A friend who knows how much I love my Mac and the hysterical Mac commercials sent me the link to this video.  There are three others that I will post below.  Enjoy them — they have a great message, in my humble opinion. 

Also, if you think of it, I would appreciate your prayers today.  I am having difficulties with one of my blind vendors (Rumor on the street is they are closing their doors at the end of the week … I’m about to go try to retrieve about $1,000 in deposits they have for product I have not yet received, so I can order it from another company … I also have to find a company that uses the same stock material to fill the orders.  If you remember, this happened to me about two years ago, when a shutter company closed with no warning.  I lost about $2,000 when that happened, and I simply cannot afford to do that again.)  Also, I am really struggling with great anger against my mom and my father-in-law … to the point that I am going to seek out a counselor to help me develop some coping tools — else I am going to have a stroke.  LOL (not really laughing, though) …

Anyway, with all that said, these videos came at a good time, because they did put a little smile on my face.  🙂

http://godtube.com/flvplayer.swf

http://godtube.com/flvplayer.swf

http://godtube.com/flvplayer.swf

http://godtube.com/flvplayer.swf

Well, it still looks a bit of a mess in here, but I have filled one trash bag with junk, have all of Jami’s art and scrapbooking supplies in her own cabinet … managed to persuade her to get rid of a bunch of old crayons she’d been hoarding … threw out a bunch of receipts that were not needed any longer …

It won’t be done tonight, because I am exhausted … but I am well on my way.   Did take a few minutes for a little fun.  What do you think about the new theme?  I’m not computer savvy enough to design my own — this is one of the ready-mades.  I like it, though.  Has my favorite color (blue), a little cuteness going on, but still simple enough to not hinder reading ease or the photos I like to add from time to time.  Love to hear what you think.

I have an appointment with a new client in the morning.  I know she’s ordering, but I’m not sure what. 

I also got a call from a chemical plant in our area.  They need blinds for their training room and were looking for a second quote … the first quote they got was an astronomical $2,500.  For EIGHT windows.  I don’t know who gave them that quote, but when I worked it up using my product selection, I came up with $1,800.  (Some of the windows are very large [one is over 100 inches wide, and 84 inches tall], but not large enough to merit the first quote they received.  And let me clarify — they want a blackout shade (cellular) for a glass door … that one treatment is $500, so the other seven windows are $1,300 combined.)  I think there are individuals who base their prices on the buyer’s “ability to pay.”  I don’t know what your thoughts are on this, but I think it’s wrong.  I have products A, B, and C and these are their prices … regardless of who you are or how much money is in your wallet.  Mr. (or Ms.) $2,500 must have worked for the government at some point … that whole thing just reeked of $600 toilet seats, if you know what I mean.

The really exciting thing about this is … the purchasing supervisor’s wife has an interior decorating/fabric store in town.  She got my contact information from him and sent me an email asking if she could meet with me.  Apparently, the blind/shutter folks that she has recommended to her drapery and design clients have not been the most reliable and so she is looking for a new person to recommend.  Yay!  So I plan to meet with her on Tuesday to show her what I have to offer and give her some business cards for her shop.  So that’s a good opportunity, for sure.

Well, I’m off to sleep.  After my meeting in the a.m., I have to get back on this organizational can of worms that I’ve opened.  If you could see things right now, you’d know there’s no turning back!  🙂

You can’t tell from simply looking around here, but I am making some serious organization progress in the office/study/craft/computer room of my house. 

Pray for me … LOL

As I was sharing with a friend the other day, my mom, bless her heart, is in bondage to her “stuff.”  She won’t get rid of anything to save her life (or her relationship with her kids, despite our begging and pleading …)  When she does make an “effort,” it is simply by shoveling stuff into boxes, which she then stacks up in yet another spot in her house.  Her house is full of boxes, boxes, boxes (I don’t know why, but I hear the Grinch saying, “Noise! Noise! Noise!” when I read that sentence back to myself…)

I look in the mirror and “see” that same tendency in myself.  And so I am fighting the good fight … tossing and purging and trying to adjust my thinking regarding what is really truly worth keeping and what is just taking up space in my home.  Making it more difficult to work efficiently, play efficiently, to even think efficiently.  I struggle with the paper that is necessary to my window blind business.  I save little bits of “memorabilia” for my scrapbooks, but because I’m so far behind on the scrapbooks, the memorabilia becomes meaningless paper sitting in a stack on a shelf.  And the thinking part … well, when overwhelmed by the working and playing inefficiencies, my brain tends to shut down.  I think this is a large part of why I’ve been struggling with feeling low (ack, could it be depression???) these last few months.  Just feeling incompetent in general … and this feeling is exacerbated by the knowledge that when I was out in the “real world,” working for lawyers and such, I was an EXTREMELY well-organized person …

But I am determined to change this, with God’s help.  I have two IKEA cabinets (one on each side of the window in my office/study/craft/computer room … I’ve designated one of them to hold my cookbook collection on two shelves, with scrapbooking materials on the next shelf and the two shelves inside the bottom cabinet.

Then I have the other cabinet designated for my business materials.  Vendor notebooks, computer supplies, computer backups and software. 

I think part of my problem is that stuff has been scattered EVERYWHERE.  Mixed up.  Not consolidated in one location.  So when I’ve been looking for this particular piece of business information, I might have to look in two or three different places.

I think purging and consolidation will go a long way towards remedying my problem.

Well … back to work!

skimming through the columnists I read every day or two, I happened upon this column by Michael Reagan.  What do you think?

And another by Chuck Colson regarding human embryos and a little boy named Noah.

Larry Elder talks about how conservatives and liberals each view their “enemies.”

And finally, an interesting afterthough from W. Burt Prelutsky’s column: 

Something else I’ve been musing about
lately is Bill and Hillary Clinton repeatedly telling us that Hillary
served as co-president from 1992-2000 and is therefore far more
experienced when it comes to running the country than either Obama or
Edwards. Until now, I thought the 22nd Amendment precluded anyone
serving more than two terms as president!

Well, this is a hoot.  I guess it’s kind of accurate, because my accent comes and goes … sometimes it’s much stronger than others.  It could be that I got a “squirrelly” result, too, because in my most humble opinion a Texas accent is all its own.  I’m amused by the TV/radio comment.  When I was a freshman and sophomore in college, I delivered the news on our college radio station.  My air name was “Nicki Rush.”  LOL  I thought it was much more intriguing than the gal who came on before me … her name was Kelly Green.  Yawn …

Well, got to get back to work.  I’ve been trying to clean out the mess that is my study/office/craft place.  It’s more office than anything.  I tacked on “craft” simply because it’s where I store my scrapbooking stuff for the time being.  When I want to work on stuff, I have to drag everything out to the dining table, or set up a table in the living room.  Someday I will figure out how to get 2500 square feet worth of use out of this 1800 square foot house. 

I haven’t highlighted anything political in a long time, and I’m not really in the mood to wax eloquently on the issues today, but this morning I did read an article by Michael Reagan that made the very accurate point (IMHO) that our energy issues are not necessarily the fault of the Middle East terrorists, but our own environmental terrorists here at home.  Read it for an eloquent and concise commentary that will have you saying, “Amen, brother Mike!”

Even though her hand is blurred in this shot, I like the way her hair is blowing in the breeze and kind of follows the downward slant of the bannister … she does not like having her picture taken and so I took a lot of shots when she wasn’t expecting it.  Utilizing the speedy quick shutter recovery on my Rebel XT, I just went “click, click, click, click …” and I think it helped avoid the frozen “deer in the headlights” problem a lot of people experience when having their picture taken.

I like this one a lot.  I’d just asked her what was the most stupid thing her brother had ever done … The smile on her face is adorable.

And here are a few shots that I just took for fun …

Sorry I’ve been MIA lately.  I keep hoping for something brilliant to post here, but I’ve been on a roller coaster of ups and downs these last couple of weeks.  The tree still hasn’t been taken down, and there are actually still gifts under it.  For various reasons, we have not yet had “Christmas” with my mom, sister, niece and nephew yet.  We were supposed to celebrate on Christmas Eve.  My mother, who is terminally unorganized, was not “ready” to have us come and so postponed it to December 26th.  Then her washing machine went out and she wanted to postpone until she got that fixed … then a part had to be ordered … we were supposed to “have Christmas” this coming Sunday afternoon, but she found out today that the part won’t be here until Thursday, and even if the repair guy comes on Friday, she has too much to do to be ready by Sunday.

Let me clarify by saying, she is vision impaired and cannot drive to a laundromat.  I would offer to take her clothes and such to a laundromat, except she is also OCD and would have a very difficult time letting me do that.  She has had my sister pick up a few things to wash over at her apartment, but my sister cannot do it all because she works two jobs (36 hours as an antepartum nurse every weekend and 25 hours every week doing billing and coding for a chiropractor) …

With regard to my mom … it is difficult to help someone who fights you every step of the way because they refuse to relinquish any kind of control …

At some point in the next few days, I will take the tree down.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen as far as the gift exchange thing goes … it’s getting a wee bit frustrating.

Business-wise, the year is starting off pretty well … I’ve gotten two blind orders and one shutter order since the first of the year and I have an appointment this coming Friday to measure some windows for another potential client.  Yesterday afternoon was a bit painful (I shared some of this in an online chat with Miss O’Hara) … it’s a long story, but the gist of it was:

I didn’t specifically communicate to a client that I would come by their house towards the end of their shutter installation appointment to pick up their final payment.  The contract they agreed to states very clearly that the “Balance Is Due at Installation” … it’s pretty obviously implied that I will be picking up the payment, I think.

My installer got there about 20 minutes early and so he finished about 30 minutes sooner than expected.  I had a little family crisis that delayed me and so I called my client to say I was just around the corner.  It was 3:58.  (The install was set for between 3 and 4 pm.)  The husband said, “Can’t you pick it up tomorrow?” and I explained that I really needed to go ahead and get it and I was only a few minutes from his house.  He barked out, “Fine!” and hung up on me.  I pulled up in their driveway at 4:02.  Literally 4 minutes after talking to him.  They were standing in the driveway with extremely pissy looks on their faces (no other word describes it so well) … I hopped out of my truck with a smile on my face saying, “thank you …” at which point they cut me off and she proceeded to tell me how UNPROFESSIONAL I was for not calling them to tell them specifically that I would be coming by.

I was totally shocked.  I’ve been doing this for 8 years and many of my clients have become my friends because that’s the type of service I provide … not to brag or anything, but I take very good care of my clients and they are not shy about saying how much they enjoy working with  me.  A large percentage of my business comes from referrals because people like my window treatments and my service so much.  So I was totally dismayed by this attack …

When I tried to explain that the installer had finished much more quickly than expected (I fully expected to arrive as he was finishing the job — our usual habit, where I check things over, make sure the client is satisfied and then collect the payment …) and that I’d received an emergency call from my mother, the wife cut me off and said, “I don’t care about your mother …”

!!!

Just so you’ll know … my mother received a cornea transplant about three years ago.  It is critical that she put anti-rejection drops in her eye every day to prevent organ rejection.  My mother called me right about the time I was supposed to go to the client’s house because my sister had come home from work with 102 degree temperature and was not able to go pick up the prescription and there was really no one else to do so … so I was needed to drive 40 miles (one way) to take care of this, as well as pick up a few things for my ailing sister.  This is what I was attempting to tell the woman when she told me she didn’t “care about my mother …”

Anyway … I discovered from a business associate who also worked with these people that they were very difficult to deal with and that because he owns his own business and has more money than courtesy, he thinks he can treat everyone like he treats his employees.

In a convoluted way, it made me feel a good bit better to learn this … to know that he is just a jerk, that his wife follows his lead, and that I didn’t really do anything “wrong.”  I think part of the reason it was so shocking is because all my previous contacts with the wife were very pleasant.  And SHE was the one who kept berating me about not calling them.  I think he probably was irritable about having to wait 3 minutes for me (they were standing in the driveway about to hop in their vehicle when I pulled up … )and so she put on a show of putting me in my place to stay on his good side.  The thing that really bums me out is not getting to see the finished job … she said they were very pleased with the shutters, just not with me.  I would have liked to have seen them, as they were stained Rosewood and I’m sure quite lovely.

I ended up mailing a thank you note for the order and apologized for any inconvenience my miscommunication may have caused them.  Sigh.  Then this evening when I went to Wal-mart, I almost ran into her as she was coming from one of the aisles!  I saw the nose of the cart as I was walking toward the checkout, said “Excuse me” as I looked up and it was her.  She was already smiling, but I’m sure that disappeared when she realized who I was.  I didn’t slow down to find out … I just kept on going. 

The rest of the week promises to be better, though.  After Jami and I do our schoolwork in the morning, I am going to go take some portrait shots for a young lady graduating from college this spring.  She is one of our homeschool family kids and is finishing up at Pensacola Christian College.  She studied graphic design and is doing a student show this spring … she has to have a portrait to hang with her work and asked me if I would take some shots of her before she goes back on Saturday.  So that was very, very  nice.  Pray for good weather and a good variety of poses for her to choose from.  And steady hands (no camera shake!) 

Well, I’d better wrap it up for now, but I figured I’d better post … especially after that last comment from John!    Have a good one and I’ll try to be more consistent in my posting.

I’ll be posting soon … I promise …