And, from my vantage point, was a stunning success.  On a night that reached -4F windchill, we had over 100 people show up for our meeting!  One hundred people willing to come out on a shit-ass night like last night to find out what we had to say about starting a co-op.  Many many of them signed up for committees!  They want to help!  We even took a donation!  I am honestly amazed at the response.

Of course, not everything was good.  At the meeting was a man who, it turns out, is 3 months away from opening a store very similar to what we're hoping to open in about 1.5-2 years time.  It's a sole-proprietorship, rather than a cooperative, which I think is a big difference, but I'm still trying to wrap my brain around what this means.  I'm not sure it means anything.  Frankly, my take is that in all likelihood we can both exist in this town without too much trouble.  But, that's also what this big feasibility study will help us to determine--whether or not we can both exist in our town.  I guess it's hard to say.  I don't think that this new development is going to change our course of action in the immediate future, but it could impact us down the road.  And we're not interested in putting other local businesses out of business, either; I hope we can play nicely with him.

We've got a post-mortem meeting tonight to discuss how the Community Meeting went, what we saw, heard and learned.  We've got a few new people signed up to be on the planning committee, and I hope they'll be able to come to this meeting, but I'm sure it's quite short notice. 

Brian is Teh Sickz today.  He left for work feeling so-so, and was mostly voice-less by the time he came home.  I'm sure teaching 3 classes didn't help that issue.

We had our last co-op planning meeting before the big community meeting today. It went really well, with the possible exception of my family room floor, which is currently coated in popcorn.  Literally.  I accidentally left out one of those monster drums of popcorn that people give as gifts for christmas (you know, the ones that have "caramel-ish", "butter-type" and "cheaze" flavored popcorn in them).  At one point, I saw a couple of the kids taking handfuls of the stuff and flinging it at each other.  And I still haven't vacuumed.  I figure, I'm exhausted, and mice deserve to eat too, right?  Although I really wouldn't be surprised if even mice won't eat cheaze popcorn.  But the meeting went well, and I think we're quite set for the community meeting.  I still need to get my hands on a copy of powerpoint, though, for my own presentation.  The packets we're handing out are shaping up great, and we've even got "environmentalist" coloring books for kids, plus a few door prizes.  The presentations should run at just at or under one hour (including Q&A), and then time to split off to talk with the different committees.  Things progress apace.