Monday Rambles

"LO!  THERE SHALL BE A BLOG RESURRECTION!"

Yes, I read way too many Marvel comics as a kid.  Why do you ask?

I am waaaaaaaaay overdue for a finds post, so look for at least one, but more likely two or three this week.  The "Mazda" posts from the weekend were just the start of it.  There's stuff inside those boxes too, you know.  I even actually recently bought some things that are just for me to keep!  (They're comics, don't you know!  But, oh what comics!  Aging Nerd Heaven, Baby!)

I might actually end up with extra time to post this week.  Turns out I'm in trouble at work for not completing some online training things.  I was informed Friday that there was to be a meeting to discuss the issue and that "There would be consequences!"  Fortunately, it's not just me.  One of my colleagues is also in the hot seat.

My boss tends toward the dramatic, so I have no way of knowing what's hyperbole and what's not.  Here's what I do know:  Said colleague and I are the most effective staff at our center.  We are well-liked and we get the desired results.  We meet our target goals over and over.  We are also the only two people there who work at multiple economic angles to make ends meet.  She has three regular jobs.  I have tons of little side efforts, plus the booths.  It's not that either one of us is being deliberately petulant about doing trainings.  It's that we both usually forget to do the durn things.

There's a lot about this system that I could gripe about (like the fact that these trainings are important enough for "consequences" but not important enough to pay our full hourly rate to do) but I won't.  I do know that they're not going to be able to have a summer morning session starting tomorrow without my tubby butt.

We'll see.  I guess.

How about some more pleasant thoughts?  I've done this booth thing long enough to know that May is a hard month for sales.  I've gone over that here quite a bit recently, so I'm not going to rehash it again.

Last night, however, my email yielded the wonderful news that:

1.  I had the best May ever in terms of total sales.

Not only that, but:

2.  I had my best month this year (so far) for total sales.

And, if that were not enough:

3.  I had my second-highest monthly total ever!

Due to my recent rent increase, it won't be my largest take home check ever, but I have a feeling that's coming.  My sales really did expand to fill my new expense void, and much more quickly than I ever would have thought possible.  Now I'm sure that the struggle I had last year to grow my sales with my expansion then was largley due to being sick and not able to keep up.

This small furniture groove is really working for me, as is my turn to more items in a higher price range than I've traditionally done.  Now, I just need to keep that momentum up.  Since I'm (hopefully still) only working half days in the June and July, I'll have a lot more time to spend at the Peddlers Mall.  I'm still not as stocked on the shelves as I would like to be, so that is the next big goal.  (Along with reorganizing my storage space and completely restocking my comic books.)

It's an exciting time to be reselling!  Yay!

Best of all, this Saturday is the hands-down largest church sale in town!  And the entire neighborhood surrounding it also has its annual sale.  This is the big ritzy house part of town, where the people have names like "Vandella" and "Davenport" and their house staff actually run the sales while they're off to the club with their kids, who are named "Skip" and Mitzi."

Okay, not really, but it would make a fun play, wouldn't it?

A couple of years ago, we got lost in one part of this neighborhood that had some serious, serious houses in it.  I kept telling Keith that there was undoubtedly some woman inside one of them looking out the window at us and screaming for her husband:

"Davenport!  Come quickly!  There are two strange men in a...a...a...Hyundai full of....USED ITEMS...driving past the house! Call security!" 

As if that weren't enough, junk set out starts again in this area on Friday!  Time to get out and battle the scrappers and the pickers and the cowboy angels!  (Bonus points if you get that last reference.  Here's a hint.)

It's a living, ya know?

And what a living it is!

See ya!