I followed up with some of my stores to see how sales had gone.  Dufflet Pastries in Toronto reported selling three quarters of what they’d ordered, so that wasn’t bad for the first time out.  I’ve realized that it’s one of those things where once people know it they but it.  At first, though, it’s like, “Fruitcake?? No thanks!”

But don’t ask me how many fruitcakes I’ve sold, as people like to do.  They think I’m being coy, but I’m serious when I say, “I don’t know.”  The spiral bound notebook in which I record sent and received invoices only works for the stores.  For other orders, I put credit card receipts in an envelope for my poor accountant.

In March or April, she will hand me a tidy bunch of neatly typed stuff, and only then will I actually know the number of fruitcakes sold in 2008.  When I was interviewed for the Vernon Morningstar newspaper last month, the reporter asked me how many pounds of fruit I go through. I said, “Hmmmm, I’m not sure….”

Actually, I would have to say that I’m very much of an instinctual entrepreneur, and not your normal school-trained variety.  I just do things because something in my gut says to do it.  Later I find out I was just having heartburn, but by then it’s too late.

On Tuesday after the weight-training class I went up to the instructor and told her that I won’t be there next week.  I said I had to watch the inauguration on TV.  Actually, I mentioned it to lots of women at the club, and not one of them went, “me too!”  Maybe I am some kind of a nut??

My dear friend Alison is right there in D.C. in the thick of things, as her apartment is just three or four blocks from the Mall where it’s all happening.  She’s going to actually be standing there watching the whole thing, so I feel mighty jealous.  To placate me she’s bought me a deck of Obama playing cards in which Cheney and Bush are the jokers.

I had lunch with my old pal Ralph from teacher training days at UBC.  We always like to reminisce about the time the prof told us to lie on the floor and feel a dot moving through our bodies.  On another occasion he made us chant vegetable names in the dark.

At one point as our practicums loomed someone nervously asked the prof what to do about discipline problems, and he said, “Be creative, and you’ll never have a discipline problem.”

Needless to say the grade sevens I had for my first practicum made mincemeat out of me.  Ralph and I still laugh ourselves stupid about all of that, even though it happened over 33 years ago!