Thursday set-up day...

I left [Lex] Lutherville at about 830 and made it into DC a bit before 10am. It turned out that I could not go in, but rather had to go to the "Staging Area" several blocks away. This was reasonably simple and straightforward and I was parked an unloading at about 10:10am. 

I have a 10x12 booth, and am using two 8 foot tables, a 4 and a 6 foot see-through trophy case. Not having Suzanne with me is horrid on many levels...I will not go into the myriad of ways that her absence cripples me in most functional ways...However, as is applicable here, her  absence means my table cloths are not a nice and true. I am reason ably certain that it was about 1pm (3 hours in) before I unpacked a single book . 

Once I did start unpacking, it went reasonably well. The Vernonware threw me a bit, as they take up a bit of space,

 etc...but they look nice in the case and, with luck, will find a

 new home here (I have nice sets of all three patters (Salamina, Moby Dick and Our America)).

There are a reasonable number of book dealers at this show, and the other DC book fair is also this weekend (the one we tried to get into for 3 years, but despite repeated calls, could never get *on* the wait list, let alone *off*...frankly, we never had any return our calls...ever.

More on the other dealers here tomorrow.

They closed the all at 8pm. I finished setting up

 at 7:49pm. About 10 hours. I feel really good about this, because I thought I had taken 12 hours...now I feel really zippy. Urgh.

The show opens tomorrow at 11am and runs until 7pm. It runs the same through Monday. Look forward to seeing some of you there...

More updates to follow.