71 thoughts on “Seller’s Market”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Busy weekend Dale? I hear congratulations are in order for a new college grad! What’s next for Gus? Lou and I were commenting yesterday that we both still remember you announcing his birth.

    When I bake cookies or anything else they vanish magically. The product just goes away. I don’t do it often because I myself move too much of the product.

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  2. Good morning. Well, I guess that would be a bad time to shop for flowers for Mother’s Day. That would also be a little late in the day to show up with flowers for Mother’s Day. At that point I think a really big box of chocolates is needed or maybe jewelry. I’ll need to think a little more about a product I was able to move because it was in short supply.

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  3. Commencement is May 27. But at Luther there were events each weekend before that, such as concerts and award programs. So I think St. Olaf is the same and that Dale has and will be busy for two weekends yet. I will leave it to the usually quiet father to tell you about Gus. If he doesn’t, I will tell you what eh told me in an email about a guest post.

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    1. It does mean we need to fill those empty flower bins with guest blogs. I just send another cartoon character blog. A turn from everyone else should come ahead of me.

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    2. I’m trying to remember Gus from the days he showed up on TLGMS. He was a pleasant, bright kid who was not intimidated by being on the radio. Garrison had his kid on his Morning Show, too. I think it was Garrison’s kid who did magic tricks on the radio.

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    3. I saw Gus when he was theater manager (not the right term) at a Fringe Festival venue within the last couple of years. He was a very impressive young man (no surprise there). Congrats to Gus (and Dale) on a great accomplishment.

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  4. We were so busy last Monday through yesterday that MD flew only barely above the event horizon. The Australia TV thing on Sunday morning took what little mental energy we had left.
    As an English teacher I had no trouble moving the basic nouns and verbs and the adjectives. The precise and descriptive parts of speech sort of mouldered on the upper shelves. As a pastor the loving hands were left in the pockets, but extended index fingers were busy, and maybe the middle ones outside my sight.

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  5. It seems $4.99 doesn’t buy much in the way of flowers these days. I’m sure that, somehow, it must be Obama’s fault. Or our collective fault for voting a Muslim to be president.

    The only time I worked in retail I wasn’t required to move product. I clerked in a fly fishing shop near the Brule River in northwestern Wisconsin. It was owned by a rich guy who didn’t particularly care about making a profit, so we ran the shop according to our whims. Our products carried no price tags. If an unpleasant guy came in, we would charge so much on any sale that we weren’t likely to see that person again. More often, when impecunious but good-hearted folks dropped by, we sold stuff at a loss because that felt right.We used the shop to correct the unfortunate distribution of wealth in this world, with so many undeserving SOBs having so much money and so many cool folks having too little. If your breakfast was four beers, this made a lot of sense..

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    1. loved the brule, the fly fishing shop prices make sense in that context, i will never forget the bed and breakfast in germany where they had this great breakfast in the breakfast room complete with the fruit cereal eggs bread cheese meat and juices, the day i am remembering this group of 4 german guys came in and were obviously here on a routine business trip, likely the same trade show i was at a mile or so away and the fellow in the corner had the basset eyes and red nose of w c fields, his friends went over to get breakfast at the buffet and order some eggs and he started out the day with a beer. as he drank it he began to look a bit better, as his friends ate he ordered another beer and started to come around enough to join in conversation by the end of breakfast he had finished 4 beers and was in the mood for eggs toast and some bacon. he waddled out in that wc fields fashion ready to slay todays dragons. life is much easier when the world takes on the proper perspective. i dont think he would have been a good helper at the fly fishing shop and a s a customer his prices would have varied depending on what part of the daily cycle he stopped in during.

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    2. Beer is usually is a product that moves fast at our house. I drink most or all of it whenever there is any in the house and I don’t let it get too old. However, I didn’t have four beers for breakfast, but I can still make sense out of what you wrote, Steve. I think some of the stuff I write would make more sense if read after drinking four beers.

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      1. The guy who replaced me as editor of the magazine was a drinker. I was told he would be reasonably sober until noon, when he would drink his lunch. He was cranky in the morning but full of love in the afternoon. Writers figured this out and learned that an article he turned down in the morning would be sure to be approved after “lunch.” We were more consistent when we clerked at the Brule River Tackle Supply. A four-beer breakfast means you are full of love for your fellow humans all day long.

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    3. Oops. Just used my last T-Sac, Steve. Should head up to your neighborhood to the Tea Source. But will not happen. Guess I’ll se those strainer things I hate.

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      1. I’d love to host you and Sandy anytime, Clyde. And there’s the half-price bookstore near here, too.

        Apropos of baboon socializing, PJ and I are going in a few minutes to check out Noerenberg Gardens.

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  6. Like Jacque and her cookies, I do have a product that can always quickly find a home. That product is my home grown tomatoes. Early in the season my wife and I eat all of them. When my tomatoes are in full production I usually have more than enough to eat and can. The extras never go to waste. I have no trouble finding people who are willing to take them. Usually they go to some of the other workers at the office where my wife is employed, but I can also find plenty of takers among my neighbors in Clarks Grove.

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    1. Sounds like you move product the same way I do, Jim, by giving it away. I have no trouble getting rid of stuff by putting it on Freecycle; Craigslist that’s a whole different story.

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      2. Does your obsession extend to creative proposals Beth-Ann? Send me an email and I’ll send you a reply showing a special project that an artist friend of mine created to help a young man propose to his beloved.
        mnstorytelr (at) comcast.net

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      5. Beth-Anne, that is very interesting. I didn’t know about that. I am familiar we both of those people who are top supporters of seed saving. I didn’t make to the seed savers meeting where Cary Fowler spoke,but I have read some things by him and read about him. I am very well acquainted with Amy Goldman who is a very good seed saver, and a big contributor to the Seed Saver’s Exchange both as the head of the board and as a donor. I have visited with her at several seed saver’s meetings and both her management and generous donations to SSE have been very important to the growth and development of SSE. Her books on seed saving are also very well done.

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    3. My chiropractor “moves” a lot of our excess zucchini and cukes from his waiting room. He works close to here, so I take a big basket end of July that we keep stocked till the first frost. His clients are happy… a win win situation. Some days we also set up a free table at the top of our drive for passersby on the way to/from the park.

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      1. I love everyone else’s zucchini excess! During my CSA experiment a couple of summers ago, I now have a good collection of zucchini recipes, including a very tasty white chocolate chip zucchini cake. Anyone w/ excess zucchini this summer — just let me know!

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  7. i sell lawn and garden products and the whole idea is to have what they want when they want it. sprinklers in a drought are good. lawn mowers in a rainy season, snow blowers in a blizzard, sidewak deicer when the storm hits fertilizer when the dandilions hit and flower seeds wen cabin fever is setting in. hammers sell every day at about the same rate, garden stuff has a variable winter stuff ,lie shovels blowers and deicer depend totally on the weather. i heard the other day that fans sell best for back to school at the college dorms.to everything there is a season. i noticed a shortage of salsa at cub on cinca di mayo too

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    1. tim, that makes all kinds of sense, and I’m sure you’re right about that. Personally, I like to buy things I need at the end of the season so I don’t have to pay full price. Christmas ornaments are best bought the week after Christmas, bathing suits at the end of swimming season. I’m not fashion conscious enough to care that I’m wearing last year’s model.

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      1. i always have this hesitation about buying next years clothes on clearance because i am absolutley going to lose the extra 20 pounds i have picked up over the last 10 years. cnt be that tough how the heck did i let that happen anyway… well next season i am no smaller and maybe things have shifted a bit so the weight is the same but the distrabution is different. i remember the old levis comercial for the model 501 levis with a scosh more room in the seat and thighs. i wondered what they need that for, now i understand.

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  8. As I’ve already established here, I’m no good at sales. If I’m going to move a product, it has to sell itself. My best bet is probably food. Seems like whenever I cook for friends it’s well received. That, of course, could be because I have polite friends, but I like to take credit for being a reasonably good cook. I’ve also discovered that it’s not a good idea for me to cook dinner for husband and me in larger portions than what two people our age should eat during a single meal. Instead of left-overs, intended for part of next day’s meal, we end up eating larger portions than is good for either of our waistlines.

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  9. Most any baked goods I bring into the office disappear quickly. Zucchini cake rarely makes it past 2pm, other cakes might last into a second day if I bring in the full cake and the folks on my team have a lot of meetings (and so aren’t at their desks much during the day). Brownies, gone. Cookies, poof. Friendship bread (from Ben’s starter) – fuggedaboutit…gone before noon.

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      1. I have put my starter on temporary hiatus (it’s in the fridge), so I don’t think I will have starter ready by Sunday – but can certainly get you some next time I get it going.

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    2. I’m very glad that I’m not stationed at company HQ in South Carolina when, once or twice a week, a birthday, departure, baby or whatever is honored with amazing treats. When I was in an office, I would manufacture the most creative reasons to leave my desk and just happen to pass by the treat table.

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      1. You would be manufacturing reasons here today… I’m in charge of a birthyday today. I made little cups from oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough. Vanilla ice cream in the cups w/ either chocolate, caramel or homemade strawberry sauce!

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  10. Let’s see. Dill when everyone’s cukes are ready to pickle, eggplants when a the chamber of commerce sponsored an Italian dinner, rose cones in November, 50 foot hoses in August, Tomato plants in June after a very late frost, Swany White flour after the fire. it seems we are always looking for things at the wrong time. Pies seem to vanish into thin air in our house.

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      1. styrofoam carbage can looking things that you put over the top of your rose bushes to help them winter. i went to the tip method 15 years ago and now i buy roses that either make it or dont. to heck with those hybred teas. i am a zone 5 rose bush guy form the u of m arboretum

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        1. We were given some small potted gift roses which I think must be tea roses. I put them out in the garden to see what they would do. I was surprised to find they can make it through the winter here and that they do well in my garden without too much care.

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        2. We have good luck with tea roses. We even had a bourbon rose that bloomed for years. They aren’t supposed to grow here at all. We find that it is too much freezing and thawing, not the absolute cold, that hurts roses. Last winter we didn’t put the cones on at all. I used them this Spring for daughter to practice parallel parking.

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  11. my office manager spent time in equador for the peace corps as a business mentor of sorts. he said he tried to get the people selling bananas and oranges to do it differently. they had all the banana sellers lined up in a farmers market set up in one part of town and all the oranges in another he encouraged them to go to a completly different part of twown to ge tthe people who were on the way to the market before they got there and had to decide between 100 banana guys same with the oranges. he said they tried it and looked very uncomfortable and the people who walked by wondered why they werent where they belonged. in a short test period a failure was proclaimed and all returned to life as it should be.

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  12. Morning all! The things that seems to move the fastest these days for me are hours during the summer weekends. I can’t keep them on the shelf – right now I have in my possession invitations to FIVE different things on June 9 alone. And they are all things that I want to do, of course. Good grief.

    OT – big congratulations to our Lisa. The Rutter “Gloria” yesterday was FABULOUS and Lisa had a solo during the second section!

    Second OT – the meal at Wise Acre Eatery was very nice. Their honey mustard house dressing is wonderful and we also shared an cream cheese and veggie sandwich that was very good. The only caveat is that from 3:30-5 they have a severely restricted “happy hour” menu as they turn the kitchen from their lunch service to their dinner service.

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        1. id like to come up some weekend this year but i am not able to pull my calander this spring. i will get on it and get back to see when is available.

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  13. When I worked at Bookstore of Edina (in the Galleria in the 80s), there were a couple of books I really “hummed to”, Living in the Light and Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. For some reason I could really sell these books, we couldn’t keep them on the shelves. I requested that they stock more of them (and similar “spiritual” books) but they wouldn’t. It led me to eventually have my own little business – one wall of books in the shop of a friend of mine – for a few years… I sold a lot of those books there.

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  14. I think my daughter got to that Cub right before you, Dale. It was a little before 7:30 when she got here with the flowers. She said there wasn’t much selection.

    I’m not much of a seller of things, but last fall I needed to thin my grape hyacinths and posted the extras in the free section of Craig’s List. In 5 minutes, I had 3 takers.

    Other than that – like other Baboons – it’s all about food, good food. Homemade cookies. Lemon thyme biscuits. Fresh bread. Homemade pizza. Chocolate mousse cake.

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