At the edge of somewhere long far away
I am back, briefly at least. To say my life lately has taken on overwhelming proportions of work, responsibilities and stress would be a fairly major understatement. Part of that is due to the fact I am in a stretch of teaching where I have classes three days of the week (including both of my normal days off) and mostly due to the fact that the store I work for, Blue Moon Camera, is preparing to close for three and a half weeks to undergo major renovations and remodeling. That last bit is incredibly exciting but the logistical issues that creates? Imagine the giantest can of worms you can then douse it in gasoline and set it on fire. Heh. Something like that. We are all frantically trying to A) Prepare a store for a three week closure that involves moving all the inventory out of the front of the store - thousands of pieces of it - in a fashion that will allow us to not lose anything and replace it in an orderly manner. B) Schedule the work that will take place over those three weeks in such a way that it all gets done properly and on time. C) Work with our thousands of customers letting them know about the closure and giving those who have photos, film or cameras with us a chance to get in to pick them up and D) Carry on the day-to-day business of running a camera shop as usual. Couple that with the fact that my boss has mostly been holed up in the back of the store overseeing the renovations that have already begun and that leaves me in charge of all this business going on frantically up front, in addition to my normal slate of responsibilities that more than fill an average work day.
So a bit more about all that (my main reason for posting this today). Blue Moon will officially close at the end of business hours on February 15th. We will remain closed through March 9th, reopening for business on the 10th. During this time, the store will be fully shut down, there will be no access to the front of the store, nor will we be answering the phones. The only way to get in touch with us will be e-mail, which we will check and respond to, though our inventory will all be packed away, so even if you desperately need to buy something, unfortunately we will not likely be able to accommodate those requests. Though we will be happy to answer questions and give you direction as to other places to get such services done.
In terms of the renovations, they are almost entirely of the cosmetic variety. The layout and function of the store will remain the same, but we are putting in hardwood floors, redoing the ceiling, replacing all the old, ugly fluorescent lighting and refinishing all the cases and cabinets. Clearing out clutter. Reorganizing shelves. Etc and so on. At some point we will be rolling out a new website too. But that is all the details I am going to provide about that for the moment. ;-) You will have to wait and see the rest for yourselves when we open.
So yeah, you may not see much of me on here over the next month. I just have not had the time and when I have had the time I have not had the energy. Looking back at my calendar, my last full day off was January 16th, and that is a streak that is going to continue until the 19th of this month. So four weeks without a day off has run me a little ragged. It is also not a terribly good time to send me e-mails through Flickr that need fast response. Much better to send them through my personal website at www.zebandrews.com. Other than that, I am still out here, and I am sure I will be back in full at some point. I am just concentrating much of my efforts on other things at the moment.
So, til we meet again, take care and keep up all the great photo work.
At the edge of somewhere long far away
I am back, briefly at least. To say my life lately has taken on overwhelming proportions of work, responsibilities and stress would be a fairly major understatement. Part of that is due to the fact I am in a stretch of teaching where I have classes three days of the week (including both of my normal days off) and mostly due to the fact that the store I work for, Blue Moon Camera, is preparing to close for three and a half weeks to undergo major renovations and remodeling. That last bit is incredibly exciting but the logistical issues that creates? Imagine the giantest can of worms you can then douse it in gasoline and set it on fire. Heh. Something like that. We are all frantically trying to A) Prepare a store for a three week closure that involves moving all the inventory out of the front of the store - thousands of pieces of it - in a fashion that will allow us to not lose anything and replace it in an orderly manner. B) Schedule the work that will take place over those three weeks in such a way that it all gets done properly and on time. C) Work with our thousands of customers letting them know about the closure and giving those who have photos, film or cameras with us a chance to get in to pick them up and D) Carry on the day-to-day business of running a camera shop as usual. Couple that with the fact that my boss has mostly been holed up in the back of the store overseeing the renovations that have already begun and that leaves me in charge of all this business going on frantically up front, in addition to my normal slate of responsibilities that more than fill an average work day.
So a bit more about all that (my main reason for posting this today). Blue Moon will officially close at the end of business hours on February 15th. We will remain closed through March 9th, reopening for business on the 10th. During this time, the store will be fully shut down, there will be no access to the front of the store, nor will we be answering the phones. The only way to get in touch with us will be e-mail, which we will check and respond to, though our inventory will all be packed away, so even if you desperately need to buy something, unfortunately we will not likely be able to accommodate those requests. Though we will be happy to answer questions and give you direction as to other places to get such services done.
In terms of the renovations, they are almost entirely of the cosmetic variety. The layout and function of the store will remain the same, but we are putting in hardwood floors, redoing the ceiling, replacing all the old, ugly fluorescent lighting and refinishing all the cases and cabinets. Clearing out clutter. Reorganizing shelves. Etc and so on. At some point we will be rolling out a new website too. But that is all the details I am going to provide about that for the moment. ;-) You will have to wait and see the rest for yourselves when we open.
So yeah, you may not see much of me on here over the next month. I just have not had the time and when I have had the time I have not had the energy. Looking back at my calendar, my last full day off was January 16th, and that is a streak that is going to continue until the 19th of this month. So four weeks without a day off has run me a little ragged. It is also not a terribly good time to send me e-mails through Flickr that need fast response. Much better to send them through my personal website at www.zebandrews.com. Other than that, I am still out here, and I am sure I will be back in full at some point. I am just concentrating much of my efforts on other things at the moment.
So, til we meet again, take care and keep up all the great photo work.