What a weekend

Yard sales can be a good thing, especially if you have stuff people want. The dilemma is you never know what will sell. Crazy stuff like old metal roller skates, the kind you had to clip to your shoes, and VHS tapes. You never know what to expect. One thing I did discover is that men don’t really care how things are set up or if the items are even clean. Women pay attention to the displays and if the things are wiped and dusted.

Venus and Mars you know. Just amazing.

We held a yard sale last Friday and Saturday and I think it was a success. We made some money, got rid of things we didn’t need and met some cool people.

Local people from all over Catalina, plus folks coming in from Tucson, San Manuel, and Winkleman stopped by. It was so cool they took the time to come by. There are also those folks who stop by, stroll around and look at the items and move on.

I always have little things for kids who come by. It is fun to give them freebies. The smiles are so cute.

A box full of hats had a dent made in it, and we sold some big ticket items too. One cute young couple came by and picked up several things for their new place. It was fun to watch them decide what they needed, and could afford talking happily as they shopped.

We had lots of compliments on our place, people surprised at how much green there was with all of our trees and plants. I even sold some books!

My big news is that my son was hired by Disney World as a stage technician!! Dream job for him, and the chance an opportunity will open up for my daughter-in-law there also. She is a theater major, wonderful actress and great singer, so I hope she can get a position as well. My son has been a sound guy for several years. He is good at it because he has an exceptional singing voice and a perfect ear for sound making him a perfect sound guy. He’s been complimented on how well he makes people sound.

We will be helping them move to Orlando this month, actually he is going out first then she will follow. I am so happy for him. Glad he will be going at the end of hurricane season!

A heads up all you writers, if anyone is looking for a proof reader I am ready and willing to offer my services.

Cheers!

-N

Productive authoring!

This has been one of my most productive writing days in a while. I really knocked it out of the park today. Characters talking, acting up, being bad, and essentially being real fictional humans. Got that?!

My two big rewrites are done, bam!

And if I do say so myself – I did a great job on them. It’s cool being a writer and getting so wrapped up in the story you start talking back to your characters. Twice I actually said out loud “Oh no you are not going to say that!” It was glorious.

I don’t know how others do their editing but mine is done with written notes and post its on a printed manuscript. This is rev#3.

I have two scenes that need elaborating, but other than those most of the edits I have to finish are grammar and punctuation. Hope my beta readers are ready for this story.

Tomorrow night hubby and I have two tickets to see Cabaret at Centennial Hall on the University of Arizona campus. Its a Broadway touring show and I am very excited to experience it up close.

We will be very busy next weekend with a big yard sale, and at the same time babysitting Millie’s brother Jake. It will be interesting since Jake is a big, gorgeous, alpha German Shepherd. His temperament is very different from Miss Millie who has been raised by two adults. I hope the siblings get on okay, since she is a bit intimidated by him. Damn, most people are intimidated by Jake even though he is a very nice boy.

Sometime in the next few weeks I will have some wonderful news to share but not yet. Patience.

Time for a glass of good wine.

Cheers!

-N

Changes-good or bad?

Distractions have been coming from all directions. I’ve been working steady on my book, and now that it is an eBook for Amazon, marketing has become my focus. I’ve also been setting up the print book and deciding the details for this. It is exciting but I’m still wrapping my head around the idea there are people who are becoming acquainted with my story people. I’m writing my next book now.

As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, Chuck was laid off and has since been a tenacious job hunter. He applied for unemployment benefits and is actively ticking off the job search web sites, local employers and looking in a lot of directions to find the next step in his career.

He had an interview today for a position that is almost custom made for my hubby. This morning he was in his robe, updating the resume, fine tuning his professional skills vitae, prepping for interview questions and determining what he wanted to ask in the interview.

We laughed that in all the online applying and all the rest of his efforts, he never thought about what to wear to an interview. He went through his clothes and asked me what I thought. I told him I didn’t think men wore suits anymore unless it was the appropriate work attire for that specific job, but jeans would be too casual.

I assured him the fedora worked perfectly.

So what do you think? Wouldn’t you hire this handsome man?

One thing that we did this past weekend was a yard sale. Since our place is a bit off the beaten path we had it at my nephew Kris’ place which sits right on a major road. We planned for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday went really well, and by 9 am we had been hammered with lots of people. There were three families participating which gave a lot of variety to the merchandise.

Chuck and I were able to move some big ticket items. These things are so unpredictable in what people are looking for or what might catch their eye.

We did have some yard sale pros give us some tips for future yard sales we might do. We plan to do another one in three or four weeks. A lot of this that wasn’t sold will be donated. It was fun to meet the people. Sunday was much slower, but we still had several visitors. One man said he saw the signs the night before and decided to come by. Another person who came by said she usually did her sales on Friday and Saturday, which I think Chuck and I will do next time. One of the best parts was getting to hang out with my great-nephew and great-niece. They are such cool people.

Well one last shot of the job hunter. He is ready to get out there and find that perfect job. What a great man I have.