Monday, September 03, 2012

Holiday Monday Rambles

Happy Labor Day folks!  I hope that you are enjoying a day off and possibly having a cookout or going swimming or something.  Hopefully, Isaac hasn't messed up to many of your plans, but if he did manage to, please remember how much we all need this rain.  Just pop your burgers in the oven and have an indoor cookout!

Last week was really wild for me.  I started the week out with a few hours at a new work gig and ended it with an increase in hours at the same gig, before I had even officially started!  This is going to work out really well.  It's part time, but at a really good hourly rate.  It leaves plenty of time for junking and other projects.  To top it off, it's something I really enjoy.

Yard sales were pretty much non-existent due to the holiday weekend, but I did squeeze a trip to the big flea market at the fairgrounds yesterday.  I didn't make that many purchases, but it was a nice way to spend a weekend indoors, surrounded by junk.  I always like it when they have the antique wing at the flea market.  It's a great opportunity to see some neat things and do a little research.  And I managed to walk out with a few treasures that may become the subject of a post later on this week.

Thrifting had gotten kind of weak recently, so I decided to lay off the stores last week for a little bit.  Instead of popping in a couple of times over the week, I waited until Friday to let things build back up a little.  It paid off big time!

I found a metric shit ton of manga at Goodwill.  That's a technical junking term by the way, metric shit ton.  Thanks to the uniform pricing policies at Goodwills in Kentucky, they were only 50 cents each!  I sell buckets of manga and have been running low, so this is most welcome.

I took a big, big load of stuff to the Peddlers Mall last week and it almost turned into a disaster.  I nearly ran out of time to stock!  They were making the "20 minutes to close" announcements, and I had three (!) boxes left to put out.  I haven't a booth fail that major in a long while.  I shifted into major high gear and started slamming stuff out left and right!  I managed to get most everything put out.  It ain't pretty, but it's out.

I ran out of time for two reasons.  First, I spent a little too much time talking to other vendors and store staff.  It happens.  We had a lot to catch up on.  It's good to connect with the people around you.  I also planned to do just a little bit too much.  Doing a major restock is one thing.  It requires shifting old merch around to make place for the new and is generally a lot more work than people realize.

However, I was also trying to take my back to school display down, reconfigure another display, and start two mini-displays for Halloween and Christmas that will gradually grow over the next few weeks.  All that together was a bit too much, even without the talking.  Still, I managed to get everything but the holiday things done, so I'll pop back out this week and work on that.

I did have a really nice surprise when I was working.  A few weeks ago, I had put up a display of all clear glass stuff in my booth.  It was mainly stuff I had scattered throughout the space that I decided to consolidate together for the summer and see if that would help move some of it out.  Honestly, I had been thinking of it as a failure.  Nothing really seemed to be moving.  Once I got it all straightened and consolidated, though, I realized that I had sold almost half of it!  Sometimes, it's hard to tell from just looking at your space how well you're doing.

I've been a bit behind on my blog-reading lately, so I just found the very nice shout out the folks at We Are: Clamco gave me.  It's brought a few new readers this way, and I greatly appreciate it!  They have a nice blog, which I highly recommend, even if the name makes me think of this theme song every time I see it.  Plus, they have cats!  Yay cats!  Junkers rock, but junkers with cats totally rock!

This is going to be a light blogging week, I think.  It's the last week I'll have for a while with no work commitments, and I have some assorted projects I want to finish up, including some longer blogging essays. 

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