Welcome to this week's edition of The Scoop -- the only newsletter that's guaranteed to be completely peanut free.

I've certainly slacked off, since it's been over two months since my last newsletter. I had started this quite a few weeks ago, but kept forgetting to actually send it, so here goes!

I've definitely been in "summer mode" over the past couple of months, as I actually managed to take 5 whole days off to travel up to Buffalo for a family reunion in early July. I left the store in the hands of my two managers, Janae and John, and I returned to find the place was pretty much in the same shape as how I left it, so I guess they did a decent job of keeping the ice cream moving.

During this time of year, people always comment to me "wow, you must be really busy at this point in the year!", to which I normally reply, "Well, no, not really..."

You see, summer is the time of year when the returning veterans have pretty much taken over the store, this year's crop of rookies are all more or less up to speed, and my role around the store degrades into acting as the grumpy old man, pointing out whatever cleaning tasks aren't getting done well enough, or areas that the kids could be doing better. I've actually been able to take a couple of nights a week off, and sometimes I find myself wondering what to do with my "spare" time.

It's the fall and spring, when customer traffic is still high, but most of the older kids are at college or involved with sports, when I'm busiest. But during the height of summer, I've got it easy, the store more or less runs itself (with the efforts of my super crew, of course!)

It's been a few weeks since I sat down to write a newsletter though, so I figured that I had better get one out this week, as I'm not really doing a heck of a lot else, and the college kids are leaving this week, so it's back to work for me!

Ice Cream Show

Labor Day weekend again marks the great "Ice Cream Show" on the Pat Whitley Restaurant show on WRKO (AM 680). The show airs on Sunday morning from 10am until 1pm, and accepts nominations for the "People's Choice Ice Cream Stand".

We'd certainly enjoy hearing our name mentioned, so if you're one of those who loves to hear themself on the radio, please call in and mention us, we'd really appreciate it!

The call in number is: 888-434-6464, or you can vote online at: http://nedine.com/voting/icecream/icecream.html

Race Car Night

Our store manager, Janae, has an older brother, Troy, who's attending engineering school at U-Mass Lowell (my alma mater.) He's involved in a project to build a race car, and we contributed to sponsoring a portion of the project.

As a benefit of our sponsorship, the race car was at the store on Sunday night, August 25th. We parked the car on the grassy area in front of the store, and the team answered questions, accepted a few donations towards their efforts, and ate a lot of ice cream!

Racing Weekend

As our college-bound kids left for school, I decided to treat our serving team to a little fun, so we gathered at "Checkered Flag" raceway, just up the street on Neck Road in Bradford, for a little racing fun.

This is a relatively new business, with an indoor track, racing cars that are a bit bigger than go carts, and which can be electronically governed to limit them to a safe speed.

We ran three races, and members Pat, Emily, and Sara took top times in their respective races. I, despite weighing (cough) just a bit more than any of them, took second place in my race.

In the final race off, Sara showed her ultra-competitive juices by wiping out the rest of the field and taking the best time. Our poor little Jenna nearly got demolished, looking like a confused grandma out for a Sunday drive, as Sara blasted her into a barrier during a "take no prisoners" rush through the group.

We had a lot of fun though. If you're looking for a fun event to do with a group of kids, or even with a group of adults, check out Checkered Flag at http://www.checkeredflagindoorkarting.com/

Weather People

Is there any more useless profession than being a weather person?

(My apologies to any of our newsletter readers who happen to be in that field. In that case, they're all useless except for you.)

For the past six weeks or so, just about every weather report here in the Boston area has been the same: "Some sun, some clouds, possibility of afternoon showers..." If I ever see that Harvey Leonard or Dick Albert standing in line at the store, I swear I'm going to run right outside and kick 'em in the knee. And that JC Monahan on channel 5 -- so perky and happy as she informs me that "the next five days look pretty wet". I'll give you wet!

And can someone please explain to me exactly why the weather report needs to take up 5 to 7 minutes (over two or three appearances) of a 30 minute news cast? They know they're only taking a wild-ass guess at things anyway. So why must we be subjected to "there's a high pressure system heading down over the Great Lakes, colliding with a low pressure system coming out of the southwest, and Doppler Radar shows a fast moving system out of the midwest..."

They don't know what the heck all of that means anyhow, but they somehow get alloted an improportional amount of time to tell us "Beats me what is going to happen, but it probably wouldn't hurt to have an umbrella with you..."

In my mind, the weather portion of the news should take 30 seconds, tops. Something like: "It's raining in New York, so it's probably going to be raining here soon."

My all time favorite jab at a weather forecaster is one I remember from maybe 10 years ago. Bruce Schweggler (or whatever his name is) had forecast clearing skies for 4 days straight, only to have it rain furiously each day. Finally, Bruce predicted a rainy day, to which the news anchor replied something like "Finally decided to look out the window, eh Bruce?" Wish I could remember that woman's name, it really made me laugh!

Anyway, all of that ranting gives you a pretty clear view into my current opinion of our weather situation. In a nutshell, "IT STINKS!". At one point in July, we had thunderstorms at 6 o'clock or so on four different days in one week, followed by the appearance of the sun and a huge rainbow over the store. Let me tell you, rainbows lose their appeal after the first couple of times you see them when you're in the ice cream business!

We had 20 days with some amount of rain in July, and as I write this, not quite halfway through August, I'd guess maybe another six or seven rainy days. Even on the days it hasn't rained, it's been cool, and "cool" doesn't bring out the flocks of ice cream seekers that we rely on to build our bank balance at the height of the season. We really haven't had the stretch of hot, humid, summer weather that we expect at this time of year.

We're trying to make the best of it, but our first summer of business at our new location has certainly been a challenging one from a weather standpoint. On the bright side, while we're not rolling in money, we're at least hitting our business plan numbers and keeping the bills paid. A friend of mine who has run a couple of ice cream stores in the area for the past 20 years reports that his business is off 40% this season, and he attributes that drop mainly to the weather, so I guess I should look on the bright side and think that if this is a "down" year, hopefully future years will be a lot better.

So, keep your fingers crossed for a warm Indian Summer. And if you see a weatherman in your travels, give him a good kick from me.

Flavor News

IT'S BAAAACK! Pumpkin-Gingersnap, one of our most requested flavors (and one of my personal favorites) should be in the dipping cases by the time you receive this.

This is one of the flavors that we make for the fall season, but we get requests for it all year long. It's hard to find the nice, chewey ginger molasses cookies that I like to use in it until right around now though, so I have to resist making it using inferior cookies.

Some folks who come to the store for the first time crinkle up their noses when they read "Pumpkin" on the ice cream menu, but one taste and they're normally hooked, as the contrast of the pumpkin ice cream with the ginger cookies really is a fantastic one.

We also have our delicious Apple Pie ice cream back in stock, and we'll try to keep it in supply until Thanksgiving or so. Come on in and try it, you'll think you're eating a fresh apple pie a la mode!

And, as a special treat (to some, at least) I have plans to make another batch of our "Chili Chocolate" soon, hopefully this weekend. This flavor has a surprisingly large and vocal fan base -- the people who like hot, spicy food love it when it's in stock, and clamor for me to make it when they come to find out we don't have it. I'm off at lunch time to buy the Habenero peppers that this recipe needs, and I'll be carefully cutting them up over the next couple of days, so watch for it soon!

Staff Profiles

We're losing the first of our "College Kids" this week, so thought I'd give a shout out to them.

Bryan has worked for us for six seasons now, off and on, and has grown from a fresh faced, goofy kid into a scuffy faced, goofy young adult! Bryan is one of our zanier team members, I think if we had team awards, he'd be voted "most likely to enlist in Greenpeace".

I give Bryan a lot of grief about his music, his clothes, and his school, but in all seriousness, he's been one of our more dependable team members, and we're going to miss having him anchoring our team.

Bryan is from Andover. He's off to Gettysburg College for his Junior year, and has a trip to Greece planned for the fall.

Peter is from Andover, and is one of our ice cream makers, and is finishing up his second year with us. He's progressed from the stage of "vanilla and chocolate only" to his current spot where he can pretty much make any of our flavors, even the most difficult ones.

Peter has a very relaxed, laid back persona, and the girls on the serving team have taken great delight this year in coming up with new nicknames for him. I think the current ones are "Peter Rabbit", or calling him "Peeeeter", with an exaggerated British accent. He seems to take it all in stride though, and has done a great job of both helping to keep our ice cream in stock, and in jumping in to help out at the counter when a crazy rush hits.

Peter is heading off to University of Vermont where he'll be a Freshman.

Katie is one of my all time favorites, and one of our remaining North Reading team. She's been with us for five seasons now, and is one of our "rocks". Remembering back to when she first interviewed with us, and came in wearing her cheerleading jacket, it's amazing to see the growth in her over that time. She's now one of our most unflappable team members, and it's rare to see her get upset at a customer or overwhelmed by a rush of customers.

Katie is returning to Simmons College for her Sophomore year.

It's always a sad time of the year to see our college kids head off, especially since we know that it's very likely that some of them won't come back next year, as they're likely to find "a real job" that's more in line with their future careers. We're going to miss them, and we sure hope they'll come back to visit. Even if they're not working for us, we'll always consider them "our kids".

B.J.O.T.W.

This week's "Blonde Joke" was contributed by by bratty, brunette niece, Melissa, who thinks she's a big shot who can make fun of blondes now that she's graduated...

A blonde's car gets a flat tire on the Interstate one day, so she eases it over onto the shoulder of the road.

She carefully steps out of the car and opens the trunk. She takes out two cardboard men, unfolds them and stands them at the rear of the vehicle facing oncoming traffic. The lifelike cardboard men are in trench coats exposing their nude bodies to approaching drivers...

Not surprisingly, the traffic became snarled and backed up.

It wasn't very long before a police car arrived. The Officer, clearly enraged, approaches the blonde of the disabled vehicle yelling, 'What is going on here?'

'My car broke down, Officer,' says the woman, calmly.

'Well, what the hell are these obscene cardboard pictures doing here by the road?!' asks the Officer...

'Helllllooooo, those are my emergency flashers!' she replied.

Real Blonde Happenings

I replaced our summer flower planters with four new pots of hardy mums for the fall last weekend. The flowers that have been there for the summer still had a little life left in them, so I left those pots beside the new flowers in front of the store.

One night last week, I decided that two of the summer flowers were losing life fast, so I sent one of my serving team out to get rid of them. I foolishly chose one of our blondes, and told her to toss out the two pots that didn't have any more flowers left on them.

As I was emptying the trash later that night, I was surprised to see the two old pots still there with their wilted, dying blooms, and two of the fresh, new pots missing. Yep, she didn't see any flowers on the new plants (hundreds of buds ready to burst forth though) -- so tossed them out.

I gotta stop hiring so many blondes.

Letters to the Future

I had an idea to leave a composition book at the store, with directions to my serving team that they should feel free to use it as a journal to write down any advice, funny stories, or general reflections that they might want future team members to read in years to come.

A few of them have really gotten into it, writing funny stories or caricature drawings of their fellow current team mates.

So far the entries are funny to read, and I hope future teams find them interesting. Maybe in future editions of "The Scoop", I'll try to share one or two of the funnier ones.

Newsletter Coupon

Bring someone you love with you to the store, order any sized sundae, and we'll give you a second one for a buck. One single dollar! How can you beat that??

We might require some proof that you actually love the person you're sharing this offer with, so maybe you'll have to swap some spit in front of us, or show us your matching health cards (nothing says "I love you" like paying for someone else's health insurance...)

OK, this newsletter has been in the works for about 6 weeks now, so I'd better send it off now, otherwise I'll soon be reporting on Christmas events.

Besides, I've got a lot of ice cream to make, as I have to pick up the slack from our departing college kids!

Thanks for reading, and come on out to the store for some great fall ice cream!