10.31.08

Ok, so there is no way to disguise the fact that the High Point show was very, very, very slow.  I guess the only good news is it wasn’t a surprise, so no one took it personally.  Not that any of that helps the bottom line.  I know a few people that didn’t write a single order.  There isn’t much you can do, though, when the only people to sell to are your fellow vendors, and considering none of them are feeling all that flush, there wasn’t even very much of that going on.  Like anyone, I am looking for a nice happy little “take away” (I hate that term, but tough times call for using terms you’re not proud of like that one or “at the end of the day” or “circling back”  or “challenges”).  Fortunately there is a happy little take away for us.  This was the first time I was really able to show our new custom furniture that we are making in Minneapolis.  And for the few people that were at the show, they really reacted quite well to it all, many with orders on it, and as usual the accessories and artifacts that I run all over the place to find went well.  So all things considered – even though it was our slowest show, I came away strangely happy.

Of course the other reason I am happy is I am writing this on a plane not heading for High Point, but rather for Fez, Morocco and to the surrounding Atlas mountains, to shoot another episode for our series on the Travel Channel (I get paid every time I mention their name in the blog).    I have started to see some edited footage of the first two episodes we shot before the High Point show – or “BHS” – and I’m actually quite excited for this thing to get completely put together, ‘cause the footage is looking really cool.  Turns out we couldn’t have done most of it in front of a green screen, much to the chagrin of the production company’s budget people (just kidding . . . mostly).   

Same as the last blog entry, I am having another close to home great sighting from the aiplane.  On our way from Minneapolis to Montreal, then on to Fez, we fly directly over the confluence of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan (I’m not sure if lakes can have a confluence, but I’m going with it anyway).  For someone that spends quite a bit of time traveling to some pretty incredible places around the world, it’s great to start out such a journey flying over your backyard seeing something like this that ranks up there with some of the greatest natural wonders of the world.  Add to that, sitting here listening to a live recording of Jussi Bjorling singing live one of the great arias “Ah Sib ben mio” that he was so well known for, a cognac, a glass of water and no one sitting next to me in the next seat, and life seems pretty good.

Anyway, I had great intentions of doing two things on the first to episode shoots.  One was blogging each day at my mom’s request, the other was doing a nightly video diary re-cap of the day.  Needless to say, I didn’t pull off one blog entry and only did the video thing three nights out of 14.  So mom, I am counting this entry as one blog entry on this trip and will do my best to keep up, I promise, but you know how I am.  I get distracted by . . .ooooh, look at the pretty lakes below. . .