Day one in Boston (MARIAB)...

Wow! Day one was just great. The promoter has clearly done a great job with this show. There was a *big* crowd waiting to get in and it was pretty steady all day long. It was 330 in the afternoon before I remembered to have lunch.

Joyce from Brattle Books (great books, bags, peanut M&Ms and just generally nice to share a booth border with) watched the booth while Eli and I went off for a quick and good lunch right on the pier (and, hypothetically, a cherry Slurpee on the way back to the show).

I saw a fair number of old friends...other dealers and "real humans" and, as mentioned, we really did have pretty steady traffic in the booth all day long. There are not many shows you can say that about and it was a nice treat today. With luck, tomorrow will be more of the same.

We sold some good books today...shockingly, only one sale was to a dealer. It is a really nice day when you have a good number of sales and the vast majority are to real humans. We've also had a lot of people say really nice things to us today, about the booth, books and boy *laughing*.

Images show the booth before set-up. There are pretty nice "right view" and "left view" of the booth. My assistant...he of "I really don't like these long ties, could you get me a bow tie, they're cool" was wonderful pretty much all day...going between playing with some actions figures/game boy and offering cards and book advice to customers. Also, Eli is-clearly-at least as excited about my recent ABAA membership as I am. He proudly tells people about this (in the booth, at restaurants, checking into the hotel, etc) and is quite convinced that he is a "half member" due to his status as Thing Two (perhaps his brother has the other half).

The last shot is strait downt he middle of the aisle at about 2pm....pretty typical of the day.

Tomorrow starts at 10am...I am the seminar speaker for the 2ish pm seminar. It should be fun, though I hate having to leave my booth abandoned (though watched) during a chunk of the "wind down" before show end. Oh well. Then break down starting at 5pm and home. Most likely no update until Monday. We shall see.