Floorplan Update and a New Baga Baby

Greetings, all.  Today had two themes:

1)  Dig Out From Under Five Days of Mail, Email, and Voice Mail Day.

2)  Solidifying The Floorplan for Canoecopia Day.

The first task took a while...nothing a few hours with a snowshovel couldn't handle.  Shame on U-Line Packaging for sending me six (!) phonebook-sized catalogs.  Three trees gave their all for these catalogs.  I also received a postcard requesting a catalog...a postcard we mailed out over six years ago.  Very, very weird.

The second task was more difficult but a lot more pleasant.  We're not making any major changes to the floorplan but it's always a struggle to include new boat vendors and other folks who need a lot of space since there's a finite amount of it...but we're making it work.  We always do.

To do our floorplan we use Adobe InDesign.  It's the same desktop publishing program we use to produce the gazette, but Annie has a lot more skill than I do.  I just drag squares around and reshape them until everything fits together.  Some booths get bigger (the ones who put care into making them look good), some booths get smaller (the ones that don't).  The tough part is that most people put extraordinary care into flying their company flags as best as they can in a space they're given. 

Annie's placing ads in the gazette this week, and we're editing copy and dropping that in too.  We'll send it off to the printer just after the first of the year and drop it in the mail soon after.  Both printing and mailing costs are up significantly but we'll manage.

Other news from last week:  John Reinders, our warehouse manager and assistant floor manager added another little Reinders to the brood.  Axel joined brothers Owen and Eli, and Liz was, of course, amazing.  John is on paternity leave for a while so he's missing out on some boat shipments.  Good timing for him, I s'ppose.  We miss him.

  Darren