8 May 2009

So it's Fireside again tonight! Lee is facilitating "The Art of Storytelling".

We have Stacey tentatively confirmed for the next Fireside on May 22 with the topic being "Feather Smudge Fans".

A hearty thank-you to both of you for stepping up and volunteering to facilitate!

Other news: we just got an extremely large shipment of those leatherbound blank Books of Shadows with the awesome leatherwork and beautiful stones set into the covers.

If you don't find what you're looking for, just ask because we've got a number of them in the back. Now 100 % "mystery stone" free. (They were sending us some with green/white/black stones with a swirly pattern that, for the life of me, I could not identify in any book including Melody's behemoth toe-breaker. Athough I have no doubts the stones - like all the rest in the books - were authentic, I found it's impossible to give the magickal qualities of a stone if you don't have any idea what the heck it is!)

They've also started sending little cards in each book and the other day I actually got the chance to read one of them. Salient facts: the dye use in the covers is non-toxic (though prone to rubbing off a little at first), the paper is made from 100% recycled cotton, and the books themselves are fairly traded out of India by a really great couple in Calgary.

Other news: we're still in the throes of year end inventory count up Hell. Yes, I know there is no concept for Hell in most paths of Paganism but if there were, thy name would be 18,682 and 1/2 tumbled stones, some of which are identical in size, type and quality (or same stone, different size and quality) but have a different wholesale price or had a different supplier, some of which were bought prior to us implementing the new point of sale system (can you say: "deciphering three year old hastily handwritten inventory logs scrawled in ball point on decaying binder paper at 3 am"?)

The situation lends itself to some unintentional yet bizarre 3 am humour such as stock item "#5514 Tumbled Stone Coprolite Fossilized Poo". All of which information is printed on the invoice when one is sold. Good times...

And, unlike the renovations back in December, this is not something we can impose on a large number of people's good natures to help us (thank you again, everyone who got dirty and paint-y on our behalf!). Only one person at a time can enter the stock into the computer system. Because our computer network consists of a single computer tower that, for security reasons, is not connected to anything else (including the internet) the data entry computer doubles as our cash register. What this means is that someone (me) has to stay and work when the Store is closed. And, seeing as we're open what seems like all the time, this translates into Chris working the night shift (cue eerie music here). Remind me, sometime, to tell you about the Things I've Seen go down on 124 Street at 4 am...or the strange folks who should be at home in bed are instead shuffling up the strip and who press their faces up to the glass of the front windows and actually watch me, for a creepily long time, standing there doing nothing more exciting than counting bags of stones and entering data on the computer. As Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons would say "worst live theatre EVER"!

On the plus side, once all the existing stock information is entered we will never have to do it whole hog again. Had I to do it all over again, we would have gotten this system when we first re-opened in 2005.

And, quite frankly, I'm astonished we don't see a complete staff turnover every year at this time. My complete gratitude goes out to Rasa and Sandra for putting up with the chaos and those times when I'm sure I desperately needed a slap across the chops to quell the hysteria...