Nashville Prep

A visitor to my home can always tell when a trade show is about to happen (in this case, Nashville in 8 days) by the chaos in my dining room office area. There are piles of charts in all states of production. Boxes of covers from the print shop, stacks of printed charts and keys from the printer, reams of paper, and spent toner cartridges. Boxes of charts that will be shipped to the show await those final collated bagged charts and shipping labels.

I've reordered clear bags, flat mailers, post office boxes, and toner cartridges - and those boxes are sitting in arms reach, being used but waiting to put away properly too. Even my stapler ran out of staples. Everything needs replenishing in preparation for (hopefully) a big event.

You can see pictures of some of the other new models on my website. There will be six new releases in total. I've got a few that I'm keeping under wraps until the big show, sort of a fun surprise for the shops that get to attend.

It was not how I planned to return from the utter chaos, but you can see here that the table is somewhat cleared off. I had worked myself down to about one square foot on the corner of usable surface area, then BLAMMO! I accidentally launched the last inch of beer in my glass into the piles of stuff on the table. Argggghhhhh! It is amazing how just an ounce or two of liquid can touch so many things.

There is some minor damage, but I'm still reeling from how lucky I am that it didn't spill onto models or into a box of printed covers. Or my shoebox of Gentle Arts or Gloriana Threads. Or the stack of linen that was inches away. You get the drift.

Time to step back, put some things away, let the antique table dry fully, and eventually get a fresh beer.