So much for ranting about the weather. Brrrr.....

Rule number one for a merchant - talk to your customers and find out what it is they want. Then make sure you have it. I've talked to a lot of people and realized I need to modify my business plan a bit. And for most of the stuff, I now have it. I'm running out of places to put stuff. Even my backup stock bins are full. And the trucks are still coming. But I've reached a watershed moment. It's pointless to buy anything further until I start to sell what I have. You want bassoon reeds? I've got boxes of 'em. Enough guitar strings to stretch from here to Nevada. 200 different kinds of guitar straps. Cheap trumpets. Expensive trumpets. Girl's guitars. Left-handed guitars. Cheap guitars. Cheap amps. Cheap recorders. Cheap guitar picks. Notice a trend here? In today's economic climate nobody wants to buy a $500 trumpet, even if the $200 trumpet is going to require more than the difference in repair costs over time. They want the cheap trumpet and are willing to gamble on the repairs. Fair enough. I've got your cheap trumpets now. A month ago I wouldn't have sold this model to you without harboring guilt for saddling you with a piece of junk. But if that's what you want, who am I to argue? If I don't sell you the piece of junk you'll go and find it elsewhere and buy it anyway.

Wahooey! I've been scrutinizing this tax return from every angle. Then I found it. My error in addition. OK, I accidentally added lines 15 through 18 instead of 16 through 18 and line 15 was pretty friggin' ginormous. Kaching! Tax credit. Kaching! Carry forward tax credit. All of a sudden the amount I owe this year is pocket change and I'll probably have wiped out my federal taxes for the next two years as well. This is how it was supposed to have worked in the first place. I'm sure glad I didn't send in a check without checking every line of the return a good half-dozen times. Even though it's my own damn fault for being in major depression over my tax situation, think how much more exhiliarated I must feel now that I resolved it. The government has already made an obscene amount of money on my good fortune back in the dot-com days. Whew... the reality has yet to set in but I really did plan for the tax situation to be easier this year and it worked. It really worked.