About

Who am I and why am I doing this?

I am a third generation San Diegan. I have tried living other places for a few years, but I always thought of San Diego as home. The nice thing about doing what I do in San Diego is I can go out every week looking for goodies to sell, and never have to worry about snow. It rains once in a while, but as a gardener, that is always welcome.

I have done many things in my life that have led me to this place.

I remember as a child playing store as often as we played house. I liked stocking my little shelves with my plastic food and helping my customers.  My parents had two huge lime trees in the backyard. Whenever I wanted some pocket change I would pick a bagful and go sit on the corner and sell limes for a nickel a piece. Forget the lemonade, I sold a hard to find commodity, fresh limes! I sold stationery products door to door, and for a few years there, lots of Girl Scout cookies. I sat at art shows with my mom, helping her sell her paintings, and my own candles and macramé hangers. Looking back on it my childhood seemed to have a common theme, I liked selling things.

The first time I used a computer was in 1980 and I took to it right away. By 1982 I was teaching others how to use them. They are the greatest and most frustrating thing ever invented!  I bought my first computer in 1985 and learned as many programs as I could.  A year later I met my future husband, a software engineer, who, as you can imagine, was happy to find a woman who actually enjoyed computers as much as he did.

We got married and a year later our son was born. After our son came along I decided to be a stay at home mom. I had always wanted to do that, but for my generation it was rare that we had the option. My husband and I decided to live far away from the city center so we could afford such a luxury. It was worth it.

Even though I was a stay at home mom I started a couple of home businesses that I quickly bored of, mostly because I liked sharing the great products I found, but was not so thrilled with the ‘get other people to sell too’ aspect of it.

Like so many others at the dawn of the internet boom, I discovered eBay. I registered on the site in January of 2000. I was completely comfortable with the idea of e-commerce. I had been buying things online for a few years by then. I happily sold a few things, and bought a lot more for a few years.  When my son moved out a couple of years ago suddenly space opened up in the house and I could start selling on eBay in earnest.  I moved everything into high gear and became a Powerseller in just over 2 months. eBay has changed a lot since then. So have I.

I decided to incorporate my business in 2006.  I now work for A Night Owl’s Treasures, inc. I’m the President, CEO, CFO, Marketing Manager and Shipping Clerk. My partner in life is my Vice President and Secretary, although he does his fair share of schlepping international packages to the Post Office.

In the Spring of 2008 we decided to leave eBay and strike out in new directions.  It was quite a learning experience. I now know a lot more about SEO, Google Analytics, Product Search and e-commerce than I could have ever imagined.  I attempted building a couple of web pages on my own, and learned a lot about html and more than I ever care to know about style sheets. Then I found Scott Pooler, of iBusinessLogic who built this site for me. That’s when I learned I don’t need to learn how to do everything on my own – I can pay people who actually do it for a living to free up my time to do what I do best, having a store and making my customers happy.