Jul 8, 20233 min read

Please Stand By - the Spring and Summer of '23 Prove to Be Very Crowded Indeed

It's been quite some time since I've posted here on the blog, and I have a few minutes this morning to get caught up.

The biggest online news is that I have decided to remove umbrellas and all-over Dad caps from my store, Lazy River Design Works. This was done for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that the manufacturer I've been using for them has made those products temporarily unavailable. That, together with the conclusion I've come to that the store needs some tightening of focus, resulted in their removal. I spent some time earlier today editing out the umbrellas and Dad caps from menus, inventory and page layouts, but I may have missed one here or there. Please bear with me as the tidying and tightening continue.

In other news, a couple of my Facebook friends suggested I create a YouTube channel for all my old music made in the early Oughts, so I did and named it shoesonwires. It's an uneasy blend of down-tempo/illbient and dark-abstract/ambient/experimental that has performed better than expected in the way of traffic; one of my tracks, Summertime Fever Dream, is closing in on 600 views (although I suspect this is due in large part to the unseen hand of the algorithm boosting a new channel with a lot of uploads in a short period of time). I see it mainly as another way to create an independent (and free) link to the store and another way to discover it. In any event, please do check it out if you're into that kind of thing. My own personal favourite is Where's the Boy, a tribute to the film, Angel Heart.

One reason that the store has been quiet lately is that almost all of my available computer time has been taken up with some graphic design work that is actually paying me some decent money. The project is still ongoing and hasn't been made public yet (it will be shortly), so all I can say about it is that I was providing illustration and graphic design work for an app in development. It's been a very enjoyable and rewarding experience; more on this when I can.

Another situation that has sucking up a lot of my time is the fact that our landlord gave us 6 months notice on our place about a month ago - we have to be out by December. He owns and operates a landscape company which has been based at his residence for many years and now he wants to move the business in here. It makes a lot of sense from his perspective, but puts us in a very difficult position. The basic problem is the rental market in Vancouver these days, which has gone insane. We were extraordinarily lucky to find this place two years ago at $1,200/month, and just as lucky to find our previous home at $1,200/month six years before that. Nowadays, 3 bedrooms in the Greater Vancouver area start around $3,000/month. Crazy. We have applied to BC Housing to find subsidized housing, but the wait lists there are longer than you think they are, and I'm assuming that you think they are very long indeed. We are hoping that being a family with a Special Needs kid like Rowan will count in our favour, but have yet to hear back. All the fingers are crossed.

And now I hear Rowan banging to get up. Later!