13 Heroics, 4 plain, and a con to bake for

Sorry about last week. I had a small case of exhaustion mixed with stress that made me fall over for about 3 days. ^^; I love my store, and I love having all the teachers come in and get what they need from us. Same for the art students. But lordie, I was TIRED when it was all done! I think I’m just about caught up on sleep now, tho, so that’s good. Just in time to lose it all again! Whee!

Yep, this week is one I’ve been looking forward to for months. It’s Dragon*con time! What is Dragon*Con? To quote them:

Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the US.

Translation? 30,000 geeks, freaks, furries, nerds, and gamers (and the people that love them!) in downtown Atlanta, GA for Labor Day weekend. Oh yeahhhh. Looking forward to seeing the guys from Ghost Hunters, Adam Savage, and the cast of Farscape and B5. And then there’s the authors, friends, artists, and just plain people-watching. God I love this con.

Instead of getting hotels rooms this year (hey, money’s tight!), we’re going to be staying with friends at their house. As part of my “thank you!” and bribe, I’m baking cookies for them. Oh and bagels. Can’t forget the bagels. Thursday we’ll drive over and end up having dinner with them and another couple we know that are coming in for the con. Friday night, we’ll be having dinner with an author friend that’s coming in for the con. Hopefully they haven’t double booked her for panels this time like they keep trying to do. Saturday is going to be insane racing around in the afternoon to get to everything we want to. Sunday’s gonna be a bit more relaxed, then Monday we drive home, complete with a kitten in the back of the car.

Why a kitten? Well the friends we’re staying with took in a stray cat, only it was a soon-to-be momma cat. She gave birth to a healthy litter, and one of my employees fell in love with the pictures of one of the kittens. So we’re transporting him to his new home when we come home. Yey for kitties with homes!

And then there’s this weekend. Saturday, during the raid, a couple of us were chatting and decided to hook up on Sunday to run “old world” heroics. So Sunday afternoon, Jared and I logged in, grabbed the others, and went racing around Burning Crusade picking up achievements. We started around 2pm, at 5:30 took a 2 hour break, then finished up around 10:30-11pm. That was 2 Hellfire Penninsula heroics, 3 Coilfang heroics, 2 Auchindoun heroics, 2 CoT heroics, 1 Magister’s Terrace heroic, and 3 TK heroics. Plus, I didn’t have the rep for the key to get into the TK instances, so add in 3 regular Mech runs to get the rep, and a regular MT run since I hadn’t ever been to it on Wrenn to get keyed for heroic mode. Oy! But damn it was fun!

So this is what my week looks like right now:
1. Knit like it’s no one’s business to finish one project
2. Go to Kara for a fun run (how fast CAN a bunch of lvl 80s cruise through there with bad jokes and puns a’flyin’?) tonight
3. Finish laundry tonight
4. Clean kitchen tonight
5. Start baking bagels and cookies tomorrow
6. Settle who’s babysitting the cats while we’re gone
7. Raid tomorrow night
8. Finish baking bagels and cookies Wednesday
9. Re-clean kitchen Wednesday
10. Doublecheck laundry pile to make sure it didn’t regrow Wednesday
11. Pack Wednesday (make sure to take items to be signed, multiple books from multiple people, DVDs, etc, plus clothes, etc., gifts, baked goods, batteries for camera, cables for eletronics we’re taking, Katamari games, PSPs, extra books to read, plus knitting for the drive)
12. Clean out car trunk of excess crap Wednesday
13. Attempt to go to bed “early” Wednesday night
14. Wake up at “deargodnoit’stooearlydon’tmakemedriiiiiiive!” on Thursday and get this whole thing started!

…

Damn. I’m gonna be busy. o.O /gets back to the knitting frenzy

Chuck Jones is my god

Hey I already said that both Jim Henson and Chuck Jones are my gods, so it’s only fair to promote Chuck Jones’s godhood status.

Growing up, Saturday morning was sacred. It didn’t really matter too much what the rest of the world was doing, but by everything holy, you did NOT mess with the Saturday morning cartoons. You especially didn’t mess with Bugs Bunny. But that wasn’t the only time that I got to see the Loony Tunes cartoons. Various stations, being shown across this new “cable” thing, played Loony Tunes, Tom and Jerry, even Woody Woodpecker, in the afternoons, right when kids were getting home from school. After watching hours upon hours of cartoons, I discovered the ones that I adored above all others, the ones that just seemed to be a little more “something” that made me giggle and remember them constantly, were directed by one person: Chuck Jones.

His Bugs Bunny was a little more refined than the others, but still capable of those sharp mentals turns that you weren’t expecting. This was not a toned down Bugs: he was still wise-cracking and jovial, just a bit more “winkwinknudgenudge” about it. He invited you in on the joke. The other characters that Chuck Jones created – Marc Antony and Pussyfoot, Wile E. Coyote, Gossamer for a few examples – all had a similar “feel” to them. Not that they were all similar, but that they all came from the same mind.

So now, five reasons that Chuck Jones is my god.

1. Hair-Raising Hare
Evil scientist. Check. Monster. Check. Bugs Bunny as a manicurist. …check? Okay it sounds silly if you’ve never seen it, but between Bugs’s Groucho Marx leers and the as-yet-unnamed monster (Gossamer) roaring, there’s a classic Bugs Bunny scene where he completely takes over the situation, even as death looks him in the eye, then wonders where it lost control of the situation to a rabbit. Giggles aplenty.

2. The Dot and the Live: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
My mom had this book when I was growing up and I was fascinated with it for some reason. I guess it was seeing that a line can be whatever you make it to be: grand or humble. In any case, it was a charming story that I loved to read, and seeing it brought to an animated form made me smile.

3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
A classic book made into a classic animation. The voiceover from Boris Karloff is amazing, and Jones’s adaptions of the illustrations from the book make it perfect.

4. What’s Opera, Doc?/Robin Hood Daffy/Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century
I can’t really separate any of these guys out from each other. What’s Opera, Doc? is the one that everyone remembers for the scene of Elmer Fudd singing “Kill da wabbit!” Robin Hood Daffy is probably best remembered for the scene of Daffy practicing with the staff, although his colliding into trees is also excellent.

And Daffy Duck in the 24 1/2 Century? Well how can you not love Daffy vs. Marvin the Martian?

5. Rabbit of Seville
This is by far my favorite Bugs Bunny/Chuck Jones cartoon. It has the usual Elmer Fudd/Bugs Bunny fight, but this time in an opera house. Classical music? Check. Singing cast? Check. Bugs Bunny getting the best of Elmer Fudd? Oh yes, check. I prefer this one to What’s Opera, Doc? for a few reasons, but the scene with Bugs giving Elmer a haircut and shave has to be my favorite scene ever.

So there you have it, my reasons why Chuck Jones is my god. Heehee.

Jim Henson is my god

While I was watching TV over the weekend, a stray thought crept into my head and rummaged around a bit before making itself at home. Whenever pop culture comes up, friends of mine have heard me say “Jim Henson is my god.” It’s either been that, or “Jim Henson and Chuck Jones are my gods.” To me, this is pretty much the truth. There are a few people that I can hold up as being the creators of something, in this case entertainment, that reaches into my soul and says “Oh yes, we know each other, don’t we?” In this case, Jim Henson and Chuck Jones are at the top of my list for Personal Gods.

Why? Well that’s where it gets a little bit more introspective. I’ve battled depression my whole life. It hit hard when I was in high school and by the end of my second year at my first college, I was a mess. The things that made me still laugh and think that the world wasn’t completely full of bullshit? Kermit the Frog and Bugs Bunny. I’m sure someone out there could do (or has done) a very nice thesis on Kermit, Bugs and the relationship of their characters to the Inner Child. Me? I like to laugh, cos enough bad things happen in life, we need to find joy somewhere.

Today, I’m looking at Jim Henson. I wish he was still around today, cos I’d love to see where he would have taken his productions with today’s technologies. He brought puppetry up to a new level in the industry, and managed to get people to learn about other cultures’ methods at the same time. He treated it not as a gag, but as an art form. He didn’t create Sesame Street, but I honestly can’t imagine it without his creations.

His Muppets were the embodiment of everyone. They encompassed the childlike wonder that so many have lost over the years, as well as the sense of joy from playing with friends. His more adult versions, such as the ones in The Dark Crystal, reflected our own disregard for others, greed and cruelty, but also the capacity for love, giving, and peace.

So now, here’s my top 5 on why Jim Henson is my god.

1. Sesame Street
Sesame Street Muppets allowed kids to see that even monsters and animals had the same problems as them. If a giant yellow bird couldn’t cross the street without holding onto an adult, then kids probably needed to as well. Grover and Big Bird embodied the kid in all of us, and made us feel not so alone. Kermit was the cool older kid/adult that knew everything and we looked up to. And Grover and Kermit together? Hysterical.

2. The Muppet Show
The Muppets doing a “variety” TV show at night? People must have thought he was insane for trying this, but Henson knew what he was doing. In The Muppet Show, he managed to get his cast of Muppets to show that no matter what you looked like, there was a home and friends for you. Everyone could work together for a common goal, and while there was chaos and mayhem around, by the end of the show, there was a sense of accomplishment from all, human and Muppet alike. Even better, he used the show to introduce the US to even more types of puppetry from around the country and world. Not to mention, he got some amazing performers to play along with the Muppets. And as amusing as Alice Cooper surrounded by Muppets is, my favorite episode is still Harry Belafonte’s.

3. Oh hell with it. Alice Cooper and the Muppets. (Seriously, can you imagine the phone call that happened to make this show? “Hi, we’d like to invite Mr. Cooper to perform on the Muppet Show. He’ll be performing with our monster Muppets for a Halloween show.” “…What?”)

4. The Muppet Movie
The Muppet Movie made it clear that the Muppets meant some serious funny business. A frog’s simple dream, to become “rich and famous”, is the driving force. Along the way, he picks up the rest of the usual cast, and hijinks ensue. The cameos from various stars through the whole film make the amusement factor even greater. And then there’s the song, Rainbow Connection: hope, longing, dreams, and a belief that life might be good and okay.

5. Muppet Christmas Carol
Now this was released after his death, but it still reflects his personality. I drive people nuts humming this around Christmas.

His kids are carrying on the traditions and businesses. The Creature Shop shows up in more places than people realize, including Batman Begins and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His son, Brian, proved that you can take Muppets into space and not have them look like Miss Piggy with the show Farscape. He’s shown us all that we can aspire to be the best we can be, because if a giant yellow bird and a very green frog can get along with monsters, kids, and adults of all colors, sizes and beliefs, then maybe we humans can too. and just maybe, we can laugh at ourselves and the silliness that is life while we’re at it.

And that’s why Jim Henson is my god.

Non-serious time!

Yes with all the serious that’s been going around lately, it’s time for FUN! …Crap, I just had a flashback to Shadow Labs. One sec while I finish twitching.

::deep breaths::

Okay all better. Now where was…oh! Fun! Silly! Yes! Today I thought, since I’m feeling lazy, I’d share a few videos, including ads, that I’m rather partial to. Yes, I said ads. Commercials. Those things that try to get us buy things we may or may not need or change our minds about other things.

Hey wait! Come back! I swear it will be okay! They won’t all be ads!

The problem with a lot of ads that are supposed to be funny to the general population is, well, I don’t find them funny. I do have a sense of humor, but as far as commerical creators go, apparently I lack the general “funny” gene they’re looking for. To them I say “whatever.” To the ones that come up with commercials that make me smile and look forward to seeing them over and over? Thank you for going the extra mile.

Time to start this off! First up is a commercial for a little company called Nike. It’s not one that everyone in the US has seen, but it’s one that makes me grin.

I’ve had friends who are Indian or have visited India that say this commercial is just about dead on. I’m just amused at the wholehearted passion for the game that this ad brings out. I can’t really imagine this done in the US. I just keep seeing too many stereotypes of male couch potatoes being used instead, slo-mo, amazingly over the top production to produce something slick and lacking in the charm that this has.

Speaking of ads and sports, here’s one from a Superbowl past:

The next day at work, everyone talked about this ad. I still love it. As a cat owner, it makes me giggle. The only problem? No one could remember what it was for. Sadly, it failed it’s job: to get people to talk about the product. But everyone sure remembered the ad!

Silliness? You say you need more? Okay, you can’t get more silly than this…

I grew up with the Muppet Show and this was always one of my favorite bits they did.

Cats. I’m a cat owner. Or, like most cat owners, I should say I’m owned by two cats. They’ve been a source of amusement, love and frustration, and I adore them. However, one of them, Kika, is a food hog. She can never get enough to eat. She has set feeding times that she chooses to ignore, pestering us for food whenever SHE feels that she should be getting fed. This little video is one I completely relate to:

Another commercial, this one for beer, which I don’t normally drink (more of a rum girl, tyvm). But this one is catchy, and amuses me.

Oh, another commerical that I won’t link here but it sends me into giggle fits? Go look for “Durex Balloon Animals”. First time I saw it, I couldn’t stop laughing. The noises alone send me into hysterics. It doesn’t help that the noises also bring up a conversation between me and a couple of friends that still, years later, send us all laughing.

Then there’s one more video. It’s less “funny haha” and more “omgyes/purr” for me.

What can I say? I’m a Diablo fangirl.

That’s all I’m going to subject you to today. Mainly cos I’m hungry and it’s lunchtime. Mmm lunch. /wanders off

Time flies, but in a good way

Christmas of 2007, my mom came to visit me at my house in Atlanta, instead of me going to see her at her house in Oxford, Mississippi. I was freelancing at the time, and not exactly the happiest with where my career had taken me. I’d been semi-content at the ad agency I’d worked for, but once again, not completely happy. Freelancing was paying the bills, but Mom knew that I wanted a job I loved, not one that just kept my mortgage paid. In that, she and I are a lot alike.

We went out to eat one night, and while we were chatting and waiting for our food to arrive, she brought up my dissatisfaction with my job. “I hate seeing you in something that you just don’t enjoy, and, well, I need to ask you something. Just hear me out first, then give me your impressions.” As it turns out, her store that she had opened for almost a year at that point was doing well. Well enough that her business partner, a friend from high school, had said “I want one in my town now. We need a good manager for this one since it would be 3 hours away from you and you can’t watch over it. Think of someone.” So Mom asked me, what did I think about becoming the manager of the second store?

For the next 5 seconds, this is what went through my head: it would be in a town I had visited (my mom’s mom lived there til she passed earlier that month) but never lived in. I wouldn’t know anyone other that some relatives I hadn’t really ever talked to often and weren’t particularly close to. Even Mom’s business partner I’d only met a handful of times, but I’d liked her each of those meetings. I had a boyfriend who was moving from Michigan to Atlanta in February to be with me, and we’d have to sell a house in a starting-to-crumble housing market. Then there was the actual packing of a house, finding a new place to live, moving two states, and did I really want to quit my career as a production artist/graphic designer?

“How soon does she want me? I can leave in two weeks.”

Yep, I was burnt out on design work and ad agencies. I was burned out on Atlanta and the horrible commutes. I was burned out on just about everything my life had at the time, with the exception of my cats, my friends, my boyfriend, and my family. The only thing keeping my sanity together at the time was World of Warcraft, where I could chat with Jared and other friends in-game, and dreaming of what would happen if I won the lottery. Not practical to getting into a happy place career-wise, but the economy was starting to tank, and advertising is one of the first things to go when companies are trying to stay afloat. That meant that ad companies weren’t hiring and even the freelance work was starting to get dicey.

After Mom realized I was serious about wanting to accept the job, we got started talking about what all it would entail and what I’d have to do to get ready. I told her I was 90% sure I wanted to take the job, but wanted to talk to Jared before I said “yes”. He and I talked later, and I told him about the offer. “But I know you’re moving down here to move in with me, and I hate to move right after you get here to yet another strange town and this one’s smaller than Atlanta.” “First, I’m moving to be with you, not the city of Atlanta. Second, I live in a small town now. I like small towns. This works for me.” So I called Mom and said dependent on the salary being something that I could live with, I’d do it.

The next few months were hectic: Jared was in a wreck where his truck got totaled and he got not badly hurt, but enough he had to delay his move down til the doctor said he was okay. There were trips to Meridian from Atlanta to talk to Mom’s business partner and scout locations for the store. Salaries and budgets were agreed upon. Packing started. The freelance job I’d been on for 6 months at that point was notified of my impending departure, right about the point they started cutting back on their freelance hours. The house was cleaned up, repaired, improved, and put onto the market with an amazing agent who worked miracles. Finally, at the end of May, after locating an apartment a couple of blocks from the soon-to-be new store, I came home from the freelance job and asked Jared how he felt about moving in a week instead of 3, since we now had a buyer for the house. He was fine with it, so the really frantic packing started, complete with freaked out cats. We were loading the moving van while the buyers for the house were there with the inspector. Two days later, we were unloading a moving van in the new town.

In 5 months, I’d changed careers, said goodbye to a town I’d had some great times in, said goodbye to friends, and dove into a new life. I’d gone to school for a career that I was now not going to use for anyone other than myself and my mom, and that infrequently. I spent the next two months frantically getting the last details done on the store, ordering merchandise, hiring staff, re-learning how to work in a retail store (I’d put myself through college working specialty retail, aka gift shops, so it was perfect training), and trying to learn the ins and outs of this new town. Finally, on July 28th, 2008, just a little over  7 months from when Mom asked me to listen to her idea, we opened the doors to the store. Later that week, the public school teachers found us and we were off and running. August 13, 2008 we had our Grand Opening celebration, and I spent most of the day overwhelmed by the support we were getting from the community.

It’s now been just over a year since we quietly snuck open, and officially a year since our Grand Opening. Everyone laughs that I remember the dates so well. May 31st, we moved into the apartment. June 7th, we met with the art vendor to plan out the purchases from him. July 25th, we got our last approvals to open. July 28th, we opened and haven’t looked back since. I look back through the notebook I was scribbling hurried notes in (“call fire dept inspection”, “pw for CD?”, “contact radio station/newspaper”, “::completely illegible scribble, underlined 3 times::”) and it seems a lifetime ago, not a year.

So, did things turn out the way I wanted them to? Overall I’d have to say yes. We have a store that everyone who comes in is in love with. We’ve made the artist community and teachers very happy. I’ve gotten to know some wonderful people. And I’m a lot more content with my life than I was in Atlanta. The stress is still around at times, but it’s good stress. It’s the stress of knowing you’re going to have at least 100, but probably more like 200 teachers coming through the store in the next week and a half getting ready for the city schools to go into session, and you just got finished restocking after the county schools came through. We have slow days, and I get stressed by them, but then the fast and frantic days happen and I get stressed by them. More times than not, these days I’m laughing and smiling. Panic attacks are few and far between instead of a near-daily occurrence. And I’d bet my blood pressure’s gone down too.

So time flies. Life happens. People change. And sometimes, you have to walk away from everything you’re doing to find out what really makes you happy. Thanks Mom. Thanks Jared. And thanks to all the friends that supported this and listened to me fret that I might screw up. You guys rock.

Sleep, how I miss thee…

Yeah another night of insomnia. This time it was at the tail end of a 3 day weekend, which I loved and needed. I’d gotten plenty of sleep and was starting to feel somewhat normal again. I even went into WoW and played around in Stranglethorne on Wrenn! Hey, those quest achievements aren’t going to complete themselves. And I figured, why not just start at one end of the continent and work my way up? It was amusing blasting stuff away without thinking about it, and as a bonus, I got to give a blue I found along the way to a lvl 41 rogue, who promptly squee’d and bounced thankfully at me. I like randomly making someone’s day.

Around the end of the quests I was finding in STV, Jared came home and logged into WoW, then asked me to join him in a raid to try something. He finally dropped the raid then sighed, cos he was getting ported out of the raid instance. When I saw what was going on, I giggled and said “So, mind if I come to MC with you? I think Exo might be interested in silly times too.” Sure enough, our friend was, so the 3 of us treked into MC: a warlock, a death knight and a priest. There was much rejoicing when we finally reached the end of it and downed Rags, especially for Exo, since he’d never been. He’d had to stop raiding right as Jared and I were doing MC when we were at relevant levels. It was a big of a struggle for a couple of the fights (%@#$$ healer mobs), but we somehow made it through. For 3 people that hadn’t researched the best way on how to do that, and two of them either barely remembered (me) or had never been there (Exo) for the fights, I considered it a fabulous success.

After that, I curled up on the couch to watch Warehouse 13, a silly yet fun series we’ve been amused by lately, then off to reading-land. Around midnight, Jared went to sleep and the downstairs neighbors kicked up their noise. Of course they did. /sigh So I kept reading. And reading. And reading. By the time I was finally unable to hear them anymore, it was close to 3am, and I only had another 100 pages to go on the book, and there was no way in hell I was gonna stop. So 4am rolled around, and I finally crashed.  I get the feeling tonight is going to be an early night for me. :/

I will thank the book I was reading last night for making me almost spit my drink all over myself at one point. Why? Cos of one little bit:

“Acheron. When it absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed overnight.”

Anyone familiar with Sherrilyn Kenyon’s books will prolly giggle at that. Everyone else, feel free to sigh and ignore me. I’m still giggling, but I think part of that might be the lack of sleep.

Rest, I can has it?

Thursday was a lot of running around. The store did great, the teachers are all coming in and getting their stuff for back to school, and Mom was in town. Granted, her car was in a local shop getting repaired (catalytic converter decided to quit), but it’s a decent mechanic and everything looked to be done on time for her to leave on Friday. We even went out for a nice supper that night, along with Jared. Yey free food! The downside was that the raid was frustrating on Thursday night, but that happens sometimes. There were a few too many odd things happening by the end, so on our last attempt at Malygos, when we made it to phase 3, landed on the red dragons, then had them vanish under us, land on another set of dragons which proceeded to vanish even faster than the first set, letting us all plummet to our deaths… yeah we called it a night. Too much weird stuff.

It’s a good thing I went to bed early tho. I needed the rest. Turns out Friday, with all the running around I had to do, plus the store being swamped by returning teachers, meant that I was drained by the end of the day. By the end of the day, Mom had gotten home, Jared had gone to the eye docs again and gotten his new computer, and the store had it’s best single day ever since we opened just over a year ago. I’m still in shock over it, but thrilled. And to add to the happy, my friend Anne finally got the box of knitted goodies I’d sent to her earlier in the week, so now I can share pictures!

I’d made for her a shawl and some fingerless mitts from patterns found on Ravelry, a lovely online community of knitters, crocheters, spinners, and dyers that has a wealth of information. So since Anne whimpered that no one ever sends her knitted goodies, I rummaged on Ravelry and found some patterns for some things I thought she might like.

First up was a pair of fingerless mitts. On Ravelry, they’re called “Nalu Mitts“, since “nalu” means “wave” in Hawaiian. Me, I never can remember that, but I remember “wave” in Japanese is “nami”, so I keep calling them the “Nami Mitts”. Hey, it’s my brain, work with me here! I’d made a pair of them in blue and love them. They were perfect for working on the computer when you’re just a bit cold but still want to feel to type. Since Anne gets a sea breeze where she lives which can get a bit nippy sometimes, I asked her to pick a color from a range I gave her. She picked “spring green”. To me, the yarn is a spring green. She swears, now that she’s seen it, it’s moss green. All I know is she loves the gloves, thus, I’m happy.

The other item I knitted was something called a Sunday Market Shawl. This one came about because Anne saw a ball of Noro yarn on my Flickr page, showing the various colors in the ball. She drooled on it, said I needed to knit her something with that yarn, and I eyed the one green mitt I’d already done. But since the pattern for the shawl said it was great for those evenings when there’s a light nip to the air but you don’t want to wear a full jacket, hey, I’ll knit that instead! And in the yarn she’s drooling on! Awesome! It was an easy enough knit, and once again, she loved it. It was amusing when she called to say she had the box, cos she was under orders to not open it til she called me. Once I gave her permission, she chatted away as she opened it, then nothing but “Oooo!!!!!” for the next two minutes. I finally looked at Jared, who was with me at that point, and grinned. “I think she likes them. I think I broke her.” She finally said something coherant at that point, and we got on with the talking. ::grin::

So yeah, Friday was good. Saturday? Eh. We cleaned up the mess at the store, putting everything to rights again, and tried to figure out what all I have to reorder today to have back in stock for the next wave of teachers. As the day went on, the headache got worse, and the tummy decided it had had quite enough tyvm, so I had to back out of raiding that night to go to bed early and try to not be sick. Sunday was grocery shopping, laundry, and me baking two batches of bagels: one for me, and one for friends next to the store. This morning when I dropped the bagels off, they cheered and were petting them, last I saw.

I’m hoping this week will be as busy as last week was. It’s making me feel better, and not quite as worried as I was back in the June lull. We’ve got one year under our belts now, and people are beginning to rely on us for their art and teacher needs. Now if I could only get more book shoppers in! (Darn you, Books-a-Million!) This weekend I have off, and I might end up face down in the bed for most of it if this week’s anything like last week. Whee!

Oh dear… I still have to look at orders for the community college kids and art supplies! Gah! /flail