Bad Things:

– Customers who just don’t get it. “Is this yarn on sale?” “Yes, they’re all on sale.” “Well, is this one on sale?” “Yes, that one’s on sale too. They’re all on sale.” “Even this one? This one right here’s on sale?” Yes, that’s what ALL means. It means F**KING EVERYTHING. Good grief.

– Customers who have no friends. “Does this color look good on me?” “Yes, it looks fine.” “Really? Where do you think I could wear it? Day or evening?” I am not a personal shopper. Find some friends or grow a spine.

– Customers who can’t do simple estimating math problems. “How much is this kit?” “Well, it’s normally $53.20, so with the 30% discount you’re going to save about fifteen bucks or so.” “But can you tell me EXACTLY?” Why, are you going to pay in PENNIES or something?

– Customers who think that they deserve special service. “This tapestry has a hole in it. Can I get a discount?” “It’s already 50% off.” “I mean an ADDITIONAL discount.” “Ma’am, that’s WHY it’s 50% off.” “But I’m in here all the time, and I spent a lot of money, and I know the owner’s dad, and the last time I was here he gave me one for eighty dollars…” That’s usually when I start gauging how fast I’d need to run to fatally impale myself on a tapestry stand.

Good Things:
– We finally got our television fixed, and it cost way less than we expected! Turns out that the explosion was just from the power supply, not the picture tube as we’d feared.

– My computer is finally on its way! I can’t wait to get it.

– My laptop is fixed! Adrian at AppleCentre Broadway really came through for me. The monitor’s been replaced and a new 40GB hard drive is installed. I can’t believe I now have two computers! That’s more than the Snook!

– I found my Halloween costume! God bless The Costume Shop. (And God damn ABC Costumes, none of whose dresses would even go over my arms. As Snookums later consoled me: “That’s because they were all made for drug-addled NIDA skanks.”) Now I just have to figure out how to duct-tape my boobs up near my chin.

Thanks to Kath & Kim, I can now knit a gumnut bonnet with wattle pompom. How cute is that? Too bad Joey and Kurt (Snookums’s nephew) are too old to wear then. (Link courtesy of Mary-Helen.)

Wow. Some guy from Wolcottville, Indiana (where I grew up) started a bison ranch! I’m trying to remember if I ever met Pete Cook. The name sounds really familiar.

What kind of girl are you?
Apparently I am a hybrid of “Progressive Girl” and “Girl next Door”. Actually that’s pretty darn accurate.

You know, the detailed profiles of those “girls” are pretty darn accurate too. Maybe I should get the book for the Snook as a wedding gift! (Link courtesy of Brigita.)

Check out my signage.
No, that’s not a euphemism. Katherine visited the shop Monday and took a picture of the wool section, and lo and behold, there’s one of the many, many signs I created! (Once it became known that I know my way around Illustrator, I got handed the task of designing all the sale signage.) That one is actually my favorite, because it just says: “Add to your stash. All knitting yarns 30% off.” For some reason those short imperative sentences really crack me up.

Recuperating.
So I’ve had 48 hours to recuperate from my first Tapestry Craft sale experience… and I’m still a little wrecked. We ended up working til 3 a.m. Friday night setting things up, which meant I only had about three (crap) hours of sleep before heading back the next day. The old ladies were lined up six deep by the time the doors opened. It was a melee. It was a madhouse. It was like the footage they show on the news of women fighting each other at the annual Harrods sale. Surprisingly, I didn’t touch a cash register until the very end of the day. I spent every other second helping people in the wool section. We’d been worried that people wouldn’t buy much since it’s the end of the knitting season, but instead folks were walking out with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. By lunchtime I realized that I needed real food (as opposed to the Diet Coke and Krispy Kremes I’d been subsisting on for the past 24 hours) so I headed next door to a coffeeshop. I ran into Helen and her boyfriend Clinton on the way so they joined me. That was nice. Thirty short minutes later I was back into the fray. We didn’t actually get the last customer out the door til nearly an hour after our official closing time. Even Albert the owner was amazed. (Apparently it was really weird to have a sale day that was full-on busy all day without any slow periods at all.) We ended up having our biggest sales total in shop history, which is pretty amazing. I just stood there dazed, looking at the knee-deep piles of wool on the floor and dreading the clean-up. Luckily everyone else was just as tired as me so we left it and went home. Since then I’ve pretty much been knitting, sleeping, and watching TV. Unfortunately, this is going to be the pattern for the next, oh, three weeks. Gahhhh…

The Triumph of the Unattractive
Dammit! I just do not get the Australian voting public these days. First they vote to keep in John Howard and his army of crusty old curmudgeons, and now they’ve voted out the sexiest chrome-dome on television since the days of Jean-Luc Picard. I am speaking, of course, of tonight’s Australian Idol elimination of Marty Worrall. My two SMS votes were all for nought, it seems. Now who the heck am I supposed to root for? Hayley’s a robot, Chanel’s a flake, Casey’s uncommunicative, Courtney’s an old man, and Anthony sets off my gaydar. I am most excessively put out.

Okay, okay, so the final five aren’t really that bad… but none of them will make half the pop idol that Marty would have.

A-ha! So this is why I’ve been getting dozens of idiotic tourists coming in the shop looking for knitted poncho patterns.

Holy crap. I’ve been at work for sixteen hours straight now…