Well, we start over again A couple of days before we left for Scotland, the franchise owner in Wisconsin whose store we were going to take over decided that he wants to keep it for himself afterall. So, now we’re looking for other available stores.

First decision point is the sale price of the store of course. James scratches out any store listed at more than $100,000, unless it’s a package deal of more than one store.

One of the main decision points of course is dog friendliness of any given area. If there is an off-leash dog park, perfect, or if there is one nearby, or even if they just allow dogs in the city parks on-leash. You’d be surprised at how many cities do NOT allow dogs at all in city parks. We rule out those cities entirely.

Second decision point would be cost of real estate and cost of living. If real estate is reasonably priced, we will look further at that city. If the real estate is affordable, And they have dog friendly parks, that’s 2 points in favour.

Another decision point, for me anyway, not so much James, is travel time for me to be able to visit family. There are a couple of opportunities in Washington State. The stores themselves are affordable, but real estate is particularly grossly overpriced, and by plane, it would take over 4 hours to get to Toronto and that branch of the family. However, I have an Aunt, Uncle and a bunch of cousins (from both sides) in British Colombia. I’d be able to visit with them a bit more often maybe, just take the ferry up. The real estate costs however scared us away from those stores.

So, that leaves us looking at a couple of stores in Michigan and Ohio.

In favour of one in particular in Michigan is its proximity to both a Tim Horton’s donut shop, and only 4 hours and 45 minutes drive to Whitby where my family is. There’s also a dog park only half an hour away. Real estate is fairly affordable, but one down side is property taxes are really high! Plus, it’s a suburb of Detroit. Winters will be cold, and summers likely stiflingly humid and hot. But, I’ll hazard a guess, summers don’t start in February like they do here in Western North Carolina!

The other shop in Michigan is over the other side, about a 6 hour drive to Whitby, and I dunno where the nearest Tim Horton’s is. I can’t seem to find information about dog parks, or dog friendlieness of the area, so I’ve emailed the Chamber of Commerce. Couldn’t find a contact for Parks & Rec.

In Ohio there are 3 stores within our price range that look ok. One is in Akron, which I think would be ok for me, but it’s a fairly large city and James may not like it there. But, they’ve got a dog park, and real estate is reasonable. It would be a 6 hour drive to Whitby, and a couple of hours to the nearest Tim Horton’s, which is I think in Erie, PA.

The other 2 are in smaller cities, which both look ok, but I can’t find information on dog friendliness and their Parks contacts have not responded to my email enquiry. Which in and of itself tells me we wouldn’t want to live there ‘cuz they’re rude :-p

Or, we could just suck it up and stay here. Where there’s no jobs, and its not very dog friendly. We may be moving into James’ parent’s house in a few weeks so that we can finish fixing up this place and not have to live with drywall dust and tripping over boxes and whatnot. We’ll have to build a fence over there first so there’s someplace for the dogs to go out and we won’t have to worry about having to tie them up and them tangling each other. I’m not sure I like that idea, it sounds kind of permanent to me, but James insists it isn’t. Oh well, what can ya do eh?

In the meantime, James isn’t working, and I’m down to only 2 or 3 - 4 hour shifts per week. Not much to live on that’s for sure. If we stay, James will have to find a new job, or go back to working for the Domino’s franchise here. Which I know he is loathe to do. The new GM at the store for some reason doesn’t want to use me as an Assistant Manager as I’ve been trained, but just as a CSR. He still has to pay me the Assistant Manager wage however, which costs him too much, hence the cut in shifts. I can only assume why, but for whatever reason, he won’t schedule me to run a shift, despite the fact he knows I can, and have done in the past.

I’ve considered looking for other employment, but I have no idea how long we’re going to be sticking around here, and I’m going home for a visit the first week of July. Its difficult to go look for a job and say “but I need a week vacation to start out”. Most employers around here don’t even grant vacation time until you’ve completed your first year. And even then sometimes they don’t. Labour law here in NC is geared toward the employer, rather than the employee from what I’ve seen so far.

Not to mention of course, school is out this month and I’d be competing for the same jobs that the college and high school kids would be going for. There’s really only retail jobs and retail food jobs around here. I could work at a grocery store maybe. I don’t think I could work for Domino’s as well as some other fast food, but it would be a conflict of interest to one or the other. Or both. Maybe K-Mart or Dollar General er summat. *sigh*

I wanted to BBQ some ribs this evening, but its going to rain. And I forgot to take them out the freezer.

What to do, what to do?  ¶ 4:20 PM