Why look, it is the x-mas death march!

So I've got less than 12 days to kick out a metric fuckton of orders, how much is a "metric fuckton" you ask? Well that is about an "ass-load times 10" or for those of you still using imperial units of measurement, "12,206 holy shit that is a lot a rope"s

Stay tuned, this is going to get strange before it is over.

October is shaping up to be a landmark, deathmarch of a month. Between supplying rope to Max’s upcoming Portland intensive, Midori’s Kansas City Rope Dojo, restocking Kink.Com and the usual mountain of orders coming in via the site, I’m one busy boy.

How busy? This was my day yesterday
7AM Alarm goes off
7-8AM wander around the house in a daze searching for fresh coffee and clean socks (in that order)
8-9:00 Gym, lift heavy things till shoulders give out then do sit ups till I feel like I’m just about to puke, all the while threatening my trainer that one of these days I will get even with him by photo shopping him into donkey porn
9-10:00 Post workout coffee with Tambo, compare schedules for the week. She just looks at me funny and asks me if I want another cup of coffee.
10am Arrive at Abbey, crew has already been at it for an hour.
10-12 review new inbound orders, check email, phone messages, orders in progress, stock levels oh and the main water pump seems to have blown out. Race across town to get a replacement and fix it before the first dye job of the day is ready to be pulled.
12pm Pull first dye job, drink coffee,
12-2 Fill orders, send one minion home sick, send the another off to start billing orders, start second dye job of the day.
2pm Wolf down frozen Mac& Cheese, washed down with coffee, scan LJ/Fetlife/Blogosphere/ARA… nobody taking my name in vain? Nope? No rumors that I am dead or was maimed in a bizarre bondage accident? Nope? Ok, back to work.
2:15-4 Continue with filling orders.
4PM “Anyone else want coffee?”
4-6pm Pack finished orders, race to post office to make last call for a rush order, review new orders and begin setting up orders to be filled tomorrow… Man are we gonna need more rope, what we sold out of that book again?! Quickly dash back up to office and place stop gap orders for more Midori books.
7-9pm spend “Quality time” with alex,
9Pm untie alex, hop onto motorcycle, and roar into the chilly autumn night in search of much needed post play food.
9-10pm Ravenously attack dinner, waitress asks “you want coffee with that?” Response: “And how”
10 get alex home at a reasonable hour, somebody still has homework to do!
10-11pm check email, write blog, load up toybag for play date tomorrow, send Matisse “I miss you note” and wait for UPS Germany to open.
11pm, call Germany and sound like a dork cuz you only speak 6 words of German and 3 are obscene.
11:30 close up Abbey, hop on bike and head home. With any luck I’ll be in bed by midnight.


The clock on my laptop now reads 7:55am and I am looking at another day much like yesterday. After nearly 5 years of doing this, the trick I have found is that this is not a sprint, but rather a marathon. Balance between work, play, creativity and physical health is a delicate one but one that is needed if you want to keep this sort of lifestyle up for as long as I have.

Dude, what the hell happened to Monk?!

4 days with no updates to this blog, that has not happened in a long, long time. Today is the first day since Saturday that I've even been remotely able to remain upright and not a dull shade of green. Normally I'd just chalk this one up to another pre/post deathmarch cold, but this one hit me like a freight train. Not this time, your hero has spent the last 4 days flat on his back doing his best impersonation of a zombie bite victim in a bad Italian horror flick. Thankfully the worst seems to have past and now all I need to do is deal with the remaining sore throat and residual ickies that still inhabit my system. No worries, I've got a great crew working in the Abbey right now. They have taken all the stock I amassed last week and are currently prepping it for sale, leaving me to focus on getting better and the dozens of administrative things still left to do before we will ever get to sell all this rope we have made.

Now rather than listen to me blather on about the state of my upper respiratory system (its fine actually, seems I dodged that bullet) or the signage I still need to make for the show (So how does one say "Already going to put a hook in her butt? Upgrade to both hooks and save" with out sounding really sick?) Enjoy this little something I was teasing you with last month.



My desire here is to bridge the gap between this, written, blog and our high end how-to videos with something where we can showcase stuff, answer more complex questions and have some fun with.

Boston Show, T-7 Days

Less than a week till Alex and I depart for Boston and the Fetish Flea. Oh crap is there so much left to get done. I know I say that before every show, but damn what I would not give for couple of hours in the day. You know what this means, gonna be some long, long days for yours truly as I do my best to make the impossible a reality, one more time. So have that Diet Rockstar on standby and say a prayer.

Now just because I am really LAZY and don't feel like re-typing it all. Check out Matisse's blog for a listing of cool kink events going on this weekend. I'll be vending at the Mark Yu class on Sunday.

Ok, back to work for me.

Gawd Damnit, I hate it when this happens.

Here I was having a right fucker of a day, a full on goat sodmozing bastard of a day. The last day to get orders out the door for Christmas, the temperature seems to have dropped so low that no amount of layers can keep the heat from feeling like it is being sucked out of the souls of your feet, the minion insist on playing fucking holiday music, I’m still feeling like day old crap from this lingering cold and top it all off the knuckles in my left hand have started making this strange popping noise whenever I flex my hand (no doubt from all the extra whipping I’m guessing). Yes dear reader, a right pisser of a day and your hero was all set to growl his way through it. Shoulders squared and scowling, oblivious to the discomfort or my overwhelming desire to crawl back into bed next to someone warm, “Press on, do the job, meet the deadline and rest when you are dead”, was my mantra.

Then this had to happen, a customer had to go and send me a thank you e-mail! The nerve of some people! Not only was she so happy with her early Christmas present to herself and she wanted to say thank you. But also she just had to attach a photo of herself in the rope as well.

Wouldn’t ya know it, no sooner than I saw the look of utter bliss on the girl’s face then my whole miserable day improved! See for yourself, how can you even contemplate having a bad day when your customers say thank you like this?


Cold? Nah, not so bad actually. Just gotta make sure you keep moving and those carols? Could be worse, besides how can you not love the Muppets? The last orders were just delivered to the post office so now I can sit back with a well earned glass of whiskey and take a long, deep sigh of relief.

Now she sent two photos, one that I can share with you and one just for me, the photo I am not sharing with you shows her full face, blessed out in a rope glow that makes these sore, tired hands very glad they can keep doing what they seem to do so well.

So, my sweet Eris, thank you. you derailed my otherwise harsh day.

Stick a fork in it and call it done.
The Shibaricon 2007 Death March is officially over! We just need to pile stock into bags, print a couple of signs and catch an airplane to Chicago.

Huge, huge thanks to everyone who pitched in with food, caffeine, extra hours, 16yr old whiskey, all around patience with us as we crunched this one out. The Abbey crew, Nerdy, DoubleL, and minion, you guys are all rockstars in my book.

Thanks

Now with any luck, all the stock will make it in one piece, the display gear we have yet to pick up will be waiting for us, and the local authorities won't kick our perverted asses out of the place.

PS:
I'm bringing my camera and hope to get some shots of the booth and such so you can see just how big a show we are throwing. I don't want to brag here, but damn this is huge.

Dumbfounded

The pre-shipment of stock just left the Abbey. This year we are sending five hundred pounds of stock ahead. This, this is staggering. The first year we went to this show, Griffin and I stuffed all our show stock into the trunk of a rental sedan, 200 pounds? Maybe 250? The next year we pre-shipped out 300?

This is JUST stock, not racks or bins or other show support stuff. All that gear we pick up in Chicago.

Here is a little math problem for you. Assuming that 100 pounds are books/dvds and that 100ft of rope weighs approximately 2.5 pounds. How many feet are currently en route to Chicago?

Now you wanna know the really mind blowing bit. I still need to make another mile of stock this weekend. Nerdy, Tambo and I will carry on another 300 pounds of stock with us when we fly out on Wednesday.

Ever play “dueling ipods”? This is where you try to out wow the other person with your impressive and eclectic collection of music? Tambo and I do this all the time, in fact we rather pride ourselves in trying to find songs that will lodge themselves into the other’s head until they beg us to give them said song. Being far more musically versed than I, she usually wins. I do however get a few good shots in. Like when I took her down with Joan Jett doing an obscure cover of Twisted Sister’s “Were Not Gonna Take It”.

Few can stand up to the coolness that is Joan Jett. The question we had was, who will take her place? She’s part of a generation of rock/punk women who fronted bands, wrote their own music and unapologetically tore up the stage. Jett, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Pat Benitar, Ann and Nancy Wilson, heck even Gwen Stefani to some extent fits the profile…. The question we had was who are their contemporaries now? Seems like there are a lot of pop princesses, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Avril Lavinge but none that seem to fill a black leather jacket the same way that Jett did.


In other news, our much-delayed shipment of 8MM stock hits the shop today! In order to crank out the backlog and get sufficient show stock made, I’m going to need to crank out about 40 hours of work in the next 3 days.

Welcome to hell week

I’m holding a coffee cup that is larger than my head. I don’t think the human body was designed to ingest this much caffeine in one sitting, enough to keep small tribes of indigenous Amazon peoples buzzing for days. Me? I’m sucking the fucker down like it was mother’s milk.

Welcome to the last big push.

I kissed my wife goodbye this morning, sent email to all those I loved and told them that if they wanted to see me, bring me lunch… and more coffee. I’ve got 10 days left to pull it all together, pack up the stock and deliver one hell of a show. No small feat, considering that 20% of my stock is not yet even in the damn country yet. This would send most folks into paroxysms of panic, me? I’m just drinking more coffee and hoping that my partners’ near legendary patience will hold out for this one last week.

As for those of you going to Shibaricon, oh man do we have a hell of a show in store for you. Here are just a few of the new things we have in store for you:

1) A new, never before seen exotic rope that is going to knock your socks off. (Thanks to everyone who helped me test run it this weekend.)
2) Our full color compliment (including the new Hot Pink).
3) New goodies from our friends in Tokyo.
4) A new book / DVD combo that you have never seen. (We will be showing all our DVDs at the booth so you can see them before you buy.)
5) Those amazing “ball end” ass hooks? Forget those cheap knock offs being sold elsewhere. We got the real deal, in three sizes no less. Small, Medium and OH SWEET JESUS!
6) New, ultra light, suspension rings. All the strength, half the weight.

Just to name a few.

Then there is the matter of all the free stuff and the bondage rodeo. I’ll talk more about that later this week, but couples who are going should think about participating. I’m looking for 4 couples who are comfortable with rope, but not experts, with rope should think about competing. We will be giving away over $1,000.00 in cash and prizes at the event.

My coffee cup is empty, the dye kettles are boiling and I need to get these new orders ready before Nerdy gets into the shop.

Time to turn up the Motorhead just a wee bit louder.