The Day at Logos

A belated "Today at Logos," now that the world has reverted to normal. (I can tell the holiday is finally over because Golden Girls and Frasier are back on Hallmark thru the night again...my favorite soporifics!)

Anyway, New Year's Eve at Logos was not quite as busy as Christmas Eve, but busier than I would expect on a traditional "party day," though the fact that from 4 to 5 it was dead tells me that people eventually went hom to prepare to party.

Sandy was working with granddaughter Sarah when I arrived.  Sarah is 8 and often accompanies Sandy to the store on non-school days.  She reads, plays games, dusts the shelves and helps Sandy with sales.  In fact, she has become so adept at the cash register that she actually made a sale of a bargain book while Sandy was in the bathroom.

There was a bald guy standing outside for a very long time, reading all the signs and checking the display window, but he never entered.

Another guy marched in and right to the section where we have books on music, where he looked for quite awhile and then left.

A middle aged woman checked out Sci Fi and then told me she was looking for books by Jules Verne.  I directed her to the Literature section, where she bought all four books that we had.  She told me that Verne was the father of science fiction.

Two women spent a very long time searching throughout the store, including one of them sitting at the front table engrossed in a book.  But ultimately they left without buying anything.

A woman bought a gift certificate, which is, I think, only the second one I have sold in all my time volunteering at Logos.

A guy who, at first, looked like Michael, the guy who runs the brain gymnasium at Atria,came in, wearing jeans, a denim shirt and a grey vest.  He bought a bargain book by Catherine Coulter which had a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the cover, and made me want to check out Coulter books.

Another balding guy who had no comb over, but a long pony tail in back bought a book on the history of coins and the Morgan car.

The next guy bought "Silas Marner" and "All Fishermen are Liars," a mother and her daughter bought a copy of "Titus Andronicus,"   and a guy bought a book by Virginia Wolf and a bargain book.

A woman wearing jeans and a black leather jacket carrying a bag made out of jeans material bought a bargai book, book on Kosher Chinese cooking and a book of Norwegian folk tales.  She told me she is an artist and would be "making something" out of the books.

A woman brought in two books to donate -- a book on the history of drinking in America by Susan Cheever and "97 Orchard, an edible history of 5 immigrant families in one New York tenement."  Looked like a different sort of memoir.

A guy was looking, unsuccessfully, for Ian Fleming books.

An older woman bought 2 contemporary fiction books and one on Native American myths.

A sturdy guy wearing a martial arts t-shirt and shorts! in this cold weather (obviously a tough guy) bought 3 bargain books.

Peter has a friend who is also a retired math professor.  He comes in regularly, often with books to donate.  Today he was looking and headed straight to the math section, but didn't find anything that looked good to him.  He said "I'm off for my coffee" and wished me a happy new year.

A woman was looking for "Watership Down."  Neither of us could remember the name of the author and my phone was dead, so I couldn't check with Amazon.  I sent her off to check the fiction section, but I finally remembered we are a book store and have a section on reference books, so I found a guide to literature and told the customer it was Richard Adams (she would never have found it, since she had started at the Zs and was working backwards!)  But we didn't have it.

Two men came in, one a round-faced Asian man with round black-rimmed glasses, who didn't say much, if anything.  The other guy seemed to be a mentor and I wondered if this was a foreign student hosting situation.  The young man bought a history of the Middle Ages and the older man paid.

A guy came in from outside with very thick book, "The Power Broker" from the bargain books and was thrilled to find out it was only $1.  He told me it was a classic, and left the store a very happy customer.

A couple came in looking for a book called "something like 'Dear God this is Ann'" but didn't know the genre or the author, and because of my dead phone I couldn't check Amazon.  (I checked after I got home and could not find anything like that book).  I wondered if they were looking for the Judy Blum book, but they said this was for adults and something like a self improvement book.  They didn't find what they were looking for but said they would check on the title and author and return another day.

It was really dead until a guy poked his head through the door to tell me that there was an alarm going off.  I didn't hear one and opened the back door and didn't hear one there either, so there wasn't anything I could do about it.

Susan and Peter arrived at 5:30, relieving me half an hour early, which left me sitting out in the cold for half an hour, since Walt didn't go to the pub because we were going to a party later and, again because my phone was dead, I couldn't call him to tell him to come early. I felt like a homeless person, huddled under my jacket (thank goodness I had brought one!), shivering in the cold.