CurlyShavings

I'll start by telling you that I don't know the answer to this question—I'm still struggling with how to answer it (although I've come to a current conclusion).

Background

You may not know this: I was recently (April) laid off from my company of 12 years. I'd known this was coming (was welcoming it, actually) and had been interviewing with a fair amount of success. But there was something nagging me in the back of my brain that said it was time to do something different. Reinvent myself, strike out on my own, take all that I've done and think about the problem from a different angle.

So I put things in motion so that when the day came (April 19th), I was ready to go the very next day. On April 20th, North Shore Nomads, LLC became legal, I started snapping up domain names, drafted a dozen different versions of a business plan, interviewed banks, realtors and brokers, joined the local chamber of commerce, got a cool logo, continued networking, talked with building owners and got things going.

And ordered business cards.

The Problem

What to put on those business cards? Is this a small business or maybe a startup? Am I an owner, a founder or an entrepreneur?

I'm taking an idea, finding that others have done similar things in other cities and bringing my vision of this idea to light in my own area. Sounds very similar to the example offered up on wikipedia for entrepreneur:

Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.

Since what I'm doing is a new twist on an old thing, I think that makes me an entrepreneur.

And for the moment (or until the cards need to be reordered), I'm the Owner.

Last night we enjoyed a fabulous dinner over at Cleveland's La Dolce Vita in Little Italy.

We sat outside on this cool evening and just took the time to catch up the other on the goings on. And since there has been quite a bit going on and even more going on to come, we took our time.

We shared a salad appetizer and both ordered the fettuccine. I had a glass of some delicious pino grigio*. We shared the chocolate cake.

You might think that because I can't tell you the details, that it wasn't fabulous. And you'd be wrong.

It was just that we were more intent on each other than the food.

(Photo from Flickr user KAHOONICA)

*Pino grigio says "summer". This was apparently a blend of pino grigio and chardonnay. It said "summer" all the way to the bottom.

We saw flowers and plants and frogs and birds and butterflies, oh, my!

Look, dad! It's as big as I am!

Well, not really, but it is a big fish.

At one time or another, each of my children have expressed wild fanaticism about fishing. With some of the children, it's happened multiple times.

A couple of Fridays ago we were out at Greater Cleveland Council's Beaumont Scout Reservation in Broadbent Camp's Sycamore campsite, (That's a mouthful.) painting my grandfather's Adirondack.

After the painting and before heading over to Orwell's A&W for some root beer, we stopped at Lake Klein and did some fishing.

I like to say that when you fish with children, you're lucky to get your line wet and this is largely the case. You're constantly untangling lines, clearing snags, baiting hooks or changing tackle.

I did manage to get a few mealworms onto a fly I would present to the fishes and I caught a couple of bream/sunfish that were worth eating. Some of the others caught some too, and with my favorite Repala ("borrowed" from and never returned to my dad's tackle box) I caught a small-mouth bass.

But Ben caught the big one.

The tackle box shown is right at 12", so that would put this fish at 13 inches or a little more.

Why didn't we take it home to eat? It's been a while since we tried, but back in the day, the children would insist that we bring the fish home and eat them. After doing this a few times and having the children refuse to eat them, we stopped. Haven't eaten a personally-caught Ohio fish in ten years.

Oh, and what did Ben use to catch this Behemoth? His new blue Storm Original Hot 'N Tot® #133.

Nice fishing, Ben!

Inspired by Jeanne's Toddler Skirt Tutorial over at Life in Cleveland, I decided to get some sky-blue and pink fabric for my daughters and give this a try.

A quick trip to Jo-Ann Fabric saw me in a weaker moment. The daughter (age 3) wanted a couple of different pinks and a couple of different blues.

Four yards later, we came home and I began measuring and cutting and sewing.

First, her waist is about 24" in circumference. (Oddly enough, so is the older daughter's!) Second, there's about 18" between where she wears her pants & skirts and her ankles. Third, I don't follow directions very well.

I cut about 16.5" off the 45" section of pink. And a 45" long strip of 5.5" wide blue. Then I followed the directions a bit, lined up the pink and the blue, rolled up the pink, made a tube of it all with the blue, pinned it and sewed it up. (See her blog post for better instructions.)

Turn all that right side out, iron the sleeve for the elastic, sew that sleeve, sew the skirt's sides, insert the elastic, fasten it into the sleeve and hand it to the girl to try on.

Then, it's outside to twirl around in the sunlight. We picked a daisy for an accessory (hope Mom doesn't mind)!

Of course the older one (age 10) wants one, too and Dad is quick to churn out another one. We still have plenty from these two yards for pockets and maybe a belt/sash, too.

The date/time stamps on the photos says it took 40 minutes to make the second one, however, I think it was a lot less—either that or fun makes time flies!

That was quite fun and I really like how they turned out. I'll cut out a couple pairs of pockets in a contrasting color (pink on blue and blue on pink), iron over the edges and sew those on tomorrow. And I still have two yards left for another two or three.

Eldest daughter brought me a skirt book with some excellent ideas for patterns which we might try. One is a double-layered skirt that would look excellent with the remaining sky-blue pink pair that we have.