Today at Logos

I came into Logos hoping to find a Harlan Coben book I had just finished as an audio book.  I was sad that I did not.  I was listening to it while I was fixing breakfast for the dogs this morning when Lizzie, in her excitement, leaped up alongside of me, caught the earbud cord in her foot and pulled the buds out of my ears.  I missed a sentence which, as it turned out later in the book, was crucial to understanding what the whole thing was about.  Now I have to try to go back through the recording and see if I can find the spot again.

Sandy didn't stick around today, as she had an appointment with Cindy (we share a dentist) and I kind of automatically rang up the first customer of my shift without noticing him or the book he was buying...all I know is that it was Contemporary Fiction and cost $5.97.

The next customer was a woman pushing a walker, but I suspect it was more as a shopping cart than an actual walker (though Lord knows I use shopping carts as walkers, so who knows).  Anyway she had two boxes on the seat and grumbled "I should have known better than to stop by here." The bargain book that caught her eye was "The Secret Life of Louisa May Alcott."

A guy came in and bought 2 Malcolm Gladwell books on success for $15.73.  Gladwell has been a writer at the New Yorker for the past 20 years and now I'm curious to read some of his stuff.

A guy wearing a Goonies t-shirt came in and checked out travel books, but didn't buy anything.

A woman came in.  She said she's also a Logos volunteer and she just wanted to check for a book. She knew we frequently had it.  She went to the Contemporary Fiction section, and then to the Fantasy section.  I just knew she was looking for Diana Gabaldon.  When I asked her what she was looking for, she said "The Outlander Series."  I asked if she was trying to read Book 2 before the new series starts on STARZ Saturday night.  She said she was recording it because she hasn't read the book yet and wants to read it first. We talked about Season 1 of the TV series (too violent, she shuddered).  Fun to meet another Outlander fan...and I just loved that I knew instinctively what she was looking for!

An Oriental guy bought both French-English and Spanish-English dictionaries.

A group of young men, who might have been college age, stood outside while one of them read aloud from a book on the bargain table, with much gesticulation, but they didn't buy the book or enter the store.

Bruce came in looking relatively normal for him.  No hat again, his white clothes were relatively clean and tidy and he had a package under one arm and a drink in the other hand.  He picked out a book on Aboriginal art from the display table and sat down to look through it, then asked me to hold it ("put it somewhere safe") and that he would be back in an hour to buy it, but he had not returned by the time I left.

A young girl was wearing a VERY short skirt and I sincerely hope that was a pair of shorts under it because with the back pack pulling the skirt up in back, there was very little left to the imagination.

A girl with long blonde hair, who looked older from the front than from the back, asked if we had "classical fiction."  I directed her to the Literature (vs. Contemporary Fiction) section and she was thrilled that she found all three of the books by Greek philosophers she was looking for.  After I told her about the store policy of donating to charity, she was interested in volunteering, but since she will be gone all summer, she will follow up on that in the fall.

A woman with reddish-purpleish bronze hair in a tight ballerina type bun bought a Latin dictionary (it was "dictionary day" around there!)

A guy wearing a UCD shirt that said Cal Aggie Tenors came in.  I asked about his shirt and learned he's a saxophone player in the Cal Band.  We talked about the upcoming Picnic Day, the biggest event of the year in Davis.

While I was talking with him, I noticed a band walking by the front of the store, about 6 guys, each carrying black instrument cases of different sizes and shapes.

A couple came in and the woman bought 3 children's books in Korean (she and her partner were discussing the Korean language, so I assume the books were Korean) and a contemporary fiction book.

A guy came in with a bargain book and asked "What does this say?  I can't read it."  It was an anthology of writers on writing, so he took it back outside to where he'd found it.

A couple came in with a big box of books to donate.  "Probably most of them were bought here," the woman told me.  She then bought a cookbook and donated 50 cents of her change to the store.  Nice people.

My friend arrived at 4:30 and bought a book of Grimm's Fairy tales and two bargain books.

Two young women were walking around, one of whom was looking up something on her phone.  She then put the phone in her back pocket.  I noticed that it was one of the newer/larger phones and wondered if manufacturers of slacks are making back pockets wider these days to accommodate the new cell phones!

Two guys I decided must be gay came in and went book hunting in different directions.  I later noticed that one had a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand and thought maybe I was wrong, but when he turned around he had 3 rings on his right hand and his friend was a bejeweled wonder, so I guess my gaydar was accurate after all.  The jeweled one bought the 3 books of the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.  Apparently this was a PBS special awhile ago.

A guy wearing a pink Aloha shirt with earbuds in his ears saunters in looking much like Matt LeBlanc (from Friends).  I didn't notice when he left because I was noticing the shoes of a girl who came in.  They were cream colored tennis shoes, very clean, with brown shoe laces, very neatly laced (without a bow) and grey anklets.  I just thought she looked very nice.

Peter came in to relieve me at 5:58 and Walt arrived to pick me up at 5:59, both very prompt.  I won't work next Thursday because I'm going to a volunteer luncheon for Sutter Davis volunteers, but I will be working at Logos on Saturday of that week.

More Family Drama

Well.  No cleaning got done today.  None.

The day started at 7:30 with a phone call from my mother, in great distress.  She felt terrible and she just didn't know what to do.  I told her I would be right over.

She answered the door, but staggered trying to get back to bed.  She kept slapping her arm and saying "stupid, stupid, stupid" because she didn't know how not to feel the way she was feeling and felt it was her fault for not being able to feel better.  She told me she hadn't eaten in 2 days and that she felt like she had nausea all over her body.  She also told me that she "tried to walk and would find herself on the floor."  I don't know if she has fallen or not...you just never know which of her stories are accurate and which are things she remember, but never really happened.

I went to call the advice nurse at Kaiser.  During the twenty minutes I was on hold (the pre-screener told me that average wait time was 15 minutes but in this case it would probably be less time.  Yeah.  Right.) my mother staggered into the living room, hanging onto wall furniture to keep from falling over.

She sat in her chair for awhile, head in her hands moaning, then moved to the couch, she lay down, again slapping herself and calling herself stupid-stupid-stupid.

I finally got the advice nurse and she ran through all the possible symptoms for stroke and other obvious things.  She talked with my mother, who could speak clearly, but feebly and couldn't answer all the questions.  We decided she should see the doctor and made an appointment for the afternoon, but said she'd try to get her in in the morning and would call me if she was able to.

 

Then I went to the Atria front desk to check their records and miss "haven't eaten in 2 days" had 3 meals yesterday, which was nice to know.  I went to the dining room and got her a piece of dry toast and a cup of coffee.  She sat up to eat and it was like she was back to normal again.

My phone battery was running down, so since my mother seemed fine, I went home to recharge the battery so I wouldn't miss the doctor's call.  Good thing I did because the doctor called on the house phone, not my cell phone.  We changed the appointment to 11 a.m.

I went back to Atria and she was sleeping on the couch.  I let her sleep until she woke up and when she did she was disoriented and "sick" again.  But the one thing she was adamant about was that she did NOT want to see a doctor.  Maybe we could go tomorrow when she was feeling better.  I finally asked "do you like the way you feel now?"  That seemed to convince her to let me take her to the doctor.

The exam went exactly as I knew it would: She tells the doctor she's great, everything checks out fine.  She isn't dizzy.  She doesn't remember falling down.  She isn't nauseous, etc.  We went and had labs drawn. I told the doctor that my non-professional diagnosis was that there was an anxiety component to all of this. I think she woke up not feeling well and not sure what she should do about it, and that made her anxious so she called me and it escalated from there.  When I took charge and got on the phone with the advice nurse it took the onus off of her for "doing something."

I think if there is anything good that is happening with all these "I'm fine; she's just exaggerating" meetings is that Kaiser is finally beginning to realize that you can't trust what she says. (Today she could not remember her last name and had to ask me.) Never ask her a "when" question because she'll just make up an arbitrary date, and people will believe her. I never did believe that she hadn't eaten in 2 days and am so grateful that Atria keeps records on that!

While we were waiting for labs, I kept thinking what she really needed is to go to a nice lunch.  But she gets confused in the atmosphere of a restaurant.  She hates the noise of crowds because she can't understand what's being said and the last time we went to a restaurant she ended up so agitated that I realized it really isn't a treat for her to be taken out to lunch. I tried to think of a place where I would take her that she would like.

Then I came up with the perfect idea:  Osteria Fasulo, a little Italian restaurant out in Village Homes, which is like being on an estate of a big mansion -- lots of gardens with trees (she loves trees) and flowers.  They have an indoor eating area, but I asked for the patio.  The weather was perfect, warm and slightly breezy, and there were almost no people on the patio, so it was like having the place to ourselves.  From where she sat, under a grape arbor, she could look out across the grass to an eye-blindingly beautiful iris garden.

The birds flew in and around the arbor and she just loved looking at all the beautiful trees.

That coral rose bush was right next to our table and when the breeze blew the air was filled with the fragrance of the roses...a scent you get so seldom from hothouse flowers.

I didn't give her much chance to look at the menu because that always confuses her.  I told her I was having braised romaine with Dungeness crab and she decided that sounded good to her.  The woman who looks at every plate and complains that it's too much, actually ate more than I did and loved it.  She cleaned her plate; I did not.

When asked if she wanted to look at the dessert menu, she gave a hearty "SURE!" so we both had a lovely creme brulee.

By the time we had finished our lunch, you'd never know she had ever been sick.  In fact, she had forgotten she had been to the doctor.  She was bright and chipper and raving about what a lovely afternoon we'd had.  When I dropped her back at Atria, where she usually gets out kind of dazed saying that she isn't sure she can find her apartment, she was sure-footed and didn't complain at all about fear of finding her apartment.

The downside was that it cost nearly $100 and we had the cheaper things on the menu! I need to find something similar...or MAKE something similar where she doesn't have to walk (which her back pain prevents her from doing--and she refuses to use cane or wheelchair), but can commune with nature and not have an expensive meal in the bargain, but I can bring a picnic lunch.

But then, since her moods flip flop more often than a politician, who knows if a return visit would be as positive, You can only take her day by day, sometimes only hour by hour. But right now I'm feeling pretty good about how the day went, even if it DID take 7 hours!


TOMORROW I'll get back to cleaning.

A Family Drama

I observed a great drama in our family room tonight.  As a professional theater critic, I think I'd have to give it 5 stars.

The family room has 3 dog beds and two chairs for humans.  It worked out perfectly when Sheila was alive.  A soft spot for everyone.  But Polly's favorite place to be really is in my chair.  The second I get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom, she's in that chair and has built a bed for herself out of the rug that I put across the seat to keep her from digging in the upholstery.  I have to smooth out the lump of bed she's created for herself so I can sit on it, and she'll jump off my chair.

Lizzie, on the other hand, when Walt goes upstairs and his chair is empty, usually goes to sleep in his chair.

Tonight I was in my office and then came out to watch Go Call Saul.  Lizzie was in my chair, so I sat in Walt's chair.  Polly stood there just staring at my chair for about five minutes.

She finally gave what is kind of a cross between a growl and a whine, but very softly.  Lizzie didn't even notice.

Then Polly went outside and stood on the patio and gave 2 soft barks, which is usually the signal for Lizzie to join her and for them to check for critters outside.  Lizzie immediately got out of my chair, walked outside, and Polly ran back inside and took possession of my chair.  Lizzie came in, looked at my chair, gave a big sigh, and went into the living room, where she sleeps all night long.

Polly won.  But it was just so funny to watch that little head figuring out how to get "her" chair back!

So how's it going with the clean-up project?  Well, if you were to come in here and look at my office, you'd swear that I hadn't done a thing, but you would be so wrong.

For one thing, I decided I probably didn't need to keep 40 years worth of bank statements, which have been stored in several places in this office.  They are all now neatly in a box awaiting the city's next "shred it" day.

There have been huge piles on my desk, to the right of my keyboard, and on the desk to my left, supposedly my "work space" which had at least 12" or more of "crap" piled on it.  Both piles were totally chaotic but I managed to gather all of the Compassion letters in one pile, all of the stickers into the sticker container, all of the SwapBot postcards into the drawer where I keep them and the blank cards people have sent me into the postcard boxes, and all of the photos I removed from photo albums upstairs to scan into a special drawer until I get around to taking them back upstairs again.

I even found a stash of memorial cards...'cause you can never throw them away, can you?  This one is for the priest who was the pastor of the Newman Center in Berkeley when all the folks in our Pinata group met and married.  The only reason he didn't marry Walt and me was because he had been transferred by the time we married.  We did, however, name Paul (Paul Joseph) after him.

There was even the program for my cousin Shirley's memorial in 2005.  What do you do with this stuff?  I guess I'll hang it on the cork board above my desk along with the memorial for my cousin Kathy and the memorial cards for my friend Sister Anne (who died in 1992), and for Char's husband, Mike.

I opened up big areas in my desk area, but still have tons more to go through in order to make it better.  Then I can get started on the rest of the office.  This is obviously going to take longer than the week I figured I could devote to it.  Next week isn't clear like this one is, but it's not full either.

In the meantime, Walt continues plugging away upstairs and makes nightly trips to the recycle place.  I'm going to have to get him to cart away several years worth of Photoshop magazines that I know I will never look at again, especially now that I only have "Photoshop Lite" instead of the full program.

If we both keep at this, we might actually get the house in a shape where we can consider moving.  It shouldn't take more than 20 years or so...

A Simple Jam

Yesterday was one of those days where one thing led to another, which led to something that took all day that led to something that is probably going to take several days.

It started simply.  You know, I'm really getting into this whole pocket letter thing.  I've already finished one that I'm going to mail off today.  It's kind of by way of an introduction and I was happy with how it turned out.

Behind each one of those pockets is a little gift...things like stickers or Washi tape or something else (a copy of two of my reviews is behind the "I am a writer" pocket).  Some of them have mini letters explaining -- like the Lawsuit picture.  It's not nearly as fancy as some pocket letters you see, but I'm pleased with it.  The woman I am sending this to is in Australia, so on the back there is a California map showing where in the state I live.

The next one I'm doing is for a woman in Malta, who suggested we might swap pocket letters with a book theme.  I'm having fun with it but have been so obsessed that I even dreamed about pockets.  In my dream, I was thinking of a pocket about Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue," about which I have spoken here so often.  the book is about the development of the English language and I thought it would be fun to have a bunch of English words, with a picture of the book on top of them.

I thought about how much easier it would be if I printed the words on sticky paper, the kind I used to use for transcription.  That would make it easier because I would not have to individually glue each word, but just peel off the backing and position on the pocket background.

Easy peasy.

Only I put a too-small piece of paper into the printer and when I started to print, it jammed inside.  This has happened once or twice in the past couple of years, but this time it was so securely jammed I couldn't even see it.  Now the problem with working with the printer is that there is so much stuff piled on the floor, since I am out of shelf space, that you can't get to the printer, so it involved removing everything on the floor, most of it to a box and then I had no place to put the box, so I needed to clear off my desk, putting all that stuff into another box, both of which I could now put on my desk.

When I got everything cleared away, I still couldn't find the lost paper.  I called in the Big Guns -- Walt.  He couldn't find it either.  We lifted everything that could be lifted and couldn't even see it, but it was definitely jammed, the printer kept telling me.  Finally we found it, jammed in so tightly it was in a place that we couldn't get to.  I was about to write a "help!" message to Canon when Walt turned the printer off and back on again (I had done that too, but this was after a lot of poking and prodding) and the paper just fell right out.  Doh!

So now I had a working printer again, but everything that had been on the floor was in one box and everything that had been on the desk was in another box and a bunch of stuff was piled on the kitchen table.  One of those "where do I even start" sorts of things.  But I looked around at the whole office, at the dust-covered piles of things I haven't looked through in years and decided that this was the time I should take advantage of the job started and clean up the office to see if I could make it more workable.

This is the perfect time to do it because  there is nothing on my calendar this week, except working at Logos on Thursday.

So this is what I will be doing for the next few days -- trying to find a way to make this office more efficient. a seemingly impossible task, but might as well give it the old college try.

Sunday Stealing

Is your birth year an odd or even number?:
Odd.  Maybe that explains my personality.

Which one of your friends is the most outgoing?:
That would have to be Walt's sister, Alice.  She can enter a room of strangers and leave knowing every single person by name, occupation, and something about their family.  She is genuinely interested in everyone. I have admired that quality about her for years.  It is what made her so successful in her job.  She can't seem to understand how not all of us have that talent.  I can't enter a room of familiar people and remember any of their names and just want to hide so I don't have to admit that even though I've known them for years, I don't remember them!

Have you eaten any of your favorite foods today?:
Not really, but I haven't had much of a variety of food today.  I do like queso sauce, which I had on scrambled eggs for lunch, but I would not rank it as a "favorite."

When did you last find yourself in an awkward situation?:
Can't think of one.

When was the last time you ignored, or went against, someone’s advice?:
Don't think I've had any advice, good or bad, lately.

How many different towns/cities have you lived in?:
Five.  We've been in Davis for 43 years.

When was the last time you had Nutella?:
I can't remember.  I went through a Nutella phase and bought a jar of it, but it has been sitting, untouched, in my cupboard for years. I should throw it away....

Who is your favorite character in“The Big Bang Theory”?:
I like both Sheldon and Leonard, though I think the actors playing Raj and Howard are often overlooked.  They are really good in their roles.  (and yeah, I like the girls too.  I love Mayim Bialik and follow her blog)

What are your parents’ middle names?:
My father was named after the owner of the vaudeville troop his parents were performing with.  My mother's middle name is Mexican...don't know how her mother came up with that.  (Somehow hesitant to publish the actual names)

Name someone with a sexy sounding voice.:
I don't know if it's actually sexy but I could listen to Davina Porter from Audible.com forever.  She's great whether reading a male or female voice.

Are your eyes the same color as your sibling’s?
Hers were brown.  Mine are not.

How many pets do you have? Would you like any more?:
Two.  and No.  We had 3 dogs until Sheila died this year.  It's nice having two.  If one of these two dies, we might get another, but we did the "many dogs" bit when we fostered for the SPCA and that era has passed.

Is there a song you can’t stop listening to atm?
You mean as an earworm.  Walt mentioned to me today that he can't stop hearing "North Dakotachrome" (one of the songs our kids' band used to play) and now that is stuck in my head too.

Is there a song that you’re fed up of hearing?:
I can't think of any off hand, but I'm sure it would be one of the obnoxious commercial jingles (not one of Ned's, of course!).  I don't listen to the radio, so I'm not up on current music.

Did you have a strange or interesting dream last night?:
I did.  It was quite real, though I don't remember details now.  I was sitting with co-workers (in itself strange since I have no co-workers) and one was telling me how long she had been following Funny the World, the other one saying she had just started reading it.  In my dream, I realized I had no idea any of my fellow workers actually read it and I was mentally reviewing what I'd said lately and whether I'd said anything negative about those two women.

Name 3 things that are in your refrigerator atm.:
Collard greens, plain yogurt, a jar of queso sauce.

Which friend do you confide in most?:
Actually, though Char probably knows more than anyone else, I no longer confide in people.  I've been burned too often and won't put myself in that position again.  Of course that means that I have a very active, full mental life that nobody knows about!

What was your most recent reason for smiling?
Things the dogs do always make me smile.

Sweet Memories

I came across this piece about Lawsuit, written in 2001 by "Oakling", and wanted to share it.

An 11-member Davis-born musical group - also known, initially, as "those milk-drinkin' wizards." They began in 1987 as a ska band, and ended up spanning so many musical styles that every record label refused to sign them - most often claiming that they loved the sound but would not be able to categorize them for sale. Lawsuit just increased in popularity year after year, eventually gaining fame down the California coast from Sacramento to Los Angeles.

They produced a number of albums, including the semi-eponymous Lawsuit EP, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip and Kind of Brown, as well as a multi-issue "audio magazine" called Preoccupied Pipers.

I grew up listening to Lawsuit. They were my first real concert, my first many concerts. Those concerts were the first place I dared to dance in public, barely more than shifting my weight from foot to foot in time with the music, bouncing up and down in time as the energy of the night rose. My friend Erin and I were painfully, excruciatingly shy young teenagers, listening to old Beatles albums and sharing Doctor Who reruns and novelisations when we weren't indulging this, our one foray into modern-day culture. It was our one peek into what we thought normal life must be.

The thing I remember most about them was the sense of closeness we got from knowing they had grown up in our town and graduated from our high school. Even though they were now big stars all the way from Sacramento to Los Angeles, they had once played at our junior high school, right in front of us, right before they made it big.

My favorite part was feeling like I was in on all the jokes. I remember a few concerts where they replaced one anti-smoking lyric with:

"I know it's cool and I hate to say this,
But there's no smoking in Davis!" 

Fans who were in the loop somehow, who knew people who knew people (and in a town of 50,000 that's not so difficult) or who went to all the concerts, or read all the small print on the albums, ended up getting lots of little winks like that thrown in with our music. They would quote an old lyric in a new song; or have Jeri Sykes (or was it Marta?) sing "Fever" in the middle of a concert, all smoky and dazzling, and then swing into the stomping intro of "Useless Flowers" as if the songs were made for one another; or launching a "geography contest" around the elaborately nonsensical (we thought) lyrics of "North Dakotachrome."

Now that was a strange song. It seemed to wander from noun to noun, stringing them together with the odd preposition like beads on a sentence.

I knew your kind, I dwell aware
But the main thing's for me not to care
a line, a line can tuck you into bed
And tear your heart into shreds
Oh, Ed meant tons to Louis Z.
And I know my place.... 

We were puzzled.

Then we read about the North Dakotachrome Geography Contest. There were place names hidden in the song, they explained, besides just "North Dakota." Mostly states, a few cities, maybe a country or two.

I don't remember what the prize was - CDs, I suppose. If anything. We puzzled over it for years, shouting out place names along with the song -

I NEW YORK! ind, I DELAWARE!
But the MAINE! thing's for me not to CAR -
OLINA line KENTUCKY into bed
And tear your heart into shreds
Oh, EDMONTON to LOUISI -
ANA! know my place.... 

It was fun. We were part of something for a while there. When I play their songs, on the old tapes I bought in the early 1990s because I thought CDs were just an annoying high-tech flash in the pan (cough, cough....), I remember deep in my body what it felt like to be in high school. I remember how strongly I knew who I was, how solid my core inside all the nerdy trappings, how starry-eyed I was, and I feel that way again. It gives me compassion and understanding for who I am and where I've been. (Or is it the other way around?)


In 1996, Lawsuit members announced that "After nine years of legal action that would make Johnnie Cochran jealous, the band Lawsuit has decided to settle out of court." Several of the band members formed a new band called Broken Thing, which continued to perform for some time. One of the Broken Thing members and Lawsuit's lead singer, Paul Sykes, continued performing monologue shows and other theatre in various venues until his death in April of 1999 while rehearsing a scene. 

Today at Logos

"They're baack!" read the message from Susan tonight, indicating that we had a very good day at Logos.  Both Sandy and I had busy shifts and brought in >$100 than we did last week.  Don't know if it's a one time thing or if we are in for a run of busy days, but it was nice anyway.

My first customer was an African American woman who bought a book on trains and a book on planes.  I only mention her ethnicity because she was wearing dark brown gloves and it took me by surprise to see how much darker her hand skin was than the rest of her body until I realized they were gloves.

Three generations of women came in and looked around for awhile and finally the middle generation bought a book called "The Working Parent."

A worker type in rumpled work clothes came in, yawning as he looked around.  He finally bought a Star Wars book which shoes all the stuff inside the starships.

A woman came in looking for comics, but looked around the store anyway after I told her we didn't sell them.  She left precipitously when she got a phone call.

I noticed a couple outside, eating ice cream cones and very interested in the books in the window, but they never came in.

A man wearing an Ivy League Blood Donor shirt came in looking for a book by James Baldwin.  He asked me if we donated to charity and when I said yes he said he had a box of clothes in the car and did I want them.  I sent him off to the SPCA thrift store.

Things were pretty slow until the 4 p.m. rush.  I had decided not to finish the book I started last week, "In the Unlikely Event" by Judy Blume.  It just was not holding my interest and  1/3 of the way into the book I realized I didn't care about any of the characters.  Judy Blume is a great author of children's books, but this is the second of her books for adults that I have not liked.

At around 4, three men came in separately, a tall blonde man in a white shirt and jeans, an Indian (from India) with an untucked blue shirt and an orange backpack, wearing earphones, and a tall man all in grey -- shirt, pants and backpack.  All left without buying anything.

A thin nerdy-looking woman entered wearing dark grey everything except the dark maroon sweater tied around her waist.  She had straggly blonde hair in a messy bun and black glasses and she kept her arms tightly crossed across her chest, even when she asked me if we only had used books.  When I told her we did, she left.

A mom and dad and teen aged daughter came in.  The mom wore a Stanford shirt (but I was polite).  Dad was in tan shorts and an olive-colored shirt.  The daughter had an attractive blue shirt with a jeweled sunburst on it.  She bought a Greek phrase book, a Harry Potter and a kids' book.

My friend arrived at 4:15 (he has not been in the past 2 weeks).  He bought "Gulliver's Travels."

A man in a weird aloha shirt came in but didn't buy anything.  He was followed by an Asian girl in a black sweater with white cats on it (and one red...but she took the sweater off and I didn't see why the one cat was red).  She was also carrying a box of food.  She bought "Beowulf" and a contemporary fiction book.

An older man came in and was angry because when he was there the day before he accidentally left his copy of the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle on the front table and it was gone today.  I searched for it in the garbage, but the garbage can had been emptied.  He looked under the table. He acted almost like it was Susan and Peter's fault for deliberately throwing away his Sunday newspaper on Wednesday evening!

An older woman was looking for books on organic gardening. She said she had a plot of land in a community garden in Sacramento.  She was quite striking in that she was wearing an emerald green satin-ish coat over a fairly plain housedress type dress.  Her hair was Maureen O'Hara-red.  She didn't find the book she wanted but wanted a copy of the Farmer's Almanac so I sent her to the Avid Reader to get one. 

Another woman bought a bargain book about Christopher Reeve.

A guy came in wearing a pink and grey shirt and carrying a bag from Watermelon Music.  He ended up buying $65 worth of books -- four on local (California) history, 1 on the history of the Incas, and 2 art books one of which was a book of African animals that I so enjoyed looking through last week.

The next guy had long dark hair, below his shoulders and halfway down his back, with about the bottom 6" dyed light blonde with a hint of pink.  He wore a patchwork vest and an Animal Planet T-shirt.  He carried a bag that said "Hungry for Better" on it and his boots were a pinkish-red.  But alas, he did not buy anything.

A pleasant man with a goatee and face that crinkled when he smiled bought 2 contemporary fiction books, 2 books on food by Michael Palan and a book called "Never Drink."

Parents came in with two daughters.  At first I didn't realize they were all together.  The older (I think) daughter wore short distressed denim shorts, the ones that have trendy holes in them.  She also had a flowing flowery top that looked quite lovely.  She has long hair in a braid to the side of her head.  Her sister also had jean shorts, but regular and a nondescript grey t-shirt.  Her braid went down the center of her back.  She was much plainer than her sister.

Dad was wearing white shorts, a mistake because they were so full of "stuff" that all you could see were the bulges in his pockets.  Mom looked like a less attractive Bellamy Young (from Scandal).   She bought 2 bargain books.

A guy knocked over books on top of a bookshelf and while he and I were picking them up, 2 more customers came in.

A woman came in with a cup of yogurt.  She was thrilled to find the store but said she had just started a book and would definitely come back when she finished the book (like that is an excuse not to buy 6 more??)

At 5:55, Peter arrived to relieve me, the neighborhood joggers ran by the front of the store, and Walt came in. He forgot to bring my cane (it broke as I was getting out of the car), so he went and got the car and picked me up.  I could walk that far without a cane, but I feel awkward about my balance walking in the crowds on the street.

Anyway, I came home to find requests to exchange pocket letters, so I'm all stoked now about designing them!