Port Charlotte, FL (82 degrees, blue skies)
We are back again at the Town Center Mall in Port Charlotte Florida managing what we call the Crazy Christmas Kiosk. This is our second year working for Slippermania at this mall and we are sharing it with our friends Randy and Fran. We work all mall hours, seven days a week, selling fun sport team related items.
You name it, we have it in a sport team item (mostly NFL and college teams) We sell reasonably priced items such as Christmas wreaths, beach towels, gnomes, Christmas ornaments, lanyards, wrapping paper, scarves, piggy banks, blankets, and yes lots and lots of slippers. It sounds like a crazy type of gig but it's a lot of fun. Folks love talking about their favorite teams and tell us some great stories. They are thrilled to find items with their team logos and the time for the most part goes by quickly.
Last year we ran the kiosk by ourselves and attempted to hire a few young adults to help out. Finding good help as we soon found out is hard to find. You have to be open all mall hours, seven days a week and being on your feet for such long hours can take its toil. This year we decided to ask our friends Fran and Randy to join us and it has worked out splendidly. We met four years ago at a NOMADS project in Eustis Florida and have kept in touch every since. They are lots of fun and such a pleasure to work with each day. John and Randy especially like going out to breakfast together and Fran and I enjoy movies at the theater in the mall during our time off.
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| Randy and Fran |
We've been here for 2 1/2 weeks and have put a lot of effort into setting up the booth and tagging all the items with prices. Fran has alphabetized everything to help finding an item so much quicker. Randy has offered some great suggestions on making the booth look more appealing. Each item as it is sold is entered onto a sheet which is faxed in each day to the warehouse. Twice a week items are delivered to our kiosk for restocking. The owner of the company has 26 locations in Florida malls and hires folks like us to work in November and December. He is a great guy to work for and gives you a lot of flexibility in running the kiosk.
This year he added a second kiosk with stainless steel barbecue tools called Sportula's. They are really cool and are selling well.
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| Sales for the Red Sox's have been phenomonal |
We are staying at an Harbor Lake RV Resort (Encore park) which offers a buy one month / get one month free deal. It's well maintained and has a nice pool. This time we can actually enjoy it due to sharing the hours at the mall.
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| Our sites |
We are enjoying kayaking more and more and decided to try and find hard sided kayaks for each of us. Our inflatable kayak has served us really well but we now wanted one of our own with more versatility and improved tracking. Facing alligators and rough oyster beds in Florida in an inflatable is a little unnerving. Randy has a Wilderness System Tarpon which he recommended as a good choice. After several months of searching on Craigslist and outfitter shops I found a gently used and reasonably priced one for sale nearby. We are now the proud owner of this twelve foot blue beauty Now I just need to find another one for John. :)
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| Wilderness Tarpon 120 Kayak |
Life continues to be good. John celebrated with 29th birthday yesterday (with 30 years of experience). Our friends brought red velvet cake over last night to celebrate with a funny singing candle. Yum! Happy Birthday to my favorite guy!
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| Jimmy's favorite pillow |
