O.K.

I'm calling it.

Game over, man. Dude, does the name Custer mean anything to you?

The psychology has changed. Positive to negative. It has shifted, overnight.

(Warning: when I talk like this, people assume we're having trouble. No, No, No. We're fine... we have so many ways to deal with the problem, so many more resources, so much experience at it. It almost feels like an old, unwanted friend, as in Simon and Garfunkel's Hello, Darkness. Doesn't mean I'm happy about it, though.)

There's an old saying: By the time a trend shows up on the front page of the New York Times, the trend is already over.

I'm going to add to that: When 60 Minutes does a show on a problem, it's too late to do anything about it. I think it is going to become nearly impossible to sell a house in the near future. But more importantly for me, I think this is really going to start impacting retail sales. Official recession, depression or not, in Bend I don't think anyone will be arguing the small stuff much longer.

I started noticing a softening in sales in the late summer and fall, but business actually ticked up in November. So then I began hoping the positive psychology would hold out through Christmas, and it sort of did, at least enough to convince me that even though we were down, it was probably more due to a slump in my product than a slump in the economy.

This month has been different, especially the second half of the month. Sure there was terrible weather, but I think that was just an excuse for people to stay home and not spend money, as if they needed an excuse. This last week has been pathetic.

So, starting next week, I'm shifting into the plans that I had expected to enact in January, but then got excited by my book and game sales and went and ignored.

Small signs:

Plentiful parking in front of my store.

Customers wanting to cut back, or leaving part of their preorders behind, or saying they'll be in 'later.'

Customers in the building trade actually volunteering that things are slowing. Talking about empty lumber yards. Not having work penciled in, into the far future.

Storefronts downtown staying unleased for more than a month. (Not very long, I know, but over the last few years they've nearly been leased before the lease sign goes up.)

Customer counts holding up, or even being higher, yet sales dropping, which says to me that people are still interested, but unwilling or unable to spend money. I've read that customer visits is a more reliable indicator of health than actual sales, so in that case I'm still healthy, and the Bookmark if very healthy.

Cold calls. Seem to be getting them every five minutes.

A plethora of advertised sales and clearances, and "Sale" signs in windows. (Does this actually work?)

Buildings that once were "For Lease," now being "For SALE, or Lease."

A huge increase in posts over on the Bendbubble2 blog, some of them actual realtors, some of them actual women!

People asking for jobs. Quite an increase. They're the non-serious, "Hey, you gotta job?" type so far, but still....

Person after person coming in the door trying to sell to me; cards, comics, books. Also a big increase.

The Bulletin daring to use a word like 'malaise,' and the Nugget using the words 'defy logic' to describe some of the real estate deals.

It's all starting to add up. At least enough for me. I probably should have stuck to my plans in January, but convinced myself to fully stock the store again. I'm fat and sassy, so I can afford to take a step back and let events unfold. I was hoping for big profits, but now I'll accept just staying even.

O.K. wrote the previous last night, woke up this morning to another snowfall, which pretty much is the last nail in the coffin of this month. I'm going to be down nearly 20%, which is the biggest one month drop in a long time.

Now about half of that drop can be totally explained. Last year, Gambit went out of business, I figured that American Sports wasn't long for this world and Anime Mountain, and I wanted to become a 'new' bookstore: all of which meant I spent a huge amount of money last year on new product. Which also meant, if I remember, that I actually lost a bit last year on this month, despite the higher sales. Which points once again to the fact that the biggest factor in profits isn't sales, but spending.

I went and added up all my expenses for February, and was astonished to find that not only do I have enough to pay all the bills in full, I'll even be able to make my double mortgage. This, after having a -- for me -- huge quarterly employee taxes payment and yearly SAIF payment. I'm pretty much used to the opposite phenomenon: having a big month and thinking I made a profit and finding I'm still short. This time I had a stinky month, thought I was at a loss, and find I'm even! Weird.

What it shows is the power of prior budgeting. I cut my reorders back several thousand dollars, and that plus the profits I didn't make, made up the difference. In fact, if I hadn't gone a little crazy on re-orders, I might have made money.

Finally, now that this is becoming real to me, I want to say this. This recession -- or depression, as IHTBYB puts it -- is going to hurt a lot of people. People out of jobs, people struggling to pay bills, people unable to sell their house for a better place, and so on. I take no joy in it.

But I think the quicker we face the reality of it, the more likely we are to make the necessary changes. And of course, the people who think it's all going to 'spring' back, aren't going to listen to anyone, anyway.


(p.s. I'm starting to actually get a backlog of entries; because I enjoy writing (blathering) and because maybe I have more time on my hands and because things are happening, baby. I've pretty much stopped bothering with the short snarky posts -- (like, what kind of numbskulls would cut the snow plowing budget in December because there hadn't been much snow?!) So....what do I do with it all? When is it too much?

I'm thinking one solution will be to dump it in the comments section. So far, I'm keeping the more generalized, less dated, posts back. If I dump them, you can read them or ignore them.