perfectly. I contacted the owner, and we agreed to meet after my work shift that night. She introduced me to her small pit bull and I settled into my home for the next few days. I was able to come home during my lunch breaks to let the dog out and enjoyed a glass of wine on the outdoor patio overlooking Puget Sound every evening.

People often ask Joan and I where we live, and it’s still a difficult question to answer. Upon listening to the variety of jobs that Joan and I told him we do, the manager of the Microsoft CEO event asked, “is there anything you don’t do?”, and I replied, “we don’t say no to money”.