Today…
So, I started the day off by freaking out about everything that I had to do in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS – and kicking myself in the butt for taking the day off on Saturday. What was I thinking? I started to combat the growing to-do list in my brain with a trip to IKEA at 10am.
At IKEA, I bought two additional wall brackets (after receiving my inventory shipments, I realized I need three sets of retail shelves, not two), and a bunch of plants to liven up the space, namely my new Money Trees, and a few other succulents and palms.
I also bought a bunch of stackable stools that will be used in the open space for people to pull out with an easel.
(These IKEA stools conserve space, are inexpensive and hold 200 lbs, so they’re safe — meeting all of my requirements!)
After IKEA, I went to the space to unload, grabbed lunch with Jacob at our neighbor’s, the Dockside Tavern, and then went to Cash & Carry to buy cleaning supplies and check stock and prices against my menu’s grocery list. (I’m planning to send these prices to Sysco and a few other delivery vendors to see if they can meet or beat them). I did find out that Cash & Carry does not have any cooked chicken breast, which I NEED for our delicious sun-dried tomato chicken salad with mesclun greens on balsamic drizzled sourdough. SO GOOD! NEED CHICKEN!
Then I went back to the space and started cleaning. We got a lot of our equipment used, so there was some heavy duty grease and grime cleaning to get through.
I also plugged in all of our refrigerators (3 so far, including the kegerator and sandwich unit – still need 1 more), and put thermometers inside. They all have to be cooling to 32-45 degrees Fahrenheit in order to pass our kitchen inspection!
After cleaning, I waited for Jacob to take a break from the bar to put the third set of wall brackets up for the shelves. Then I went through all the inventory! I realized that even though I’d purchased over $3,000 of inventory, which is supposed to give me free shipping, they charged me $60 for shipping because $300 worth of supplies were on back order. Not cool. Gotta call them tomorrow.
(Just a small sampling of what I pulled out from the boxes).
Around 8pm, we started getting hungry, so I ran up to Lucky Labrador, my other neighbor, and got a few slices of ‘za and two 22 ozs of Lucky Lab brew – wheat stout for me and IPA for Jacob. On my way back in to the space, I ran into a girl that rented studio space in the building right next to me. She said she was from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and there were 30 other graduate students working in that space as well! How did I not know that?
I was super psyched to hear this news. I told her about The Canvas briefly, but my hands were full of pizza and beer and I didn’t get to tell her the whole spiel. And I made a totally idiotic move when I told her the space “…isn’t for artists, it’s for everybody! A creative outlet…” I have been kicking myself about that since. I’m so used to talking to non-artists about The Canvas in this language, that I carried it over to the audience that is probably more likely to use the space in the first place! Good grief. Lesson learned. Know your audience.
After pizza, I cleaned up a little more and then read an article about challenging the laws of Physics in one of the ‘zines I ordered for the space - Discover. It was pretty interesting. I love that magazine!! (Ordered National Geographic and a bunch of art ‘zines as well).
Then I rooted Jacob on to finish the bar tonight, but then realized it wasn’t going to happen and put my compass on “home” around 10pm – blog in head!
Here is how far Jacob got with the bar today, though. It is looking awesome!! We are using 1.5″ thick pine with a live (bark) edge for the bar top. We set it up on the finished part of the brick and dimmed the lights to see how it would look (awesome)!!!
(All of the brick we’re using was salvaged from our original building, built in 1900!)
Oh, and I almost forgot one of the coolest parts of my day – because you know, I’m big into signs and “coincidences”… After I cleaned my office, I looked down at the floor right by where my desk goes, and what did I see, but:
AB – my initials! Not totally a miracle considering the alphabet is painted all over the floor (our space used to be the old Norm Thompson building and we suppose they used the alphabet as an inventory system in their warehouse), but still pretty cool all the same.
So I’m ending the day feeling a lot better than I did starting it. Tomorrow we’ll finish the bar, continue cleaning, hopefully get our Comcast hooked up (come onnnnn Comcast), talk to my beer rep at Columbia, do some more work on food inventory and check on the status of my various licenses from the city.
Now, bed.
