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As you can see, I haven’t posted in awhile.  Eliz and I went to a trade show this past weekend up at the Sheraton Meadowlands.  We missed last years show because we were both sick, so I was looking forward to going this year.  I always enjoy listening to the sales pitches on why we should be carrying the company’s product or line of products.  I was especially looking forward to speaking to companies about getting their products on ForYourSalon.com – Professional Beauty Supplies and Salon Equipment For Your Salon.

Many of the companies we met with are ones that we’ve done business with in the past and have  currently on ForYourSalon.com, like Zotos, Marianna, and Satin.  For them, we just needed to order their new products and get artwork so that we can put the new stuff on the site.  Other companies we met with were those that we have some inventory, but haven’t gotten the products up on the site.  China Glaze, Fromm, and Mona Lisa Hair Accessories come to mind.  Then there are companies like Wm. Marvy Company.  We may have sold some of their items in the past, but we don’t have an inventory, but they have a product line that they will drop ship for us.  I love companies like that.  Their product line that I’m adding to ForYourSalon.com is barber poles.  It is a quality product that I don’t have to inventory.

It is nice talking business with manufacturers reps and other distributors, most of whom have been in the beauty biz for a substantial amount of time.  I always seem to learn something from these people.  Even the gung-ho, there-is-no-escaping-our-booth-without-learning-about-our-products sales peeps have tidbits of very useful information.  My favorite booth is always the Mona Lisa Clips booth.  The sales guy, who’s name I can’t recall at the moment, should be doing infomercials.  This year, he shared some ideas on selling his products and other similar products online.  He talked of calling the category Hair Management.  Hmmm, I thought.  HairManagement.com is just way too long, but HairMgmt.com isn’t.  It was a lightbulb moment.

We went back to our room and fired up a PC Margaret lent us and tried to get online.  One minute we were on, the next minute the page wouldn’t load.  We had enough time on to download FireFox, since the only web browser was the dreaded Internet Explorer 6.  It is not friendly to people like me with vision issues.  When we tried to run FireFox, we couldn’t get online at all.  After dinner, we called tech support to try and resolve our problems.  After an hour and a half, they told us there was nothing more they could do.  Turns out, it could have been the weather that night, but I’m not 100% on that.  The hotel refunded our money for the “high-speed” internet connection.  We then tried to use the complimentary computers the hotel has in the lobby.  It was like being back in the mid-80’s and on CompuServe with my 300 baud modem and my 8088 IBM-compatible computer built by Jim Conallen!  Each page load took between two and three minutes.  Eliz got as far as adding the domain to our cart and inputting the GoDaddy coupon code OYH7 to get the domain for $7.67 before the service went down.  (The next morning, I called Margaret — who stayed at our house with Meghan and our kids — and she completed the transaction.)

The only bad part about the show was my sight.  Eliz would tell me what booths we were passing and the items they had (if I didn’t know.)  She would also tell me if a person we knew was coming over to talk to us.  I can’t tell you how many times she had to tell me to shake a person’s hand because I didn’t see it extended.  That was the worst.  A close second was being in the hotel room.  Without a computer I could see (I don’t know why I just don’t say Mac) and the internet, I couldn’t research the items we saw on the show floor.  I couldn’t see what sites sold what products for what price.  It was like flying, uh, blind.  Eliz would go through the brochures and read me some of the things she felt was important.  I was so miserable, I’m surprised she didn’t throw me out of our eighth floor hotel window (with the wind that night, I would have had greater hang time than a Sean Landetta punt across the street at what was Giants Stadium.)

My sight continues to worsen.  By the end of the day, it is so bad I hate to write emails to customers for fear of embarrassing mistakes (forgive any typos here for 24 hours, please.)  I have also hesitated adding products to ForYourSalon.com.  I don’t want to sell one of those new Marvy barber poles for $4.99 instead of $499…  Surgery is only 27 days away, but I wish it was tomorrow.  I’ve always been told to be careful what you wish for, but I’ll take my chances on this one.

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It’s funny how excited I still get about snow.  This winter has been a dream come true.  I have always loved going out into the snow.  When I was a kid in the late 70’s and we had a couple of big storms (okay, big then, but not 2010 standards,) I’d have to shovel the driveway and some of the grass so our schnauzer named Schnappes could go out to play and do his business.

I would often shovel our elderly neighbor’s driveway first because of the “payment” I would receive.  Fresh-baked, homemade gingerbread men.  Wow were they good.  They were usually done by the time I finished shoveling our driveway.  One time, my dad came home early and noticed I had done the neighbor’s driveway first and asked why.  I told him because he couldn’t bake.

This last week has been great.  Two huge storms with plenty of snow.  Jake, Jane, and I started shoveling Saturday around noon (I had shoveled once on Friday night while Eliz was picking up Jake from school after he attended the school play Little Shop of Horrors.)  The three of us shoveled for about an hour and then Jane had to go inside to get ready for a Bar Mitzvah which she was attending at 5:00pm.  Jake and I continued shoveling so Eliz could get out and get Jane to her friends house to carpool to the service (thankfully the party was postponed until noon the next day.)  Jake and I cleared enough snow so Eliz and Jane could get out and had the whole driveway clean by the time Eliz was ready to pull in after returning from dropping Jane off and looking for a new shovel.

With yesterday’s storm, Jane and I went out to shovel.  I did most of the shoveling while Jane did some, but concentrated on building a snowman.  We were outside for a little more than an hour and had cleared a good portion of the area of the driveway by the garage doors and a path to the street.  I intended to go back out, but our power had gone out.  After resting for 10 minutes or so, Eliz said we should play a game.  The choices were Life, Monopoly, and Risk.  I am not a fan of Life and we thought Risk would’ve been too hard without power and little outside light due to the dark gray clouds and heavy snow coming down.  Monopoly it was!

We had fun playing for over an hour.  We stopped for a tea and hot chocolate break and as we started to play again, the power came back on.  We took a few minutes to power up the computers in the office and check for any sales on ForYourSalon.com (we had some!)  We resumed playing around 4:00ish.  After another hour, Jake was broke.  He went and watched Ghostbusters that was playing on cable.  Eliz, Jane, and I played on.  Jane was just about broke, but then she landed on Free Parking, where we start off with $500 and then add all the fines and taxes to the pot.  She scored nearly $3000!  She was down to one monopoly, but now had cash.

At around 6:00pm, the power went out again.  We continued to play with flashlights and a candle providing us light.  Eliz took too many rides on the railroads (all owned by me) and was living it up in hotels on Boardwalk, Park Place, Oriental Avenue, and Pennsylvania Avenue (also owned by me,) so she went broke.  With Jane only having one monopoly, she wasn’t bringing in enough cash.  I believe a stop at my hotel on Boardwalk finished her off.  It was the longest I’ve ever played.  It was probably three to four hours long, not including breaks.  It was awesome.  Had the power not gone out, we probably wouldn’t have played (and even if we did, we definitely wouldn’t have played that long.)

Today we all went outside around 10:45am to clear the driveway.  The area we shoveled yesterday had about eight or nine inches on it and was much easier to shovel today since it was lighter.  The rest of the driveway, included the path to the street which was covered over and as high as the non-shoveled areas, wasn’t as easy.  Snow had drifted in some areas and yesterday’s snow was still heavy and much icier.  It was so tiring mainly because of piles of snow along the driveway that we had to throw the shovel-full of snow over were so tall.

While we shoveled, we joked around with one another and talked at times.  We finished off the driveway and the area in front of the mailbox (in time to get one check and a blizzard of bills today.)  We went inside to rest for a few minutes and decide on lunch.  We ended up at Five Guys in Lawrence Park.  Even the ride there was nice in the heated car.  The restaurant had the heat cranked and it felt great there too.

The power had come back on just before we left for lunch at 2:00pm (I had to open the garage door manually, but by the time Eliz backed out and I came in to close the door manually the power was on,) so when we returned, it was back to work.  It was nice to see we had a few more sales to acknowledge since the power had gone out.

All in all, it was a fantastic 24 hours.  Without the power, we spent more time together as a family.  We worked together to clear the driveway (even though Eliz shouldn’t have shoveled since she is still getting therapy for her arm.)  It felt good to be with the kids without them wanting to bolt for their computers or a video game and me not taking another call or updating the website.  I guess we probably wanted to do that, but we couldn’t.  No matter, I still enjoyed the time together.  I can’t wait for the next snow.

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It has been a long day.  It started off with a trip to the retina specialist at 8:30 am.  We were a few minutes late, so only had to wait about 10 minutes in the waiting room.  Eliz had a cup of tea from the Senseo (or similar) machine, while I brought my own (my favorite Teavana mix: Queen of Babylon and Rose Garden Rooibos.)  I was called back into the first exam room, where I would (try to) read the eye chart and go over my eye issues.  Kelly asked about any of my eye problems and then noticed we were from Media.  She said she grew up in Wallingford.  When Eliz told her we did as well, she mentioned that she graduated from Strath Haven in 2002.  I told her I graduated from Nether Providence and Eliz from Strath Haven and Kelly asked if I went to school with her mother since I was born in 1954.  I laughed and asked if I looked 55…  I guess if there’s going to be a mistake, that one isn’t bad at all.  She corrected my birth year to 1964 and we moved on to the eye chart.

Again, I was unable to read any of it until I flipped the pinhole cover down.  Like magic, the E appeared.  I then said I know the next line is S and L, but I can’t see it.  She told me I was wrong.  What!?!  It’s not S and L.  Now I had to know.  I moved the pinholes all around until it was as clear as it was going to be for me.  I guessed O for the second letter.  Try again.  D!, I said next.  That was it.  The first letter (don’t ask me why I don’t read them in order) looked like it could be an O, G, or C.  I guessed G in hopes of it being the GD line.  No such luck.  C was my next try and that was it.  Kelly mentioned that this chart is made up mostly of similar letters that repeat often, so my usual deduction that I’ve got a one in 26 chance which increases with every letter doesn’t work.  I’m actually going to have to read them.

Once I was finished with the eye chart, Kelly took us to another waiting room, where Eliz read me the story of the Penn State mascot in a recent addition to ESPN magazine.  Before we could finish, we were called to see the doctor.  Dr. Garg asked me about my issues and mentioned that he had spoken to Dr. Pro about me.  He explained that even though my right eye doesn’t do much he still wanted to check it out.  Since my cornea is really cloudy and I have a pretty mature cataract in it, they would use an ultrasound to have a look.  He also explained a test they’d run on my left eye, to check for changes in the macular pigmentation.  Dye is injected via an IV (that’s iv, not roman numeral for 4) and pictures are taken.  After he mentioned the dye, I remembered that I had this test before.  The images are wicked.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a flash drive on me to get the images.

I went into another exam room to have the ultrasound and then back to the second waiting room to wait on the angiography.  After a 10 minute wait, Tom called me back to have the angiography.  He took a couple of images of my eye before putting the dye in.  The dye made me feel nauseous for about a minute.  Tom took more images and left to give someone an OCT scan (which took him all of five minutes — about 1000x faster than mine took on Monday.)  He then came back into the room I was in to get two more pictures.

I waited in the angiography room for a few minutes until they called me to see the doctor again.  He explained what he thought was going on.  He increased my use of one drop to three times per day and added another drop to try and get the swelling down in the retina and cornea.  He suggested that I wait on having the cataract removed until I see him again in six weeks.

After three hours, we were out of there.  We headed down City Ave to pick up Jane from school.  She called me just before the ultrasound and said she wasn’t feeling well, which I knew when she left for school.  I also knew we’d be right down the street from her and could pick her up after the appointment if she couldn’t last the day at school.

After I spent an hour, or so, at home (at which time I found out my mom had gone into the hospital — more on that below,) we headed over to Viva Salon in Springfield.  They’ve been having a problem with a hydraulic base that was still under warranty.  We swapped out the bad base for the good one that has been in our car since the move and headed to my next eye appointment.

I had scheduled this appointment with John Ruffini, another NPHS alum, to talk to him about the cataract surgery (and before I knew of any retina issues.)  He had a look at my still dilated left eye and we discussed my options and the problems that could arise from taking out the cataract.  He also thought it was best to see how the eye reacts to the increased drops and new drop.  I have put off scheduling the cataract surgery because of moving the business and the fact that it could undo the partial cornea transplant.  My left eye has endured seven operations over the years, with another one imminent.  I’m tired of going through these procedures and the recovery with mediocre success.  The risk/reward factor isn’t great, though I would do anything to preserve any sight I still have.

After leaving John Ruffini’s office, we made a delivery in Holmes and stopped by a salon in Milmont Park to look at a styling chair that needs replacing.  We returned home at about 4:00 pm and had an alarm company tech waiting to convert our system.  It took him about two hours (the whole story will have to wait for another time.)

We were finally able to head to Riddle to visit my mom.  She went to the hospital at around 8:00 am this morning because she was having shortness of breath and chest pains.  The doctor wanted to keep her overnight for observation.  She seems to be okay, though uncomfortable because of the shingles.  We are hoping to pick her up and take her home tomorrow.

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