Today.

What I did today.  Hmm.  Seems like not much.  Went to the powdercoating place, picked up my three pans.  Dropped off my customer's pan, he said it may be done tomorrow.  Asked Shannon (owner) about re-powdercoating some of my QC pans and QC wheel... he said that it would be best to get them sandblasted first, which he said would run me about $30+ per pan, and then get them powdercoated, so another $10ish.  And then he asked me what it cost to buy my customer's pan (it was a new pan I just bought for one of our for-sale cages) and I told him it was like $25, so he said it would be better worth my money, if I'm concerned about the QC pans, to just buy new pans and have them powdercoated, as it'd cost less in the long run.  Good point.  I haven't worked on getting any of the QC's ready for the new setup, but when I do, I'm going to take a look at the pans.  If I really feel they need to be replaced, I will call up Bass and order them all at once (and save on shipping) and then get them powdercoated.  If I think they can go for a few more years (which is likely the case-- the powdercoating's coming off, but I don't think they're rusting quite yet), then they will, and I'll just keep Shannon's card. 

Asked him about the QC wheels.. he said if I had a way of getting the sheetmetal round part off of the wood, they could re-powdercoat that.  He said if they were to cover the wood and re-powdercoat the metal, the drying process is so hot that the wood would twist and warp.  Oh yeah, forgot that powdercoating happens at what, 140? 150+? degrees?  Yeah, wood warps when I keep it in the car a few too many hours, so I could definitely understand that.  Looked at one of the wheels today when I got home, without taking it out of the cage (I know, genius, really easy to tell how things are put together when you're looking through bars), and I think the wood part is screwed onto the metal, but I will look at it better later.  If it really is a few screws, I would just pop off the rounded sheetmetal and, without sandblasting (because Shannon said it's considerably more expensive if the piece is rounded in any way, and $30 is already expensive), and have the wheels re-powdercoated.  I could have chin spins in fun colors, lol.  We will see.

Went to the post office, mailed out a package.  Will email the person bout it tomorrow cause it's already late today.

Had someone come and pick up their almost $250 order, so that cleared off my work table, so I can start putting my almost $600 order on that table.

Decided it'd be a good idea to start setting up the last FN (the insides) at like 2:30 am, so went downstairs... and I see a little chin on the ground.  Ah hell.  So I caught him pretty easily, and I had this moment of thinking, "did he really squeeze through the bars?"  Cause he is like a 10-12 week old kit in a cage with 1" bar spacing.  But nope, he and his cagemate pushed the pan forward in their cage, exposing like a 2" gap at the back... which they promptly jumped out.  So, found his cagemate on the other side of the basement.  A nice extra dark ebony chin, looked like he'd found a few cobwebs along the way.  Caught him easily as well, which is good cause I was already wheezing.  Need to really work on taking my asthma med twice daily.  Anyway, so they originally went into a shut-off run, while I took a chin-chiller and blocked off the hole in Winx's Critter Nation.  Then the boys got the bottom.  I know Winx gets along with the mosaic, but with these boys going home soon, I don't need any disasters happening, so the boys are in the bottom, Winx (who I'm sure is really plotting my death now) is in the top.  Had to add another food bowl and water bottle to the cage.

So then, I didn't actually go down there to chin-chase, so I got the pans for the FN, put those in.  Bengal orange on the bottom, canary yellow for the top (it looks good, I swear).  Got out my zebra print liners, put those in.  Started putting the zebra stuff in, and thought, hey, maybe I can do this as my "print" cage with both the zebra and leopard.  So right now it's a mix of zebra and leopard.  Not sure I love it, but there's no shelves in it yet, will do that when it's NOT 3 am.  May move stuff around in there, and I think I will need to figure out something extra to put in there, and something extra to put in Gypsy's cage.  Cause like, in Winx's cage, I have that hanging ledge in the middle, and in Toby's cage, I have a tube in the middle, but Gypsy's is open at the top middle and this one will be open at the top middle....  I believe I have another wooden tube, so that may go in one of the cages, and maybe I'll make another one of those hanging ledges.  But I need to do something cause there's a tad too much open air.  Not using enough of the cage-space.  Oh, and I wiped down the Ed wheel from the prairie dog's cage (which he clearly wasn't using) and put it in the top of this cage.  Left room for the flying saucer, which I will be getting back from Meredith, and that can go in the bottom cage.  And I technically need that in before I do shelves, so that I don't have to move everything around to accommodate that.

Oh, and I got in the extra food bowls.  I don't know if I posted about that, but the previous time that I had ordered food bowls, I ordered 10.  7 came broken, called them up, they sent 7 new ones.... I think 4 were broken, they sent 4 new ones... and then like 1 or 2 were broken, they sent new ones (they do offer money back, but I want those food bowls-- it's hard to find places that have stuff reasonably priced that can support a small markup for the rescue to sell).  Anyway, this time I ordered 20.  And these people must have had a light bulb go on or something... apparently these bowls come in boxes of 12 (had I known this before, I could have made this all a lot easier).  So, they sent a box of 12 and a box of 8 (both in a bigger box, along with some other random stuff that I ordered).  Well, two came broken, and I called them up, said that two were broken, wanted replacements, and they sent two, with *gasp* packaging material in the box!  Cause, see, last time, when they were broken (the 7 out of 10), on the last phone call, I told them (nicely, I swear!) that the reason they were coming broken was cause they would send a food bowl with a thin flimsy piece of bubble wrap around it inside a box the size of a microwave, with no other packaging, so it would bounce around and break, and they would wonder why, even with no damage to the box, the bowl would be broken.  Anyway, this time I only had to deal with two shipments, the first time (20) and the second time (2).  Awesome.  Next time I think I'll just order 24 so I get two full boxes.  I didn't even think to ask if a certain number came in a box, but if I ever have to switch food bowl suppliers, that will be on my "good to know" list. 

And then cages.  I went today to order some more of the large cages, the purple and black ones.  And over this past year, the price has been creeping up.  Like the one time I ordered, it was an extra dollar, the next time, an extra $2.... this time it was an extra $17!  Holy shit.  Like it's one thing to up the price a little, this is ridiculous.  So I looked for another supplier, and I found two of them that offer the cage at a price that's closer to my original price (closer than $17).  But... both are out of stock.  And wouldn't you know it, someone decided to text me asking about a cage and saying how great a price it was at $143 with shelves.  Um... yeah.  Sold the last one today, buddy (went with the $250 order).  So, I told him, I can get it now, at a higher price, or I can wait and see if the other places get it in.  So in the end, we agreed that I'll give it like a week, check if the places got it in, and get back to him.  I really do hope that the places get it in, because I know prices go up, but a $17 hike in price is ridiculous.  And the same happened with the smaller cage I sell as well.  It went up about $15-16 or so.  I still have one of those left, but for those, I should start looking for another supplier as well.  This is such shit, the cage didn't change an ounce, yet the price jumped so much.  Ah well, that's for another day.  I have marked down to check on the cages in a bit, and I can just hope that one of the cheaper places gets them in.  We will see.

Well, I think that's it for today.  Oh, was going to put my cheetah hammock (I've called it leopard for the longest time, but it really is cheetah) in the zebra and leopard cage, but when put next to those two... it does look a bit different than leopard (I know, "well, yeah") so that one can get saved for one of my other cages.  I am digging my multi-pattern cage though.  It looks good.  And the thing is, that cage, being zebra, is going to get the most colorful toys and all, because I won't be trying to match colors.  But... the perfect thing about that cage is that I have several of those food-and-treat bowls by SuperPet (my mom thinks they're adorable and every time we see them she asks if we have enough, haha, they are cute).  Anyway, we have several of those, and I want to say all the ones we have are either yellow or orange.  So they'll match the pans! 

Anyway, that's it for today, gotta sleep or I won't get anything done tomorrow.