Baltimore

We're going out to Baltimore in just a couple of weeks. The Baltimore Comic Con is there when we're there, so we'll probably spend a good chunk of Saturday checking it out. There are some solid people on the list! I was impressed. You can click on the link I have here and then click on the link for guests to see the biggies. We're hoping to find some reasonably priced original art for the store, so hopefully a slightly smaller con like this will have that. Then Sunday we will probably go to D. C., since Craig has never been there. Lucky for us, a customer of ours lives out there and he's willing to cart us around a little bit. We've never met him in person, but he's quite a character, so it should be lots of fun. Then all day Monday we have what they call a "retailer summit." It's put on by Diamond Distribution and their game distribution partner Alliance Distribution (both owned by Steve Geppi) A bunch of us comic book store owners get together and have a big pow-wow. We get to listen to seminars from publishers of various things as well as seminars put on by some of the big names in comic book retailing. We went to a similar one last October in Ft. Wayne IN and found it VERY informative - it was the major factor in convincing us to expand the store.

Thanks to our new employee, we can be gone for a few days and not worry about what will happen. HORAY! Although we were worried about Friday, especially since books will be a day late because of Labor Day. We figured it could be a pretty busy day and we didn't want to be closed all day long. Luckily our new employee had some extra vacation saved up from her Monday-Friday office job and will run the store Friday. We'll be closed the following Monday, and opened shorter hours on Tuesday, but those are ususally the slowest days of the week anyway.

Now our big worry in planning for the trip is our dog. We're going to board her at her usual place, but we won't get back in time to pick her up before the place closes for the night, and the next day is Wednesday, which is new book day, so there won't be any time to get her and we close the same time the kennel closes. Poor thing, she might have to be there an extra night. It's not just the added expense of an extra night, but she really has issues with being in places that are not our house. We've afraid that if we move she wouldn't know what to do with herself. She only goes to the bathroom in our yard, where she can smell that she's been there before. She's like those people who leave parties/movies/ whatever early to go home because they can't use other people or place's rest rooms. Plus, she probably won't eat much, and probably won't sleep much. When we take her for a 2-night stay she's usually exhausted and has to go to the bathroom about 5 times to catch up with what she held in. Thankfully the boarding place is also a vetrinary hospital, so if she gets sick from all of this they should be able to take care of it.