RE: Happy Halloween Free @MinnowBuilder Share and some updates about me
Hey, @thedarkhorse.
Wow. That must be some show. All of the expenses of the boiler, plus pay your help their normal amounts. But, what does that mean for ongoing expenses that might normally be covered by the show? I mean, I think it's a great blessing that the boiler work was covered. I'm just thinking about what happens now.
re: daughter
I had two boys, and I did the same thing. Worry. I tried to limit what they did do, which helped, but unfortunately there's only so much of that you can do when their peers are getting to do everything so Dad becomes mean old dad, and society in general wants to treat some ages, particularly teenagers, as if they were fully functioning and rationally thinking adults.
Which is not the case at all. They have intelligence. They have some decision making abilities. But those all seem to override when it comes to being with the friends. Individual thinking turns into groupthink. At least with the boys.
Still, they made it through, and now they get to worry about their own children who are beginning to enter the world. Can't wait to see what they do. :)
Really didn't do anything for Halloween, other than get take out at the favorite Chinese restaurant, a tradition we started years ago when the boys finally got old enough to stop the trick or treating. Why Chinese? I don't know, other than we like Chinese. As far as I'm concerned, it has no links to Halloween otherwise.
I like these kind of free writes. I don't think every post has to maintain one topic, other than life. And these were the more important things happening in your life, so why not write about them?
This is the current issue at hand. But heat was concern #1 as we already have had some cool nights...you know waking up to heavy frost on the ground and trace snow even the one day. But this just means we will have to work harder with our online sales for the winter as there just aren't many shows to do, actually after this weekend my next shows aren't until Feb with 2 and then 1 in March. And those shows can be great as everyone just got tax money back and haven't had a show to get out to in months or horrible if it snows as people just don't want to drive in it. With 3 in a matter of 4 weeks hopefully at least 2 of them will be good.
This might be the worst part of when they go out as a group. Mob rule rarely has a good outcome.
More then a good enough reason to me! This is what we do for my Grandfathers birthday dinner. He turned 92 on Halloween and we took him out last night to our Chinese place just as we did last year. Both of my Grandparents love the way we do family style there and pass dishes around.
As for the freewrites, I like them too. Hate going back an editing things and really not great at staying on one topic when writing as ideas about other things are popping into my head. This lets me jump around and not care about structure as much.
re: heat No. 1 concern
Oh, no doubt about it. That needed to be fixed, and unfortunately, you also ran afoul of regulatory policies if I remember right that by the sound of things had little to do with the reality of your situation, just another opportunity for someone to make a money grab.
When you've been there done that on things like this, you know there's a rest of the story, you know? Life doesn't just conveniently become a bed of roses because you managed to get over some hurdles.
As I said, absolutely thankful that the boiler was taken care of, and now we'll all just hope that between the online sales and the three or so shows during the winter will be prosperous, too.
re: Chinese on Halloween
Ha! Well, all right then. We're not the only ones. We haven't quite got to the stage where we're handing different kinds of food around to each other (too picky, the lot of them!), but I like the idea. One big shared meal like you would do at home.
re: freewrites
Well, sometimes, there's just not one topic to fully expand upon. They all kind of link together in your head. So, what to do? Write three or four small posts so you don't mingle the topics, or one longer one, to get them out of the way and clear the mind so you can move on to something else? I think this worked out great.
Oh believe me nothing is a bed of roses. As Andrew pointed out above this took up a bunch of inventory that I'm not replacing. Normally I'd put 35% of the sales for new inventory. Luckily I was very stocked up before this so can get away with a couple shows of not buying new inventory.
Really the biggest concern becomes our normal day to day bills for the next few months. We don't have our normal reserve going into winter and this show normally tops off those reserves and covers all our spending money until show season starts up again. Living on a tight budget isn't the worst thing and I always find a way if we need money right away.
Chinese is great family style. If you have picky eaters that actually lets them taste new things without committing to them for a whole meal. It's how we have gotten the kids to eat a whole lot of new things.
For sure lumping them into one post works better for me. I could have easily made a post about each topic and dragged it out and added a bunch of photos that most people just wouldn't have cared much about (at least I don't think they would have). Just isn't my style. Would rather post less often and do a real post.