Believe it or not, in a roundabout way I got some business ideas from watching my cats deal with a recent dilemma.  Sounds silly but stick with me and let me know what you think.

Rewind to a few months ago when I started seeing my cats looking under my stove and sitting for hours just staring.   It went on for days and I thought it was odd but I wrote it off as a new cat “thing” that this lowly human would never understand.

A few days later my husband pulled a pan out of the bottom drawer of the stove and was met by a little fuzzy beast who squealed and ran back through the electrical cord hole to the basement.  Yes, we have a mouse in the kitchen and the cats had heard him scratching.  The mouse had probably been waiting every night for the lights to go out to make a mad dash Tom-and-Jerry-style to the cat’s food dish and then back under the stove.

So far the mouse had been successful because the cats were still on the job a week later.  Well, one cat was anyway.

It started out with three guardian cats day and night watching for the beady-eyed intruder.  Three cats with a mission all lined up staring at the most fascinating challenge that they’ve had in ages.  It was highly interesting for all three.  For a while.

Smoky was the first to give up. He’s a tail chaser from way back that gets distracted very easily.  He lasted at the stove front for a few days until he walked away for the last time to peruse a box, a ball, then a wood chip by the fireplace.  Any new object was fair game and he looked at them all.

Bear is a very laid back cat that is as sweet as he is lazy.  A good day for Bear is a 23 hour nap followed by a cuddle session then a feast.  He watched for the mouse for about a week because it didn’t require much effort and he really didn’t have many plans anyway.  After that week, he walked up to the corner of the stove and, much to my disgust, took a territorial pee and walked away for good.  He was done.  That mouse wasn’t coming out.  Buh-bye.

Tiny, the third cat, is an odd little character.  I found him in the yard 5 summers ago teetering on the edge of a cinder block by my garage.    He was all of a few weeks old and his mother was nowhere to be found.  I would never have seen him if my husband hadn’t pointed down to the ground to show me.  There was this little bag of bones kitten that ended up shunning the bottle that I initially tried to feed him with, and went straight to lapping from a saucer.  He was a scrapper even when he was a kitten and to this day I have no idea how he made the long trip from the neighbor’s barn far behind us to our yard.  But he got where he needed to be and he’s been happily spoiled ever since.

It seems to me that there are at least three ways to handle a problem and I have three cats with very different personalities that just happen to make this lesson clear to me.

When faced with a challenge I can do one of three things:

Try different things that might be more productive. Instead of just relying on eBay and Amazon for most of my income, I can put some effort into other venues that I list on and try new venues too.  My Google Analytics tracking tells me that eCrater and Bonanzle are getting more traffic all the time (especially eCrater).  I have accounts on both but I don’t spend much time on either one.  EBid.net just partnered with Google a few months ago and I’m a lifetime member (no fees) there even though I’ve not done much with it yet.  In the past I’ve gotten off track chasing every new venue under the sun so there’s a fine line between diversifying and getting distracted, but the aforementioned venues seem to be worth their weight these days so I’ll consider doing more business there.  I can also continue to try new ways to make money such as blogging and writing articles.

Say “Piss on it” and give up. Some venues were a total waste of time (OLA anyone?) and I’m glad I walked away from them.  One of my favorite book sites, Alibris, has just raised my seller fees to an amount that may make it unappealing for me to sell there anymore.  I’m also getting away from selling books in general since many are going digital, I’m running out of room, and local buying options are getting scarce.   As much as I love bookselling, common sense tells me that I should just phase myself out of it.  I have plenty of backup plans for that if the time comes.  EBay is one venue that I’m constantly reviewing to see if it’s still profitable.  Although it’s number 1 for me in income, the fees have become so expensive that when I really sit down and do the math, the big venue isn’t so big in my book anymore.  Giving eBay up may free up a whole lot of time to sell on less expensive venues.

The third option is to persist with a laser-like focus. This isn’t a strong point for me and my plan is to try harder on this one.  The first two options are much easier to put into practice.  Those options aren’t wrong in some cases but I wonder sometimes if things would be different if I only focused on one venue.  I read a lot of blogs (to the point of distraction) and I’m not so sure that my fellow eBay sellers who limit themselves to just eBay are feeling really great about the venue either.  Persistence can sometimes be confused with beating a dead horse.  I’ll know in a few months whether I will continue on eBay or pull the plug.  If they take away eBay stores, they will have made the decision for me.  Without my store I would have to run continuous auctions and if my sell through rate is what it is right now then hello dead horse, goodbye eBay.

Ask Tiny about persistence.  Look.

He's focused.

His gaze is laser-like.

He’s still there.  He’s in the kitchen right now as I write this.  Focused.  Persistent.  Taking on the challenge.  Bear’s snoozing in front of the fire.  Smoky’s playing with a new dustbunny.

Where’s the mouse?  I don’t know, but if he surfaces Tiny’s going to be the first one to greet him.

Have you changed your business model this year?  Does it include eBay?  Are other venues working out for you? I’d love to hear from you.

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Business was OK for my Christmas sales, not jump-up-and-down wonderful like some months in the past, but just OK.  I had happy customers and lots of sales and I’m grateful for every one of them but… I’m not quite where I want to be yet.

I’m feeling the slow and steady demise of eBay in my big picture.  Seems like I’ve been wanting to spend less and less time there even though it’s still my #1 venue for sales though not as much as they used to be.  Without spending much time at all on my Amazon listings, my sales there are slowly stealing eBay’s hold on that #1 spot.  It’s not difficult at all to do business on Amazon either.  EBay, however, is fraught with hoops to leap through, feedback issues, frequent price increases, lower traffic, and daily changes that require complete overhauls on a regular basis.  On Amazon, I list a product, reprice if needed, and wait for it to sell.  Period.  On eBay I’m constantly trying to figure out it’s latest search formula and then tweak my 1000+  listings to accommodate this mysterious, ever-changing algorithm.

Change isn’t easy but the writing on the wall is telling me that if I don’t change my business model soon there won’t be enough hours in the day for me to continue to do all that is needed to make a decent living.

So what does all of this have to do with cats?  Nothing, so far.  Because I haven’t posted in 5 weeks, I’ll squeeze another blog post out of all of this in tomorrow’s Part 2 story.

Alright, I just mentioned what I wasn’t going to mention.  Why haven’t I blogged in 5 weeks?  I read a LOT of blogs and I intensely dislike posts that invariably start with “I know I haven’t posted in ages but ….” while the author blathers on about being (lazy, busy, sick) fill in the blank.  My readers are smart enough to figure out that December is a busy month for online sales, hence “I’ve been busy” seems to be the main reason.  But you knew that.

I’ll continue this too-long post tomorrow and it really will be a post about what I learned from my cats about my business.  Captivated yet?  Here’s a precursor to what you won’t want to miss:

Is it just me?  Are you feeling a major change coming too?  Is eBay becoming less of a player in your online business?

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Cornfields and clouds.

 

Fast moving trees.

Fuzzy horses.

Along winding roads.

I couldn’t figure out one reason why this road was constructed this way.  There surely must have been something that the crew couldn’t dig or blast through so they made it curvy, right?  My husband thought that the construction crew was just probably drunk.  We’re pretty far out in the sticks here.  Anything’s possible. 

Eventually there comes a time when we have to get out of the car and actually get up close and personal with the trees and nature.  Here we had our chance.

This particular trail is only open four weekends a year.  This was the final day of the season.  Time to go hiking (or huff-and-puffing as I call it.) 

Wait!  Stop the presses!  There was a food tent set up at the foot of the trail and I hadn’t eaten anything all day.  I asked my fellow hiker if we should eat something before we walked, or after, or both.  Which one do you think I chose?  Did I mention it was to benefit the local church?

We started hiking through the woods on a well-marked trail while we ate our gooey brownies and saw the sights, the sunshine, and the trees.

When we reached the top we were rewarded for our efforts by the sight of the waterfalls.

Glad to see that we weren’t the only fossils at the top of the trail.

See the trylobytes?  They’re millions of years old.  And they made it to the top of hill just fine.

We decided on the way down to take the scenic route which we did not know would take us waaaaaay out of the way and would require us to walk another (gulp!) 20 minutes!  It was well worth the extra effort since we got to go deep into the woods and see more of this.

Some people followed us in because they thought that we knew where we were going.  My husband and I laughed because, little did they know, only fools would follow us anywhere.  I’m that person who should bring full survival gear at the mere mention of hiking in the woods.  My spouse is the typical male who would never ask for directions, even if our life depended on it.  After about 15 minutes and no sign of people (other than our also clueless followers) we both kind of nervously laughed that this trail was leading us nowhere and seemed to be going deeper into the woods.  After a very long additional 5 minutes we saw the comforting sight of the food tent.  Yep, time for coffee.  And a park bench. 

Autumn is my very favorite time of year.  It doesn’t last long enough, in my opinion.  Hikes do though.

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When the windshield looks like this, it’s time for a road trip.

 This time we ended up in Cooperstown which was a destination we landed in earlier this summer.  Did we go to the National Baseball Hall of Fame this time?  Nope.  We’re still not baseball fans.  But we parked in front of it. Does that count?

Cooperstown National Baseball Hall of Fame

Did we miss out on learning anything about baseball just because we chose not to go inside?  You’d be surprised what you can learn about the sport just by hanging outside the building.

Like this sign, for example, that showed us the players who were inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer on July 26, 2009.  Oh, just three guys with the last names of Gordon, Rice, and Henderson.  If I stretched my non-sports brain a bit I think that even I might be able to come up with their first names.  I won’t write them here for fear of embarassing myself and it would be cheating to go look it up on Google first.

This spot outside of the Hall is where the very first induction took place.

WOW!  Look who attended.  I even know who they are!  And they all stood right here.  This unplanned trip to the outside of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown was getting better and better.

 Check out what else is outside of the Hall of Fame.

An up-to-date scoreboard.  How do I know it’s up-to-date?  Because I lamely thought that September 26 meant September 1926 and that this was a relic replica of baseball as it was in 1926.  I can admit this because I’m among friends right?   Right??  My husband was quick to point out (while shaking his head and fighting the urge to say something that would make for a VERY long ride home) that it was current day statistics. “See the date? It’s right there!”  Um, yeah…  Moving on…

Right in front of the Hall of Fame is this sign denoting that an “Indian agent” lived here in a log cabin for a year while he speculated about land.  I don’t know what an Indian agent is but I don’t really like the sound of it.  I’m sure it had nothing to do with the Cleveland Indians or baseball trades.     

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) this is why General James Clinton was headquartered here:

In 1779 Clinton led an expedition down the Susquehanna River after making the upper portion navigable by damming up the river’s source at Otsego Lake, allowing the lake’s level to rise, and then destroying the dam and flooding the river for miles downstream. This event is described by James Fenimore Cooper in the introduction to his popular novel The Pioneers.

This, apparently, was the very spot where the plot was conceived and carried out.  Did I think I would get a history lesson today?  In front of the Baseball Hall of Fame?  No.  But I did.

If you don’t want to go inside the Hall or even skulk around the outside like we did, just walk down one block and hang a left.  This is the type of scenery that I was really looking for:

A tree-lined walkway

Past pretty historic houses

With pretty flower boxes

That led us to a set of steps

With more historical plaques

With more Indian history

And water.... Otsego Lake

And boats on the water...

Ahhhh… Now you’re talking.  Who cares if it’s raining?  Not me.  I was well prepared with my umbrella and my new shoes.  Here’s a picture of the Crocs that I’ve been yammering about non-stop since I got them:

See 'em? Yeah, they're green.

Don’t ever look down and take a picture of your feet if you can’t handle the optical illusion of your hips looking wider than the broad side of a barn.  Yes, it’s an optical illusion.  Just like my purse  that’s swinging from my camera arm looking as if it’s a suitcase fit for a 3 week vacation.  

Glad I was wearing my Crocs because we had to go back up these stairs when we left the pier.

We walked back to our car parked in front of the Hall and drove to the Marina that we could see from the pier.

For me, neither rain nor baseball could spoil this gorgeous autumn day.  We spent the afternoon walking between the raindrops and seeing the sights along Main Street.  The pizza at Sal’s was a good reason to come back soon.  

Have you been inside of the Baseball Hall of Fame?  Is there anything there for the baseball-impaired?  I’d love to hear about it.

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Don’t know who Guy Fieri is?  You’re probably not surgically attached to the Food Network like I am so you may not be familiar with “The Food Network’s Bad Boy.”  This guy here is one of the most popular chef’s on the FN:

And he knows it.  In a good way.  He really is not a “Bad Boy” at all.  He was very gracious, entertaining, and funny all while he was making delicious recipes and giving out great cooking tips.  He worked the stage and never stood still a minute. 

Guy in Motion

The crowd of 5,000 people just loved him.  I had no idea that so many people would come to see him.  It was a free show at an annual event to celebrate The Feast of San Gennaro, an Italian favorite with Italian chefs, food, and bands. 

I should have known that this event would be packed.  Central New York State, in case you didn’t know, has a large Italian-American population.  When I was in grade school. fist fights could break out over whose Grandmother made the best sauce.  You could get laughed out of the room if you pronounced “ricotta” or “manicotti” with a vowel on the end.  This red-headed, freckled girl whose parents hailed from the Midwest was lightheartedly called “American“ and “mayonnaise face” by my Italian friends but it was all good because I frequently ate dinner at their houses and had some of the best lasagna, eggplant parm, fettucine alfredo, and scores of other dishes that there was no way my Mom knew how to cook.  My stomach easily forgave my friends teasing.  Call me what you want, just keep the calamari coming OK?

Back to Guy Fieri…  Do you see anything odd about this photo?

Right there hanging off the table.

Not five minutes into the show someone whipped a bra at Guy.  From his reaction, I don’t think that it was a “plant” at all.  He appeared to, for once only, be at a loss for words.  And he was beet red.  When he finally collected himself, laughed it off, and made some comment about this being a family show. and that he’d now seen everything, he asked for the owner to be brave enough to show herself.  After a few moments of silence a woman who must have been eighty doddered up.  Of course everyone roared, her family took photos of her and Guy and the bra.  Every Italian grandmother in the room wanted to pinch his beet red cheeks and take him home.  This “guy”s got real charisma and can cook too.  My husband, who never sets foot in the kitchen, even enjoyed the show and it went way over the alloted 90 minutes.  Glad I was wearing my Crocs Mary Janes because since I was not smart enough to guess that this event would be packed, we didn’t get a seat.  We found a place near the front row and we stood through the whole thing.  Glad I could get some decent photos though.

He never stopped moving.

And he was cooking two recipes simultaneously.

He let some people help him.

He told stories while he cooked.

The seafood dish smelled so good and it was right in front of me.  As Guy was leaving the stage he was right in front of me too.  I had the best photo opportunity of the night and I was at the front of the Security gate like the food groupie that I am.  He was signing the shirt of the lady next to me when I snapped this close up.

He's right here, really.

That’s right when my camera batteries died.  Uh-huh.  He was right in front of me and my camera didn’t work.  Not only am I not Italian but I didn’t have the luck of the Irish either.  Oh well.  “I still have my memories.”  Name that movie…

Guy Fieri did not end up being the only celebrity with whom I spent my anniversary.  Stay tuned for my next celebrity sighting….  Especially if you’re from Joisey…

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Did your kids or grandkids go to Vacation Bible School or summer church camp?  The kids can put their favorite camp photos in it.  Vacation means camping to a lot of families too.  What a great way to have all of your photos together when your parents come to visit.  No one loves photos more than Grandma and Grandpa! 

This item caught my eye because I’ve been a photo nut since I was old enough to hold a camera.  My shelves are full of different shapes and sizes of photo albums filled with my (very amateur looking) photos.  My photography skills have improved ever so slightly since then…

In my opinion, nothing replaces actual paper photos.  Nowadays people have computers, cellphones, and hard discs full of photos.  You can’t really “leaf” through a disc or look at a bunch of photos quickly on a computer.  The quality of most of the cell phone photos I’ve seen is poor.  That’s why real photos on paper will still be the first choice for all of the keepsake pictures.  Print only the photos you want.  Better yet, let Walgreens or WalMart do it for you – they’re down to about 17 cents a pic.  Put those in the album.  Keep the fuzzy, headless, crossed-eyes, bunny ears photos in the computer where they belong!

 Click on any of the above photos if you’d like to see the listing.

There’s more camping stuff that I’ll be adding when I get a chance.  All of the items are new and I’m mostly going with unique things that aren’t your everyday find.  I’ll keep you posted!

Do you still print your photos on paper or do you prefer to keep the images on your computer?  I’d love to hear from you.

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We went to the beach, of course. 

Why would anyone do that on a day when your windshield view looks like this:

‘Cause that’s how we roll….

And there’s always a chance that the weather could break (after it pours buckets for the entire trip there) and that we might see something green when we got there.  Sylvan Beach was cool, breezy, and had off and on rain when we first arrived.  Did we make a mistake?  Nope, we saw this right away:

And some wildlife too:

Ducks don’t mind rain.  They prefer it.  And they go to the beach every day. 

There were lots of these guys:

One asked me to take his picture so he posed for me:

He must be somehow related to this duck that I swear slowed down and winked while I snuck a picture:

His friends were jealous of the papparazzi attention and immediately wanted to be the new subject for my camera lens:

One good thing about rain (for us anyway) was that the Amusement Park wasn’t so amusing today.  The roller coaster was running with about 2 people on it.  The ferris wheel with the cages was not running.  I know there’s a name for that ride but I don’t know it.  You know.  That thing right there with the red and blue steel cages.

The carousel was empty.

Not too many boats out today.

Not too many people on the beach either.

Just the way we like it.

After a nice fattening fish fry we waddled walked down the beach some more and decided to drive a bit further down the shore to Verona State Park.

We’d never been to this State Park before but felt adventurous today.  At this age, this type of adventure is about all we can handle.

Hubby drove up and asked about the admission fee.  Seven dollars later we drove around a small parking area where it was pretty obvious that we would have to get out and waddle walk some more.  At first I thought that we would not like it so much here.  There were loads of crammed together campers, kids, dogs, tents, RV’s and the like.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” to quote Jerry Seinfeld, but we are reclusive types that like to be as far away from people as possible.  The quieter and less populated the better.  We had been spoiled at Sylvan Beach.  But it got better.

Verona State Park is known for it’s shallow water that you can walk out a long way:

They’re not even up to their knees yet.

Pictures like this make me want to know more about zoom lenses’, ISO, filters and all of the things about photography of which I am ignorant:

If I knew about all of those things then I would have been able to get a close up shot of the one thing that is more annoying than all of the drunken campers, litterers, shrieking children, and barking dogs combined…

Can you see it here?:

Hear the high-pitched hummmm?  I still can.  That’s right – a Jet Ski.  The bane of the lakeshore.  Many lakes here have banned these suckers from their waters.  Apparently this one has not.  The entire time we walked along the shore this skier revved his motor and raced back and forth.  As much as I dislike these contraptions, I felt bad when he  accidentally beached it on a shallow sand bar and couldn’t pull it to shore.   I really missed the nerve-grating hum so much that I almost helped him pull the thing out of the quicksand…  Do you believe me?

The clouds soon parted:

And the sun came out.  First the beached Jet Ski, then the arrival of the sun.  This day was getting better and better.

We walked until we could walk no more.  I love mini roadtrips. 

Where do you travel locally for a mini-vacation?  I’d love to hear from you.

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This was pretty much what we saw the whole time.

Lots of pretty trees.

Lots of water.

Bugs.  Mosquitoes, black flies, you name it.  Bugs.

And lots of them.

My husband said that he could get the Mohawk Valley Erie Canal Swine Flu Virus Plague from these bugs.  I’m sure he made that up.  He’s such a drama king. 

So we high-tailed it to the car and stopped at the pizza place down the road for a slice.  BTW, this was another business just like this one   that took every opportunity to cross-promote and to provide excellent customer service.  While we were chowing on our pizza the friendly owner asked us how the slices were (this is unheard of around here at a deli/pizza place) and she then reminded us that they now have ice cream too.  After she walked away, I commented to my husband, “Cross-promotion!  Good for her!”  He just shook his head.  He’s used to me saying things like this.

The pizza sure made the buggy experience worthwhile.  This was the best part though:

See the rainbow?

Do you brave the bugs to commune with nature?  Maybe I’ll wear Skin So Soft next time.  I’ve heard that it scares off mosquitoes.  Not sure if it works for black flies. 

Does anybody have any hints for a natural, non-chemical bug deterrent?  I’d love to hear about them.

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So yesterday I did not check my emails, answer questions, review my sales, or play on Facebook (ok I finally signed on at 8 PM but it was really 24 hours and not a complete day…)   I can easily ignore Twitter these days since I now have over 800 followers and get completely overwhelmed there with the constant sales pitches or internet Twitter hooker propositions.  Seriously.  Why don’t they just go away?

So yesterday I read the Sunday paper in the sun – got sunburned but as a red-headed, fair-skinned, freckled person I really should know better.  The burn didn’t carry over until today so it wasn’t so bad. 

I did yardwork.  The weed whacker was dead or wasn’t charged so I used hedge clippers.  Had rubber band arms all day long after that.  I really do need to exercise more if a pair of clippers got the best of me.

The best part was the nature walk that hubby and I took at the end of the afternoon.  I remembered to bring my camera this time.

We saw a lot of this.

And lots of these.

The forest area was dark and buggy.

That's why we stayed here. On the mostly empty trail.

After a while we could've used this.

But we used this instead and kept going.

A snake showed up here the day before. Not today.

This bird did though. He had a lot to say.

When was the last time you detached yourself from the e-world?  Was it as difficult for you as it was for me?  I admit that by 8 PM I was really jones-ing for some computer time.  And I needed something to do to keep me awake! 

Next Sunday I’ll be trying this internet-free thing again.  It was enlightening to see how this laptop in front of me has been overtaking some quality time that I could be spending with others or even by myself.  Moderation?  Not sure if one day off qualifies for moderation, but that’s what I’m willing to do right now.  Maybe it will make Mondays a bit nicer too. 

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I picked as many as I could reach.

See the horses in the background?  They were still camera-shy today but I snuck up and snapped them anyway.

This old girl  doesn’t mind haven’t her picture taken.

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