Today was the launch of Missoni for Target. Sonia was up at 4am to order online and fought multiple website crashes before finally persevering. She also went to Target this morning at 8am to see what she could get. At 8:03am, everything was gone. Branding is an amazing thing. In some ways, we’re trying to become the Missoni of the South.

They’re making another movie based on The Great Gatsby, so I figured I’d give it another read. It holds up surprisingly well.

Breakfast burrito digesting. NFL ticket on the TV. Sonia’s chili cooking on the stove. Hoping for a 50% work free Sunday. So far, so good.

Brit’s team lost the first game of the new Gold level season. They led 1-0 going into the second half, but lost 1-3. It looks like it’s all about the subs at this level.

Another successful photoshoot in the books.

Because we’re currently dealing with a company financial crisis, we decided to celebrate “Fashion Night Out” on Rodeo Drive and spend money we currently don’t have.

This is how honors students do their homework nowadays.

It took two overtimes and a second round of the penalty kick shoot out to break the 0-0 tie, but once again Brit’s team came out on the losing end. Nevertheless, she’s over it and ready for the season to begin next weekend.

My mom’s dog, Shelby, approves of the pool.

BBQ & Pool with my Mom, Jim, Sean, Kim and the twins.

Playing their last tournament before the gold season begins next weekend, Brit’s team has looked great. They won both games, 6-0 and 3-0 and look to make it to the finals on Sunday. Brit seems to have shaken off her Achilles tendonitis and scored three.

We took my Mom and Jim to the Taste of LA “Burgers & Beer” event. We tried way too many burgers from the city’s best restaurants.

I finally gave my Aunt Ona’s greatest book collection a home.

We took over the space next door to house our growing inventory. We hope that it will help alleviate the daily shipping headaches we seem to be having. For instance, we just discovered that twenty seven orders were charged from last week, but did not get boxed and shipped. So, the only thing to do was to next day air a few hundred pounds of orders which wiped out all profits on the batch.

Last night I was entering an order around 12:15am and told Sonia, I’m done for today because I have a lot of work to do today. Somewhere around that time it became clear to me that I hate my job. Because of this I am now focused on my exit strategy. I need to work harder to put this company in a position to offer me a golden parachute. Two years or bust.

It’s midnight and she’s still going strong. Junior year is turning out to be a tough load to carry. Brit starts school at 7am and ends at 2:30pm. She then has high school soccer practice until 5pm. And then there’s club practice from 7:30pm to 9pm on Tuesdays and Thursday. It’s been hard to fit in all of that homework. She also managed to knock off number 99 by joining the fashion club and the breast cancer awareness club. Both family influences I guess.

No TV in the bedroom leads to more books read or more babies. I’m reading more books.

Finally, one hour of free time on the yard. If I keep my nose clean, the warden has promised another hour next weekend.

Burbank only allows food trucks on the last Friday of every month. I’m not waiting an hour for a grilled cheese.

Come on, Irene! We have enough road blocks to deal with. Leave our customers alone.

We’re officially drowning in production. #6 was officially knocked off a month or two ago, but now we’re forced to expand a little sooner than we would’ve liked.

There is only one eye sore on our street and it just happens to be our neighbor. I couldn’t take a very good picture because I didn’t want them to see me. However, their yard probably accounts for $50,000 of lost property value for us, so I’ll probably get meaner as time goes by.

Twenty trips to Home Depot later, we completed a few projects.

We painted the front door a dark red.

We Painted

Before

After. We opted for silver and grey/blue tones.

We opened up the wall between the living room and dining room.

Our biggest project outside of wiring the house for audio and video. It’s not the best before picture, but we opened it up about 32 inches wider and a 6 inches higher.

Who would have the gumption to host a party three days after they moved in?

Because we couldn’t just move in and enjoy the place for awhile, we decided to tackle a few projects right off the bat. The first was painting. The second and third more ambitious jobs were opening up the wall between the dining room and living room and wiring the house for rock stadium quality audio and video. We hired a guy our former landlord recommended to do the painting and wall. After five days of horrible work and shady comings and goings, we fired him. Turns out he was our landlord’s salsa instructor and had no business doing the work we asked. Devin and his girlfriend pitched in to help paint and we hired a reputable floor guy to finish the wall job. Sean provided a crew to do the audio and video work, but a few snags have prevented me from watching TV. Still don’t miss it. Pics of the finished jobs are coming soon.

It’s been 8 Days, 3 hours, 5 minutes and 36 seconds without TV. Nevertheless, I’m not missing it. Although I did buy another TV today, so go figure. It’s 9pm and what is suppose to be the final install is not going so smoothly for the crew. Maybe I’ll get another twenty four without the boob tube.

It may be a bit of a disaster zone, but at least it’s our disaster zone. For the very first time, Sonia and I slept in our own bed in our own house.

Today was Brittany’s first day at her new school, Burroughs High in Burbank. Cue the marching band. Montclair didn’t have a drumstick, let alone a whole band. As far as public schools go, it’s highly rated in Southern California. Her high school class of 2013 went from 50 to about 750. It will be an interesting transition, but I still think she’ll be a stand out when all is said and done.

When I asked her for all of the details, she said, “pretty good”. So, I’m thrilled. And it only cost us a house to get her in.

A few interesting facts about Burroughs. The 80’s hit television show, The Wonder Years was filmed on campus. The Burroughs’ Choir is a big deal. They have played on Oprah, Dancing with the Stars and were the inspiration to the television show, Glee. Ron Howard, Debbie Reynolds, Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams) and the voice of Mickey Mouse are all alums.

Dallas is in the books and was our best show yet. Despite a terribly slow show (it’s the economy stupid), Basically Me has struck a chord in the South. Now all we need to do is produce and ship what we sold. Sigh.

Escaped the heat and caught Stevie Nicks in Dallas.

Paying her for her time worked.

Teaching Britt the family business.

They do everything bigger in Texas, including roller skating cowboys like this guy. Our show coincides with the Western Wear show, so good people watching.

The first two days of the show have been busy. In fact, we have quadrupled our New York show numbers and matched the last Dallas show with two days to go.

Surprised by some rare cloud cover, Dallas residents on Thursday fell a day short of tying their all-time record for consecutive days at 100 degrees or above.

Sean brought his crew to outfit the house with TVs and surround sound. Nothing like starting a big project hours before a business trip.

Sean came by and removed my TVs from their walls. They will remain lifeless until they are rehung in the new house next Monday. This separation will help me adjust to the fact that we have decided not to hang a TV in our bedroom.

Headed to Dallas tomorrow. Can’t wait to be apart of the record setting 46th straight day of triple digit heat.

Celebrating all of the July birthdays.

Being that I’m a Francophile, I could’ve watched this movie without sound. I generally don’t like Woody Allen movies, but I enjoyed this one.

Wild applause all around……

We funded today, so escrow might actually close tomorrow. If that happens we get the keys on Monday, paint on Tuesday and leave for Dallas on Wednesday. When we move in is anyone’s guess. We had our final walk through last night, so here are way too many pictures if you’re interested.

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NYC was as hot and humid as we’ve experienced there. The traffic also seems to have gotten worse. Still, you can’t beat the Big Apple. On the surface, the show was pretty bad. It’s nearly three times the expense of the Dallas and Atlanta shows and lacks our core customer. With that said, we wrote about the same amount as we did in Dallas and Atlanta the first time around, so we’ll probably stick with it and continue to grow our customer base. If nothing else, it’s a great write off. It was also nice fitting in a visit with Matt and the family in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

I always make time to visit this Brooklyn steakhouse that was voted New York’s best steakhouse for 26 years in a row. The bacon is a must.

The first day wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but our target customer didn’t make the trip to NYC. Although we didn’t write the kind of orders we do in Dallas and Atlanta, we did manage to pick up a number of new stores in the North.

I made Sonia hike through Central Park in her heels, but number 50 took a tumble thanks to checking out this Egyptian marvel known as Cleopatra’s Needle. Here’s the scoop:

The Obelisk, nicknamed Cleopatra’s Needle, is the oldest man-made object in Central Park.

Transferring the 71-foot, 244- ton granite monument from Egypt to New York was an arduous and delicate process. It took 112 days from the time the Obelisk touched upon the banks of the Hudson River until it reached the Park. Laborers inched the monument on parallel beams, aided by roll boxes and a pile-driver engine. Thousands turned out on January 22, 1881 to marvel as the obelisk was turned upright.