Status report.

By the end of last week, I was feeling pretty good about business. I'd done the minimum average I was hoping for going into the year for about 7 weeks in a row. I'd fallen behind a couple of times, only to have a big day catch us back up.

By the middle of this week, I was feeling pretty discouraged. Some horribly slow days, so that by Thursday, I was thinking my minimum low was busted.

I went home muttering to myself and to Linda.

Woke up the next morning, and thought to myself: "Hey, it's late February! Don't be drawing no conclusions based on late February!" (Besides, I figured out later that Thursday sucked because the afternoon was taken up by families were were downtown for the free Winterfest street events -- either that, or Marty Stuart fans. Now, I like Marty Stuart, and I like country western, but it's the one kind of music that I actually have customers object too -- not even opera or jazz seems to faze them, but CW does...)

Yesterday was a huge day. Just had people marching in and spending money. A few of them mentioned "tax returns", so I'm back on my minimum schedule again. I think the fact that it's a holiday on Monday helps -- it seems like over the last few years, more and more people are turning these into 3 and 4 day weekends.

Overall, I think the economy in Bend is pretty bad. I'm impressed by the resiliency of downtown businesses -- I know that people hang on pretty tight to their dreams. I hope that continues...