I spent about an hour trying out all kinds of titles for this weeks missive.  Awesome Amherst, I Love Amherst Fans, New Guys and New Jobs, Peggy Back On My Good Side....but the only thing that stood out from this week was my terrible planning skills.  I can't blame it on Tank, nor Peggy, nor Martha Stewart.  I just blew it.  I guess I should explain. The week rolled along a little on the disappointing side.  Last Saturday, the Liberty Mens Basketball was better, but just barely covered my expenses.   Tuesday's double header was much the same.  The only really bright spot was adding Dan Joslin to our band of merry idiots as he became our chief hawker.  We'd load him up with drinks or funnel cakes and send him out with the instruction of "be loud and obnoxious."  He was.  And sales improved. Thursday's auction was OK but not great.  Three loins but I froze my butt off.  The day started at 24 degrees and got very little warmer.  One thing really hurt us as there are now a bunch of new drink machines selling for $1 and I can't compete with that.  So my drink sales pretty much disappeared. Then came the two VSHL Championship games on Saturday.  The first game was somebody from near Charlottesville against Richlands and the late game was Amherst versus somebody else I'd never heard of.  Before the start of the Amherst game, we ran out of bottled drinks.  By halftime, we ran out of batter.  By then we were adding powdered sugar a grain at a time as we were out of that.  In between, I'd made emergency calls to my sister to bring us more napkins, more batter and sugar.  That was all gone as were all of our forks, spoons and knives.  We got clobbered. Set a new record for my best day as we surpassed the old record from Belvedere by $120.  Not bad, but I probably left $500 on the table if my planning had been more on target. Just to give you and idea of what the day meant.  We went through 80 pounds of funnel cake mix; 45 gallons of water; 45 pounds of sugar and almost a case of lemons; 13 pounds of powdered sugar.  And we were packed up and gone by the start of the fourth quarter. Since Steve was placed on injured reserve because he hit a wall...or a wall hit him...something with a wall.  Anyway, he broke his hand.  Tank brought in Matt Fauske and you talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.  His first day working with us and he got blindsidded by our biggest day.  Basically, he ran the front.  Tank and Pete cooked.  I did steaks and kept squeezing lemonade and squeezing lemonade and squeezing lemonade and squeezing lemonade.  Peggy made batter literally all day long.  I'm surprised she didn't burn up the mixer.  Dan went out hawking with drinks and kept coming back every five minutes because he sold out.  Then after we ran out of drinks, he cooked some to give Tank and Pete breaks, and backed up Matt topping the cakes and serving customers.  The boys were terrific. You might ask why I stayed in the background and let the boys do all of the work?  (Actually, I stayed fairly busy myself but in truth, I had the easiest day of the six of us.)  We're working on getting ready for next year's football at Liberty where we'll be set up on both sides of the stadium.  So the boys could have a ton of business in two locations cause I might be at JMU or Belvedere or God knows where else.  Anyone know where I can find about ten more fryers? For now things slow down for a couple of weeks.  The next huge event is Winterfest at Liberty on December 30th, New Years Eve and New Years Day.  I'm not doing basketball games until the kids get back after the holidays.  We'll do the auction each week but I'm told it slows down until after the first of the year.  I might--depending on the weather--pick up a Walmart or two in the interim but really want to try to get into the holiday spirit and make a long overdue trip out to spoil my grandson a little.  We'll see.