Today at Logos

I was riding in a horse-drawn cart, the kind with the fringe on top.  I could hear the clip-clop of the horses' hooves on the cobblestone streets.  It was a cool spring day and I could feel the breeze on my face as I rode.  Suddenly there was the trumpeting of an elephant that came from my cell phone timer and had awakened me from my brief nap.  The "clip clop" noise was the sound of Sheila lapping up water in my office, and the cool breeze came from the fan on the table next to me.  

I had come home from lunch at Atria and decided to try to nap for about 20 minutes before going to Logos, and was successful.  It was just what I needed.

Off we went to Logos, where Sandy reported a successful morning, over $100 she said.  Also four people had brought in boxes of donated books and it looked like Susan was going to have her work cut out for her pricing them and putting them on the shelves.

We had a nice chat of about 20 minutes while she told me about her father, who had been at Atria for 3 years before he died.  When she left, there was one customer in the store, a guy drinking out of a "Dutch Brothers Coffee" cup.   I wondered where he got it...I can't think of any place that sells cups of Dutch Brothers Coffee. I might have asked him, but he left without making a purchase.

A Mom (or maybe an Aunt...I didn't get "mom" vibes from her) came in with a little guy who was probably about 3-4...older than Lacie, but not by much.  He bought a children's book on natural history and while she continued to look around, he told me all about volcanoes and lava and I showed him how to measure things with a ruler.  After they left, I discovered that he had left his bright yellow Transformer sunglasses on the desk, but they came back about an hour later to get them.

While they were there, a painfully thin woman wearing black pants with a wild white Aztec print on them was looking at our animal section and ended up buying two dog training books (one by Cesar Milan) and another one on some form of exercise I didn't recognize.

A couple came in.  He had dreadlocks that extended to his knees and would have been longer except they had been pulled into a knot at his neck.  He was looking for a photo book on "Humans of New York," and I directed him to where our photo books were, but the Cesar Milan lady told him she had just been in that section and hadn't seen it.  I suggested he try the Avid Reader in the next block.

There was somebody screaming outside, but it stopped after 3 screams and I never did figure out who or where it was coming from.  A guy rushed across the street carrying about 8-10 large orange and black backpacks (or they may have been medium sized duffel bags).  I felt like our old Oakland neighbor, Mrs. Babcock, who spent all of her life indoors keeping an eye out for everything that was happening in the neighborhood. 

A tall bearded buy wearing a Cotting School t-shirt (a private, non-profit school for children with special needs located in Lexington, Massachusetts).  He was looking for audio books because he had a long drive ahead of him, but we don't carry them, so I suggested he go to the Avid Reader too.

A woman came in to say she has a bunch of VHS tapes and wanted to know if we would take them in donation.  I said no and suggested that she put an ad in Craig's List, like I did when I wanted to get rid of mine.  Also gave her some suggestions for the yellow pages.  Since fewer and fewer people have VHS players any more, I didn't figure there would be a market for them at Logos.

A Middle Eastern guy bought the book "Davisville 1968," which tells the history of Davis.

I had been reading a mystery but was taking a break and found the book "We Do" on the shelves.  It's a photo book about same sex couples getting married in San Francisco.  A book of happiness, but I realized with a shock that I had looked through the entire book and there wasn't one photo of Ellen and Shelly.  Shocking!

I hadn't seen Mr. Antiquity for a few weeks, but he came in today, as always seeming in a hurry.  He put all of his stuff down on the chair in front of  the desk, pulled out a dress shirt with a 49er Logo and put it on, checked the old book bookcase and then left without buying anything this time.

My friend came in shortly after 4:30 and bought two books on Japan, one a book of instructions for the game, Go (which I learned last week he plays).  He didn't linger, but bought the two books and left quickly.

A very healthy, friendly looking young woman bought a self help book, which I thought was titled "Even stones can teach us," but I can't find that on Amazon, so I don't know what she bought.

A guy rushed in saying he was "very illegally parked" and bought two of the old books.  He took his money from a wallet made out of duct tape.

Another questionable woman/child couple came in.   She was old enough to be the girl's grandmother, and young enough to be her mother.   They weren't looking for books, they were trying to find a frozen yogurt store, so I directed them to the one around the corner.

My last customer of the day (though she didn't buy anything, so she can't really be a "customer") was perhaps the most wrinkled person I have ever seen.  She was wearing a light colored skirt, a white blouse and a scarf and all looked like they had been jammed into her backpack (which she was also wearing) for a long time.  I always think of myself as wrinkled, but I couldn't hold a candle to her.  She was very pleasant though and said goodbye when she left.

Peter relieved me a few minutes before Walt arrived. We walked back to the car, passing this sign in front of the pub where he has his beer each Thursday before picking me up.

 
Seemed to put a nice cap on the afternoon!