The year here in Chicagoland

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendWell Chicago just lost the Olympics. It is October and looks and feels like winter is just around the corner. The winter clouds are here with rain off, and on, and the temperature maybe got up to fifty today so winter can't be far behind. The pond season here will be over for another year very shortly. And what a strange year this has been. The season started out strong but by summer it was dead. July was as slow as I have ever seen it and August wasn't any better. But actually it goes back to August of last year. What happened in August of 2008 was the bottom dropped out of the stock market and with that so did the pond work. Was it the economy slowing down. No it was slow all of 2008 but my pond business was going strong until the market went down and the switch was turned off. But there was hope on the horizon because a new president would be taking over in 2009 and normally the stock market goes up when we have a new president. But the new president took office and market went down and the new president said he didn't care what the market did as it only had rich people in it. I don't know if he was talking out his backside or if he really believed this but in the last forty years with the advent of 401k's the market has a lot of middle class people in it. When the market is down they feel as if they don't have any money anymore and they stopped spending. Fall has gotten here and the market started going back up and things have started to get busier. My pond business is just about back to normal so maybe 2010 will be a good year but we will not know that until next year. With October here, business picking up and Info Tanza less than three weeks away, this promises to be a good October. Info Tanza looks like it will be the best ever. With two major pond trade magazines at this year's event it will be a great event. Add in a wide range of speakers and two manufacturers debuting two new products this will be the place to be. Of course then there is the new website a long with blogs for all of our members 2009 might turn out to be a good year after all.