Open for business

Last week, I noticed that my eccentric nocturnal housemate seemed to be home an awful lot when I was returning from work, which is odd, as that’s about the time that he is just arriving at his job. He was stepping up his amount of tie-dye production, mostly from our garage, backyard and a giant trash barrel conveniently located immediately outside my bedroom window. I was out of town this past weekend, but was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s just on vacation, I thought.

Nope.

I learned from my other housemate, the upstairs/day-time one, that he in fact quit his job, which of course begged the question “How will he pay rent?” Apparently, he’s got that covered. He’s just upping the production of tie-dye t-shirts and tapestries, as it is, after all, a growth industry. He’s managed to land two retailers who are buying from him and is also selling “freelance,” as well. It seems like a sound business model.

This new information makes last Thursday’s interaction with him all the more clear: When returning from work, there he was in our backyard/driveway area, classic rock on the radio, beer can in hand, various tapestries being hung dry. It was maybe the third conversation we’ve had and it was brief, but he did mention something about having “a big order” as he pulled a couple hundred plain white t-shirts from the back of his shady van. Because I had no idea what in the hell he was talking about, I simply smiled. Later, I heard him on his phone describing the quality of the shirts. “I mean, these are pretty heavy-weight t-shirts, you know?”

Last night, when our landlord’s landscaper came by to set up our sprinkler system, housemate asked him for advice in starting up his business. I nearly choked when he started talking about creating a website for it.