ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS

Ah, a day off. The calm in the eye of the storm.

Yesterday was another crazy day. The sad part is, if
we had one or two more booksellers(not shelvers or
barristas or alpha's oh my!)it would have been much
less stressful.

As it is, those of us there are running back and forth
between info and registers, and at this rate we will all
be burned out by Christmas. I find myself drifting
towards rudeness with some customers lately and take that
as a signal to take my ten minute break.

Among the more...unique...ones lately:

The woman who I called to notify her that her book
had come in. Her answering machine took the message
after I was treated to a quote from the Bible that
the customer's disgustingly cheerful voice delivered
with a "There! That should help you through your day."
I hung up with a few well chosen(and whispered)phrases
of my own.

The woman looking for a summer reading book for her
daughter:
"Where are your kid's books? Not the kid kid's books,
but the kid's books." (She wanted Young Adults.)

The woman who made use of the computer kiosk:
"The computer says it's a large paperback.Where
is your large paperback section?"

Add to this TMWMBO in full voice paging the troops
from info to registers and then two minutes later
paging them back to information and you have people
walking about with stressed looks.

It was 6pm before I had a chance to try to reshelve
some of the day's returns that had accumulated along
the books and such that customers leave lying about.

I do love the book biz. I do,really.

But damn, I need a vacation.

And it now appears that won't happen until August.

....IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND....

Saturday was an amazingly busy day at the store,
considering we're in the slow season, and we were
lamentably short staffed. A long tiring day.

I spent a good portion of the day at register, and
it is not the most intellectually stimulating part
of the job...and yet....

I saw him standing in line at the far end of the
counter, a man perhaps a few years younger than I.
He was wearing a blue tshirt and a pair of jean
shorts. Very low jean shorts. So low, his beer belly
was hanging out over the waist and flopping nicely as
he advanced to my register. It was not until he was
standing across the counter from me that I noticed
that his zipper was also low.

Very low.

Ok, it was open.

He handed me his chosen DVD. I debated alerting the
gentleman of his umm..openness. Several customers
had noticed it as well. But as I looked at the guy,
I couldn't decide how to bring the subject up.(cough)

BT like?: "Milord, your blade is near unsheathed.
Secure it, please."

Dhugal like?: "Och y' bluidy numpty! Y' willie's
wavin' oop in th' wind!"

After a closer look at the guy's face, I decided he
was not in the best of moods and not likely to take
a hint well no matter how nicely (or not) I might
put it.

So I handed him his change and wished him a nice day.

And didn't salute the colors.

AND NOW, THIS REPORT

Umm..lessee..I'm still breathing. Although I
must have pulled something in my neck because there's
an ache from just by the back to a little ways out to
the left. Pain in arse..umm..no..neck...

Writing has picked up again. HT is moving along and
I have a few other stories in the mental pipeline if
I don't curl up like the Hunchback of Notre Dame this weekend.

Store passed the audit. Civilization as we know it is
safe.

And it's a damn BIG family tree.

Back to Jim in the studio

CAN I HAVE A VOWEL?

Another graduate of the Pat Sajak School of Spelling:
Pretty Young Thing customer whips out her checkbook
as I total her purchase.

Me: "That'll be twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents."

PYT:(stares at check): "Is there a y in twenty?"

Ah yes. A twentee something.

Lord Help us all.

At least she didn't ask if there is one in "sixty-
seven".

CYCLE

It's Father's Day and while climbing the Family Tree
last night I wondered how Dad would have reacted to
some of the things I've found on the climb. He was a
country boy who went to war who decided to stay in the
city when he came home(although technically he stayed
in the suburbs by his folk's standards it was the city).
He never finished high school and was a blue collar
worker all his life, most of it as a glazier. And here
it turns out that some of his ancestors were among the
leaders of the first towns in Massachusetts,and possibly
he could be related to the royalty of Europe.

He also has some drunks and scoundrels among his family,
at least by Puritan standards.

I could hear him muttering "idjit" as I read about
John Barnes. Dad wouldn't care that John was rather
infamous as a drunk, but he would have shook his head
in disgust that John was killed while apparently petting
his bull and the bull petted back ...with a horn. Any
sober farmboy would know better.

The irony of some of the things I've found amazes me.
I've lived all unknowing in a town (Marshfield) where
several ancestors lived and died,gone to college in a
town (Bridgewater) founded by others, hiked in a third
where other ancestors lived. Now my nephew will be
attending the London School of Economics for a semester
this fall: back to England where we came from.

It strikes me as a turn of some grand cosmic cycle.

MUSE-ICALLY SPEAKING

The Muse is back sort of and seems to be doing fine.
I zipped through two parts of HT the other day and
the words to much of the next two or three are pinging
around in my brain since then. I will wait until Sunday
to work on them though because I have found that
when I write late at night, I either get bogged down
and find it hard to continue, so I set it aside,
OR, I sit here much,much too long into
the wee hours of the morning determined to get it
all down while the flow is going well.

That second part leads to no sleep and a very
long day at work the next day.

So.......

Sunnnnnnnnnndaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!

(insert race car radio ad music here)

Meanwhile, I hight myself off to yonder bed.
Yeah, right over there....
(yawn)

Night.

INNER BUBBAHOOOD

Back a few weeks ago when I knew I was about to
enter the Financial Valley of Doom,I found a deal
at my local supermarket on frozen hamburgers. These
are sold under the brand name of Bubba Burgers and
usually go for $6.99 for a pack of six 1/3 lb.
hamburgers. The sale was "Buy one, get the other free",
so I became the proud buyer of 12 Bubba Burgers. I
took the two packs home and stowed them into my not
overly ostentatious but roomy (ok,halfempty) freezer
to be cooked at some future date.

Today was that day. Not for all 12, good lord no,but
two Bubba Burgers were placed in the skillet and
heat applied.

Friends, you know that term about "your mouth will
water!"?


Well, I'm here to tell you, brethren and sisters,
my mouth done salivated! I expected the Boston Pops
to burst into my living room to play Aaron Copeland
whilst Sam Elliott intoned in all his folksy cowboy
charm:

"Bubbaburgers. They're for Dinner."

I put them Bubbaburgers on two slices of white bread
(hamburger rolls are only for cookouts in our family
tradition), added some mustard,ketchup and relish,
covered them with two more slices of bread and
gobbled those suckers right down.

Were they good?

Great Lord Almighty, they sure as heck were!

Dessert was some Oreos.

I will go to bed soon tired but replete, and
content in the knowledge that I am, at last, in
touch with my Inner Bubba,

DE-UNKIFIED

Guess what?

Unk stands for ......

Unknown

DUH!!!!!!

Ah well..it made a funny poem, anyway.

Day off today. Made a laundry run and then
came home mildly concerned over a gurgling stomach.
Turned out it was merely hunger and after I ate
a pb sandwich it quieted down.

I took along a Michael Jecks mystery with me to
the laundromat. They are set in 13th century England
and while they aren't classics, they are good reads
and give more insights into medieval life. Many of
his books you already know whodunnit but watch his
two heroes pursue the truth while learning about the
ins and outs of whatever medieval fact of life they are
dealing with. This one is The Leper's Return
and by the title you can guess the angle in this one.
But I enjoy them and it's a reminder to me that not
every story has to be poetic and lyrical, and that
attention to characters goes a long way.

SO GOODNIGHT, YOU MOONLIGHT LADIES....

Hmm..been a few days.Headcolds tend to suck
what little ambition I have away.

One of those days today.I was once again reminded
that TMWMBO is a person with moods and that unless
I watch my step, that mood could put me out the door.
Nevermind the details. Suffice it to say I went about
the rest of the day with a queasy feeling in the pit
of my stomach and fearing a summons to the inner
sanctum for a pink slip.

When I came home I nuked a meal and was sitting down
to enjoy it when this tremendous clap of thunder
burst right over the house. Usually something like
that doesn't bother me,and I knew my comp and modem
were off and safe,but ..they hadn't forecast a
thunderstorm on the radio during the drive home.
Perhaps TMWMBO had found a more arcane way of
being rid of me?

Taking no chances I put aside dinner,moved away
from the windows and waited. One more burst of
thunder and lightening and a small torrential
downpour later,I finished dinner and then did
what I do all too often lately.

I fell asleep.

So I missed any rp tonight because it was nearly
1:30 am when I finally staggered over here to the
comp. Can't feel too guilty though as I have been
a bit wrung out from this damn cold.

At any rate: that day is over.

Tomorrow (or at this point,today) will be a
better one.