I was having breakfast at the Victory Grill with Micheal Sunie on Tuesday morning and he was telling me how lucky and blessed he feels.

Here's a guy who's living in a men's shelter on the North Side, who hasn't seen his wife or two young children since before Thanksgiving, and who plans to spend 12 hours riding a Greyhound back to Battle Creek, Mich., on Friday to spend Christmas with his family before flipping that trip back this way Monday night.

Tell him that sounds pretty tough and he'll quietly steer you in the other direction.

"It is but it isn't," he says. "When you care about your family and your kids -- I'm not just going to sit around and let life push me down.''

He pounded the streets until he found a job here, which was why he rode a Greyhound last month to a city where he knew nobody, and why he has spent more than five weeks sleeping in the Pleasant Valley Shelter while his wife and kids stayed with her sister in Battle Creek.

"I don't think it was that courageous," Mr. Sunie, 39, said. "I don't know about faith but everything happens for a reason, I guess."

Times are tough in Michigan. He had spent his adult life bartending and managing restaurants, mostly in his home state and some in suburban Chicago, but hadn't worked in over a year.

He and Mattie have been together nine years and have two children, Brenden, 8, and Samantha, 1. They'd often talked of moving to Pittsburgh; Mr. Sunie has been an avid fan of the city's teams since he was 8, and the couple had visited for a Penguins game in 2005.

So he suggested to Mattie one day that he move to Pittsburgh and find a job, and that they reunite the family once he's settled. Mattie wasn't keen on the idea at first, but after talking with her parents and realizing they were spinning their wheels in Michigan, they went all in.

They sold their TV, tools, rings and jewelry to raise his traveling money. Their parents loaned them some cash. And these two, who had never married because they were always waiting for the day they could afford a nice wedding, went before a justice of the peace Sept. 16 and tied the knot.

Fast-forward to Monday, Nov. 14. The bus from Michigan arrives Downtown at 4:30 a.m. He changes his clothes in the men's room, kills some time Downtown and then walks with his backpack and suitcase-on-wheels two miles through a light rain to the North Side shelter he had found online.

Five men are waiting ahead of him to claim an overnight bed when he arrives at 7 a.m. A couple more fall in behind him soon after. When the doors open at 8, there's room for only six men, and he's the last guy the shelter takes.

Mr. Sunie spent the next couple of days walking up and down Carson Street on the South Side and all through Downtown and the Strip District, dropping resumes at every bar and restaurant he saw. He figures he dropped 200 -- "Yeah, I hit it hard."

He received no calls back. Then he saw an online ad for the James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy, a new restaurant in the Deutschtown neighborhood. He arrived the next morning 20 minutes early for an interview and talked with the owners for 45 minutes, sharing everything but the fact that he was staying in a shelter.

"We knew right from the get-go he was a high-quality person, a real straight shooter, a gentleman," said Lisa Saftner, co-owner of the pub with Adam Johnston.

The pub had a quiet opening last weekend with Mr. Sunie behind the bar. I'd heard some of his story from Jay Poliziani, director of Northside Common Ministries that runs the Pleasant Valley Shelter, and he told me Mr. Sunie would be working Monday night.

I walked into the pub before the Steelers game to find two men tending bar, one who seemed a bit unsure of himself, the other who glided confidently from customer to task to customer.

Mr. Sunie turned out to be the guy fully at ease in his work.

Pittsburgh, he said, had exceeded his expectations. "There was no letdown." He's searching out apartments, asking about schools, hoping to reunite his family here sometime early next year. His wife, a medical assistant, hopes to find work at a hospital here once they're settled.

In 10 years, he said, he and his wife hope to own a restaurant. When I asked how he'd describe Pittsburgh when he gets back to Michigan, he answered, "Home."