Live From the Garage

Another months-long delay, another weird season or two. I got back into acting, of all things, and while I had a great time in two plays over the winter, it took its toll on what spare time I had and left a lot of business plans in limbo. Once the curtain fell on "Arsenic and Old Lace" (I was Mortimer, if you can believe that - three-piece suit and all), I redoubled my efforts to get back on track with this whole junkman biz.

As of now, my office is in the garage of the house. We're finally cleaning out the third bedroom for my daughter to use (she's nearly four, with special needs, and we've had her in our room to keep an eye on her -- as she's grown, there has been less and less need for the constant monitoring, so she can finally have her own space). This weekend I got some shelving bays up, sorted a lot of accumulated crap, and even found a box of books - my own books, not inventory - that had been buried since we moved into the house 2 1/2 years ago. Amazing!

I've been on a listing tear, too. My new goal is 250 new listings per week in the ebay store. It's been rough some weeks, but I ended last night with 330, and we're at exactly 750 for the month to date. Over 10% of what's in my ebay store right now was listed since May 1. I'm starting to reap the rewards of this listing blitz; sales had tanked but they're creeping back up again, and I'm actually seeing a dent in the stockpiles of stuff both here at the house and at the warehouse. Boxes I haven't peeked into for three years have been opened and sorted, and we're getting old stock up, photographed, listed, and out the door better than we have, well, probably ever.

And after missing lots and lots of the early spring sales, the boy and I finally hit a great day of picking this last weekend. I'm in the midst of listing all of our finds now, and tallying up how much we'll make off that one morning of shopping, and it looks like an awesome kickoff to the season. Once he's out of school, he and I will be hitting the sales every Friday. We'll drop the little one off at daycare, grab some breakfast, and start picking! He'll be 10 this year, and his tolerance for being out, walking up and down streets and wading through tons of junk has never been higher. He's really getting into it now.

(He'll even have his own bit of internet glory to share -- a couple years ago, he started a 'breakfast blog' to write about the various diners where we stopped. Now that he's a little bit older, he wants to relaunch it, and add photos of some of his custom Lego creations to it as well. I'll post a link when that's up and going.)

While sleep has been scarce these last few weeks, it feels good to be renewing my efforts at work, and it's great to see them paying off. Customers are happy, stuff is moving, and we're keeping a roof over head. Looking forward to lots of adventures in the coming months - and, hopefully, a little more regular updating about them here, for anyone who's still checking in.