I think this is the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. (Excluding my mom’s death while we were on our Honeymoon in Hawaii. That was cancer, and we knew it was going to be soom) Business is down. We had some really big contracts delayed 6-12 months, or longer. In other words, no cash flow. So this morning my father & I had to lay off our 3 employees. We will not take salaries for probably 2 months, hopefully not more. They took it well, at face value anyway. I think it’s harder on me at this point. I’m sitting here almost in tears. What’s worse is 2 of them are my friends, 1 with a new house and baby #3. So now we restructure. We may have to find a smaller office, and we will cut back all unnecessary costs. I’m going to sell the Maxima to keep my personal expenses down. The Hawk is paid for, so the good new is I don’t have to sell her, yet. I’ll probably buy my friends Fiero this fall for a winter beater.

We should be able to survive. In 2 months we hope to have any outstanding debt paid off, so things should be looking up at that point. We should be able to land some small contracts to get us by until our January yearly maintenance cost come in from our customers. We just have to work harder, and longer hours, nothing we didn’t have to do in the past. When the economy is down, many places want to computerize to improve efficiency. That’s where we come in on a Municipal & School level. That’s where we do our best work. So with any luck and a lot of prayers & hard work on our part, we can build up to where we need to be in the future. I anticipate a 12-month recovery process. I hope it’s sooner, but that is a realistic goal, at least for now.

I won’t be at Skyline drive this fall, nor will I be able to attend Bragg-Smith either. And I just can’t work on the map anymore, so if anyone is interested, I can email you all of the files. You just need a website for it.

So I ask for prayers & support to get us through.