Nothing Surprises Me
If you are curious how it is going with the whole not-working-on-Wednesday thing, please know that it is basically a bag of broken dreams. Over the last month, we’ve managed to not work on one out of four Wednesdays, the rest falling victim by short staffing or last minute call outs or weird projects demanding our time and presence. And honestly, the goal of this not-working-on-Wednesday plan is to a) give us a modicum of work/life balance in the summer, and mostly importantly, b) help us figure out our weak areas as we slowly work toward having a store in St. Louis that would require.
This morning we were actually sitting and drinking our coffee and discussing our plan for the day when we got a message about a call out at West, prompting us to haul out the door to cover it. So that’s definitely a weak spot. Duly noted.
Anyway, here’s what else is going on:
Last Friday, Ellery and I went to see our beloved Jason Isbell in Kansas City and got back home and in bed at 2:20 am. My alarm went off at 5 am to head to PJP. And then Ellery, Jason, and I went to Chesterfield that night to see Jason Isbell again. Remember all those overnighters in the earliest years of PJP? In the long game, it totally gave me the ability now to function on little sleep. Also, Jason Isbell is worth being tired.
Both stores were crazy busy on Saturday. In general I’ve learned that people plan much more for Mother’s Day than they do for Father’s Day. When we checked on Wednesday of last week, we only had a few orders. By Friday afternoon, we had four pages of orders at each store and a line outside both stores at 10 am on Saturday morning.
(Jeanne had little sympathy for my three hour sleep schedule. She wouldn’t go to back to back concerts on minimal sleep for all of the money in the world. You could hand her a briefcase of unmarked cash in exchange for her concert attendance and she give would it back and tell you she needed to go home to watch Korean dramas on Netflix.)
Yesterday marked nine years of Epic Pie Tastings. At our very first event, we made 12 flavors and each on a full size baking sheet. It literally took us all day long. The event started at 6 pm and we literally hadn’t cut a single slice of pie while 20 guests lined up eagerly with their plates. In short, it felt like a disaster at the time. But we got better over time and now pie tasting is our favorite event. It’s never boring, even after 100 scheduled event dates.
And finally, someone left a wood veneer residential door and a wood veneer shelf outside our back door at PJP Nifong. Absolutely nothing surprises me anymore.
