All About Photography and Line Cutters

There's hardly anything you can do as an entrepreneur that doesn't require photography. As a glass artist I need photos of my work. As the owner of a rental property, I need pictures of the property. Heck, even as a blogger I need photos because nothing but words, words, words would get really boring! So today I spent a lot of time on photography. Oh I didn't take any pictures of the apartment, nor did I take any pictures of my work. But I got out the new camera and shot a few pictures in the garden, and then I spent an hour trying to get them off of the camera... Yet a few more things that are still in Montana (card reader, charge card, camera usb cable). But that's okay, replacements for these are quick and cheap from Amazon, and will be here Monday.

Photography also came up earlier in the day when I asked Zaga to do a walk through of the apartment and she said I needed art on the walls. I didn't want to go buy something generic from a chain, I don't have any extra work that we are not displaying in the house, and I can't afford to just go out and buy all new one-of-a-kind work or even prints. But what I do have are a lot of good photos, and I was lucky enough to find a Groupon for a company that prints photos onto canvas and I got three 30X20 canvas prints for $29 each and two 16X20's for $17 each. That is a SUPER deal, and I had three large landscapes from Glacier National Park printed on the 30X20's and a deer at the National Bison Range and a mountain goat from the Park printed on the 16X20's. Supposedly I will have them in 7-10 days. I'm not going to wait that long to do the initial photography of the apartment, but I'll keep updating the marketing photos as I have new, cute things to add.

And that's the happy part of the post. For the rest, I would love it if I never drove out shopping again. As I was getting into line at CostCo a woman walked in front of my cart and pointed for her partner (who had their cart) to get in line. In front of me. She saw I was getting my cart to the line, she didn't have their cart (and was therefore more maneuverable) so she cut in, and looked at me flatly, daring me to say anything. I didn't make a fuss, but I fumed. As they were finishing checkout and my stuff came up the conveyor belt, a plant I had tipped over and spilled little pebbles all over their package of steak. The clerk laughed nervously and said something about sorry for any pebbles on the steak (package). I commented under my breath that that's what happens when you cut in line. My aggression was passive.

Then I went to Home Depot looking for new knobs for the cabinets in the apartment. It sounds petty, but they were white plastic and are now all yellowed and gross so I decided to replace them. I found some nice black ceramic ones for 97¢ each, but they only had 20 and I needed 34. So I asked an employee if he could help me, and he said no but took me over to a man working in that department so he could assist. That man was cutting a key for a woman so I stood there patiently waiting and the other employee stood with me too. Just as the man handed the woman her cut key another man walked up, handed him a key and said, "I need three of these." The man I was waiting for calmly took the key and started to duplicate it--saying nothing to me. The new customer also ignored me. I said, "Excuse me, I've been waiting and I would like help with these knobs." The employee said nothing to me just went on calmly cutting the keys, and the customer went on calmly waiting for the keys as if I hadn't said anything, as if I weren't there. Then the guy took his keys and left, the employee walked me over to the knobs, fiddled around with his inventory device a bit and told me there were no more. I calmly said thank you, put all the other  knobs back in the bin, put the empty shopping bucket on the floor, and walked out. As I headed to the exit I had to pass by the man who cut in front of me for keys and I walked up to him at the self-checkout and said, "I have to know, did you intentionally cut in front of me to get your keys or did you just not see me?" He said he didn't see me, he had been painting all day, and whatever. I said, "Huh. This is the third time I was cut off today and I'm beginning to feel invisible", and I walked away. (The first time I was cut-off was driving to the store.)

As I drove home there arose another moment when someone didn't want to wait through the line going straight at an intersection and so got in the lane that had to turn left and then tried to cut over. Actually there were two cars who tried to cut over, both of them tried to cut in front of me but the first one didn't push it. The second one did and started to come over into the lane while I was still there and I moved slightly out of the way and kept going, forcing him to drop back. He was very pissed and kept trying to get in a position where he could cut in front of me, but it didn't happen. That's it. I'm done driving and shopping. I can get everything I want on-line--especially since I was only able to find about 50% of what I needed in the actual stores. I was told at the stores that the other things I needed were available in their on-line stores.

Tomorrow we're off to San Antonio to stay the Hill Country Resort for a long weekend. I think I'll let Dave drive. Zaga is pet and house sitting again--I really won the friend lottery with that one!!