Day 3 of what it is like to run a resort

This morning, Friday, it was 8:00 before I stepped outside and the only sound was a warbler in the trees. Sunshine was everywhere.
Today the telephone company should be by to fix our internet problem. He was here by 9 a.m. It turns out the old wiring in our lodge/home is interfering with our Wi-Fi signal and our internet signal. So he had to drill another hole in our house. We hate having another possible entry for critters and bugs! But now we will try this until Monday to see if it works.
I initially had put on jeans but its already 82 degrees at 11 a.m. so I changed into shorts. It was 60 when I woke up.
Later in the morning I talked with some customers about their parents, homes and families. Mostly, the customers came into the lodge today to talk. Two of our cabins will not be returning next year. Their bar/restaurant burnt down this spring so they don't know where they will be or if they can take a vacation next year. So now we have 2 openings this week for next year already. We will miss their group because they have a lot of kids and its always fun to have kids around here. Hopefully they'll be back
I got some good news from the Chamber today. They will not be raising the fee for us and others who have hotel/motel/resort status. They said, "You have been heard". I guess my e-mail to them helped. Good. We need every penny.
I went to the Town offices today to talk to the Clerk in detail about some questions I had. She was very helpful. It turns out that the town will be, in 2011, burying all the overhead power lines and putting in new sidewalks, new light poles and planters, etc. on the main streets. That will be really nice and should help our downtown. Hopefully this will bring in more people too, which we all could use. Since resorts are a dying breed, any help we can get is great.
Tommy, my nephew, and my husband, John, decided to drive up to see some waterfalls and do some hiking. Our customers have seen all the waterfalls around here and weren't interested in going. We have taken them to all the waterfalls in years previous. I stayed back to do some computer work, laundry and be here for the customers. They didn't need me though and it was a boring afternoon. I only had to make one root beer float and 2 kitty cocktails.
Tonight I had to prepare for tomorrow. I took out clean laundry and put it in bags, labeled them for the individual cabins, and started 2 loads of laundry for tomorrow too. I have two lines in the basement where I hang the kitchen throw rugs and the bathroom rugs, which have to have a rubber backing. I can't put them in the dryer because the rubber disintegrates very soon after, and that's a waste of our money. Especially when we have to have at least 19 in stock for a week's changeover. Since we have 9 cabins and 10 bathrooms, and each has a bathroom rug, that means 10 are in the cabins, and 10 need to be ready for the bags. We have large, white, cloth bags with a drawstring top. Very handy.
We have 31 beds and some are queens, doubles and twins. So we have big shelves, 4X8, in our basement full of sheets and pillow cases. We wash the rugs, kitchen towels/cloths, blankets and comforters. The sheets we send out to a laundry service in a huge, yellow, wheeled cart. They pick up here every other week. As long as our laundry is over 100 lbs, we get a volume discount. We have never gone under that minimum.
We bought all new mattresses in 2005 so we put top quality mattress pads on every one. They have to be waterproof in this business, for obvious reasons. They weren't cheap, but clean up very nice whenever there's a stain. That's a must. The Health Department says there cannot be ONE stain on anything, unless its a bleach stain. Yikes.
So I made bags for 5 cabins to prepare for tomorrow. That's a good head start. Saturday is our big day. We have cleaning girls arriving by 9 a.m. and we have to clean all 9 cabins before check-in at 3:00 p.m.
Almost all the customers waited until today, the last day, to pay. So now we don't have to worry about them needing to check out tomorrow when we will be so busy. Now they can just wave as they leave. I put the money in our locked safe. We've never had a problem keeping the money in a safe, which is VERY good. Previous owners have been robbed because they didn't have a safe. We hope that no one ever attempts to rob us. We can't afford for that to happen.
Now its time to relax. Even though we will keep the bar open until 10:30 p.m., our usual time to close if no one is in the bar, people usually don't come in on Friday night because they know they have to get up early. Tomorrow they have to leave by 9:30 a.m. and they have been busy pulling out their boats, packing and getting ready too. Good night. Wish me luck tomorrow.