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 Thursday
was Alison's
Birthday, and it was a beautiful spring day to boot, so we
put work aside and went out to play! We spent the afternoon picnicking
and wandering around the National Arboretum. Our usual trio was
joined by our friend Luisa,
and we had a great day together, walking the nature trails, marveling
at the amazing collection of Bonsai trees, and checking out the
columns shown here.
Although of course the plants are the real stars of the Arboretum,
I was particularly charmed by these columns. For over a hundred
years, they were part of the Capitol Building. Then they spent
a few decades in storage, and finally in 1990 they were installed
on this hillside at the Arboretum. (This was the first time I've
seen them, since my last visit here was in the mid-80s.) The
columns are incredibly striking and wonderfully surreal, perched
on this grassy knoll, supporting nothing but sky. And they're
a tribute to the concept of saving and reusing cool cruft, which
brings me, in a roundabout sort of way, to my next topic.
People are always asking us, "When are you moving to
Canada?" It's been almost 2 years since we first announced
our
intention to move, and almost a year since we decided our
chosen city would be Hamilton,
Ontario. So, when are we going? What's taking so long?
There are many answers, the most simple being that everything
always takes longer than we think it should. It's a big job,
packing up everything and getting ready to move far away, particularly
when you're a bunch of packrats with a lot of stuff, and also
particularly when you're super-busy with your day job, as we
are with the running of our company, Looney
Labs. And when we think about priorities, we always conclude
that the speed with which we carry out our grand relocation plan
is of little importance when compared with accomplishing our
entrepreneurial dreams. So packing always takes a back seat,
and unfortunately, since we have a lot of stuff, progress is
very slow.
Here are some other points to keep in mind. Firstly, we have
no deadline. We have a long term plan for moving north, but we'll
get there when we get there -- it really doesn't matter WHEN
we arrive.
Secondly, from a financial standpoint, we actually aren't
in a very good position to be moving at this time. Next year
would be much better. While things are generally going extremely
well for Looney Labs,
we still haven't quite attained profitability, primarily because
we've increased our payroll (adding new employees because there's
so much work to do) while also still struggling with the servicing
of our startup debt. We just started talking with a new business
lawyer about ways we can restructure our loans to give us some
relief on our cash flow (if you're interested in becoming an
investor,
please contact Kristin).
It all gets back to the need to keep focusing on the business,
rather than on moving, and anyway, it's to our advantage to be
patient, since having more money will make moving a lot easier.
Thirdly, it's important for us to have a life. We're overworked
and understaffed, and sometimes we just need to take time off,
to do things like visiting the Arboretum.
Finally, it's not just a question of time, money, or life
itself. The schedule for the Big Move keeps sliding back because
the more we think about it, trying to figure out how we can actually
make it happen, the more complex and elaborate our plans become.
As we work towards the ultimate goal of building a new place
to call home in Hamilton, we've realized that what we really
need is multiple locations. Like my brother, who has a
cabin on the mountainside which he retreats to on weekends,
we've realized that what we need to make this happen is to get
2 new places: an apartment in Hamilton, and a house out in the
country somewhere -- in upstate New York. That way, we can start
by renting a small place in Hamilton, without having to bring
all our stuff with us. (Did I mention we have a lot of stuff?)
I love using analogies, and often compare complex undertakings
with the space program. I frequently think of our plan to move
to Canada as being like a mission to go to the Moon. It's a massive
undertaking that will take our team years to accomplish, and
which can only be carried out in stages.
The first thing we had to do was to move the business out
of our basement and into a place of its own, and we
did that last year. Like launching the first man into space,
this was a major step forward in going to the Moon, and yet it
represents only a tiny step in the overall project. And there
are so many other pieces, which the public doesn't even see or
understand, but which take up our time and resources. (Tracking
and Data Relay Systems, for example, are like SuperFRED and Sweetie.)
This is why we call our dreamed-of place-in-the-country the
Space Platform. We've realized it's too ambitious a goal, moving
directly and completely to Canada. It's like trying to go from
John Glenn's Mercury flight directly to Apollo-11. What we need
is a middle stage, a half-way point, a jumping-off place. We
need a space station we can go to first, which can serve as a
staging area for trips all the way to the moon.
That's what our house in New York will be. We aren't moving
to Canada because we want to get away from the US -- far from
it. We love America and plan to come back often. We're not giving
up our citizenship. Even if we decide, eventually, to also seek
Canadian Citizenship, we will always want to maintain an official
US place of residency. Looney
Labs will remain a US-based company... the office we've set
up here in College Park will remain in operation, regardless
of where us three Loonies happen to be. (The office space doubles
as a small apartment, and just like Josh
stays there when he is in town, it will be our place to stay
when we're in town visiting after we have sold Wunderland.Earth
and moved away.)
Having a base of operations in upstate New York will have
other advantages for us. For one thing, it will be a piece of
natural land for us to preserve for ourselves, like a tiny independent
national park. We're hoping to get a place with several acres
at a minimum, with woods and fields and natural places we can
keep that way forever. Obviously, such a piece of land will be
far from civilization, otherwise there'd be no way to even imagine
being able to afford it.
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 More
to the point, the Space Platform will also give us the thing
we really need the most right now: space. As noted, we have a
lot of stuff. Some of it we can get rid of, but most of it we
just want to put into deep storage for a few years. I've been
packing stuff away into boxes
-- almost 300 so far -- and moving them already to an off-site
location. The boxes are all carefully inventoried, organized,
and labeled, so that I can find and retrieve anything we might
suddenly find we need, but I've also been focusing on our various
collections which we prize but don't need ready access to. Our
existing storage facility is rapidly filling up, and we need
a bigger place. We need a warehouse, with plenty of space to
store our collections for a long time, like those columns from
the capitol, until we figure out a new place to install them.
And it's not just the eclectic collections of Wunderland we
need space for, Looney Labs
has a lot of bulky stuff we need to store as well. We have an
increasingly large pile of props and equipment which we use only
now and then at trade shows (such as the parts of the giant tree
Alison built for us last month for GTS,
and the giant-sized Fluxx and Chrononauts boxes we've made in
the past). Like Christmas ornaments, booth gear is annoying because
it's bulky and delicate and useless most of the year, but you
always have to keep it safe somewhere for those occasional moments
when you actually do need the stuff.
The Space Platform will give us more than just a warehouse
for booth gear, it will also provide us with a place to store
the product we take to trade shows. After we go to Canada, we'll
be constantly dealing with customs issues as we travel back and
forth across the border. This makes the idea of preparing for
a big gaming event all the more challenging, since the hassle
of a border-crossing increases with the amount of stuff you're
bringing with you. But with a US-based storage center just across
the border from our home in Canada, we'll be able to easily drive
south for a trade show, stopping off at the Space Platform on
the way to pick up product and gear.
While we have numerous requirements for the land and location
we're seeking, we don't expect to be very picky about the house
itself. It doesn't need to be much to look at, as long as it's
sturdy, secure, weather-proof, and ideally has a garage.
Anyway, there's all the latest on the status of our elaborate
relocation schemes. There's more I could say, but I've gone on
too long (and this site is already too late) as it is. But to
answer the original question, as to when it will all happen,
the simple answer is, it will probably be at least another year.
A lot will depend on how many Fluxx
decks and Treehouse
sets we can sell in the next year. Cash flow is really tight
right now -- if you want to help us, please buy a copy of Treehouse
and teach it to everyone you know!
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