> It would be good to know about ths shop in case I'd ever stop off in Canada on my
> way to .... the North Pole.

Lol. The store is South of Seattle. There is a link to off to the right, under the Links section. I don't like calling it out to much from this blog since people googling for the store would end up here.

I talked to Ryan today. He's burnt out of his job making video games. He's quit and is going to do some soul searching. He's thought about becomming a bartender, a mechanic, contractor and many other things.

We took out an ad in a big local newspaper. We mulled over it for a long time. The annual contract with the newspaper is big bucks-- as big as a new car. Black and white ads once a month are like Kia's. Color ads every week are BMW's.

Well, the ad works. It came out today and today is very busy. We know it's working because several of the customers have mentioned it.

We still need more people. We have one new guy helping in the back room. For the most part he's working out well. With one catch-- he sometimes smells. RO is going to have a chat with him.

I've been catching up on the books. We have an automated payroll system that automatically writes cheques out to the employees. It adds a copy of my signature to each cheque. It's weird seeing my signature on dozens of cheques that I never wrote. If I died or went away, I would live on in computers.

Today is the first day in the past two weeks that I don't feel bloated. Yeah!

Spring has hit Seattle. The birds are birds everywhere. Every morning RO and I have breakfast outside. In the past few days the number of birds is noticably greater.

All week RO and I have been a bit under the weather. We feel bloated and gassy. Bleah.

RO and I spent a long weekend at the Chrysalis Inn & Spa. It was our first time off since New Years day.

It was very relaxing. We ate a lot, hiked the around the hills, ate some more, got massaged, drank and slept. An almost perfect weekend.

Almost perfect because Monday evening, we ate some bad raw oysters. Today RO and I are a bit under the weather. I just need to drink lots of water to flush it out of the system.

Matt's grandmother is getting better.

Other than that, it was a busy weekend. I did manage to do a lot of organizing in the office.

Sunday night RO and I had dinner with Mac and Joe. It's the first time we've seen them since last fall. We had dinenr at CI Shenanigans in Tacoma. It's a great restaurant. It's on the water front and it's built with stadium seating so every table has a good view.

Mac and Joe are doing fine. They've both just switched jobs. Since they moved, their commute was about 90 minutes one way. At their new jobs the commute is down to 15 or 20 minutes.

Matt's grandmother is very sick-- pneumonia. The last time I saw here, last summer, she was a fit, sprightly, intelligent, active, 90yo woman.

Another busy weekend. Whenever I work at the store, I always bring a list of things that I must do. I always get distracted by things are more important.

This past weekend I wanted to catch up on the book keeping. Instead we got a shipment of 25 rugs. Rugs are big and heavey so the girls can't easily hang them from the rug rack. RO was very busy working on some furniture he promised a customer a month ago. That left me to deal with the rugs.

We need a one more strong guy at the store. So far all our applicantes and employees have been thin women. I don't want to be sexist, but when you have to move a metal and granite wine cage a thin woman isn't the most helpful.

Today RO is in Dallas shopping. He found a vendor that he really likes, so he's flown to their warehouse in Texas.

One nice benefit of the store is that we are getting thousands of air miles every month since we do most of the store buying with credit cards.

Everyone loves credit cards. They are faster and easier than cheque. Much less paperwork; credit card transactions automatically appear in the accounting software and in our bank account, unlike cash or cheques which require manual entry.

Back to the airmiles-- the store earns about one free roundtrip ticket a month. Right now RO and I aren't taking money out of the store so this is the only benefit that we have.

RO and I are trying to exercise again. We jogged this morning. We made it half as far as we used to before we needed to stop and walk.

I try to do the books for the store. Even though most of it is automated, book keeping is a lot of work. Fortunatly the most important expenses like pay roll and paying sales tax are completly automated.

The bank statments and credit cards are mostly automated. We can download import them into the Accounting Package. The hard part is matching the transactions up to receipts. That's a lot of tedious work.

The book keepers that we talked to wanted to charge us a couple thousand a month to keep our books. Now I understand why.

The robins are back. This morning while RO and I were in the hot tub, a robin was in a nearby tree calling out to others. It would whistle loudly. A few seconds later other nearby robins would whistle back. The calls sound fairly far away. One robin is accross the ravine and another is a few house down.

How do you forget valentines day? Well, his argument is that he had a really elaborite valentines day gift planned. Then he got too busy to follow through.

He knows I don't want to receive flowers at work, so he was either going to have some roses sent to everyone around me, but not me. Then at a particular time, each of my co-workers would give me a rose.

Last night RO and I took Neu to see Dan Savages's Valentines Day Bash. At the Bash, you bring a momento of a failed relationship. Dan calls you up to the stage, you talk about the failed relationship in front of the audience, and then Dan destroys the momento-- burn, blend, smash, rip it up and flush it down a toilet and so on.

It was fun, though we left early. There were too many paper momentos. In past years people have destroyed wedding rings and other valuables. This year it was mostly photos and love letters.

When we got home, RO opened my valentine's day card to him. I opened my valentines day card and... RO didn't send the card to me! One of the store employees sent me the card. RO forgot valentines day! We argued over it for a bit and went to bed in a huff. At about 3am in the morning he apologized. That felt good.

The store's grand opening sale was on Saturday. Even though we've been soft open since mid December, we didn't start advertising till now.

RO created a big event for the sale. We rented hollywood search lights. We catered. We had a stagered sale. 10% off from 10am to 1pm. 20% of from 1pm to 5pm. 30% of from 5pm to 7pm, and 40% off after 7pm.

The customers worked hard to get things at 40% off. Before 7pm, one lady went around the store and hid the items she wanted under scarves.

It was very busy before 7pm. After that it was was a mad house. We were wrapping and ringing non-stop till 10pm. The small stuff was easy. Quickly packing the big stuff, chairs, book shelves, paintings and other art, was back breaking work.

That night I could only dream of bubble wrap and price checking.

It's a big load off my chest that the store will be successful. Still, this isn't easy money We are working hard for our dollars.

So, for four days the kitchen drain was blocked. Every evening RO and I would go to Home Depot and buy another drain clearing tool. We poured chemicals and hot water down it. We plunged it so vigorously that the seals broke and the joints started leaking. We shoved a twenty five foot drain snake down it. We spent hours on it. No luck.

RO finally let me call Roto-Router. At 8:30am the plumber showed up. By 9am he had cleared the clog and rebuilt the plumbing that we had destroyed.

We are having bad drain karma. The kitchen drain has been plugged for the past three days. Every night we buy another drain clearning gadget and spend an hour trying to free things up. If we don't clear it up tonight, then I'm going to call the plumber.

I wanted to call the plumber yesterday. RO is too stubborn. I know he wants to save a some bucks. But there is something to be said about having a working dishwasher and sink.

I just heard from Bib for the first time since he got back from Australia. He said he had a great time down under.

On the way back, the jet tire blew out. He said they heard the bang at the tail end of the take off. So, the pilot didn't abort.

They made an emergency stop in SFO. Fortunatly they landed safely.

Last night, Matt, Sandy, Steven, RO and I had dinner at the Blackbird Bistro. Nice restaurant.

We spent most of the evening mulling over Steven and Vic's situation. They are very much in love (and married) but they live 5 hours apart. It's difficult for Vic to move to the U.S. and Steven would take a big pay cut if he moved to Canada.