Monday Rambles

Almost titled this one "Monday Ram-blahs."  I guess you could say I've been in a bit of a funk over the last couple of days.  I'll get over it.  Probably.

As predicted, the basketball tournament torpedoed sales last week.  From Monday to Wednesday, my sales dropped off a whopping 90%!  I am not exaggerating that in the least.  I really went from $50 a day (on Monday) to $5 (on Wednesday). 

I know by now this time is coming.  It does so every year, but I had been riding such a high earlier in the month, that the crash is particularly hard this time.  Bummer.  I've been feeling a bit discouraged over the whole thing.  I did have a good, strong day on Sunday, but the tournament has two (!) more weekends to run.  Sigh!

Based on first half of the month sales, I had a pretty hefty month end total as my goal this time around.  I think I'm still going to come out okay at the end of the month, but there's no way I'll make my goal now.  Ebb and flow.  I know it's a fact of this business, but I'll never get used to it or like it.

It's very early in the yard sale season here, which means they're hit or miss.  It also means they're farther apart than I like.  Once the season starts in full, I tend to hit the ones I know will be good  from past experience and stay mostly in my own central area otherwise.  It saves a lot of useless travel and frustration.  I'll branch out for something that seems extremely special, but I tend to stick to the established patterns.

This weekend, we ended up going from one end of the county to the other and coming up basically empty.  We went to a find-raising sale at an American Legion post that promised thirty sellers.  Of course, that ended up being more like ten.  Who weren't anywhere around their stuff when I tried to buy something.  Who were wildly over-priced when I could find someone to ask.  One seller even tried to lay a guilt trip on me to get me to buy something.  I'm sorry, but "You know what this is for." is not a way to get me to spend money.

After that, we went to what had been advertised as a neighborhood sale, but ended up being one house with about ten things for sale.  Really? There was a house in the neighborhood with a bookshelf sitting at the curb.  We debated back and forth about it and drove past a couple of times.  Finally, we saw a woman in the yard acting like she was waiting for someone to come pick her up.  We asked her if the shelf was free, and she said "Oh no.  It's five dollars."  We bought the self, but it was all just too weird.

After that, we went to a video store that's getting ready to close.  I bought a display rack there.  They had another rack that I wanted, but I have no room for it anywhere.  Today is the last day, I'm going to pop over there one more time to see if they've lowered prices any more.  Keith found a copy of one of my favorite movies there, so I got that too.

We ended up going by the storage unit to actually make a van load for the booth.  This is the second time we've filled up the van from the unit,  yet the unit is still full all the way to the door!  I think it violates the known laws of physics, mass, and volume.  Mind-boggling.

On the way to the booth, we decided to take the dog for a ride.

He likes to hang his head out the window.

Good boy!

I spent the rest of the weekend at the booth, cleaning and restocking.  Hopefully, that will work a change in the sales.

My scan is this Friday.  We'll see what happens, I guess.  Sorry this one is a bit of a downer.  I'll work on cheerfulness this week.

Ram-blahs.