One of the great things about writing a new book about Chocolate is that I had to eat this bar for the cover image of the book. And no, it’s not a photo of me passed out covered in chocolate and surrounded by wrappers, but an artistically bitten chocolate bar I molded myself.
This “flying ant” was gathering dirt from a hole and dropping it on the other side of the stick. Not sure if he was making a hill to play on or digging a ditch for a home (or boobie-trap for a centipede). Either way he got pretty territorial when I tried to take this photo. Don’t worry flying ant, there’s enough dirt for everyone.
We went hiking this weekend at the Garden of the Gods this weekend. Can you spot the sassy mule deer in the trees? (Hint: Look for the floating deer tongue and you should see his face to the left).
While driving to work I was overwhelmingly compelled to take this photo at a very long red light… something about the gritty urban paint chips on the truck framing a trail of cars trickling into the distance like two mirrors sitting across from each other struck me beautiful.
The park where I eat lunch has been “re-sodding” many grass patches… at least that’s what I believed until I looked at the wireless networks nearby.
Is it a coincidence that the surveillance began the same week I was setting up my blog after a 2 year hiatus?
Getting the account setup was probably the most exciting part of starting a business for me. It reminded me of opening my first checking account when I was a kid. I still remember going in with my mom. A lot has changed in my life since I couldn’t even see over the counter as a kid — but I’m still just as interested in the free lollipops.
It seems like it’s getting harder to find “free checking” (for individuals or businesses), but after some hunting around I settled on Colorado State Bank… it was free up to 200 transactions, which was perfect since I was only expecting one giant royalty payment each month.
I felt very responsible and grown-up walking out of the bank with a BUSINESS checking account… but I was saddened to know that the really nice banker would only be helping me for my first month. After you have half-a-million in transactions, they transfer you upstairs…
Forming a legal business (in Colorado) was the easiest step in the process of starting Glow Word Books. It didn’t require brainstorming for names or much of anything aside from a payment.
I took an accounting class in college and was vaguely familiar with different business types. I knew a corporation would involve more tax paperwork than I wanted to do.
I wasn’t interested in a Partnership (or Sole Proprietorship) because all of my personal assets (car, blue hoodies, self portraits) would be up for grabs if you decided to sue us over this blog post. So we settled on a LLC. It protects all my personal possessions from business lawsuits and has much simpler paperwork than a corporation.
In retrospect the LLC tax forms (IRS 1065) are still really complicated. We could have paid roughly $450 to have them done, but I donated a lot of frustrating March nights instead. Be careful how many LLCs you setup or your Marches become quite depressing.
We didn’t have to mess with State Sales Tax IDs since all of our sales happen over the internet.
The final bit to setup was our EIN (a “social security number” for a business). It was easy to do online and I got my EIN immediately. (But it’s the first website I ever saw with hours of operation!). Even though there was nothing I could do with an EIN (aside from open a Business checking account), it was still hard to sleep after setting everything up.
Authors Steve & Natasha