I'm still in the throws of figuring out if I'm going to buy that coffee shop. It's a sweet little space and I'd love to be working only ten minutes from home, in a place where Ella can hang out on a couch with her Connect Four or walk down to the bookstore or over to the park or the library. Everything about it feels right. The current owner would like an answer by the end of next week.

So far I've attended a workshop on Starting Your Own Small Business, which was a kind of pre-requisite for meeting with a small business advisor. I'm meeting with him this upcoming Thursday to go over the Profit and Loss Statements of the current and previous owners and basically get some honest advice from him about whether or not this an absurd idea.

The coffee shop is located in an old yellow and turquoise Victorian building with a wide wrap around porch right in the center of Main Street in Johnson, Vermont. Johnson is home to a state college, an artist residency studio, and a ton of really good people. The shop includes the entire downstairs....the counter and coffee room, a little room with a few tables and two computers, and a large, bay window room with a non-working fireplace and beautiful, colorful, lush furniture. Upstairs there is a psycho-therapist, massage therapist and web design business run by friends of mine. The owner of the building, from what I'm told, is "a bad to the bone bitch" who does nothing for the building. The upside of her slum-lord approach is that one rarely has to deal with her. So I know, going into it, that that is one strike against what I'm doing. Whatever repairs the building needs, whether electric or structural, are my responsibility. And the upside to that is that Bill does carpentry for a living and has a great head for electric stuff, from his days as a sound man.

The big room was once home to the local health food store but they purchased their own building across the street and now operate out of that. The rent for just that room is almost $600 and while it's an awesome space for customers to hang out in, it's often sparsely populated and a huge expense. So I'm trying to figure out how to make that room make money or find someone who wants to run a little business out of it. Any ideas?

I've noticed, too, that since I've had this in the mix, I've been a total slack ass at work. I've taken sick days, come in late, left early and have already "checked out" mentally. So, cross your fingers. I've never worked anywhere longer than 3 years. I've been here two and a half years. The clock is ticking.