SBL Day 3

The last full day. There were even less people in the workout room than yesterday, if that is possible. There were only two people when I got there at 6:10, and no one came in at 6:30. Strange. I don't recall a conference with this few people doing a workout.

The hall was busy pretty much all day, but you could definitely tell when sessions ended. There would be this sudden influx of people and the lines would get longer. I don't remember seeing as many people hauling suitcases around as I saw today. That could mean a slow day tomorrow.

Two of the exhibitors—IVP and Abingdon—had stuff missing. Somehow the freight company managed to lose 5 pallets worth of books that IVP had sent to the show. They still haven't found them. All the books in IVP's booth either came from ETS, or were sent next day air from their warehouse. That explains why some titles that I would have expected to see were missing. At this point, I think they hope the product isn't found, so they can at least get an insurance claim. Can you imagine if they tried to deliver it to the conference hall on the last day?

Abingdon lost their Skyline display. For those of you who don't know what that means, Skyline is the company that makes the backdrops that you see in many booths. They aren't cheap, costing about a thousand dollars each. The advantage is that they are light, pack very nicely into sturdy travel cases, and are fast and easy to set up. The backdrop that Eisenbrauns uses is a Skyline. I can't imagine what we would do if our Skyline didn't show up.

We lost a portable hand truck. It was stolen from the pallet on the way to ASOR. It's only worth about a hundred dollars, but it is frustrating and an inconvenience when you are trying to move several boxes to other areas. You have to make multiple trips, carrying one box at a time. That is the second one that has been stolen in the last 4 years. But, compared to not having any product in the booth, our loss is nothing!

Jim and Merna's daughter and son-in-law, Johanna and Allan, joined us to help for the last two days. They live in the area and drove up. Allan is always fun to talk to; he is a programmer/geek/open source guy, so we speak a lot of the same language.

We always have our Eisenbrauns employee dinner on Monday night. The other nights there is no guarantee that we will be together, what with Jim going one way and me another. This year we actually all ate together both Sunday and Monday, but that rarely happens. We went to Legal Seafood, which of course begs the question of where do you get illegal seafood. We had reservations, which was a good thing because it was packed. With good reason, too. The food was very good, with much of it.

After we got back to the room, it was the pack up, get ready to fly out tomorrow routine. Dave totaled the day's orders while I went over the previous days' orders looking for for certain titles that I have to flag for special handling.

By the time all that was over, it was already 12:30. So much for an early night :)