08:02 – With only four days left, it looks likely that we’ll go over the “fiscal cliff”. My bet is that congress will extend the Bush-era tax rates for the middle class, while allowing the other tax increases and spending “cuts” to occur, except perhaps extended unemployment benefits. The core problem, out-of-control spending on social programs and the military, won’t be addressed. As we’ve seen in Europe, politicians are quite capable of ignoring unpleasant realities for years or decades on end, if that’s what it takes to continue getting them re-elected.
09:19 – We met our goal of selling 250 science kits for CY 2012. The goal for CY 2013 is 500 kits, which I think we’ll be able to do. Of course, the bulk of those will sell in the second half of the year. The first four months of the year will be slow, and we’ll use that time to prepare for the pickup in sales volume that starts in April/May and then turns into the rush in July through October.
Barbara has more time available during the winter months because she’s not doing yard work. So, starting the first of the year, we’ll be labeling bottles and envelopes, thousands and thousands of them, and putting together subassemblies for the various kits. We’ll start with a first pass of 60 to 90 sets of each. Once those are complete, we’ll do another batch of 60 to 90, and keep repeating that until we run out of time.
Many of the chemicals in the kits are stable indefinitely, so we’ll also fill those bottles ahead of time. Some chemicals are stable for years rather than decades, so we’ll hold off on filling those until closer to the time they’re needed. Overall, my goal is to have as much work done as possible by the first of July to allow us to assemble 300 kits on-the-fly in addition to having 100 or so kits ready to ship.