Saturday, November 5, 2011.
Sam's Club Sells Out. Dinner At The Club.
No radio show today, but I had a lot to keep me at my desk. Mary Ann is leaning on me to get her e-book published, and a lot of details needed attention. I spent most of the afternoon getting an ISBN number, formatting the book (again), and fiddling with the conversion software. But in early afternoon I sent the book to Jude. He's the only one in the family who owns an i-Pad. In fact, he is on his second unit, having been one of the people who jammed the stores the first day the iPad 2 came out. It's great to have a member of the family who's up to speed.
Jude reported that Mary Ann's E-book works perfectly on his iPad. Mary Ann responded to this news by showing me more warmth than I've felt from her in quite a long time. This may be the secret to a happy home life: let the wife take over the business and become a workaholic employee.
Our first North Shore book signing was at Sam's Club in Slidell. I have been told by the people at Pelican Publishing that Sam's moves a ton of books. I have no doubt about that. The store's staff set me up at a table just inside the front door. In the first fifteen minutes, I autographed sixteen books. At that rate, we would have sold well over a hundred in the scheduled two hours. But sixteen was all the books they had! One of the store's managers went on a search for more in the storeroom, but turned up nothing. Then he forgot to tell me that, and I sat around for another hour and a half doing nothing but talking at great length with the many people who stopped in and wanted the book. It came down to my ad-libbing the book's contents instead of selling copies.
That left me in a sour mood. I punished myself by stopping at the Krystal and getting two of their little square hamburgers, thereby satisfying my most embarrassing culinary sins. I got hooked on those things when I was in high school. Because they haven't changed in the tiniest detail since then, eating them is a nostalgia rush for me.
Coincidentally, I read some news about the Krystal company today. It's privately-owned by the family that started it in the 1930s. But I see that they're looking to sell the business. That will probably be the end of the consistency of the product. Those corporate guys have no patience with momentum, and will make any change if they think it will add one tenth of a cent to the profit margin.
Dinner with Dan and Cathy Scott at the Beau Chene clubhouse. I always like hanging with them, both because they're entertaining and because Dan always has a new idea for me. He thinks I ought to host a dinner at Beau Chene during the holidays to take advantage of the skills of the chef, an alumnus of Gerard Crozier's kitchen and a talented guy.
It was Dungeness crab night at the club. Mary Ann had a lot of fun with the pike of crab claws that came from that offer. I had a good turtle soup (perfect for the cooler weather) and a thick filet mignon with a demi-glace sauce. Dan kept apologizing for the narrowness of this night's menu, an upshot of the Dungeness offer, which grabs most of the customers. I don't know what he was apologizing for. Everything I had was good, and the wine prices were so attractive that we indulged in full measure.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
