Ah, the joys of travel (updated)

Well, after a very successful and good time in San Diego for the AAR/SBL conference, I am now experiencing the travails of November travel. I'm stuck in the airport of Fargo, ND after being diverted from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport because of blowing snow. My flight leaves here at 2:00 PM on Wednesday (later today), so it will have taken about 24 hours to get home. Probably longer by the time I clear baggage claim, pick up my car, etc.

Oh, the things we do to sell books! : )

Update: The flight actually left a bit before 4:00 PM. Because Sun Country doesn't normally fly out of Fargo, they don't have a computer system set up there. They had to physically check us off against a printed manifest. Also because they don't normally fly out of Fargo, they don't have a gate. The Sun Country flight that was ahead of us was supposed to leave at 1:00. It still hadn't left at 2:45. At that point, another gate became available and they shifted us over there. If they hadn't done that, we would have been there another half-hour or so.

I finally landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul at 4:30. I had done a reverse park, stay, and fly, so I called the shuttle. It took over an hour for the shuttle because of being so busy and the roads being somewhat slick. I finally got home around 7:30 PM CST. That made for a bit over 24 hours in travel time. . .

I know why!

I'm in San Diego for the Annual Meetings of the AAR/SBL. Over the years, I've noticed a trend. Back when I first started doing this, if you got to the workout room after 6:00 AM, you had a limited choice of equipment. I prefer a stationary recumbent. It used to be they would have three upright bikes and two recumbents, plus elipticals and treadmills. I sometimes ended up on an eliptical.

But over the years, the number of people in the workout room has dropped—and the number of bikes had dropped. This hotel has one each of the bikes, as well as four or five treadmills and ellipticals. Because of the small number, I went to the workout room yesterday at about 5:40. Sure enough, someone was on the upright bike, but that left me the recumbent. Interestingly, during my half-hour there, only two other people came in to workout; one on weights and one on a treadmill.

Knowing from experience that the first day of the conference always has the biggest turnout in the workout room, I went down at 5:30 to ensure getting a bike. No problem; no one else was there. When I left at 6:05, here's what it looked like:

Yep. No one was there. I'll bet the restaurants won't have that problem! And that, my friends is why the waistlines of Americans are getting larger.

San Diego!

I'm in San Diego for the Annual Meetings of ASOR and AAR/SBL! Watch for pictures, etc. on the Eisenbrauns Facebook page and Twitter feed. There's a picture of the ASOR exhibit there right now!

Carta Online!

Carta has a new online program coming soon. It looks great; they are going to premier it in Boston at AAR/SBL in November. You can get a preview here: https://vimeo.com/230358095/8dba570479

And they're off!

I'm leaving for the Annual Meeting of ASOR. Hopefully, this will be an uneventful trip, unlike last year, where it took me 18 hours! I could have driven faster.

I'm driving to Duluth, catching a flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul, and then a flight to San Antonio. ASOR starts tomorrow evening and then AAR/SBL will begin on Saturday. I fly home on Tuesday, but will stay overnight in Duluth. I'm not a fan of driving Highway 61 after midnight—there are way too many deer. I'm a bit gun shy after hitting one two years ago. So, another night on the road.

See some of you in San Antonio!

Musings on exercise rooms

As you know, I recently returned from the annual AAR/SBL meetings, this year in Atlanta (you can read about my trip there and back again). Over the years, I've noticed a distinct trend in the use of exercise equipment in the conference hotels.

When I first started attending the conference back in 2003, if you didn't get to the exercise room by 6:00 AM, you likely wouldn't get the machine you wanted. In my case, it is the recumbent bicycle. More than likely you would have to take the upright bicycle or an elliptical machine. I started getting up a bit earlier and getting to the room at 5:55. If you waited until 6:15, you likely would stand in line for about 10–15 minutes to get a machine.

Over the years, that has changed. The change was gradual, the lines disappeared with people arriving later. It became less essential to arrive before 6:00, indeed 6:15 became early enough to get whatever machine you wished. The number of pieces of equipment also changed. Where before you would see 1 recumbent bicycle, 2 upright bicycles, 3–4 ellipticals, and 3–4 treadmills, now it is 1 recumbent, 1 upright (or none), 1–2 ellipticals, and 2–3 treadmills.

This year was the most dramatic, perhaps because I haven't attended for 2 years. Every day I arrived in the exercise room between 5:45-6:10 (depending on when my first appointment was). On most days, no one else arrived in the room until 6:15. On no day did more than 2 other people enter the room before I left (usually at 6:40) and on some days, I was the only person in the room.

Meanwhile, the nation has a growing problem with weight. Hmmm...

But, exercise is only half the issue. The other half is diet. At one of the hotels I stayed at, they offered "grab and go" lunches. Basically, a sack lunch. I took one. Here's what it had: 1 white bun with ham and cheese, 1 bag of potato chips, 1 Rice Krispie™ bar, 1 packet of real mayonnaise, and 1 packet of yellow mustard. Basically, the healthiest thing in there was the mustard packet! No fiber, no fruit, no vegetable (potato chips are not a vegetable!). Needless to say, it isn't healthy; even aside from the ham, cheese, and real mayo being animal products, the white bun and Rice Krispie™ bar would cause a pre-diabetic / diabetic's sugar levels to go nuts. But this was passed off with no apparent thought as a normal lunch. Add to that the probability that whoever ate it would grab a can of sugar-laden beverage, be it carbonated or not, and you've exceeded the recommended sugar intake for the day by about 3 times! And that's just one small lunch!

Any wonder we're a nation of obesity?

And the road home from Atlanta is paved with...delays!

For those of you just tuning in, the record of my trip to Altanta is here. I arrived in Atlanta safely, late last Thursday, after a 13 hour day, what with traffic and all. We set up the booth for AAR/SBL on Friday and the conference opened on Saturday. Yesterday, Tuesday, the exhibit closed at noon.

Once a large conference closes, mayhem ensues. Everybody wants to get torn down, packed up, and outta there as quickly as possible. Usually it's because they have a flight to catch. Well, of the four of us, one lives in Atlanta, and the other three of us drove, so the flight deadline wasn't looming. But, I had to get the van out of valet parking before 3:00 or pay for another day, so we wanted to get done. Because everything sold so well (thank you!), the teardown went well. In fact, we were waiting for them to bring our stuff out of the storage so we could pack up. Huh? Well, when you set up, you have to put all the empty boxes and crates on a skid and they store it someplace, fire regulations and all that. So, one of the first things they do is bring up the storage skids—usually!

That wasn't happening, so I went looking (along with other vendors!). I found the foreman, who was frustrated. Apparently the freight elevator had ceased working! Not a good thing. But, they had managed to get it fixed and our skid was soon to be delivered. Sure enough, 5–10 minutes later it showed up.

We still had to skid everything up, even though I drove. The loading dock is down one floor, so they move the skid down there and then it goes on the van. No problems there—until the guy decided he wanted to just load the skid on the van instead of unstacking and restacking. Oops! Too tall. Tear off a few layers and on it goes. Pack the stuff we took off around the skid and I'm ready to go.

I asked the guys standing there about the fastest way to the Interstate. Mistake! They gave me bad directions! I lost 20 minutes trying to get unlost from following them! Oh well...off we go into the wild construction zones of I-75 and I-65! I had hoped to get to Louisville before stopping. Originally, I had hoped that would be around 9:30—10:00. As the traffic moved slowly through the construction zones around Chattanooga, I started hoping for 10:30. It looked like I might make it as I pulled onto I-65 in Nashville. That is, until about 20–30 miles south of Elizabethtown (E-town to those of us who know). There was a 16 mile section where the lanes split; I chose the one with the exits, figuring that if there was an accident, the exits would make it easier for them to clear the road. Bad choice! About 5 miles into it, traffic came to a dead stop. For 27 minutes! And there was no cell phone coverage, so I couldn't even look at what was happening on Google maps. I still don't know what it was, because once traffic started moving, the lane was clear. I hit Louisville around 11:00 and stopped a bit into Indiana.

Today I took off around 8:00 or so and hit the offices in Winona Lake before noon. No problems! I hope the flight out tomorrow is as uneventful!

And he made it!

I just rolled in from Indiana with a van load of goodies! Tomorrow we set up. My luggage was indeed waiting for me when I got to the airport in Fort Wayne, so all is good there.

Now I'm heading over to the exhibit hall to see what I can see...more later! But it sure was a long drive!

The road to Atlanta is paved with . . . delays!

Well, I finally got into Warsaw, coming via South Bend airport. But my luggage went to Fort Wayne! I'll have to pick it up tomorrow on my way through to Atlanta.

For those of you just joining us, I am on my way to the annual AAR/SBL meeting in Atlanta. I'm going via Warsaw, IN, because I'm picking up a van full of Eisenbrauns books for the show. I started this morning (well, actually yesterday now) at 7:00 AM from Grand Marais, MN. I drove to Duluth through rain, and as I got near the Duluth airport, the fog got extremely thick. Not good, I thought. My flight might get delayed.

Well, it was delayed, but not because of fog in Duluth, but because of wind in Chicago. The plane I was supposed to board was still grounded at O'Hare! It finally arrived around 2:00 and it looked like we might get a fast track for me to catch my connecting flight to Fort Wayne. Nope. We sat on the tarmac for an hour before they sent us back to the terminal. Then it looked like we might not get out at all. Just about the time I was weighing my options—drive home and try again Thursday, drive to Indiana, or just stay in Duluth—they said that Chicago had cleared them to come on down. So, we loaded up the plane and headed south. This was about 5:00. We got into O'Hare around 6:30 and deplaned. I headed to the customer service counter, hoping to catch the last flight into Fort Wayne, but it was already full...so much for that! Maybe I'd be spending the night in Chicago.

They asked if I had an alternate destination. I said, South Bend. It's about an hour from Warsaw, about the same as Fort Wayne. There was a flight leaving in 20 minutes and there was one seat left. I took it and headed to the gate. I got to the gate just in time for them to announce that there was a mechanical problem on the plane and they were switching planes. We should be leaving around 7:30. And then around 8:00. And then around 8:15. We finally left at about 9:00, which is actually 10:00 South Bend time. We landed in South Bend at 11:00.

Dan (the business manager at Eisenbrauns) had driven up to get me. As I was landing, I got a text message from the airline saying that my baggage had missed my flight and I needed to talk to a customer service rep. Fine, except there was no one there. They were unloading the cargo, running a short staff in the evening. He finally made it to the customer service counter around 11:45. Sure enough, my baggage was on another flight—it was waiting for me in Fort Wayne!

So, we headed toward Warsaw. We got in around 1:00, but Dan needed to show me how to run all the point-of-sale computers. And then we loaded it all into the truck and here I am, almost 2:00 AM and I'm hitting the road for Atlanta in the morning, with a detour through Fort Wayne, where hopefully my baggage awaits me! And then on to Atlanta!

Isn't travel fun? : )

Two weeks

Actually, 13 days. Thirteen days until I leave the glorious promised land of the North Shore for the delightful experience of wallowing in a sea of books at the annual carnival that is AAR/SBL.

Two weeks from yesterday I fly out of Duluth, heading for Winona Lake, IN. Once there, I'll pick up the cargo van loaded with books and goodies and drive it to Atlanta. I'll leave Winona Lake on Thursday morning and arrive in Atlanta early evening, I hope, anyway! Friday will be set-up most of the day. We have a smaller booth this year, so either it will go faster because there's less space. Or, it will take longer because we're trying to shoehorn all those great books into a smaller space!

Either way, I'm hoping to find time to head over to the ASOR book exhibit in the afternoon. It would be nice to see the ETS book exhibit as well, but I doubt I'll have time for that. No worries, I'll have 4 days to wander around the AAR/SBL one...

Stay tuned for this year's special offers! Forty years of business calls for special offers, doesn't it?

Do we disagree?

Joseph Kelly and I were discussing (at AAR/SBL) one of the questions on his recent comprehensive exams. The question was “Which of the ten commandments relates to the environment” (do I have that right, Joseph?)? His response was, “None of them.” My response was all of them! He looked at me kind of funny, so I explained. It is a question that the ancient Israelites wouldn't have understood. The question requires a Western, post-enlightenment mindset. They would have seen everything in their life as relating to God, hence, all of them.

Joseph smiled, and replied that was the reason he answered none of them...we both believed the same thing, but we said it in opposite ways.

Language! It can be so confusing sometimes without dialogue. If we had stopped at the first statement that we each made, we would have thought that there was a major disagreement. Dialoguing revealed we both were using the same presuppositions, just expressing it in different ways.

How often does that happen in our everyday lives? Just some food for thought before assuming the worst...

Days 2 & 3

I didn't post yesterday, so I'll run two days together (they've already run together in my mind, anyway!).

I should have taken a picture at the beginning of each day, but the piles of new releases have dropped dramatically. We've sold out of a number of them and are down to one left on several. Time and the Biblical Hebrew Verb sold out the first day except for one copy. Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew wasn't far behind.

Had breakfast in the morning with Bobby K from Hendrickson; it's always a pleasure to talk with him. We talked business some, but also caught up on all the happenings in each of our lives since the last time we saw each other in March. Their shipment of Novum Testamentum Graece got caught in hurricane Sandy and was delayed.

Sunday evening Emanuel, Andrew, and I went to dinner together. Emanuel told me to pick the place, but he wanted it to be vegan. He told me that it was his way of recognizing the years of going wherever he preferred and me never complaining about it. I chose a place called Karyn's, on the north side. He called it the "last supper" as it is probably the last meal we will have together. The food was good, but I'm missing a good home-cooked meal right about now. I've been on the road for 2 weeks and am missing Debbie and home. Only one week left, with only 2 days of that away from Debbie.

This morning, I took Andrew around to the various publishers and introduced him. It's embarrassing to hear them talk so highly of me; I don't think I'm that good. Sure, I enjoy my work and put a lot of energy into it, but I'm just a faithful servant doing my job.

I went to lunch with Ramon from American Bible Society today. It's been an annual tradition of ours to have lunch and share what God's been doing in each of our lives. Hard to believe we've been doing it for nearly 10 years now. Those years have seen both my kids get married and have kids of their own. His kids have gone through the difficult teenage years and come out loving the Lord and wanting more of him. It's been good to see answers to prayer.

Monday night is always the Eisenbrauns dinner. During the conference, we don't always have a chance to share what we've been learning, what's working, what's not, what new proposals we've got, etc. So, Monday night we all go out to eat together and talk about the show. It's pretty obvious to us that our experiment of paying the tax or paying the shipping was a success. We're not sure about the PDF experiment yet. It appears to be a success, but probably could have benefited from more advance publicity. Of course, that was pretty hard to do when we didn't get the technical details working until less than a week before the conference started!

Tomorrow is the final day and it starts earlier than the other days. At noon we tear down, which is always a fun and interesting experience. I'll be curious to see what Dan and Andrew's reactions are to seeing the dark underbelly of a conference for the first time. I'll try to get some good pictures and post them on Facebook.

AAR/SBL, Day 1, part 2

Because AAR/SBL is in Chicago this year, we decided to bring as many staff up for a day or two as possible. Today, we had 5 extra people. Melody and Carina, two of our customer service people, Bev, one of our editors, Pam, our prepress manager, and Andy, our graphic artist, all came. Actually the first four came up Friday and spent the night. Andy caught an early train and got there a bit later.

Melody and Carina manned (personned??) the booth and did a great job. They enjoyed putting faces to the names they see every day. Bev and Pam met with people. Andy wandered around getting ideas, taking pictures (he's a great photographer), and deciding what he wanted to do differently for next year with our booth.

This year, we are trying some different things. First, we are paying the sales tax if you buy a book at the conference. Chicago tax is 9.5%, so that is essentially giving an extra 10% off. Second, if you decide to order the book at the conference, we are paying the shipping. Third, we are selling PDFs of our books. If you want the book and the PDF, we are only charging an extra $19.00—and you get the book on a 2 GB USB drive that says Eisenbrauns. How's that for a deal? And the PDF is DRM free...we call it our No Wait, No Weight sale—you don't have to wait for the book to be shipped and it doesn't add any weight to your suitcase.

Of course, we also are offering our new mug for free if you order or purchase $150 or more. If you want to buy the mug—and who wouldn't—it is only $9.95. A steal at twice the price :)

The rest of the day after my ASOR excursion was relatively uneventful. As always, I saw a lot of old friends, met some new ones, and had a good time pointing people to books that I thought would be helpful to them. That's the best part of the conference; it's all about the people and helping them find what they need.

The problem with where the conference is this year is that there is nothing in the area when it comes to restaurants. You have to drive or take a cab to everything. Tonight, we didn't want to go anywhere near downtown, so we looked for something relatively close. Someone, who shall remain nameless, found what sounded like a good place close by. So, after bidding the day trippers adieu, the remaining ones of us, except Andrew, whose wife and daughter were with him, loaded into Gina's vehicle and drove there. Turns out the place is a takeout only. No problem, so we thought. A quick Internet search revealed an alternative about a block away. So, we walked on over to what turned out to be another takeout only. Hmmm...back to the Internet. Back into the vehicle. We headed for an Italian restaurant that was nearby. Parked the vehicle, walked past a burger joint, a Subway and into the restaurant. An hour and a half wait! Not happening. So, we walked back past the Subway and the burger joint and went to a Thai restaurant that Jim had mentioned as being very good as we walked past it on the way to the Italian place.

It was very good. And cheap! Rare combinations, but welcome to our travel budget...While we were there, Dan checked his Facebook and saw that Andy had gone to a Greek restaurant before boarding the train and was having flaming cheese. Andy and I had gone to that restaurant at an AIA conference in Chicago several years ago. Unfortunately, he had misjudged his schedule and had to run to get his train before he could do more than have an appetizer. He always wanted to go back. Tonight he did...

AAR/SBL Day1, or a comedy of errors

Day one is always the most tiring day for me. I make sure I stick around the booth to answer questions that may arise. About 4:30, I usually realize I haven't sat more than about 15 minutes all day. This year was a bit different, though.

Eisenbrauns always attends ASOR before AAR/SBL begins, but we have always ended Friday around noon. This year, because both are in Chicago and we had staff coming up for Saturday, we decided to sell at ASOR on Saturday as well. Merna volunteered—or was volunteered, not sure which!—to man the ASOR booth on Saturday. The plan was to close up there around noon and then have me drive from McCormick Place to ASOR's downtown exhibit and help her pack up.

Problem: I have a "clipped" driver's license. What that means is that I have a new Minnesota driver's license coming and am still using the Indiana one with a clipped corner and a piece of paper saying that the new one is in the mail. The problem is that the paper expired and the new license came the day after I left for Indiana. So, essentially, I have no driver's license. While the probability that I would be stopped was small, that was not a chance I wanted to take! The profit margin at conferences is thin enough without a hefty fine like that to pay.

So, Gina drove me up there so I could play pack mule for the books. Commence comedy of errors. Gina assumed I knew where the ASOR hotel was; I assumed she knew. We got out of the parking ramp and she asks where we were going. I looked at her with a mystified look and said that I thought she knew. She pulled off to the side of the street while she entered the name of the hotel into the GPS. We knew it was the Marriott on Miracle Mile. Fine, the GPS sent us down Michigan Ave. No problem...except that the festival of lights was going to happen Friday evening. And there was going to be a Disney parade at 5:00 PM. And they were going to close Michigan Avenue to traffic and pedestrians. And everybody and their brother seemed to be downtown.

Fine, so it just will take a bit longer. But the GPS took us to the Marriott Courtyard on the Miracle Mile. Gina dropped me there, not knowing it was the wrong one, and went to get gas in her vehicle. So, here I am in the wrong hotel with no idea where the correct one is. So, I called Merna. The call dropped before we could say anything. That happened three times. Finally, I got through, found out that the hotel was only about a block or so away. No problem.

Once I got to the hotel, I went up to the 5th floor, found Merna and we went to get our empty boxes to pack the books in. The room was locked. No one was at the registration desk. No one with a key was anywhere on the floor...not good.

I went down to the first floor, found someone with a key, and they opened the room for us. We packed up the books and proceeded to the first floor. Now we had to contact Gina, warn her that the GPS sent her to the wrong hotel and try to get her to the correct one. We couldn't trust the GPS, though. It had sent her on a wrong path the night before as well...so we tried to tell her where to go and how to get back to us, but one way streets downtown can be a problem...

We finally got reunited, loaded the car and headed back out to the massive amounts of traffic. We made very slow progress, and I had an appointment to choose next year's booth locations. It looked like I wouldn't make it, so I called Jim to have him cover for me. No answer. So, I called Andrew; he answered, but he and Jim both had a meeting at the same time I did. Bummer. Major bummer. If you miss your appointment, you risk losing a choice spot. Andrew did get a hold of Dan, though, and Dan said he would go. The problem is that Dan had never done this before and wasn't sure what to do...

Well, we managed to get to Lake Shore Drive and from there is was smooth sailing. We made it back to McCormick Place 5 minutes before my meeting. I moved quickly to get to the meeting. I got there only to discover I had the wrong time...I had another 25 minutes!

We got the booths we wanted.

Day zero

Day Zero is setup day. It began early, as I mentioned yesterday, with a check-in at the Truck Marshalling yard. We got the necessary paperwork and drove to the exhibit hall.

In case you've never been to McCormick place, it is huge. The road snaked around underneath to a checkpoint. The guard looked at our paperwork, wrote down our license number and told us to go ahead. We drove up a relatively steep ramp, only to find a line of trucks. I've been in lines like that before...sometimes for a hour or more. But, this one moved in a few minutes. I was very relieved to find out that all of them turned left to the South building; we are in the West building. We drove up and found the dock had plenty of open bays. We had a low back rental and they didn't have dock levelers.

I thought we might have to tear the skids apart and rebuild them on the ground—not something I wanted to do at 7:30 in the morning!

I needn't have been concerned, though. A forklift driver just lifted the skid off the back, pallet jack and all (we had brought along a pallet jack in case they were going to charge us to use theirs—you can never be too careful). Then he put the pallet jack back on the truck so we could move the back skid close enough for him to lift it off. We built a third skid consisting of the Skyline on the spot (The Skyline is the back display that we use).

Set up went the best it ever has, except for my little snafu :) We were done before 2:30, but Deo and Carta hadn't arrived yet, so I stuck around, doing the Deal-of-the-weekend—a great deal, by the way—and waited for them. They both arrived in due time and I wondered the conference hall, drooling over the books.

Last night, I went out for dinner with Emanuel (from Carta) and his granddaughter to a nice Italian restaurant. Emanuel usually tries to have a family member who lives in the States with him. The restaurant was nice, noisy, but nice. The company was delightful, as well. In a massive brain fart, I ordered a mushroom and spinach pizza, forgetting all about the cheese on it! That was the first animal protein I have had in about 14 months!

And we're off again

To AAR/SBL, that is. Yesterday afternoon, we left Warsaw with a truck full of product and display material. This morning, about 6:30, we got the necessary paperwork to unload the truck. Then we waited until 8:00 before they would let us unload.
Setup went well; we're getting more organized and better at it each year...but take a look at these two pictures. See the difference?

I had all the books set out and nicely organized—early, too. Then I realized that I had forgotten the Eisenbrauns table drape : ( I had to take all the books off, put the new drape on, and re-place the books. Of course, they didn't go back the same. I couldn't find room for one of the books and had to rearrange again.

Post-SBL

OK, I didn't post much during AAR/SBL, and even less about the conference. I didn't even post any pictures of set-up or tear down. In fact, I didn't take many pictures at all—none at all of take down.

There is at least one reason for that, which was remedied this afternoon in the dentist's chair. I had a tooth that needed a root canal. I was praying that I would be able to make it until I got home—and I did. I was only in pain about 20% of the time, but as the conference went on, that amount of time increased. It was especially acute whenever I had something either warm or cold; that pain would last about 1/2 hour or so. As the dentist was digging around, she said that I should have been experiencing pain based on what she saw. So, I am now numb for who knows how much longer, but the pain is gone. I'm sure I'll be sore after it wears off, but at least it isn't air on a tooth nerve...

On other notes: we got home without any unusual problems—at about 4:00 AM. I actually fell asleep in the dentist's chair while they were waiting for the Novocaine to kick in...

Eisenbrauns SBL order form

For those of you who are searching for the Eisenbrauns SBL order forms, they are here. The stats show that you are ending up here on that search term, so that is my public service announcement for the day :)

By the way, Eisenbrauns titles are cheaper on site than through the order form—another public service announcement for you...

AAR/SBL prep

Andy, our webmaster and graphic designer, has a nice post on our AAR/SBL prep this year. He even includes photos of the procedure. Do check it out—and check out the real thing at AAR/SBL :)

Oh, by the way, all the books left yesterday for the conference. It is costing us about $1600 to ship them out to a warehouse in South San Francisco—and $2600 for them to be moved about a mile to the conference center. Can you say greedy? We're in the wrong business! We should start hosting conferences and charging ridiculous prices of the vendors...OK, I'm done for now.

<UPDATE:> I fixed the link; sorry about that.

SBL Day 4

Last day. I realized that I had forgotten to send BookNews yesterday, so I sent that off. The last day is always interesting; you never know what to expect. You know that Brill and Oxford are going to run a last day special and that there will be a line at the door. You just never know how long the line will be. Since I saw so many suitcases yesterday, I figured the lines would be short, and they were. Last year there were probably 200 people waiting, but this year only saw about 50.

I spent the early part of the morning checking with Mohr Siebeck and Deo to make sure that the books we were taking back with us were going to be ready. With Mohr Siebeck, I have to decide which series to take, since they have some that don't sell for us.

I also made a last run through the hall to make sure I hadn't missed any books that I can't live without :) Every year I say that I won't be bringing as many books home as I took. Every year, I end up being wrong. This year was no exception. You'll hear about them here as I read them.

The morning was slower; most people seemed to have left already. We started consolidating and putting bookstands away; it helps with tear down to do that ahead of time. Some of the smaller publishers started tearing down and leaving, but we stayed open and selling until after closing. Allan got the idea of turning himself into a walking billboard for Eisenbrauns. Merna made two signs, one for front and back, and pinned them to him. He just had surgery, so he is using a crutch. It was funny to watch him walking up and down the hall with the crutch and sign. A few other publishers asked if they could rent space on him, too. We all had a good laugh, but I doubt it made a difference in sales.

Dave and I had to catch an early flight, so anything that we could do to make it quicker, while still being able to sell, helped. When I left at a little after 1:00, we were well ahead of schedule. Having Johanna and Allan definitely helped.

When we got to the airport and were checking in, the attendant noticed that Dave's driver's license was expired. Good thing they didn't notice it at O'Hare on the way out, we might have missed our flight! They gave his the royal treatment—patting him down, going through everything, the whole deal. Me, I just went through security as usual. Once Dave finally got through, we reunited and had a late lunch and waited for our flight. They are calling us to board right now, so I am signing off.

Later, in flight. The flight is very bumpy. The pilot just announced that the worst was behind us and we would be going faster to make up for lost time. But, as is sure to happen, it suddenly became even bumpier! No pretzels and drinks this flight :) We will be landing at Newark soon for a two hour layover, and then catching our flight to O'Hare. Dave just told me that he forgot and put his keys in the suitcase, so I hope our luggage doesn't take the scenic route. I don't relish the idea of spending the night in Chicago if it does!