Two mystery photos. First is a plant which has appeared on the small hill in the Caravan parking lot. It could be a weed but I don't want to uproot it just in case it's a flower worth keeping and encouraging. If no one knows, I guess we'll wait and see how it looks in a few weeks.
The same hill also has a new hole problem. We have a critter, or family of critters, which are digging burrows like crazy, with such vigor and enthusiasm that even the grass and weeds above their tunnels are dying. I'm guessing either chipmunks or moles, but have yet to see any living creatures. If I was young and had night-vision goggles, it might be fun to camp out some night and see what I could see. But I'm not young and have no special goggles, so that's out. The holes are about 2-3 inches in diameter and there are lots of them. And I see as I review this page that the holes in the photo above look like eyes, but that's just an accident from how I cropped the photo. Here's another photo showing the entire burrowed area.
If you know what the plant is and/or have a guess as to what the burrow-diggers are (and how I might humanely get them to live somewhere else before they ruin the entire hill), please let me know. Thanks!
One of our suppliers visited a couple of days ago and the retail staff, after an hours-long shopping spree, have been busy checking in, pricing, and tagging hundreds of new strands of Czech glass. This photo shows part of the crime scene.
We just finished unpacking our April sea shipment from Miyuki. The total weight was around 3,600 kgs or almost 8,000 lbs. This is an average size shipment for us. We occasionally get smaller ones and we've also gotten more than two hundred cartons in one shipment. One shipping carton usually contains 25 kgs (55lbs) of beads but that also varies. One thing is for sure: at the end of a day of schlepping boxes, they seem to weigh a lot more than they did in the morning. Unpacking them is a pretty good workout.
We put a barcoded label on every bag of beads as we unpack the cartons. Delicas typically come in 100 gram bags, so one kg of Delicas requires ten labels. For a good-sized shipment we might print and apply 15,000 to 20,000 labels. (Driving the electric forklift is more fun than labeling.)
The forklift is the only all-electric 'vehicle' I've ever used. Its top speed is perhaps 6-8mph and ours weighs around 8,000 lbs and can lift a maximum of about 3,200 lbs. Believe me, it's our best friend when a truck pulls up with tons of beads on board.
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