This morning I was confromted with an issue that is common in the jewlery industry.  I do the repair work for a number of stores; and, I was asked to size a ring to an 8.  The repair was sent back and the comment was that it was not an 8!  For whatever reason there is no board of standards to govern what a ring size is,  like when you buy a ruler, an Inch is always the same.   This is not so with ring mandrels (the stick that measures a ring's size). They all differ in size from manufacturer to manufacturer between 1/4 to a full size depending on the material of the mandrel and the manufacturer.  The plastic and aluminum ones are the most incorrect.  To maintain some consistencey I have purchased the solid steel ones from Stuller that go all the way to a size 16.  I also have made sure that the ring gauges that we size customer's fingers with matches our mandrels.  All of these steps I have taken have taken all the complaints out of my retail customers sizing experinence.

I had a customer come in the other day and ask me to appraise a loose diamond for him.   He said the several years ago his mother had found it on the floor of a luggage closet in a Florida apartment building.  She asked around and put up a notice and no one claimed the stone.   It was  a somewhat beat up old eroupean cut diamond that was very clean and yellow.  BUT IT WAS 5.10CTS!!!!   Wow dont we all wish we could find something like that.   man .  

It seems that some of the same vendors who forced Friedman's to close are now putting the screws to Whitehall  jewellers.   I do the work for 3 of these stores!  and they tend to pay about 30days or so in the rears,  so we are feeling shakey about getting paid by them.    We have already recieved one bounced check that we had to resubmit,   and are triing to get our fees incurred back from them.   they owe us more than friedmans left us with so we are nervous about them.  we continue to get work from them and there is an interested party in purchasing them,  so i can hold out and make a good reputatin and relationship with my stores and the possible new owners or cut them off and risk not having a future relationship with the new company,    HMMMM.   What do we do?

This past sunday, leslie and i ventured to valdosta, GA to retrive out kids from her mom who met us halfway.  So after 3wks with my folks and two weeks with her's,  our kids traveling summer has come to an end.  they had lots of fun with both sets of grandparents but are glad to be home, they were beginning to get home sick.  they have been in TX, OK, NM, GA, and FL for thier summer vacation,  and now only have 5 weeks left for summer before school starts.

sean has gotten braces and had a tube put in his ear this summer, he has enjoyed his candy apple red mohawk and then when it faded to pink we tried to die it blue and it was kind of red white and blue,  just intime for 4th of july,

harley tried blond highlights and blue highlights but was not impressed with the end results in either case.  not enough difference for her.

on one of our trips to retrive them from one set of grandparents we learned that my cousin was diagnosed with a form of pre lukiemia.  so if all would please pray for him,  please,  thanks.