Guess what just arrived at my doorstep? A box of my books! Time to pop open the bottle of champagne!

I did a little dance, carried the very heavy box to the kitchen and put it on the counter.

I grabbed the scissors, and cut open the tape. Inside were 50 individually shrink-wrapped books. (Shrink wrap?!?) I grabbed one--it was thicker than I expected. (I wrote all this?)

I ripped off the plastic and opened it up. It was such a strange feeling to actually see my words in print! I kid you not, a shiver passed through my bones. I grinned. I flipped through the pages.

The first thing I thought was, "Gee, the tiny fonts in the images look good. I was worried it would be too small. Allison and Liz both assured me it would be fine, and they were right." Then I noticed all the green in the book. Yay, green! My favorite color (being born on St. Patrick's Day). I love how the full green pages that mark the chapters are visible on the edge of the book as you page through it, so you can skip to the next chapter pretty easily. Lou's clever little iconography at the top of each chapter page that indicates where you are in the book and how thick each chapter is corresponds directly to the experience of holding the book and looking at the thin green page-edges of each chapter. Wow. And then, of course, I found an error, excuse me--errata, on page 95 in the table about prioritized key business objectives. The "ne" in "business" is not bold like the rest of the word. Oh, that's not a bad error to find! Then I studied the cover again and noticed for the first time the gradations and transparencies in the lines that Jason Kernevich at The Heads of State drew. It looks like it has more depth in print. Cool!

And last, there's that book smell. You know how a new book smells? It smells like a bookstore and settling down to absorb a new experience, to read some new adventure. Except I've read this book a hundred times--just not in print. With the book smell. I think I'll go sit down with it now.