Nearly Spring

Nearly Spring, if you look at the date it is, if you look out of the window it's not so certain. I am really fed up with the cold weather. It has been another busy week for both my hubby and I, he has taken most of the week off work to crack on with my new bug room and I have been posting orders, answering emails and continually feeding and cleaning my ever growing menagerie. I have received new millipedes and snails this week and I have also ordered a number of spiders (tarantulas & true spiders), scorpions, more millipedes and beetles. I hope these will arrive in a couple of weeks time. The bug room is certainly taking shape but there is just so much to do. I feel it is really important to get it right as I have never been happy with my current log cabin. It looks great but is impractical, the new bug room will be very practical. It will be painted white, all surfaces will be washable. The floor will be totally sealed as will be every nook and cranny. There are lots of pipes and permanent structures like the boiler for the house and alarm system, they all need covering so my hubby has made lots of cupboards around them. I'm glad he likes carpentry but he hates painting and sadly I have just been too busy to help with any of it. It's a good job he loves me!

The bugs are mostly thriving, I did have a strange thing happen yesterday. I went to send out a male Horned Baboon tarantula and it had mysteriously died. It was so odd as the spider only matured last month, he hadn't been near a female and he was fine last week when I fed him. I suppose sometimes these things just happen but it is unusual. I wonder if he was too damp or possibly too cold. I try not to heat my male tarantulas too much as this is likely to cause them to be more active and therefore lead a shorter life. He was on a top shelf but my other male spiders look ok, I have now moved them just in case. I saw my first baby Hissing cockroaches of the year this week. I expect to see lots more over the next few weeks.

I have quite a number of special offers running at the moment. This is partly due to the fact that I need to cut down on stock before the 'big move' but also because I have so much coming in each week. I really am panicking about fitting everything in, we won't know until it is all finished but I woke at 4am this morning worrying about it. My hubby says that if it really doesn't fit we will have to extend the bugs into my office and then have my office in the spare bedroom. That doesn't sound very feasible to me but it 'may' be an option. I have actually removed some of my 'super special offers' it seems that when something is reduced to a very low price, everyone thinks there is something wrong with it or the offer is too good to be true. It is so weird that when I put the price up again the items sell better! If you want to know why something is reduced, just ask, there is always a reason. The most common reason is that I have bred too many and cannot house them all. Sometimes people sell me their surplus stock and these too may appear very cheaply on the website.

A few quick bits and pieces - I wrote about selling some super bug earrings that I purchased at a show a few weeks ago. Sadly I haven't sold a single pair. Please take a look, they are really nice and great value (click on equipment or put 'earrings' into the search box). I love dangly earrings but I cannot wear them all!

I am having real problems getting plastic sweet jars to post off numbers of stick insects and my bulk buy cockroaches. The one and only shop that I know has old fashioned sweets in jars, recently changed hands and the new owner is now reusing the jars instead of simply throwing them away (or giving them to me). I have looked into buying new sweet jars but they are too expensive to make the offers worthwhile. There is also the problem of storage as I would need to buy a large quantity and they cannot be folded up or shrunk down. I really have nowhere to put them. Oh to be back in my large house in Hounslow! (not really, it was a great house but in an awful area).

I am still learning about my new website. A customer had problems placing an order this week, somehow the payment had been received from PayPal but I had no record of the order. I contacted my web guy and he talked me through placing the order manually from my admin side. I had no idea that I could do this, I assumed I had no access to people's accounts but it appears I do! I obviously don't have any access to the payment system but on this occasion I had received the payment but there had been a glitch with the ordering system. Fascinating but if I were to do it again I would probably need help. I did show my hubby in the hope that one of us would remember it, should we need to do it in the future.

I am learning French (well attempting to). I have a great course on CD (12 CDs), hubby has downloaded it onto my iPhone so wherever I am, if I have a few spare moments I can listen and learn a bit more. I try to do a little everyday and I'm really enjoying it. Wherever I go on holiday I seem to meet French speaking people and it is frustrating not being able to converse. I have also promised the French guys that I meet regularly at bug shows, that I will be able to hold a conversation with them at the AES show this year in October. They may even be at the BTS show in May, to that end I have also signed up to a "Conversational French for Your Holiday" evening course next month. I have decided that I should be fine so long as everyone speaking to me slows down by about 10 fold. At the moment it seems that someone speaking in French is actually saying one long word. Where are the gaps between words that I hear on my CDs? Wish me luck, I need it.

Must get going, I need to walk Teddi and then go and order the flooring for the bug room. Evidently as the room is an odd shape we will need a 4 metre roll of vinyl and I have the choice of two (it shouldn't take too long to choose then). I hope to get it fitted at the end of next week. Sadly hubby is working this weekend so nothing more will be done on the room until he has leave again next Wednesday. I don't know who will be more happy when the room is finally finished!