Boxes of Books, Restaurant Show, Email Newsletter, The Oatmeal.

The last few days, I've been double-checking stock for the Wisconsin Restaurant Expo, which runs next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We picked this up late, after another store pulled out, so I wasn't able to really go to publishers except for our two event authors (Andrew Zimmern on Monday and Tony and Kathy Mantuano on Tuesday). Oh, and from Wiley, since our rep Tom was so on the ball about this. He even gave me a suggested order. John, you've got competition for rep of the year!' If you haven't registered, here's a link to tickets.

I have now filled our receiving room with huge numbers of boxes. So normally I would not have been that upset when I created a Melissa and Doug 20-box order to ship April 1st that instead arrived March 10th. But I knew we'd have no room. So we carted off all those boxes to a storage area to clear space. Look for our new outdoor collection in early April. Oh, the bubbles of it all!

The spring event booking has slowed down, but we have plenty of follow-up to do on all the great things coming in April and May. Book ordering and outreach and partnerships and brainstorming and newsletters and signs and all of that. In fact, I was able to get out an email newsletter yesterday. Here's a link, just in case you don't subscribe.

One of my customers complained that the events never ended. No, they didn't, but I think that's a good thing. We recently had our first event where the authors didn't know they were speaking. A little panic, but we were able to pull it all together. Who knows what bodes for tomorrow's (Friday 3/18) event with Matthew Inman, Mr. Theoatmeal.com)? I've heard the events are much bigger than expected. I've already upped my book order three times.

It's a free event so get here early. And buy your book beforehand. I think we have a lot but we could run out. It sometimes happens.