Just doing business stuff.

Well, this month has turned out to be anything but easier.

Usually, after school starts, I can count on a couple of very slow weeks, and a bit of recharging. But my store has continued to generate summer level sales through the first 20 days of September.

Not that I'm complaining.

Unfortunately, I kind of wasted the last two Sundays off. If sitting around and reading and napping is a waster. I can feel my batteries recharge a little with one day off, but I can feel them recharging not quite enough. I think I probably need two days to really do that.

Turns out my comic orders are due next week, and I have an appointment with my accountant early Monday to do my 2008 taxes (due Oct. 15. yeah, yeah, I know....). So this Sunday is going to be: get up, do the taxes, rest a little, then do the comic orders.

The season premieres of my favorite shows are a bit of distraction, as well. But I'm just going to DVR most of them for the time-being. I haven't seen a movie in a month in a half.

Yesterday was one of the first really slow days I've had business-wise this month. 3000.00 worth retail in books showed up. About 80% of my order. To make room, I boxed up my audio books, and the history section, and the leftovers of my experiments in non-fiction; design and home, gardening, cooking, photography, science, etc.

I'm going to embrace the "fiction" part of my store.

I do have a kind of all-purpose non-fiction shelf near the register -- books by Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, etc. Pop culture themes. Quirky science. Art of all kinds. Humor.

I'm going to just give the boxed up books to Linda.

Anyway, with the opened shelfspace, the new books all found a place. Amazing how 3000.00 worth of product can just kind of blend in. But they are ALL good books, and I know I have them in stock and I know I can sell them.

I'm pretty sure that part of the reason the store was slow yesterday was because I was distracted putting away books; but I decided I couldn't wait. I've got another shipment of twice as many books showing up any day now. (Twice as many books, but not as much money.)

I also have 3 other orders of material arriving -- two of the shipments are unexpectedly delayed by a week. Mistakes like this seem to happen more often when I'm active buying -- I'm not sure if it's just mistakes happen and because I'm doing more ordering more mistakes are happening. Or because I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and just not being clear in my ordering.

Anyway, I'm just figuring that this is early Christmas ordering.

2/3rds of it is already paid for because this month has been so good. That was a happy accident, and I'm grateful for it, but I fully expected to have to pay it off at Christmas.

Just the nuts and bolts of store operation.