Topping the Hill

We gamed last night (for those of you who don't know, Wed. is our official game night). It could have been better, but the funniest highlight was Todd. I described a room with mist in it and Davis asked: "Is it Smoke?" I said no. Mac asked "Is it Fog?" I said no. Todd said...drum roll please..."Is it Smog?" LOL

The latest round of TLG re-structuring has about wrapped up. Mark and I worked in the mailroom the other night for many hours. He shrink wrapped the bulk of the AWD books and I boxed them for shipment. These went out to Ft. Wayne on Wednesday's UPS truck. As I3 Felsentheim had shipped out Monday we'll have two releases this week. We've begun wrapping up work on the East Mark Folio, and recently received Gary's signed copies, so these will begin shipping late next week. We probably won't bother to shrink wrap the direct to consumer orders as that is just more work and waste. And I'm not really found of wasting (I avoid grocery bags if possible, many a time I stagger out of Kroger with my hands full of crap thinking...'just get a grocery bag'.)

Mark is putting more hours in these days and Davis is hard at it, taking over many jobs I've had to previously do. This has freed up some of my time which I will devote to pushing TLG books and games into deeper markets. Spent Tuesday afternoon on several sales calls to retailers and distributors. I've been down on this aspect of the business lately as the several 'retailer' promotions we've done have not been fruitful. But in watching an episode of "The Office" I got rather inspired. It was two weeks ago I think and basically the new regional manager is replacing sales staff with computer/online ordering. Funny show as the sales staff tried to battle the computer and the manager set off on the trail to drum up business. He fails of course in an embarrassingly funny manner, but in one scene, while pitching his product, after being rejected and on his way out the door he turns and says to the potential customer: "By the way, don't let you daughter have the such and such nuts as they some such in them and she is allergic (I'm paraphrasing as you might be able to tell)." The camera stays on the customer for a long moment as he realizes that this salesman knows him personally and the subtext is obvious "we're loosing the face to face business." It gives no lesson or judgment, but it did make me pause. After some thought I'm going to try to become more interactive with my retailers. That is part of my job.

With the greater organization around here, we have more time and with that I am happy to announce that I'm going to recommence work on four projects that have languished in my inbox: The Basic Set, CI Shades of Mist, Dwarven Glory II and Monsters of Aihrde III.

In a personal note, I was up at the kid's school today and noted a big display of Andy Warhol stuff, some kind of celebration or the other and contest. I thought to myself and said outloud "are they going to have a Rembrandt celebration?"

Thanks for Playing,
Steve