Postal Stations

Weeks like this one are always interesting around here.

The Mail Room is attached to my office here, so the trip from my desk to the packing area is about 15 feet. The trip is pretty seamless from one room to the next. The wall dividing the two rooms has bulletins pinned to it (Mostly urgent stuff that I'm supposed to attend to, much of it dating from 2005, 2006 and some little from 2007) and a huge wire rack that we salvaged from a dumpster about six months ago. Its filled to the brim with the various hundred or so titles we've put out over the past several years. Passing through the door puts you in a room about 20 by 50 feet or so and its filled to the brim with giant racks filled with books. All these are stacked in nice stacks and represent 7 years of publishing. There are two large tables, one for processing and packing orders, the other for assembling products and shrink wrapping. These have shelves under them stacked high with supplies such as packing, tape and other sundries. There are a mix of shelves and and file cabinets all filled with jumbled items gathered but not discarded or filed over the past many years. Mixed in with these are tools for the truck, oil, wracking for cons, posters, extra computer equipment and boxes, boxes and more boxes.

Presently the mail room has 6 extra boxes piled on the floor. These house the components of the East Mark Folio, signed by Gygax. We have a mountain of pre-orders on this thing as well as more orders that have come in over the past week. I've been out of pocket and Davis and Mark out of sight so things have stacked up around here. Its alot of orders. And they have to be shipped. So I sit and assemble them at one table, stacking them on the other. When I get 10 or so done I wander over to the packing table and do up the boxes and address them and drop them in a bigger box to carry to the post office.

And I'm the CEO of Troll Lord Games. :)

So each day this week I've taken a few hours and wandered into the Mail Room and begun assembling these Folio sets and sorting through the orders, assembling the boxes, packing and stuffing them. Its all rather dreary work. I don't mind it, as orders are always a good thing, but its a bit mind numbing and since my stereo out there has gone kaput and I'm too cheap to replace it, I don't have any Blondie to brighten the job. But the orders have been packed and shipping all week and by a look on the boards folks are finally getting them. I am rather proud of this product, it came out very nice, Gary, Jeff, Peter and Jared all doing bang up jobs in putting together a really cool adventure and combining the setting material. Nice work and my hats off to them all.

This has all be to the detriment of other items of course, I've put C2 aside for the week, and Crusader 8 is languishing, in need of my Alea iacta est article. I do hope to hit C2 or #8 pretty good this afternoon. I spent the rest of the week catching up with quarterly reports, balancing accounts and the like (as I was ill for the better part of the previous week). While all this has been going on Davis managed to finish and turn in Chimera's Roost and has returned to his own roost on the CKG. Peter is working on covers for G1 The Teeth of Barknash Nour. Mark continues to wrestle with various problems in the print shop but has (as of last night) cleared the station for action.

All is well in the Troll Dens and next week looks to be clear of bumps and empty for lots and lots of writing.

Thanks for Playing,
Steve