My Day: I Don't Like Mondays: Boomtown Rats

Ok, perhaps I am dating myself by the reference to the Boomtown Rats infamous song, "I don't like Mondays" , but simply stated, in my own words, Mondays (typically) suck! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the song, which happens to one of my all time favorites, it is about a student in San Diego who did something awful (read link for details) and when asked why she did it she simply replied: "I don't like Mondays".

While today wasn't nearly as bad as the Monday referred to in the infamous song, it seemed like it just wouldn't end. Today seemed to be complete blur.

It started out just fine, and in fact ended fine, but the ride was long, bumpy at times and incomplete. I just couldn't finish anything I started. Here's a summary of the highlights.

My alarm went off, I stretched out, got up, made some coffee and took the dogs out. Then, I [fill in the blank]. Alright I am just kidding. I am not going there with this blog. Not now, not ever. Read about someone's daily boring activities on another blog. This blog is intended for the behind the scenes views of my daily boring life :-)

So for real this time. As usual I started my day wondering what I was going to blog about later that day. This time it was easy. I got an email from Shawn Powers of both Linux Journal and independent fame. Shawn is responsible for one of the funniest SCOTTEVEST videos ever made (watch it here, but be patient as the ending is truly hilarious).

Shawn shared with me a blog post by one his own blog readers. The post is shown here, and it is entitled "Totally Geeked Out" and is about, well you guessed it (or not), a couple who just got themselves a pair of his and her SeVs for themselves with pictures of them modeling the same, with more flare than I do btw. I don't know why but I just think it is pretty cool when I see people blog about their excitement learning about our products. It seems that some people didn't know SeVs existed. They must be living under a rock :-) with over 100,000 websites referring to SCOTTEVEST per google.

Well, that was supposed to be the beginning and end of today's blog post, sans the intro above. But as the day is fast coming to an end, there were so many other activities that I thought worthy of mentioning. While thinking about all these, none came to the forefront, and it occurred to me just how many different things I did today.

So, for real this time, here goes the highlights of my typical Monday.....

I walked to work (~2 miles) as I do every day, with my three big dogs firmly attached to me at the waist, while talking to my right hand man, Thom O'Leary. (Thom is worthy of his own full post saved for another date). I took the ~40 minutes on the walk to express my sincere panic that the new website will not be ready on schedule (May 17), and telling him about my extensive ideas on the SeV Bus Tour (see post below for more on that). He assured me it would be done on time.

I got to work, and read through and replied to about 100+ emails (excluding spam and customer service emails). I then remembered I was still sick. So, I called my Dr. who said they had an appointment NOW if I rushed over. So, I ran over to the hospital.

I spent the next 30 minutes begging my doctor to prescribe me some antibiotics. I have been sick for what seems like months, and he explained the whole virus vs. infection thing, and I didn't really care. I just wanted to get better. I finally convinced him to give me some antibiotics - SUCCESS!

Then, I returned to the office. I made a HUGE list of what I HAD to get done that day, realizing there was no way I could get everything done, but had to try.

My first priority was to deal with the outsourcing of our fulfillment process. We narrowed down our finalist to 3 companies, all in the midwest. I had to call about 10 people to get references on these companies. I HATE calling for references. Of course they are only going to give me the best people to call. I figured a way around it though. I went online and ordered products from the companies that the 3pL companies fulfill for to see how they dealt with them. Well, not all so good but I learned a lot by doing this secret shopper task, including it takes over 7 minutes for them to pick up a phone on one occasion. I proceeded to try to make travel plans to visit 3 cities in as many days, leaving from Sun Valley, Idaho. Not easy or fun. This will be next week's activities.

Then, it occurred to me that mother's day was fast approaching. Besides the fact that I still haven't gotten anything for my own mother-in-law yet (aka the "Wicked"), I realized that for the first time EVER we finally have a full line of women's products but was informed by Laura that we didn't have enough in stock to do a promotion, and it was too late for people to order unless they used an expedited shipping method. So much for planning ahead....

I was able to preview and comment on some key videos to be included in the new website. They looked good, but I believe we are way behind schedule on editing, although Thom assures me again that all will be ok.

I then called my web designer, Robert, to give him a pep talk on the new site, but it turned out to be a nervous panic of my concerns about finishing everything on time, etc.

Next I had to interview someone for our bookkeeping position. I have been doing all the bookkeeping myself and it is just getting to be way too much. I hate interviewing people. I am a horrible judge of character.

Then the fun part. I got to plan the SeV Bus Tour. I am so excited about this. In sum, I think the route is set: Sun Valley, Las Vegas, LA, San Francisco, San Jose, Lake Tahoe, and back. We are trying to come up with a funny story to tie it altogether, but haven't figured it out yet. It needs to have a beginning, middle and end, with some other "characters" in it, other than me and my tennis ball/Frisbee crazy standard poodle Lucy, named after Loose Lucy song by the Grateful Dead. (Ideas are welcome!)

We are looking for people to host SeV parties, at my expense of course, in these cities. If you are interested, please let us know, or better yet submit a video via Youtube or www.blip.tv telling why I should visit you.

Well, I am leaving a ton out but that is the crux of my day. Oh yea, I forgot, I spent the last 45 minutes summarizing it here. Yea, I have a problem.

BTW, I am disappointed no one weighed in on yesterday's post about my dilemma. See below.

Sorry such a long post today.

Scott