A Little Ink Blot

Our donut mix manufacturing business doesn't run itself. Every week I set aside several hours to contact all the customers of a given area. Those customers order products that we manufacture and then deliver to them. So, while making calls, I am also tracking inventory, placing orders for ingredients, making sure the mixing gets done and the deliveries get loaded. And I have the joy of doing these things at a home office about 150 miles from our warehouse (we call the company The Hol'N One, and the warehouse is affectionately labeled "The Donut Warehouse").

It does require careful planning. For instance, maximizing a delivery requires that we load enough product to fill enough orders so that our excessive gas bills don't exceed 12% of our sales $$ for that delivery run. The previous owners had some good advice to give us on that score, and we are applying it. So, our customers are used to a once a month visit from us, and we have our delivery routes organized in 4 week segments. Very clever!

That means, oh joy, oh surprise, that when a fifth week occurs in our scheduling, we get a vacation!

This Memorial Day weekend was such a fifth week. None of our customers needed anything after Wednesday evening. And none of them called until the following Tuesday morning. So, we had the break we needed.

I got caught up on sleep. We did some necessary car chores (shocks, struts, new tires, carburetor repair). We spent a day visiting living and dead relatives. We had our first restful Sunday in a long time. My folks hosted the Monday bar-b-q picnic.

I feel fully recovered from that hectic schedule of 10 days ago, and it all starts over tomorrow!