daily exhale

Social media is making me lazy.

There was a time recently that I was able to keep the whole family - work - play thing together and have enough left in the night to let creative ideas flow.  That is leading to a nearly published book, three more in the works, scrapbooks, charity blogs, and my own musings. That was before FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  I can't keep up.  I love my friends, enjoy my associates dearly and want to know what they are up to.  What has become a chore is writing for the sake of writing.  Some people enjoyed reading my nannerings and would subscribe to them; the stories of every day happenings, recipes, book reviews.  Not only do I not finish writing books, but reading them is a chore. 

Wait, it's not just social media, Duoh!  It's summer.  I'm so glad it's not me being sucked into the virtual get together abyss.  Our children are home - every day.  They bring with them friends, fights, the need for supplies for lemonade stands, Otter Pops, lunch for five impromptu neighbors stopping by and fights. I know I mentioned fights twice. I should mention fights, bickering, bragging, slamming, kicking, fights, yelling, crying and injuries a few more times.  The creative flow is sucked into the vacuum of their days.

I'm grateful to hold it together enough for my clients and a few friends that get me to laugh at my day.  I am grateful for a loving audience that knows my stories and can instantly appreciate my 140 characters.

I'm still lazy.  I used to send out emails with links and stories to my address book.  Takes too long to select them all. I post to Shutterfly, it pushes to Facebook and they can all share it if they want.  If they are not in the group yet, they'll have to wait until I can breathe in the Fall and catch them all up.

Thank you for reading this. I feel better now.  Time to curl up with my current book, "A Rage to Live" by Mary S. Lovell.  Need to check in with Richard and Isabel Burton.

Franchise Business Idea - Mobile Sun

I was on my walk and saw a truck in a neighbor's driveway, "Sun Power."  I started to think about how popular tan booths still are, but how people don't have the time to get ready and go somewhere to do it.  They want the tan, they can afford the money, but not the time or complicated scheduling with families.

Here's the idea:
Get a big truck - buy a tan bed - a good one.  MOBILE SUN. You allow people to prepay and set appointments.  They can go in on it with neighbors for 1/2 hour sessions.  There is a "delivery" fee and then a per session fee. This would encourage multiple appointments in one driveway.  Usually tanners have friends within walking distance who are tanners.

It could be a whole franchise thing.  Sell exclusive areas and protect territories.

Obstacles:
Power. You can't very well ask people to unplug their driers to plug in the bed. Somehow, you have to have the power on board without a noisy generator or else you'll be in violation of CC&R's in many areas.
Won't work so well for apartment buildings either because of parking permissions, unless you are totally self-contained and quiet.

Permits in cities to offer the services

Insurance and CYA paperwork just as if you had a brick and mortar location.

Additional considerations:
You could offer minor child care for an additional fee if they are outside. But then your folks need to be bonded and pass background checks. They should anyway and have major liability insurance.

This idea was inspired by several neighbors who tan almost daily.  They would dig this and would sign up.  It does remove the spontaneous 'walk-in' tanners.

Our son loves PhotoShop

We don't have computer games. We both use our computers in our businesses all day long.  On the weekends our children love to have a bit of "creative time" on my computer. Their favorite program - Adobe PhotoShop.  It is most popular with our son. He's 3 1/2.

Another date well spent

We have nearly wrapped up rebuilding my sad little 'puter.  It's taken days.  We seem to be stuck on Service Pack 3.  D*MN MS!  It should not take days to start from scratch.  We treated ourselves to a sitter tonight and a movie AND dinner.

My weekend with the blue screen of death

We've been building to this crescendo for a while.  Slowly, at a rate of about one task per week my main computer's been dying.  Today we are burying our Phoenix.  It's taking much longer to rise from the ashes than suits us.

Is it bad to Photoshop your own vacation photos?

There's a point you either have to get comfortable with how you look or do something to change it - Photoshop doesn't count.

My client was cool

I have to admire one of my clients.  I asked this client whether there were new listings to add to his site.  His reply was cool and as it should be from a man offering his service filled with integrity.

Passwords too many to remember

I shut down my computer too fast last night and was on my husband's Mac trying to post my daily exhale.  I tried and tried and T R I E D my password for this blog.  No luck.  Wasn't able to get a password reminder because it has to go to my email and this blog wasn't recognizing my email address.  By this time and level of frustration I should have just rebooted and been done with it.