Smoke gets in my eyes.

Eyes are puffy. Annoying, but what can I do?

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Boy, if I was building a house on land that was flooding, I might have second thoughts....

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A bit of a brouhaha in the comic retailer world. Apparently, there are such things as "ghost" variants: covers to books that are offered only a few select stores.

Now, I dislike variants. I really, really dislike exclusives. But they are such a small part of my business, that it doesn't really hurt me much.

But it turns out that one of these ghost variants was offered to the board members of the Comics Pro, a retailer group. I'm not a member of Comics Pro. But their stated mission is to represent the entire industry.

So it looks a little cliquish for them to accept an "exclusive" comic that wasn't offered to most of its membership, much less the rest of the comic stores.

I'm not mad about it. What interests me is how small, inside groups seem to lose perspective, and how easily they can be influenced. I know they don't see it that way. But like Caesar's wife, they need to be above any appearance of impropriety.

As in the case with the Bend Downtowners, I'm not a member, and maybe I don't have any right to complain. On the other hand, as an outsider I can bring a different perspective.

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I can't tell if I'm seeing lots of unfashionable girls wearing 70's - 80's style jeans, or lots of fashionable girls wearing 70's - 80's style jeans.

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"I have to fool my stomach into not thinking it's starving. It has to believe everything is normal -- 'oh, I just forgot to eat as much today."

Wait. I'm talking like my stomach has a brain.

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My orders came in way too high, yet everything I ordered is something I think I can sell.

I'm going to take the morning and go over it again, and see if I can't cut it a bit. I need to remind myself that I can always "reorder." But once I've ordered something, I'm committed.

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I'm trying a new strategy from July to December. Keep the store fully stocked, and continue to order interesting new stuff. But don't try to bring in entirely new product lines -- don't try to dramatically increase existing stock.

That's a pretty flexible goal -- more flexible than a fixed budget.

And I don't think it's working. I'm ordering too much under those conditions. The definition of "interesting new stuff" is probably a little broad. I'm committed to trying this tack for six months, but already I'm pretty sure it isn't working that well. I'll probably have to come up with a fixed budget, for this to work.

But it isn't hurting us -- I mean, we're making money (just not as much as I'd hoped), and not going into debt, so I'm going to stick to the plan for the full six months.