Sad Tale of Technical Woe

I have been trying to start this entry for one hour.   I don't even know if it is now going to make any sense or not, but let me try.

The subject was going to be the show that we saw tonight.  I had pictures to go with it, so I attached the camera to the computer.  I tried to download a photo from the camera but it said that it was an invalid number.  I tried another photo, same thing.  I could SEE them on the screen, but it would not let me download them.

This afternoon, my desktop told me I was almost out of storage on my 120 gig C drive.  Almost everything is stored on different drives to keep the C drive clear, but apparently I had a ton of temp files.  The computer gave me the option of deleting all those unnecessary files.  I said OK and went off to visit my mother.   I'm wondering if freeing up an additional 2 gigs has screwed me royally.

But no problem.  There are work-arounds.  I'll use the other camera, the one that used to work fine and is now iffy.  Downloads on that camera are a breeze.  But not now.  Since I first attached the Canon, it has screwed up how I download from the Panasonic and now I can't do it at all.

Well...OK.  I'll use the laptop, upload them all to Flickr and then download from Flickr to my hard drive.

While waiting for the laptop to boot, I decided to install the software that came with the camera, which I had not done yet.

While that was installing, I checked the laptop, which had frozen.   The only thing to do was reboot.  I did that and finally was able to get to Flickr and choose the 13 photos to upload to a junk folder.  That was 30 minutes ago and they are still uploading.

I came back to check on the install of the Canon software.  It said that there were 4 more files to install and that it would take six minutes.  

I tend to be entirely too impatient, so I turned on The Golden Girls and set the timer for six minutes so I wouldn't tear my hair out.

When the timer went off, I checked the computer.  The "install" bar had not moved.  It now said it would take 13 minutes and there were only 4 files to install.

But after an hour (1 Frasier, 1 Golden Girls), the 13 photos were finally uploaded to Flickr.  Now I have to move them, laboriously, one by one, to my photo file on my external hard drive.  The desktop said there were 4 files to upload and it would take 21 minutes.

Amazingly, after an hour and a half, the software did install.  I have to reboot in order to use it, and I ain't gonna do that until THIS is finished!  Then I'll find out if it really helped, or if it just took up some of that space I just freed up this afternoon.

HOWEVER...

The show we went to see was called The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety and it is a very odd show about wrestling.  The set certainly made it seem real!

It's a comedy that pokes fun at professional wrestling and the actors certainly get a workout.  In fact, one of the actors was injured during a preview and had to drop out.  Fortunately they were able to get another guy who was just finishing the role somewhere else to come in and play it here.  His primary occupation is not actor, but professional wrestler, so he knows the ropes, so to speak!

We all agreed that we hadn't known what to expect when we went in and that it was an odd show...and that we had all enjoyed it.

Reading Frenzy

I don't know why, but I am suddenly in a reading frenzy.  I just can't read enough.  I have all these wonderful books that I want to read and I am not spending as much time on the computer and turning off the TV in the afternoon so I can read.

I don't know what sparked it.  Maybe reading my mother's trip diary of a trip she took in about 1998 with her husband.  They went to Amsterdam and this is the kind of trip I would love to take, without the trailer part.  They rented a trailer stayed in one trailer park for a long time and used that as a base, while they took their time, driving around looking at one or two places a day, then returning to their base to play cards, read, wander around the area on foot, and just relax.  

I know when you travel thousands of miles and spend thousands of dollars, you feel like you should see as much as possible, but boy does having a vacation that includes guilt-free reading sound good to me.

Right now I'm frantically reading a Vince Flynn book, listening to a Diana Gabaldon (one I read many years ago) and looking at all the really good books (Kindle and real) I have here that I want to read.  I am, for example, about 75% through the latest book on Dementia and want to finish it, though I reached the part where the patients are put in convalescent hospitals, the worst of the worst.  I guess I was too depressed and ready to read something a little lighter...like a nice book about political assassinations.

My mother seemed grumpy today.  The lady who says she "never naps" was napping yesterday when we got there, and napping today when we got there.  But the difference was that yesterday she made a joke of it and today she was grumpy.

Yesterday I brought her laundry, which I had washed.  I slipped in a couple of outfits from that box of her clothes that she had turned into the front desk because she said they weren't hers.

When I unloaded the bag I brought the clothes in, I put them on her bed in 2 piles.  She put away one pile, but the second pile contained things she had never seen before (including 2 pairs of slacks that were in the laundry she gave me to wash).  She insisted she had never seen them.

In truth, one outfit I really don't remember, but if all the OTHER clothes in the box are hers, there is no reason to believe that particular outfit is not hers either.

It's not like she has problems wearing clothes that don't belong to her.  Heck, she has a huge wardrobe and 99% of it was purchased at the Hospice thrift store, where she worked.  She has bragged many times that she doesn't need to buy new clothes because she gets the pick of all these beautiful clothes that are donated to Hospice.

But when I tried to tell her that they were in the bag she gave me to wash and that I had pictures of her wearing those clothes, that seemed to set her off.   She really didn't talk much after that and though we were going to the bank, we had to tell her at least four times where we were going and what we were doing and even when we pulled into the parking lot of the bank, where she was yesterday, she didn't know where she was and asked again why we were there.

[The clothes thing may soon become a moot point because she has put on weight since she's been getting 3 good meals a day, and I'm noticing that she is outgrowing most of her clothes.]

The good news, though, is that FINALLY her money issues seem to be resolved, at least for now.  We have only been working on getting this settled for a month now. I called Ed and told him to treat himself to lunch because all of his work finally paid off.  Literally.

Walt has been wonderful the past couple of days, helping with the money issues and trying to sort out her car issues (it looked like she did not remember to pay her 2012 car registration, but because he discovered that, Ed was able to find a note for a check she had written and the bank found that the DMV cashed it, so she did pay, she just either never got the registration, or lost is, or forgot to put it on the car).

But the interesting thing about having Walt there so often in the past few days is that he told me today that he had no idea that her dementia was so bad and he wondered how she had functioned in the last few years on her own.  FINALLY people are figuring out that I'm not over-reacting!  When you are with her every day you begin to realize how bad it all is, something you can't pick up, generally, in a couple of hours of visiting because she has so many good cover-up tactics.

I was thrilled, however, to discover that she had DONE THE HOMEWORK for the Brain Gymnasium.  I was not only thrilled, I was flabbergasted!   She made one slight mistake, but by God, she did it, though when I left her today and told her I'd be back tomorrow for Brain Gym, she frowned again.  She goes to those classes like she goes to doctor and dentist appointments, I fear, even though she leaves them in better shape.

With all her memory problems, it surprises me how much she is reading.  I don't think she has been to the library, but there is a bookshelf downstairs with books that change weekly and she has "read" several of them.   I'm wondering how much she really follows when she reads a novel.  But she's enjoying it, so I'm glad that she is making the effort.

As for me, I follow plots but my problem is that I should have learned speedreading so I could get through all these books I'm dying to read, but have to finish before I can move on to the next one.

All things considered, a reading fanatacism isn't all that bad, I guess.  Could be worse.  I could be watching NCIS and Criminal Minds marathons all day....

The Peripatetic Clarinetist

The one thing for which I am very grateful about my growing up years is that I grew up with music.

Being the granddaughter of show biz folk and the daughter of a wanna be pianist, who taught himself to play (at parties, he would put on a pair of oversized ears and tell people that he played "by ear."), I can't remember a time when music was not a part of my life.

My father loved the pop music of the 30s and 40s and our house was filled with the records of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, the Andrews Sisters, Dinah Shore, and all the other bands and singers of the era.  He was particularly passionate about jazz, so I grew up knowing Art Tatum, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Louie Armstrong and a host of others.

My mother liked the more pop tunes and the radio always had some pop station on, and it was on all day long (when she wasn't listening to soap operas).

Theirs was a party house.  When my mother decided to become a Catholic, the religious instruction came with a built-in social network of couples who rallied around "Father Joe," who eventually baptized her and remained her friend until his death a couple of years ago (he buried my sister, my father, and my son David).

Father Joe was an Irish tenor, had a great voice and loved to sing.  So all of Father's parties came with lots of singing.  Our house was a favorite place to have them because they could roll up the rug in the living room and dining room and my father could play the piano all evening while people danced.  

(I'm so glad I have those memories, because they are some of the most pleasant of my childhood.)

As a child I learned almost all of the popular songs of the day and could (and did) sing along with the group whenever there was a sing-along.  The songs I learned went up to the late 50s, but once rock 'n' roll took hold, my lyric learning was hit and miss, the most consistent lyrics those of musical theater.

My mother's second husband was not a music guy.  He liked music, but it was never as pervasive as it was in the day of my childhood.  My mother didn't really sing any more because the "white noise" of music playing in the background bothered her, but I fixed up a CD for her to play when she and Peach and I went to see the old ranch in Valley Springs.  She was first upset that I would be playing MUSIC when we were going to be driving, but when she heard those songs that she had loved so much, she got into it and we all sang all the way to and from Terra Linda.

One of the things there is a lot of at Covell Gardens is music.  There are the sing-alongs every Tuesday afternoon, led by Judy Boock-Davis, David's old kindergarten teacher, with accompaniment by dear Ida Sue, who used to be a very good pianist, I am told, but she is 95 now and she has had a couple of falls and now finds it difficult playing chords, so mostly we get one-finger accompaniment.  We've seen the Davis Banjo Band and a guy playing solo banjo, accompanying a tape of piano music.  On the 4th of July there was a patriotic sing-along, accompanied by a "real" pianist. I missed the father and daughter piano-violin duo and a violin concert.

I make sure my mother gets to all of these musical events.  At first she went grudgingly, but now she seems to really enjoy them and sings along with the group, remembering all the words and not needing the lyric sheets.

This week we went to a Klezmer band.  I love Klezmer music, though usually leave feeling like I've just seen Fiddler on the Roof without dialog!

This was a small group of viola, accordion, drum, cello and clarinet,   It was fun in the way that Eastern European / Jewish music is ever fun.   Always that sense of melancholy interspersed among the lively passages.

But the clarinetist was kind of weird.  He sat, he stood, he changed positions, he walked around the lobby, all the while playing.  I never did figure out why he needed to move around so much. Maybe he, like my mother, is dealing with back problems.

The cellist had a round face and a pink complexion and his jowls quivered whenever he got to energetic passages.  He was fun to watch.

The woman on the accordion was a woman whose name I have heard for decades around Davis, as she has mine.  We talked a bit and I friended her on Facebook, after which I discovered that we share lots of mutual friends, like Ellen and Shelly and two of the medical people I worked with at Women's Health.

Today when we went to bring my mother home, after our trip to the bank and lunch out, we were going to just go home but The Psychiatrist's car was there in the parking lot (it has a personalized license plate, which I recognized instantly) and I went in to see if he was around (he was not).  However, he plays with a folk music group and I hope that one of these days they will be the entertainment in the front lobby!

While I was listening to the klezmer band, I got this idea for an article for the newspaper, but it will take several more of these front lobby concerts before I can really get a handle on what I want to do with the idea.

Sunday Stealing

This week's questions come from Shopafreakingholic and it was stolen there as well, but the search doesn't go back any farther.

30. What brand of batteries do you usually get?
Energizer, because that's the brand they sell in bulk at Costco.

31. Are any of your friends pregnant or have kids?
I'm 70.  If any of my friends are pregnant, call the Guinness Book of World Records.  Most of my friends have children, though, and some of THEM are too old to be pregnant too!

32. What is in your medicine cabinet?
My toothbrush and various teeth paraphernalia, creams, and rust.

33. What's your favorite aspect of the natural world?
I love any spectacular thing that I can see from a car, boat, or bus.  I might get out for a waterfall, though.

34. What's your favorite man made thing?
Today?  The air conditioner!

35. Can you whistle properly?
Yes, the purse-your-lips kind.  The fingers-in-the-mouth kind, no.  I'm a tuneful whistler.

36. What song do you think is the most widely heard in the world?
A toss-up between "Amazing Grace" and "Happy Birthday."

37. Where's the strangest place a fast food restaurant was located?
A Burger King across the street from Windsor Palace.

38. What states surround your state? Or are you not land locked?
Nevada and Oregon

39. Do you own binoculars or monoculars? What do you use them for?
Walt has binoculars that he takes to the opera and sometimes to ball games.  I occasionally grab them to see something, but I don't own any myself.

40. Do you ever wish you had a telescope on the roof or attic to stargaze?
Given the steep slope of our roof, uh, no!  Not really interested anyway.

41. What's your favorite chocolate bar?
The little known U-No bar, which is almost impossible to find these days.

42. Do you fall asleep easy in cars? How about planes, trains and boats?
I can fall asleep standing in line at the supermarket.  It's a big of a problem if I'm the one driving the car, though.

43. Would you rather live a year of your life in every major country or stay in the same place you live forever without vacations?
I have seen a lot of the world.  I would like to live in one place, like Dublin or London or maybe even Paris for a year, but definitely not change every year.  At my age, I'm happy staying where I am.

44. What will you not tolerate in a person?
Bigotry, intolerance, homophobia, and singing "itsy bitsy spider" instead of "eency weency spider."

45. Do you forgive others easier or yourself? Why is this?
Oh yeah.  'Cause I was trained by nuns and I suffer from Catholic guilt (which is more severe than Jewish guilt)

46. How was God made, if he exists?
Well, if God was made, I'm sure nobody is around who remembers.  If God was made, then s/he's not much of a "God" because something/someone more powerful was able to make him/her.  I'll go with "always was."

47. Have you ever done aqua aerobics or polo?
No.

48. What age were you when you learned how to swim?
I don't remember.  My father taught me.  Probably around 6-8.

49. What shows or characters scared you as a child?
The Wicked Witch of the West, and a movie called "Queen for a Day," based on the TV show, which had as one of its contestants a woman whose child had polio and was in an iron lung. THAT freaked me out.  I was terrified of contracting polio.

50. Do you stay up all night on New Years Eve/Day or go to bed after 12 a.m.?
We're lucky to make it to midnight, and are in bed before 12:30.

51. What's something unusual currently in your fridge?
A tube of wasabi and some ginger beer

52. How about your freezer?
Very, very, very old naan bread.

53. What could you be doing now that is more productive?
What??  You mean there is SOMETHING MORE PRODUCTIVE than doing Sunday Stealing?   I'm shocked!

54. Give me some lyrics from the song that's stuck in your head?
We just came from a Klezmer concert and for some reason Fiddler on the Roof melodies are running through my head.

55. What's your favorite type of firework?
I really don't like fireworks.  If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all, in my opinion...and they make me angry because of how much they cost when there are so many homeless, starving people around.  Call me a party pooper.

Theater of the Mind

"I'm off to make a fool of myself," I called upstairs to Walt as I started to go out to the car.

Not surprisingly, he came downstairs to find out what I meant.

In truth, I had already started making a fool of myself five minutes before when I answered the phone and heard a guy named Bill Buchanan asking me if I was still planning to come to his radio station for an interview today.  I had completely forgotten about it and was sitting here blythly working on a project on my computer, while Bill and my colleague Jeff Hudson, were sitting across town waiting for me.

As for recording the show: will 1:30 p.m. Saturday, July 13, work? We should be done by 2:45 or 3.  I will send questions in advance. They'll address the growth of live theater in Davis, how you assess the health and future of live theater in Davis, any trends you see, perhaps some of your experiences as a local theater critic, and so on....

...he had written to me on July 4.  I wrote "interview" on this date on my calendar but even though I saw it there, it never processed in my brain that I was supposed to go to an interview this afternoon. I have obviously been spending too much time at Covell Gardens!

I was intimidated about being on a program with Jeff, who has been a reporter since he learned to read, I think, and who knows everything about everything, knows everybody, and I'm sure can recite every Shakespeare play by heart.  He attends every Shakespeare festival within driving distance and can't seem to understand why I don't jump at the chance to see a new Shakespeare production, just for the fun of it.   (By the same token, he also can't understand how I can bear to review yet another musical theater production.)

I knew that I know a lot about Davis theater.  We have been involved on some level since about 1974, I think, when I inadvertently auditioned for the Davis Comic Opera Co. (one of my most embarrassing moments...I thought I was there to talk about helping with publicity, and ended up singing a song I was ill-prepared to sing and couldn't sing anyway!)  Over the years we have watched theater groups coming and going and at one point, everybody in the family was involved at some level with at least one or two theater groups.  There was a period of time when I was doing publicity for every theater group in town.

But I think I got off on the wrong foot in the interview when he asked why theater is growing in Davis...and I said that I don't think it is.  I think there has always been theater and I think that the new theaters opening up in the last couple of years are just a continuation of a trend that has been going on, for me, over the past 40 years.  Jeff, however, who has not lived here as long, was able to answer Bill's question to his satisfaction.

It was interesting to listen to the two of us.  I was coming at this as a faux critic (with zero credentials), who loves musical theater, who is very supportive of community theater, and who hates Shakespeare.  Jeff was coming at it as a "real" critic and seasoned newsman, who doesn't really like musical theater, who doesn't really review much local community theater, who is impressed by equity performers and equity plays, and who loves Shakespeare...and who knows everything.

It will be interesting to hear how it sounds when it airs (I will post a link).

I do think I held my own, though, even answering the very difficult question, for me, "the potential playgoer just wants to know if the show is good enough to be worth the time and cost.  When you think a show is weak, how do you convey that message to your readers, in the context of a community theater review."

He had no idea what a difficult question that was for me to answer on the air (though I gave him a complete answer after the interview was over, an answer I won't repeat here for the same reason I wouldn't answer it on the air!)

It was really fun, though, to choose one show that I had seen in the last few years that really stood out for me.  I can't remember which one Jeff chose, but it might have been a Shakespeare.  For me, it was the recent Davis Musical Theater production of Chicago, hands down the. best. production. I had ever seen at that theater, and truly the production that stood out head and shoulders above most of the local theater productions I have seen in the last few years.

Fortunately he didn't ask for the worst show I had seen.   I would have been hard pressed to choose from among a couple of very weird university shows.

The chat we had after the show ended was MUCH more fun and probably would have made a more interesting show, since we all threw caution to the wind and let it all hang out.  Turns out Bill has two daughters, both interested in show business (one has graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and wants to be a classical singer).   I gave him a little history of our kids in show biz and he remembers Lawsuit and asked if my son's name was Ned.  That was kind of cool.

I hope I didn't really make a fool of myself, though I may cringe a lot when I hear the show in a week or so!  I hope not.

Hide and Seek

I lost my mother today. I found her again, but it was strange to get to her apartment mid-morning, long after she would have finished breakfast and to have the apartment empty.  I wasn't sure where to look for her, but hoped that maybe she had gone to my friend Peg's apartment to see it.  

I waited for about half an hour.  Tried to take a nap (unsuccessfully), watched a bit of TV and checked to make sure she wasn't passed out on the floor in the bedroom.  Finally I left her a note saying I was going to Costco and would stop by later.  I also reminded her about her hair appointment at 1:15, and I left.

When I got home from Costco, I called her and she was there.   She said she had gone down to the game area to work a puzzle.  Another Yay from me....she is finding things to do that don't involve just sitting in her apartment.   This is very good.  I told her it was too late to visit her right then, because her hair appointment was in 20 minutes and that I decided I would skip coming to see her today but would see her tomorrow.

She is settling in.

Before stopping by Atria, I went to Blood Source for my regular blood donation.  What a disaster.

First, I think the girl who checked me in had never done it before.   She started out asking me for my birthdate because she couldn't read it clearly on my driver's license.  I gave her the date and the very next question she asked was "what is your birth date?"

She handed me a two-sided list of medications and instructions I should read, even though I've been donating blood for >10 years and the list hasn't changed.  Then she left me to answer all those questions that would disqualify you.   Everyone else who checks that list does it in about 2 minutes, stopping to ask me where I have been out of the country.  She read every question and checked my answer to see if I had answered properly.  

When she got to the travel question, she had to check every single country (Russia, China, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Netherlands) in a book to see if, for example, Germany was an OK country to visit and still give blood!  When I told her I had been to Hungary, she asked which country Hungary was in.  When I told her that Hungary was a country, she asked me how to spell it.

I had to remind her to take my pulse and my temperature

Either she was extremely annoying or I was just in a bad mood and not ready to help someone trying to learn her job.

Then we moved on to the actual blood donation area and she turned me over to the staff there.  About five years ago, the regular staff at this location started to rotate.  It used to be everybody knew me by name when I walked in the door and we got caught up over the needle.  There was never a problem drawing blood, and my blood flowed so fast that I filled a bag in about 5-10 minutes.  They say that the blood flows faster if you drink a lot of water, but I drink gallons of water, so I never go on a "force water" program before I give blood.

Once again, the woman taking my blood was someone I had never seen before.  She kept up reassuring talk, as if to calm me down, as if I'd never done this before.  I could tell just from looking at the needle when she stuck it in that she had not done it right.  It always goes right in, the blood starts flowing immediately, and in no time at all, I'm munching cookies and drinking more water.   But she had to wiggle this one around (which stung) and eventually got the blood to start to flow, but she couldn't let go of the needle or it would stop again.  Each time she moved it just a little, I winced.  She had to get someone else to come and take blood samples to submit with the bag of blood.

The blood slowed and then, when it had reached the maximum time allowed for them to take your blood, she had to stop with only a partially filled bag.   This is the second time this has happened, both times with someone who was a new face to me and who had difficulty hitting the vein properly.

I'm actually considering whether I want to take a break from donating blood for awhile.  I will next be eligible when we are in Ukraine, so I could not make a future appoiintment today, but given the bad experiences I have had the past two years with people I don't recognize and who always have problems taking blood, where the old crew never had a problem, I am more reluctant to try again.

It's very depressing to watch her pack up a bag of my blood and tell me it would be discarded.  What's the point of that?

But the day wasn't a total loss.  I picked up the jerky treats that our dogs like at Cosco.  They cost $6+ a box and until next month they are on sale for $4 off, which means I got each for $2+ (limit of five per customer).  I may go back in a week or so and buy 5 more....  (or send Walt so there won't be any impulse buys on the bill!!)

Logos Today

When I arrived at Logos, I could see that we now have a new painter on display.  Logos turns its walls over to local painters who can hang what they want and advertise their work.  I can't remember how long the paintings stay up, but when the time is over, another painter displays his/her wares.

Art is another one of those subjects about which I know very little.   I can talk a bit about VanGogh, but get me much beyond that and I display my ignorance pretty quickly.

My tastes tend to lean more to the literal than the abstract.   This isn't entirely literal, but it is more literal than the other abstracts.   I haven't decided if I like this artist or not, but I kind of think that I do.   (Sorry--I didn't get the name of the artist, and it's not on the Logos Blog yet)

It had not been my intention to write about my day at Logos today, especially since it seemed to be a pretty dull day.  In the first hour, I only had one sale and that guy was shocked when I rang up $81 first.  Turns out Peter had left so quickly that he hadn't cleared out the cash register, so I was adding this guy to the previous sale.  He was very relieved when I canceled that sale and rang up the right amount.

But then "they" came in and I decided to start taking notes.

"They" were a group of four young women, who all came in together.  They were all tall, all had long-ish hair, three of them wore ankle-length gauze skirts over what looked like Bermuda shorts.  The fourth one wore a long black dress, very form fitting and looking beautiful.  She had what looked a jeweled evening bag over her shoulder.  She could have been going out to a fancy dinner.   I was so taken aback by the group that I told them they were the best dressed group that had ever been in the book store.  They laughed, but offered no explanation for what they were doing there, other than looking at books.

They wandered around the store for a bit of time and finally one asked me if I had a copy of "East of Eden."  I directed her to the section where she would find the Steinbeck books and mentioned that it was my favorite book.   She said that she doesn't own any books yet, but she is thinking of getting one and she might also add "East of Eden" to her as yet nonexistent collection.

She left the store saying she didn't find any Steinbeck books.   I went to the shelf and found a bunch of Steinbeck books, but no "East of Eden." But they were long gone by then.

A Latino family came in--a couple of young women with an older boy, a younger girl, and one had a baby.  The woman with the baby just wanted to sit, but the others looked around for awhile.  The little girl was the most excited about the store, especially when I showed her that there was a whole room just for children's books.   I've said this before, but I'm always tickled when kids come in excited about books.  It's what I love about Bri and Lacie, that they love books so much.   Laurel is now reading Bri her first "chapter book" at night when she goes to bed.

A man came in to buy a copy of "Walden" but decided it was too thick to carry on his bicycle so he bought a copy of "Tom Sawyer" instead and said he would be back to get "Walden" if it was still there.

A Latino young man came in.  He was the kind of person that you might shy away from on the street, scrubby clothes, one earring, tattoo, and scruffy beard.  But he headed right for the literature section and spent a lot of time looking through the books, deciding on what he wanted.

A middle-aged man came in and gave me my biggest sale of the day.   He bought 2 cookbooks (including the huge "Gourmet today" by Ruth Reichl), 2 books on flowers, one Trees of Puerto Rico and one on wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains.  He also bought a book about bicycles and two books about the history of American Indians.  Now that's eclectic!

The next customer also bought a book about American Indians.

There was a cute little European man who comes in frequently.   He always mistakes me for someone else.  Today he said he was glad that my arm was better because he remembered my having it in a sling the last time he was there.   Uh.  No!  But he's very nice.

A woman came in and looked around, and then left, then came back looked around some more and left again.  She finally came in one more time to give me a Bargain Book, from the sidewalk, those books which are $1 each.

Around 5 p.m. my regular customer came in.  He apparently attends a meeting downtown on Thursday and he always stops in, always buys at least one book, always pays cash, always gets a receipt.  The books he buys are always eclectic.  Today he bought 3 bargain books, a book on paper folding for pop-up books, and a book on Sundials.  I would love to see what his home looks like...probably a lot like mine!

A woman with copper colored hair must have wandered around for half an hour before buying one bargain book.

I was a customer today too.  I found not one but two books about Turkey (I've been looking for a long time and we never had one before) and I also found an Albert Peyson Terhune book in the "old book" section.  I couldn't remember if I had this one or not, but I sort of pick up his books whenever I find them because I love his stories.  So now I have a big stack of them on a book shelf and a big stack of them on my Kindle.  I'm going to have to make a list of the Terhune books I have so I don't keep buying ones that I already own, even if they are inexpensive these days.