Monday Rambles

Where the craziness never ends!

Ever.

Seriously.

Last week was a whirlwind of activity and this one seems sure to be more of the same.  I have to go to Lexington for training on Thursday and Friday.  It's sure to be a good training and I love Lexington.  Thing is, I want to go thrifting and junking in Lexington, not sit in a class all day!  It's so hard to do the things you gotts do all the time when you can practically here the junk crying out for you!  Am I right?

The good part is that I will get out of a day of work.  The bad part is that my pay rate for training is half of my regular rate, so I'll barely make up for missing that day of work with the two days of training!  Sigh.

I spent a couple of days last week trying to get the new booths up and running.  It's proving to be quite a challenge.  Nothing is photo-worthy yet.  There's not enough stuff in the spaces for a pic.  I've started selling at a good pace though. 

I only have two spaces in the new store, as opposed to the eight I have at the other one.  I'm actually finding it kind of hard to work in a smaller space now.  I am so used to my big ole four-plex.  It's easy to forget that I started small, back in the day.  To make it even more challenging, my two spaces are across the aisle from each other, so I don't even have a duplex.  The smaller space will be easier to stock and keep clean, but I find I'm constantly over-compensating for the size by not bringing enough stuff.

It's still going to be a while before I get it to that just right stage, especially at the rate things are selling.  I am a little worried about keeping up the pace.  Since it is across the river, I cannot get over there as often as I do the other store.  However, blank spots and disorder show up more easier in smaller spaces than they do in my big ole booth.  I'm still trying to figure out the balance.  It might take me through the holidays to get it right.

Speaking of the holidays, I put the Halloween stuff in the new spaces and will be putting it out in the old booths this afternoon.  It's already selling well across the river.  Even my harvest stuff is selling better than it usually does.  This time of year it really pays to think like a regular retailer and do what they do.  All of your customers are seeing this stuff go up in Wal-Mart or wherever, so they are tuned into that cycle whether or not they realize it.  Vendors that can play along with that will benefit.  I'll have some Christmas out by the end of the month.

This was the most interesting yard sale week I've ever had.  We went to a church sale that did not exist, a community sale that was a bust, and by 11 had only bought a bird cage.  We were heading to large neighborhood sale, when we saw a pile of furniture in front of a house with a "FREE" sign on it.  That filled the van, with really nice stuff, so we called it a day.

Sorry no pics of that haul.  It was a busy road and there was no place to pull off safely, so we were too busy trying not to get killed as we loaded the van.

I did go over to a store I used to be in for a carport sale on Sunday.  Everything was a dollar, so I cleaned up on that.  Got some nice larger smalls for the new space.  Here is Chiquito inspecting that haul:

Beware the photo-bombing kitty!

I sort of had an interesting proposal tossed my way while I was shopping there.  The timing right now is really bad for me, so I said I would think about it.

I need to give a "thanks" to one of my blogging heroes and all around good dude Mike Sterling for featuring my wonky Magneto on his blog the other day.  If there is ever anything you need to know about comics, Mike is the guy to ask.  He's hilarious too!

I got to know Mike several years ago, when a group of bloggers would exchange music CD's through the mail.  Another one of my blogging heroes, Roger Green, reminisced about those days recently.  It's kind of like "old home week" on the blog today!

Well, I've got laundry to finish and dishes to do before getting ready for work, so I better scoot. More later, if I don't totally lose my mind!