Signs and Portents

This has been a good day. My visitor count passed 10,000 this afternoon, the weather has been balmy for a change, and Fred First came to visit.

I also figured out how to produce a better folding workbench product in less time than before. For me, that is a key factor in making a success of my new business. I spend a lot of time getting the product quality to the level I want, then I struggle to make the product faster without compromising quality. It is a real breakthrough when I can improve speed of assembly while improving quality.

As the sun went down, we had drinks and snacks on our high deck and watched the deer feeding down below. I also got a chance to show off my outdoor blogging station. This is a picture of my wife Gretchen watching Fred browsing the internet.

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When the weather is better, I expect to write many of my posts out here. When the light finally faded, we came in out of the cold and enjoyed one of Gretchen’s great meals.

Fred regaled us with the continuing adventure of getting his book published. I think he is making great headway on this formidible challenge. I am an interested onlooker, because I expect to face the same challenge myself in the future.

I may be overly optimistic, but I see signs of sweeping changes in the publishing industry and they all point to a lowering of the bar for getting your book sucessfully published and available for sale through established channels like Amazon.

Now, marketing the book still requires magic, but that’s what blogging is all about. To that end, Fred and I expect to go to Charlottesville tomorrow for the Virginia Festival of the Book. This is an increasingly important gathering of authors, agents and publishers and the price is right. It’s free.

When I started this post, Fred was struggling to get used to using a keyboard covered with cat hair. It didn’t feel like his nice clean keyboard at home. It was covered with a light sprinkling of glossy black cat hair. (Sherman is shedding his winter coat and where better than on the keyboard.)

Fred kept wiping his hands on his shirt until I took pity on him and got out the hand vac. Five minutes of furious sucking and the keyboard was finally fur free. Fred is now contentedly pecking away, probably composing a post about the harrassment he got at the main gate.

I forgot to call the gate and tell them I had a distinguished man of letters visiting, so he got one of our new employees giving him the third degree and wanting to see his ID and everything. (He should be happy they didn’t wand him. We are security concious out here in the woods. He might have been a revenoor.)

It’s getting late and I need my beauty sleep. We must be off early tomorrow. It feels like we might have a great day. I’ll let you know.

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