And a brief departure while we tidy up in the corner

Wait a sec, wasn't I working on the website? Wasn't that going pretty smoothly? And then, SMACK! Let's throw a couple of obstacles in the path just for funsies.

OK, then. Having spent the last month intermittently listing about 200 CD's out of the 600 that have come into our home as a result of our in-laws moving into an independent living facility down the road, I find that I'm packing and taking said packages to the post office just about every day lately. Quite the impressive collection - and quite the range in price that I've found as I've explored as I went through the listing process on Amazon, where I'm an established seller.

It amazes me that I can take what is a hobby/business, and become extremely distraught with it. One day this week I had a customer on Amazon who had placed the order for a CD box set, and then sent a message that he was leaving the country by the end of the week and needed to upgrade the shipping to overnight the item. The hoops - the incredible hoops - of having to cancel the transaction yet noting the conditions concerning the cancellation so I wouldn't be "dinged" as a seller, upgrading the shipping, then relisting the product and notifying the customer to go ahead and make the transaction again, was aggravating. Not the least of which was the realization that the credit given by Amazon for the overnight shipping charge fell far short of the actual cost. Couple this situation with another on the same day where a customer received a CD which was by the artist they wanted, but it was the WRONG album. (That was a refund. Shake my head and thank my help for the - help.)

I was rather rattled by having both of these events happen in the same day. Lost money on both transactions. Did a lot of running around in trying to salvage my "seller" game face, particularly with the incorrect order - that stuff burns me!! How could I have not looked at the order more carefully?! (Beats own head against wall.) One saving grace is that my reactions in both instances rewarded me with very good feedback by both customers - believe it or not, I really think that's worth something.

So you may have noticed reading earlier that I've got 400 CD's that I was unable to list for sale. That's not saying I didn't go through the process of researching and discovering that they were not sellable. Each album was looked up, the price found (and found to be pennies) and put aside as "what do I do with this one now"?

I miss my garage.

Anyways, I took a small selection of the non-listed CD's to a local trade/swap/sell music store. The owner was impressed with the musical quality of the discs I brought. And then offered me $3 for 2 of them. So this is going to be harder work than I had hoped it would be. At this point, I'm thinking: "library donation". I am pretty worn down by this aspect by now.

And where the heck did all the energy that I'd been devoting to my website go? Pffft.