What Do You Do When You’re Not on the Road?

I get that question a lot – “What do you do when you’re not on the road?”  I rarely seem to have problems staying busy.  I have been home since mid-August, but every day has been full – I have even had some time to work on a project or two at home.

But most of what I have been doing recently is related to this . . .

We are building a new website!  The finished product probably won’t look exactly like this, but I like the new logo at the top and I think we’re going to keep that.  I have been spending a lot of my time adding items to it – there are about 5,000 items on the current site, which was all that it was built to handle.  The new site will allow for more.  But it’s a lengthy process – I am working on the “easy” items now (items that don’t have lots of sizes and colors) and on my best days get 50-100 of them finished.

Gary asked me last week when the new site would be ready to go, and he looked at me strangely when my answer was “hopefully by the end of the year.”  He thought I was kidding – I’m not.  With three shows in October, progress will be slow.  But it’s coming – and a lot of things that our customers have suggested over the years will be included.

On a lighter note, I put this picture and the following note on my Facebook page this morning . . .

September 25, 2007 -- I stopped at the shelter in Lebanon on the way home from my morning workout. Our family was numb -- we had lost our nine-year-old dog very suddenly the day before, and I couldn't get rid of the feeling that we weren't going to start to heal without a new focus. There I found a four-month-old pup named Daffodil, with a note on her cage that said "plays too rough with older smaller dogs" -- and after a trip back to the shelter with Carla, and another with Ryan and the tomcat who ruled our yard, she came home with us and Ryan renamed her Zoe. Eleven years later, she has picked up a lot of gray fur, but is still the same bundle of excitable energy that burrowed its way into my heart.