How Does One Fill a Blog Post? Let me Count the Ways...

A nice blog post often is accompanied by photos. I have once again misplaced the store camera, and my cell phone's camera is not so great.  If I were showing you photos, last night's event with Chad Harbach and Stuart Nadler was great (apologies to the publicists I was supposed to write back to) but the best shots are of that amazing room in Discovery World where Dava Sobel had her event. It was quite stormy and you could see the water rushing around outside as the Soulstice Theater dramatized Copernicus's historic meeting with Rheticus that changed the way we looked at the world.

A fine way to write a bookstore blog is to have some staff recs.  Or how about my recs? Well, it seems like I've used up almost all my recs for books that have come out, aside from a few that aren't due until next year. Seems like it's too early for that. I did just read Drew Magary's novel, The Postmortal. Magary is coming on November 30. Hey, I should write a whole post about the book. But that post isn't going to be for today. I'm just not ready.

And how about one documenting how I'm spending my time?  I received some bookmarks that I bought at GLIBA. Do you remember those tins of book darts we used to sell at Schwartz? I brought some book darts in from that vendor, only these are sold off a plastic strip, much like our bookmarks. I'm hoping we'll one day do a custom tin, much like Schwartz did.

Speaking of custom, Aaron's working on a holiday bag for us.  I realized that a collector of paper-handled shopping bags who owned a bookstore (that would be me) would be an embarrassment to his obsession if he didn't at least once have a special paper bag.  This would be the place where I'd show you the bag, but I think it's too early in the process.

I also received (meaning opened the boxes and checked off against packing slips) some toys and plush. Unfortunately that included some plush lambs and chickens that we ordered last February for Easter. I did actually include a cancel date, but you know what they say...dates are so yesterday. On the other hand, we also got Sushi Siamese Cat (see picture), which makes all the problems manageable.

And then I wondered again why a particular order of boxed cards and bookmarks hasn't shipped. It turned out we had this weird stalemate where the vendor claimed we weren't up to date on payment and we claimed we were. In the end, they had applied one of our payments to the wrong invoice. We had actually not paid one of the invoices, but it was a different invoice from the one that both of us thought. There was a bit of sheepishness on all sides, but we're back to being friends and looking forward to the shipment (particularly the bookmarks, because the rack was looking a little piqued.

It reminded me that I have been remiss on finding new gift product for the store on the adult side. I've been good about loose cards and boxed cards and journals, but where are my scarves? Where are my hats? I'm actually not sure if I'm going to bring in clothing, but I do have friends at other bookstores who are. If I brought in the book jacket match boxes, would you accuse me of being too pro big tobacco? Maybe I should bring out my matchbook collection.  Yes, I have one.  I know you're shocked.

This is all to say, I'll be back tomorrow, perhaps with photos.