Schedule? What Schedule?

The best laid plans, etc. When I awakened this morning, after gathering the trash and recycling at a time of the morning when most "normal" people are fast asleep, I settled down to catch up on my emails and write my daily blog. But no. Five minutes after I settled down to answer an email, my internet went dead. Calling my carrier, I found out that there were issues in my neighborhood and it would be down until about 6:00 am, a time when I'm usually in the shower after my morning swim on Wednesday. With an usually full schedule today, this small paragraph is all you're getting before I hop back into the car and head to my next appointment.

The best laid plans and scheduling hit the dust today
because my internet connection wasn't connected.
What a mess. *sigh*  Back to normal now, though. 

What a mess - happy Wednesday, everyone.

Sales Strategies and Le Tour

Today is only Tuesday? OMG - this week is just going to drag itself along behind me like a 50-pound weight attached to leg irons. My feet already hurt because I had less than 30 minutes to sit yesterday and I have five more days to go. Am I being a wuss? Maybe, but it's no fun standing for nine hours with sore feet and a lower back that should be shipped back to the shop. I know I'm carrying too much weight, and this is confirmation of that fact. But it doesn't change the fact that things had better change quickly or I might lose my temper.

OMG this looks so comfortable! My back could really use this
type of stretch. 

That said, my manager was actually helpful yesterday, coming out whenever I asked him to help and not getting too much in my way. I have no guilt about asking him to pull this or that for a customer, or to work with this person or that when I'm tied up with other people. I will call him out of the back for a large order or a small. My problems arise when he sits at the main computer to compile purchase orders or look through sales histories. Then I have issues because he'll sit there, ignoring the world around him, for hours. I rely on that chair to take a load off my feet. I may have to use my stool - something I haven't had to use in several years - just to relax my back a bit.

I had no issues with calling for help, and my manager
was actually fairly responsive when I called him out
to the sales floor. He wastes my time in idle chit-chat
sometimes, but I just try to ignore that and get on
with my own work. 

Still, because I called on him to help with the smaller sales, I had the chance to work intensively with several families and smaller groups, building their $20 sales into end results of more than $100. I was happy, they were happy, and if it took a lot of work to achieve that goal, well, that's why I'm really good at sales when I apply myself.

It's important that people feel welcome, but it's also important
that they actually find what they're looking for. 

I find that all too often my staff will welcome customers to the store, but then they will turn their attention back to whatever task they were doing and not really pay attention to what the customer is looking at or where their curiosity is pulling them. If you watch - really watch a customer, you can answer questions, show different colors or products, and generally satisfy needs that they never knew they had. That's the mark of a successful sales person and a successful sale.

A lot of my customers are older women and they can be a lot of
fun. Sometimes they can be a PITA, though. Generally I find
them to be interesting and unafraid to voice an opinion. 

Chickie can show almost infinite patience with some really difficult customers and often is better with older ladies, but I can read body language like words on a page and I watch people. Chickie also loves to chat about this or that, but although I'm also talking, I'm talking about the products, colors, stitches and design, not really allowing the discussion to pass through to the personal except to get an idea about what the customer really wants to achieve as their end goal. Differences, good and bad, but the two of us make a formidable sales force.

Chickie is on vacation this week. She should be roaming around
Seattle today, taking in the sights and sounds of that great city.
I hope she's having a wonderful time. 

With Chickie on vacation this week, it's up to me to deal with everyone and that might be difficult with some of the groups we get in. The week has hardly started, but I hope I'll end it with a feeling that I did a good job both in terms of dollars in the till as well as happy customers. I guess my sore feet are a small price to pay for satisfied clients.

Stage Four, although it does have crosswinds and some topography, is generally
a "meh" stage just to get from the coast into the interior of France. 

Today is Day Four of Le Tour de France and the boys are finally on French soil. They all flew over last night (the support personnel had to take the ferry or the Chunnel), and today's stage will be relatively boring with the possible exception of wind issues when they're near the coast. Today seems more like a transition day as they move from the coast of France to the interior for tomorrow's dreaded cobblestone stage. Today will be "meh", but tomorrow? Tomorrow will be broken bikes and possible crashes here and there as they deal with nine separate sections of cobblestone roads. So, as I finish this out so that I can get to the TV in time to watch today's stage, I wish all of you a wonderful Tuesday. Have fun and make someone's day a happy one.

Errands in the Cold - Insanity at Zero Degrees F

I feel a bit like Santa Claus today - driving all around in freezing temps. Unfortunately my errands won't be as much fun as dropping down chimneys, eating cookies, drinking milk, and depositing gifts. On the contrary, I'll be shopping for groceries, office supplies and - most importantly - an Embossing Heat Tool.

RIP Embossing Heat Tool. This essential tool that is central to my Solstice card making died on me yesterday morning in mid-session. I mean literally died - the on/off switch no longer on/offed. I was close to shutting down my work for the morning anyway, but ... (big but) ... I had just put embossing powder on two elements and that stuff MUST BE MELTED or it turns into sandy dust that just blows away with a small puff of breath.

Fortunately I have a paint stripper (yes, I have weird tools in my life). It happened to be down in one of my workrooms, so down I trooped to get the paint stripper. Now this is rather like using an elephant to squash an ant. In other words - it's overkill. But, after successfully finding a plug that would accept it, I turned it on, very carefully fused the embossing powder (actually didn't even singe the card - whoo hoo!) and returned the huge piece of equipment back to its corner. Success.

Number one thing on my shopping list today? Get a new Embossing Heat Tool! Supposedly the feared Big Blue Store (otherwise known as WalMart) may have one in their Party and Occasions section, Huh? OK then. But ... the website can't guarantee that it will actually be in stock. I can order said tool, but it would barely be in my hands by Xmas and I need it TODAY. So...if Wally World doesn't have it on hand, I'll have to shift to a different supplier, get a brand I'm less happy with, and pay more. BUT, before I return to my cozy, warm home to work on my cards double and triple time for the rest of the day, I WILL OWN A NEW HEAT GUN. (Just envision Scarlet O'Hara shaking her fist at the sky and promising that she'll never be hungry again - although I could still stand to lose some pounds on a personal level).

So after my long list of stops have been accomplished, and I have successfully acquired the items on my list, I will gas up my vehicle and quite happily return home where I will set up the laptop to run my specialized printer for part of my cards that is very time consuming, while setting up a small station,  to continue the embellishment of said cards. I'm cruising right along, but these guys are highly decorated (because my muse went a little crazy) and I really want/need to have them in the mail as soon as possible.

So ... if you were wondering what frantic looks like? I present ME! And a Happy Wednesday to all of you - LOL.

Interruptions and Writing

Interruptions are a fact of life, and I (like many of my readers) operate better without outside interruptions, conversations or sounds. I have trained myself over the years to ignore the television sounds in the background, so I usually can tune those out successfully. I like having the news on in the background in my early morning hours, it brings me back up to date on world events and current temperatures and weather. But I cherish my quiet time in the early morning. My time from waking up until 6:00 am is my time to think, to read my emails and LJ posts, and to write my daily blog. It's my thinking time, my viewing pics time, and my catching up with friends time. It is NOT my 'socialize with DH' time.

Socializing is not always what I want to do.

Lately he's been sleeping less, been more restless, and has been waking up earlier. Today he was up at 3:30 am and by 4:30 am he was in his chair in front of his computer playing LOTRO. I wouldn't care, but his chair is less than six feet away from mine, and I am attuned to pay attention when he talks, mumbles, complains, or otherwise vocalizes. It is inhibiting and I am not happy.

Normally I would leave. I would grab my laptop and flee to my local coffee shop. Unfortunately they don't open until 5:30 am, which is still one hour away from now. So I have to put up with him and I'm not happy. But, I remind myself, it's just an interruption *sigh*.

Tables, plugs for my laptop, coffee, oatmeal. I do a lot of my
writing at my local Caribou Coffee.

Fall has finally arrived here in the Twin Cities. Sunday was glorious - blue skies, autumn colors displaying their best and mild temperatures. Yesterday and today are the first days that my heaters have been on in my house and my business. It's been cold, it's been wet, it's been grey skies, rain, wind, and the leaves that looked so glorious on Sunday are being driven to the ground in droves. Soon we'll be raking this deciduous throw-off and adding huge piles of dead leaves to our compost piles.

The colors along the North Shore in northern Minnesota can be
spectacular. This year was a good year for color.

I'm getting geared up for NaNoWriMo and I'm getting really excited about diving back into my novel and finishing it. There's still so much of the journey that my characters have to walk. I downloaded a sample/trial copy of Scrivener last night and I'll do the second half on this program. I'll merge the two halves after the end of this year's NaNo and then start the editing. If I have anything left to write, I can do that in December/January. Then it will be time for editing. I'm really looking forward to pushing my editor into his box and not letting him out until December. There is something rather liberating about allowing myself the freedom to just write words, followed by words, followed by more words.

Happy Tuesday to all!