Selling Books – June 2009 Results

Posted by Forest on July 3, 2009

For some perspective on this post, here are last month’s bookselling results.

Now to this month’s stats:

Number of Sales:  140

Sales:  $1,157.22

Shipping Credit:  $569.61

Inventory Costs:  $170.13

Amazon Commission:  $361.23

Shipping Costs: $364.46

Scouting Fee:  $30 (Recurring monthly fee)

Amazon Marketplace Membership:  $39.99 (Recurring monthly fee)

My Brother’s Commission:  $155

Miscellaneous Expenses:  $10.68

GRAND TOTAL: $595.34

Woo hoo!

Best Sale of the Month was:
The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender To #45472

Purchased for $2.15 at Goodwill, Sold for $54.95!

I’m very pleased with these results.  Profits were way up even though we didn’t get very much new inventory this month.  We tend to get busy in the Summer so it’s harder to get out there and get new inventory but it’s an important part of the game and we’ll be looking to increase our inventory and our profits even more in July!

June’s Wedding to Do List – Update

Posted by Forest on July 1, 2009

Let’s just check up on that wedding to do list I made in June.

Wedding tasks I want to tackle in June:

• Pay photographer’s second installment Done!
• Purchase my wedding ring Done!
• Start shopping for her band Done!  Bought hers on 6/30
• Invites – a vague goal - maybe make some decisions re: color, format, etc. Done!  They go to the printer next week
  
• Collect all addresses for invites Done!
• Book a florist Done
• Start gathering pictures/music for the slideshow Done!
• Start tux process Done!

So I batted 1000% on my wedding goals for June.  Way to go me!

Here’s what I think I should work on in July:

• Plan honeymoon
• Work on slideshow
• Work on playlist
• Line up transportation (limo?, etc.)
• Get measured for tux
• Marriage license/paperwork

June 2009 Money Report

Posted by Forest on

The highlight of June was that Bird and her parent’s made their final contributions to the wedding fund.  Now we are fully funded for this wedding.  Let the spending begin!

As for my normal expenses, everything was pretty much on target this month.  I only spent around $200 eating out.  Proud of myself for that one.  I spent a little more on gas than usual because I had the long trip up to my cabin and some other misc. trips.  I spent $137.50 on gas in June.

There were a few miscellaneous expenses in June including:

• Domain renewal – $10
• Antivirus software renewal – $53.32
• Renewing my tabs – $78

The only things I bought that were wedding related in June were both the wedding bands.

• $24.95 for mine
• $1233 for hers

And they look pretty much the same….well, at least mine is shiny like hers.  The money came out of the wedding fund and we had budgeted for it.  Actually, we had only budgeted $700 for hers, but we will tweak the budget and steal from other areas to make it work.

Happy Monday People

Posted by Forest on June 29, 2009

It’s Monday again and I have yet to write a weekend wrap-up post.  I just wanted to give you a little teaser post to tell you to come back and eventually read my weekend wrapup post whenever I post it.  Bird and I had a GREAT weekend.

For  now, I’ll write about Monday.  It started off with me sleeping in until about 8:15.  Then off to work and a doozy of a day.  Work is absolutely crazy right now.  It gets in the way of a lot of things like blogging, wedding stuff and honeymoon planning.  Oh well.  Busy season is almost over…well, hopefully only one more month to go.

Here are a few exciting things that happened at work today:

• I requested two weeks off for my honeymoon.  My request was approved.  My boss was really sweet and actually said if I wanted more time off to just let her know.
• We got an email informing that management is in the early process of transferring my entire department to a different location.  It’s not the end of the world, it’s another city about 15 minutes away, but boy do people resist change.  I say moving to a different location is better than getting laid off.  Plus, they said they will try to work with people to be flexible about things like schedules or working from home.  I so want to be able to work from home.  We have no idea when this transfer is going to take place, but I am kind of looking forward to it.  I might be the only one.  A couple of bad things.  The new location is a lot more formal as far as dress code.  Also, it may or may not be by a post office.  My current location is next door to a post office which makes it ideal for shipping books.

Tonight’s Agenda

Bird is making paella tonight and then we are settling in for a movie.  We are watching Let the Right One In.  Has anyone else seen this?

I don’t usually do horror films, but Bird has been really wanting to see this one for a long time, so I agreed.  We tried to watch it on Friday night, but Bird fell asleep about 40 minutes in.  So we are giving it another shot tonight.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

A Day Late or A Fish Out of Water

Posted by Forest on June 26, 2009

Does anyone else feel like they are always blogging one day too late?  I don’t know how other bloggers can keep their blogs up with their hectic lives.  Anyway, here it is Friday evening and I’m finally getting around to writing about what happened on Thursday.

After work, Bird and I headed to the mall to look into renting tuxes.  This was our second attempt after a terrible first experience a few weeks ago.  This place was better, but this specific location didn’t have exactly what we were looking for so we didn’t seal the deal, but I’m sure we will back there in a few weeks to do so.  That will be nice once that is out of the way.

I had a terrible day at work yesterday, so instead of going home and making dinner, I wanted to eat at the food court in the mall and just veg when we got home.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the food court and came very close to scoring a free meal, but in the end it cost me $10.

Instead of vegging out upon arriving home, we decided to go for a walk.  We walked along the creek that runs through my neighborhood.

We weren’t the only ones that thought it was a great night for a walk as there were a lot of people out on the paths.  As we walked, we talked about wedding stuff and that’s where it got a little ugly.  In the end, we ended up getting into a fight over wedding planning.  She thinks I’m not doing enough, I think she’s trying to do too much.  You know, a classic wedding planning fight.  Well, it seems kind of like a classic fight to me.  It wasn’t much fun.  We actually ended up walking home separately.  Sad.

But don’t fret, I won’t leave you with such a sad story so let me tell you a feel good story.  In the middle of our walk, I looked over at the creek (which is really low this year) and saw this:

This little northern pike was laying on all these rocks obviously struggling but very much still alive.  I couldn’t really believe it.  First of all, I didn’t even know the creek had fish in it.  Then to see one laying out of the water was kind of weird and sad.  I don’t know how he got there, I’m assuming he was maybe trying to make it upstream and got stranded, but who really knows.  Dear readers, do you know what I did?  I saved him.  I gently lifted him up and placed him in the water and worked him back and forth until his strength returned and he swam away.  For good measure, I made sure that I pointed him downstream towards the lake.  I hope he made it.

So that’s one uplifting story.  Another good story is that Bird and I have now made up after the fight.  Wedding planning can be fun but I’m at the point where I’m ready for the day to just be here so we can get on with the marriage!

The One Where This Becomes a Food Blog

Posted by Forest on June 24, 2009

A couple of weeks ago in premarital counseling we practiced being assertive (asking for what we want) and actively listening (listening to the their wants and reciting back to them what you heard).  Through the course of this exercise, I found out that what Bird wanted was for me to help out in the kitchen, specifically, to make dinner more often.  That is, a dinner which involves a recipe and ingredients.  Frozen pizza or a can of soup does not count.

I spent part of my day at work perusing food blogs and googling various ingredients.  I found the basics of what I was looking for and figured I would just tweak it to make it work with what I had on hand.  Eventually, I decided I needed to get some additional groceries so I stopped off at the store after work.  The total bill came to $28.41 but I bought a few things that were not for dinner.  Actually, almost a third of the bill was for a bouquet of flowers which I thought would make a nice centerpiece for dinner (they did).

Long story short, I ended up making grilled stuffed peppers and grilled corn on the cob.  They were a big hit.

I need to work on my presentation photos!  Haha!

A Delayed Weekend/Fishing Update

Posted by Forest on June 23, 2009

Hey everybody, just wanted to give you an update on my weekend/fishing trip to northern MN went last weekend.  I know I should really getting around to posting these things on Sunday or Monday at the latest, but real life happens and it often gets in the way.  That, or I’m lazy.

As you recall, last time I wrote I was trying to get out of work early on Friday so I could beat some traffic and get in as much fishing time as possible.  I ended up leaving work at 3:30 and after stopping at the post office to ship some books that I sold, I was on my way at about 3:45.   For those of you that don’t live in the Twin Cities, which is pretty much all of you, let me just tell you that trying to get out of the cities heading north is basically a total pain.  Getting out of town traffic on a Friday evening is pretty much like getting into downtown traffic on any given weekday.  I sat in stop and go traffic for about the first hour, but I made up for it by flying as soon as I got out of it.  I’m usually not really a fast driver, I’m pretty much a slow guy in general, but I was hauling.  I got to my cabin in 3.5 hours which is close to a record.

Here is a tiny picture of my cabin.

The fishing was just okay Friday night.  I was glad to have arrived and to get a chance to go fishing but we didn’t catch anything worth writing about.

Pretty much the same goes for Saturday and Sunday.  We saw some big fish in the shallow water but they just weren’t biting.

Here is a list of other cool things I saw:

• Huge snapping turtle
• Deer
• Bald Eagle
• Beaver
• A couple muskies
• Sunsets
• Loons

All in all, even though the fishing wasn’t the best ever, it was still a nice time to hang with my dad and brother and get away from wedding planning for a while.  Bird actually went to her grandma’s for the weekend and I bet she felt the same way.  On Sunday morning, after a few hours of fishing, I headed home to make it back in time for our premarital class.  On the way home I stopped and got lunch at Wendy’s for $4.81.  That’s the only money I spent all weekend!  We took my dad out for Father’s Day on Saturday, but my brother paid because I had paid on Mother’s Day.  Of course, my gas tank was pretty much empty when I got back home, but I didn’t fill it up until Monday so it doesn’t count as weekend spending.  When I did fill it up, it cost me $24.50.

Here are a couple more shots from the weekend.  I’d really like to start adding more photos to this blog.