That's... that's quite a schedule, there...

Hey, guys!  I've somewhat-slightly figured out my schedule!  And you know what I've figured out?

..That I'm doing a Thing literally every weekend in June.

First up is...

Chippewa Valley Logjam Wild West Fest & Steampunk Spectacular!

That's the three-weekend vending gig I mentioned in my previous post, starting on June 6th-7th.  (Website is HERE, but it appears to be down at the moment.)  There's still some fairly important details to work out (what non-inventory stuff I need to bring, exactly how monies are being handled amongst the four of us, where I'm going to sleep while there...), but at this point?  It's happening.  I've been forgoing any sort of "day off" to build bloomers, and I've officially been granted my requested time off of the Day Job for the first weekend.  This is super exciting to me, because these are my old stomping grounds - the venue and many of the people have warm fuzzy places in my heart leftover from their previous incarnation, the Chippewa Valley RenFaire (and before that, the WI Renfaire), where I used to spend summers selling awesome concrete statues for Stone Gryphon Studio, and two of the people I'm collaborating with are dear friends from college.

I don't know what building we'll be in, or what our joint venture will be called, but Unpronounceable Designs' Unbeatable Unmentionables will be in stock!  Inventory for the first two weekends will include bloomers in mint green stretch gauze (still deciding between tile blue and chocolate brown accents), red & white stripe stretch seersucker, and plain white cotton gauze with customizable ribbon accents! 

I will be leaving my inventory in the hands of my cohorts for the second weekend, because June 12th-14th is The Song Remains The Same, the very first weekend-long event for Here At The End!  Hopefully, I'll have enough spare time between building inventory and the HATE event to whip up some stuff for an awesome Edwardian camp, but even if I don't, it'll be great to play pretend with some folk I don't see often enough, and maybe a few new friends we made at GenCon last year and haven't seen since.

20th-21st I'm back at Logjam for the last weekend.  If I can find time, I may be restocking the shop with bloomers of brown gauze with ivory accents and/or blue-on-blue pinstriped stretch poplin.  Mostly, though, I'm just hoping to do enough business to pay for the trip, and looking forward to a second weekend in the old haunt, hanging out with some fellow freaks I haven't seen in years. 

Then, to wrap up the month, June 25th-28th is the LarpCraft World event, hosted by the folks that made Deeplight happen!  I don't know that I'll be able to make all four days happen (the day job is still crazy, although we do have a couple new people to share the load), but I'll be bringing my usual inventory, plus any leftovers from Logjam.

Hope to see you one of those weekends!  June will be tiring, but AWESOME.  Right now, my mom and I are drinking margaritas and watching Supernatural, having declared this night-after-an-early-closing-shift the closest thing to a day off I'll get for a while...

P.S.  My bunny is fine.  He had an ear mite infestation, which caused a nasty ear infection, which made him so agitated that he (with some help from his sisters, who were just trying to clean his ouchie) very badly overgroomed his tail (as in, his tail is basically one vertebra shorter now).  A course of anti-inflammatory and antibiotic meds later, and anti-mite meds in the pipe for the rest of the herd, and he's his old self again.  Actually, all three seem happier and more active now.

Still Alive! ...Well, Mostly.

The Day Job has been getting crazier.  Several of my coworkers have moved on to better things (full-time jobs, grad school, etcetera), and that means that those of us who remain have to cover for them until we get some new blood... especially the few of us (like me) who don't have standing week-to-week conflicts.

In less fuzzy terms: When I was hired, it was the busy season, the store was heavily staffed, and I was averaging just over 24 hours per week - aka four 6-hour days per week.  Now, we're heading into the slow season (who wants to knit when it's 85F out?), there's usually just a skeleton crew working midweek, and I'm getting scheduled for 30 hours per week - another full day more, at least for the part-time retail definition of full.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but with a business to run, LARP/faire/convention season spooling up, self-imposed homework for assign myself, gardening season in full swing, and a schedule that's never the same from one week to the next, I'm starting to get run into the ground.  Because I stay at my parents' place after closing shifts (the majority of my work schedule) so I'm not driving 45+ minutes while sleepy, and sometimes between consecutive days at work to save on gas, this schedule pretty much means I live in my parents' basement and just visit my fiancee and my bunnies and my garden and my sewing room on those two days off per week.  I'm doing my best to bring projects with me and get most of my networking/research/paperwork-type stuff done in the morning and whatnot, so when I actually go home I can focus on the garden and bigger sewing projects, but that sounds a lot better on paper than in practice.

Even something as relatively simple as sitting down and organizing my calendar enough to put in time off requests for the many, many things I have going on this summer is proving difficult.  I still need to figure out how many and what events I'm actually going to be vending at, which effects how many days off I request for those events.  I'm at least one invoice behind (fortunately, it's a piece I made for a friend, so I'm not super worried).  And I'm pretty sure I've missed the boat on a couple of commissions because I mentally composed a response to their inquiry while at work and then forgot that I hadn't sent it in real life.

In related but much cooler news, one of the summer events that was in the "probably going to for a day, but not sure enough to request off yet" category may have just turned into "three weekends of large-scale vending and, oh yeah, only a month to build inventory for."  Not naming names yet, because I haven't officially said "yes" yet, and I'd be partnering with three other people who are confirmed for the booth, one of whom also hasn't given an official "yes" to adding me as a fourth.  This is definitely still in the MAYBE phase, especially since it conflicts with at least one, possibly two, other events that month, and the prospect of building significant inventory in that short of a time span is rather intimidating.  But it has lit a fire under me to get sewing and finalize a product idea that had been in my head a while (colorful bloomers with boxer-style elastic waistbands - low-rise, so they're easy to pull up under a corset), which... may make life a bit interesting, given that the bulk of this post has been all about how busy/short on time my schedule already is.

So yeah.  I'm pretty frazzled, and it looks like I'm going to stay that way for quite some time.  Oh, and to top it all off?  One of my rabbits may be sick.  The fiancee is waiting for a call back from the vet to see if he should be taken in for an emergency visit, or if it would be okay to wait until later in the week for a more normally-scheduled exam... and I'm stuck at my parents' place, about to go head in for another closing shift.  :(

I'll keep you guys posted about both bunny health and event scheduling.  Wish me luck!