None Of These Things Are Related
So, we didn't bake any pies today because um, hello, SNOW. Even if we had baked some, we probably would have needed to strap tennis rackets to our feet to successfully walk into Lucky's and re-stock our display. Any time I start getting multiple texts from KMIZ about Interstate 70 closures because of accidents, Mizzou closing for a second day, and the 70/63 interchanged deemed "impassable", well, I'll just stay at home, thank you very much. I would suspect that we will be fully stocked again on Thursday morning, so hold tight if you have some sort of bizarre pie craving that just won't let you rest. In the interim of any substantial news, here are all sorts of random things on my list to share..
1) We got our mechanical drawings this morning from the engineer. This is HUGE because those suckers are a big piece of what the city needs to move forward on permits. In short, mechanical drawings cost a small fortune and are basically drawings of where electrical outlets are going and where HVAC ducts will run. These drawings actually cost MORE than our architectural plans that we thought were costly and that made us feel oh-so-fancy just a few short months ago.
Note to readers considering opening their own business: No one will really tell you that you need mechanical drawings and they certainly won't tell you how much they cost. At some point, someone will realize you don't have them and get all freaked out on you about getting them ASAP. The next thing you know, a lot of days have passed, you've spent a ton of money, and you've yelled at the people who make the drawings. And when you finally see a copy of the elusive drawings, you will look at them upside down and not even realize it for a few minutes because YOU DON'T EVEN REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT. Everyone else will be all happy about the plans and you still won't care because you have sore feelings about HVAC tonnage and are good at holding a grudge. Ahem.
2) The liquor license application is almost complete. Behind-the-scenes-tech-guru Jason found a website that calculates straight line distance and you'll rest easy knowing that the new shop location is EXACTLY one mile from The Crossing. In case you are curious, you can calculate "as the crow flies" distances at http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html. I don't know TJ Peiffer (and I'm only guessing TJ is a person), but he/she/it should be charging for that information and not making it free on the Internet. Think of all the liquor application people who thought "whhaaaaatttttt?" on the distance question and then solved it on tjpeiffer. I then directly proceeded to waste a lot of time calculating distances from my front door to random places. Paris, France? 4,457 miles. Napa Valley? 1,616 miles. Honolulu? 4,018 miles.
All that is left is to choose a picture of myself and snap one of the new location, print those out, glue them to the application, sign in triplicate, and get the whole thing notarized. And then calculate the fee. I started to do that part today but you have to use an Excel spreadsheet as a resource to figure it out and so I just clicked off it and decided to leave that for Behind-The-Scenes-Math-Person Jason because I consider anything beyond my iPhone calculator to be needs for a specialist.
3) If we can get the weather to cooperate, we plan to sample pies at Lucky's this Saturday from 11 to 2. We will be sampling the Valentine's Day options (have you ordered yet??? pjpies.com) and also trying some new pies. We asked on Facebook over the weekend if you would be interested in trying a Blueberry Rum pie or a Hard Cider Apple pie. The votes were pretty evenly split and so we are considering sampling both out. We are fairly certain we can make it happen, provided the weather behaves and/or we don't drink all the rum and hard cider while we wait for the snow to melt.
4) We are official City of Columbia Chamber of Commerce members. Woo-Hoo! Anytime someone offers me an enormous ribbon and a massive pair of scissors with a photo opportunity, I'll be the first to say yes. Well played, Chamber. I have some ideas floating around in my head about what day we might cut that ribbon, but as always, it depends on 4,292 things outside my realm of control.
5) This is completely lame news, but it needed to be shared...our chopped pecans are backordered until February 10th. REALLY???? I should have known it was too good to be true. If we are going to be their newest client, they better start chopping faster. I have a lot of hopes and dreams balanced on those 30 pound boxes of pre-chopped pecans and I really can't handle any sort of chopped pecan shortages. Just saying.
So that is all for our slow-news-day-because-we-are-stuck-inside-watching-it-snow blog update. I promise you that as a reward for hanging with us during the mundane, we will have some exciting news to share soon (and no, it doesn't have anything to do with that HVAC system or my grudge against it).