Inexcusably long post

My blog allows for the most recent 5 posts to appear on the front page, and I'd delayed posting anything new for a while because it would mean that the post about my grandmother would be moved off the front.

It surprised me to come to that realization.

I guess it's all been a little reminder that life can't be put on hold forever, and continuing to live doesn't mean I loved her any less.
Still, I miss her.

Thanks to Paul who has managed to transfer an audio recording of a conversation I had with her last year - I'm excited to give it a listen.


But now, to catch up to the present:
I did get a new car, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid mentioned in an earlier post.
That's right, baby, I'm driving car a from the future!!

I'm getting just over 41 mpg, which is nice, and it's a very comfortable ride. It was a bit more than I was expecting to spend, but it was the only car that combined some form of alt-fuel technology, physical comfort (oh for shame, VW, for shame...), and an engine that doesn't make me want to apologize for asking it to go up a hill.

As alluded to in an earlier post, I would NEVER have thought I'd be a ford owner, not after the 1972 Torino (apparently a good car, ugly as sin), the 1985(?) Thunderbird, and 1990-something Taurus our family had. That Thunderbird was.... a stunning POS, the Taurus, nick-named the white whale, had a variety of issues. And all the other Fords I encountered along the way just illuminated the trajectory of a company that had given up making decent cars and was, in fact, in business to pay its employees to stay busy.

So, imagine the surprise to stumble on the Fusion, almost as a lark, and find it was the best in its class (for my criteria, above). Lots of good automotive reviews, a glowing demo on Jay Leno's garage, and an experimental road test that showed hypermiling could get the Fusion to reach 1,400+ on a single tank of gas.

I'll miss my pretty purple car, which is admittedly far more fun in appearance than a staid, grey sedan. But the comfort, mileage, and safety features are really really nice changes.


"That's great, Liz" you say, not caring one iota about a new car, "but hasn't anything else meaningful happened lately?"


Well, the big news is that Paul left his job at the end of June to focus 100% on our cake biz. It's a weird time to be jumping in like this, but we have a few goals in mind:
1 - Really commit to the business for some time, rather than always keeping it at the margins. We'd been turning down cakes because we had too little time - and were too burned out from the few we could fit in, between both of us working full time at day jobs.
2 - If we end up not staying in our current space (still working on ways to buy it, mortgage market not so friendly these days), then we need to decide by next June if we need to find a space *with* enough room to run the business or not. Since that's such a huge difference, it's important to us both to take this time and really figure out if this business thing can fly.
3 - We've invested some great sweat equity already, and we'd like to see it pay off. We have fostered some great personal connections, have a great company truck with our logo and everything, and would like to see if the investments we've made so far will bring some returns.
4 - Paul and I needed to begin living a more balanced life, especially after he'd become physically ill after the last few deliveries because of how much stress even one cake added. It was really clear that the current model was not sustainable.

Strangely, we've been getting a lot of people contacting us recently, and it feels like the universe's way of saying this was the right move! Kind of nice.


There's more, but it's probably dull and this post is long enough.


So just one last thing - YAY SUMMER!!!!!!