Saturday is Inventory Day.

Can it really be a year since Amie, Jason, and I stayed up for 18 hours doing inventory, only to find that one of the pricing guns froze, forcing us to hire a service anyway?

So this year we just went and hired General Business Services. Moin and his team started at 5:30 this morning, and they were done by the time we opened at 10.

First they lay out inventory cards in all the areas where there are titles to be counted. Greg went through the back room, while Jason, Sharon, Anne and I counted up our storage area. The crew totaled up each section, and at the end, Moin and I went through the store, judging whether the number seemed right, and whether there were any areas that weren't counted.

It seemed like a good time to take out the holiday window, since we had to pull the books anyway. All the totals were added together and we got a final number. A store wants to be within 2% of the number on their computer. We were close, but not quite there.

For me, the day felt like it was over before it begun. But at 2 pm we hosted Scott Jacobs, author of Never Leave Your Block. I'm not sure, but I think we had more folks at our event than he did at the ones in Chicago. Go figure. (My take--he split his audience over multiple events down there, while we were able to pull together family, ex-Sentinel colleagues, plus folks interested in his story together into one event). A good time was had by all, and after it was over, I went home to collapse.