Sunny California

I thought I'd write a quick blog about the vacation I'm on right now. I flew out to California yesterday and will be spending the next 11 days out here. It's been great already - I flew into LA about 9:00 am local, got to my parent's house and spent the entire afternoon swimming and playing with my nieces. I even got a little sun burn - and it was just the first day!

AJ is manning the fort - of course, I'll be doing a lot of remote work, but AJ will still have a heck of a workload when I'm gone - so be nice to her!

I'll be posting regular blogs - Dan is about 12 blogs behind right now, in case you've been wondering why we've had so many blogs from Jon in a row. I expect you'll see a truckload of blogs from Dan over the next weeks as everything balances out.

In comic retailing news, Cold Cut Distribution got put on the market yesterday. This is a pretty big deal for a store like Star Clipper, which carries a large number of smaller-press books. We've actually been ordering less from Cold Cut for much of 2007 since they changed their discount structure and shipping terms, but we still order a fair amount from them. It would be nice if their warehouse were moved somewhere a little more centrally located in the United States. Right now they're in Salinas, CA, and shipping on our orders takes about 5 days. Compare that with next day shipping from distributors like Diamond or next day (free freight) from Baker and Taylor's warehouse in Chicago, and you can probably understand why we've been ordering less from them.

Anyway, St. Louis could also use a good comic distributor locally, right. I'm not predicting anything, I'm just saying...it would be nice.

-b