RO and I bought some board games so that we have something to do in the evening other than watching TV.

The Chinese Checkers board is terrible. The colours are wrong. The pieces are two shades of red, two shades of green and two shades of blue. Under medium light it's hard to tell which house a piece belongs to. Was that a dark red piece? Or a light red piece with some shadow on it?

On top of that, the house colours, yellow, purple, red, green, blue and white, don't match the colours of the pieces.

RO and I were frustrated before the game even started. So we put the game away and watched TV.

Last night RO and I went over to Matt and Sandy's for dinner and a movie. We watched Virus. What a bad movie. It wasn't even fun-bad.

RO and I went on a wine tour of Eastern WA. It was a bus tour with 40 others, including Matt.

We did stop at one great winery-- Apex Cellars. The others were nice, but not exceptional.

My parents left this morning. They have a wedding in Winnipeg this Saturday so they are off RVing across half the continent.

I actually enjoyed their visit. I wish I could have spent more time with them, but that didn't work out. Oh well. I'll see them at Christmas.

My parents really like the store.

Over the weekend it was Kent Cornucopia Days-- a large street fair. The fair ran right past our store. It created a lot of traffic for us. We doubled our usual weekend sales.

There were some problems though. The midway attracted lots off teenagers till late in the night. Saturday night a bunch of teenagers were walking behind our store when two of them started fighting. RO and I were just pulling in and saw it all happen. RO started honking his horn and I got out and shouted at them. They quickly disbursted. One of them grabbed a fountain pump that was laying behind the store. I shouted for him to drop it. He did and walked off.

We went out of dinner. When we came back more teenagers were hanging out behind the store. They weren't doing anything wrong, but we got them to leave. I don't want dozens of people hanging out behind the store. There is no reason to be there.

RO and I spent Saturday night at the store. Nothing happened during the night.

My parents are in town. I love my parents very much, but we are very different people. In their hearts they are good tolerant people, but I know they are uncomortable around gay people, so I wonder how they feel about staying at my house with three gay men.

I know my dad get's quiet when anything gayish pops up in the conversation.

Last night, our neighbour Ross came over for dinner. Ross and his partner live four houses down from RO and I, yet we rarely see them.

Ross is a train engineer. He told us that trains regularly run over people. We are in a bad stretch right now. In the last three months as many people of died from train accidents in our state as usually die in a year.

Many of them are suicides. Some of them are stupidity. If there are two sets tracks side by side people forget that trains don't always travel along the right track. He told us about a lady who put some pennies down on the right track, then stepped back to the left track where Ross promptly ran into her.

So, RO couldn't take all of Sunday off. He had to to open up the store and to fix up some displays.

RO and I met up for lunch. You could see that he was tired. Lunch started off nice, but both of us ended up with the runs.

So, it was a crappy day off. And then Boone called from the store. They had just finished a very large sale-- as much as we normally sell in five days. Within seconds I could feel my stress and tension fade away. It was like an instant vacation.

I didn't think I was that motivated by money, but knowing that July will probably be a strong month for the store helps.

RO and I are getting mentally tired,

Originally we planned on taking Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. Then a large vendor for the store shipped us three palates of furniture. We scheduled delivery for Wednesday, so that we could leave for our trip Wednesday afternoon.

Well, there were missed calls and miscommunication between the truck driver and our wharehouse. We didn't get the shipment. It took a day and a half of calling around to find out where our furniture was, and to reschedule delivery for Friday.

So, instead of a nice short vacation, RO and I had three days of stress.

We are going to take Sunday off.

Of course, the down side to owning a store is that there are quiet days. Very quiet days. The kind of days where you sell less than what you need to pay your bills. Although, we knew it would be quiet this week. Many people take vacation this week and we're not a vacation destination-- yet.

We did have three different couples from California drop by our store for a little gift shopping.

One of the fun parts of owning a store is that some of our customers are very interesting and I get to chat with them.

On Sunday a lady who is a medic for the U.S. Coast guard dropped in. She told us some of here tales of riding ice breakers up to the Arctic and down to the Antarctic. RO said he was jealous of her. The lady told him to not be. Yes, sometimes she experienced wonders that very few people will ever see. But, most of the time you are very bored. You can't get away from the ship or shipmates for weeks. And if there is an emergency, real help can be thousands of miles away.

I'm on vacation next week. Not a fully real vacation since I'll spend lots of time doing the books at the store. But, I'll get a few days off from my day job. Plus, RO and I can sneek away next Wed and Thurday-- two of our store's quieter days. We really need that. RO and I have only had a handful of days off since the store opened.

My mind is already leaving my job. I'm having problems focusing on anything but sunshine.

One of my co-workers is working on his doctorate of theology. I asked him about the Landmark Forum and Sandy. This is how he responded...

Wow -- I looked at their "syllabus." That may be the oddest combination of self-help and poststructuralism that I've ever seen. (Actually, the only such combination that I've seen; but it's still pretty odd.)

At seminary they teach us to be wary of giving advice -- we're supposed to operate on the assumption that most people already know the answers to their problems, they just might need some help drawing it out. In that spirit, I think your statements that you can't make your friend "normal" again (and I would agree with that; you can't "fix" people, they have to fix themselves) and that you don't want to just cut him loose, imply your answer: the third option is to put up with it.

At the risk of slipping into advice-giving, my experience suggests that there's a decent chance he'll get over it -- it sounds like right now he has the fervor of a new convert; that usually fades over time. And who knows, he might actually retain something valuable from it -- most of these programs have some good insights buried in all of the hype. If you ride it out, I think there's a good chance you'll get your friend back again. And if not... it was his choice, not yours.

Matt and Sandy have plit up. Matt spent last night at my place.

A couple of weeks ago, Sandy attended the Landmark Forum, a cultish organization that's is a descendant of EST. The forum radicly changed his personality. Before he was laid back and sweet. Now he's obnoxious. He says whatever he wants, even if it's rude, and then dismisses it all with "But I don't mean that as a judgement" Then, if you don't respond with respect, he accuses you of judging him and cuts the conversation off. Of course, we just don't get it, but we could if we attended that Landmark Forum.

Bleah. I wonder where this will go.

Last night RO and I watched "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." What a strange movie. Mostly art for art's sake. RO called it "Pink Floyd for Children." Afterwards we came up with a morel-of-the-story; don't break the rules, if you do, make sure you can cover your ass. Otherwise you won't win the lotery.

RO and I took Saturday off-- the first day we've had off in months. We went with Steven, Vic and some of their friends to the Freemont Solstice day parade. We had a blast. Freemont is an differnt place-- locals call Freemont the center of the universe. It's 60's hippy meets modern grunge, meets Seattle money.

Pics at rooktook

I'm starting to get tired. Having two full time jobs is wearing me down.

The stress at my day job is increasing. This fall we hope to finish a three year project. My manager has let out subtle hints like "If you ever wanted to work over time, now is the time to do it."

Then there is the store. The cash the store goes through is unsettling. Advertising works, but is expensive. All of our income goes to paying bills. We'd be in big trouble if anything went wrong. Our fixed monthly costs have grown way beyond what I can support.

Don't get me wrong, the store isn't going under-- so far sales in June have been excellent. But as RO said after he sold a expensive chandelier, "Yea! We can pay our bills!" Its frustrating to sell so many luxury goods, yet have no cash left to show for it.

To calm my nerves I think about "Black Friday" the day after Thanksgiving when most stores (supposedly) become profitibale.

I am still stiff and sore.

The truck trailer was 60 feet long and full of furniture. We hired six guys to help us and got it all unpacked in about two hours. Then, we spent the rest of the day unpacking and stacking everything.

We got the warehouse keys this morning. On our way to pick up the keys, the truck driver called ans said "I'm in Seattle. Can I drop off early?"

This was cutting it too close.

It's been a very stressful week. Last week, we thought we had a warehouse-- the landlord was going to finalize the lease all we had to do was sign and pay up. In anticipation of the warehouse, RO started the shipment on a transport truck full of furniture that had been waiting for the go ahead for about a month. The truck is going to arrive this Saturday.

Then the landlord just stopped talking to us.

So, Tuesday and Wednesday Mark and I busted our butts trying to find another warehouse before Saturday.

Fortunately, last night, the leasing agent called us and said he heard from the land lord-- death in the family. We are signing the lease today.