Today at Logos

I was kind of in a pissy mood when I arrived at Logos today.  I had run into someone I have known for decades, but only see in passing at intervals of several months.  Maybe once or twice a year.  I greeted her and asked how her family was.  20 minutes later, after I'd learned what her kids were doing what their spouses were doing what her grandchildren were doing, what the kids' spouses PARENTS were doing, where the grandkids went to school, what everybody's wonderful accomplishments were, where everyone had traveled in the last 10 years, and a few more things, I finally extricated myself and headed to the car.  Not once was the sentence "how are things with you?" spoken.  

When I got to Logos, Sandy was there with her granddaughter Sarah and they were ringing up their final customer.  There was nowhere to sit, so I sat at the table in front until they had finished.  Then I moved to the cash register and saw that Sandy had a very productive morning.  For myself, I sold less than $50 to the four customers who bought books during my four hour shift.  The rest of the time I read.  And took a few notes.

I chose Judy Blume's book, "In the Unlikely Event," the fictional story of the town of Elizabeth, NJ and a series of plane crashes that affect the town and its residents in the early 1950s.  It is apparently based on experiences Blume herself had as a child  I have enjoyed Blume's children's books and read her first adult novel, which had entirely too much gratuitous sex for me so I haven't really sought her out as an author since then, but this one appears pretty good.  I brought it home to finish.  Even on a slow day, 400 pages is a tad much to read in four hours.

The first guy who came into the store was a very tall man named James Williams, who is apparently the artist whose work is going to be on display at Logos next month.  He was there to take pictures and measurements.  Very nice man.

After a long while, a mousie blonde woman came in and looked around for a long time, then waved a cheery "thank you" and left without buying anything.

A woman came in looking for "Why look at animals" by John Berger.  She didn't find it and I discovered later, when I checked Amazon, that it was written in 1926 an she told me she had found a copy on sale at Amazon for >$200.  I am amazed that she thought we might have it!

Mike, who filled in for Sandy when she was on vacation came in with his wife and their dog, who may be named Derek or something else.  It ended in -erek, though.  He was sad to find that the book on Japan that we had in the window yesterday was gone.  It sounded like the sort of book my friend would have purchased, but I don't know if he comes in on days other than Thursday (and he didn't come in today either).

Someone posted this picture on Facebook a couple of days ago.  Many of us laughed at how accurate it was.  But then I really had to catch myself because the next guy who came in could have been this Davis guy.  He didn't buy anything or I might have told him how closely he resembled this meme.

A man and two women came in.  One of the women was looking for a book by someone named Marston and the book title, she thought was Kari.  She didn't find it, and when I searched on Amazon (she asked me if I was going to order it from Amazon), I didn't find it either, so she may have had either the author or the title...or both...wrong.

But the group settled themselves comfortably at the front table and the other woman took off her shoe and sock so she could show her friend something wrong with her foot. They discussed the problem for awhile, then she put her sock and shoe back on again and took out her makeup bag and started to fix her makeup.  Meanwhile, the other woman took out a bag of meds and took out some eye drops to put in her eye.  The guy just sat there reading the paper.  Finally all three left.

A guy came in with two books to donate and wanted exchange credit for them, but I told him we didn't do that, so he just left the books, after letting me know they were quite popular, so would probably sell well.

At around 3:30, I made my first sale of the day, two books of stories (one by Alice Munro and another one) to two girls.

They were followed soon by a white haired man wearing a blue shirt from Hibbert's Lumber.  He bought two art books, one on Cubism and one on African art.

Four guys came in together.  They appeared to be a group of young special needs adults.  One went directly to the Literary section and picked out a book of Robert Lewis Stevenson's stories for $7.  He carefully took a red envelope out of the big manilla envelope in his hand and handed me $10.  I gave him change and all four left. 

Another guy came up with a copy of "Hirohito" to purchase and I fear he woke me up.  I was reading my book and had dozed off!  His was the last sale of the day. 

So that was my exciting day.  It was more exciting to come home and fix a Blue Apron calzone dinner.  One of these days I'll actually make the whole recipe the way it's supposed to be made!  (But even without being brushed with olive oil before baking, they were still tasty.)