Finally, a big day.

Finally had a big day. Three days before Christmas. A couple of more days of that, and we may still pull it out, even-steven for the month and year.

Of course, we're really way ahead of that, because whatever debt we end up with (maybe a thousand or two) on our credit cards is nothing compared to last year.

I look around the store and it still seems packed, to me. But that is the norm in my store -- I don't stock up for the holiday's or trim for the off season. I sort of feel sorry for any store that tried too hard or borrowed too much to stock up for Christmas.

Best of all, I don't have anything coming down the pike that I must buy. That's different. Usually, I'm either paying for a recent ordering mistake, or having to accept product I ordered a long time ago. But I've sweated out all the unanticipated problems over the last year and half. I thought it was just terrible that business fell off the September before last, but really most of the year was pretty good. Until this September.

Then it really fell off the table. But I'd had a year to prepare, to get ready.

I'm just getting ready to hunker down next year. I've got a well stocked but paid for store in the midst of a slowdown, which is going to be hard for other stores to do unless they started preparing a long time ago.

Working the store by myself really frees me up to run the store at full capacity. My buying budget actually can stay pretty much the same as it's been.

Interesting times.