Nemo's News 9-25-2007

We have had some incredible sales lately, or at least they seem incredible while still building up our clientele... A year from now it should be a different story.
We had slumping sales for the last four or so days. At first, I thought it was just a small slump. Then I noticed that our average ticket prices had fallen from the mid $4 range, down to the low $3's and nearly breaking down into the high $2's. That seemed odd, as it takes a great deal of data to skew the results so far from the established trends. I just figured people were buying brewed coffee instead of espresso drinks and smoothies.

We were having an especially slow day today, but I noticed that we are out of whole milk already, and we don't get another shipment until Thursday. As our sales grow, it is difficult to gauge how much we need of perishable items. We would rather run low and go pick some up ourselves, as opposed to having our vendors bring too much and have it go bad. I decided there is no way we are out of milk with sales in a slump. I looked at our graphing information in our POS system and a key item got changed about four days ago! It was tracking total margins (sales with product cost subtracted) instead of total sales figures! I corrected the setting and found out we are on record pace! That explains all of the milk being gone! We were starting to think our September sales figures were in decline over August, but it turns out everything is OK... LOL

I scheduled a writer's group in the cafe for the next six weeks, as well as a larger meeting in the studio soon, and a December Holiday party for them. I also have the district Mary Kay managers and consultants meeting in the studio every Tuesday night for basically forever...

I have the photography group meeting here at least once a week, and I just established a Photoshop group to meet here on Fridays. I have 17 members in the Photoshop group already, and I will be charging $3 per head, per meeting to help pay for a projector for the room. It will be needed to go through the Photoshop lessons.

Josh decided to play the saxophone in the school band, pretty much out of nowhere. He has never shown much of an interest in playing music before, although he loves listening to music. He goes to sleep every night with a CD playing in his room. He also decided to try out for the part of Beethoven in a school play. He has always been deathly afraid to be up in front of a group, so this was a huge shock! I'm glad he is trying some new things, and overcoming his stage fright. His stage fright in the past has been on the level of PRIMAL FEAR, so we'll see how things go. We rented a new sax for him and he has been playing it all the time! He is amazingly good, even without any lessons yet. I bought him a basic sax book at Barnes and Noble, and he has taught himself all the basic notes and has been practicing them... He likes to practice on the front porch, and our neighbors are managers at a local night club. They get home at 5:00am and pretty much sleep all the time they are not working. I'm sure they are enjoying his sax as much as we enjoy the late night parties they have every few weeks!

Josh, Jonah, and Ethan are in a club called Landsharks. It is a cross country running club, and they have had two meets so far. Ethan runs the half mile, Jonah runs the mile, and Josh runs 1 1/2 miles. I am really proud of them because they all run their races and finish strong. They are not in contention to win any races, but they are all very determined to do their best and finish with a sprint! There are too many kids who come to Colorado Springs to train at the Olympic Training Center, and there is no way for an average kid to compete with them. Some of them have been running competitively since they were three or four...

I have been checking out a couple of job opportunities and it looks like I am headed back to Intel in a few days. Another company was interested in me being their project engineer, but they had a project in Denver get cancelled, so they had a couple of extra guys. In the meantime, Intel has extended their production run to Q1 2008. I will be involved in the plant decommissioning after that, but I am going back on Monday as an Ultra Pure Water System Certification Tech. Having been a project manager at Intel for so long, I know what a tech position like this should pay. They very generously offered me about $7 an hour MORE than I expected, so I am very happy with how they are looking out for me... The other company called me a couple of hours after I agreed to work at Intel and wanted to proceed in bringing me on board... This other job would be best for me long term, but I have a lot of friends at Intel and I need to go and support them as best I can until the decommissioning slots open up for Project Managers/Construction Coords/Safety Engineers, etc...

Well, it is 10:30 and I still have to make burritos. gotta run!
JD