Ready or Not, Here Come the Books

(I've reverted to Old Blogger--the new one drove me nuts, dropping my photos.)

The Thirty-Six Cents

Good news: Big Boss said he'd take care of the 36¢/hour discrepancy in my pay raise. "I don't know why they did that," he said--meaning E.D. (exec director) and Co. shorting me. "Maybe it was a mistake in the numbers..."

"Let's agree to say it was," I said. 
In fact, I am willing to believe E.D. shorted me on purpose, because we do not get along. 
But I don't really care. 

I said to BB, "I don't have to work with E.D. I work with you. If there's anything wrong between you and me, I want to know."

And he said no, I was one of his supports at work, at a time when he feels he's carrying too much alone.

I told him about St. Christopher (he doesn't know Catholica) carrying the weight of the world across the river in the person of the Christ child. I sent him the Bosch painting.

I also made a speech about the importance of 25¢ ephemera. I showed BB the basket I put it in, explaining it's letters and so forth. "Letters," I said, "like what half the gospels are composed of."

BB had told me recently that actions matter more than words. He's been talking a lot about the Good Samaritan.
And I agree that you've got to get down off your horse and into the gutter. DO IT.
But are actions more important than words altogether? 

I took this opportunity for rebuttal.
"St. Paul said actions speak more than words" I said, "but how do we know that?"

BB looked quizzacal.

"Because he wrote it down!"

BB laughed.

So, we're okay. For now.

 

UPDATE: BB never did get me the 36¢ raise. He's a great talker, I'll give him that!

Stand Back and Open
Today's Opening Day--and I still have to print replacement subject labels for the bookshelves I rearranged.
Art Sparker made labels for me a long time ago. I'd foolishly  framed most of them in glass, much of which has since broken (accidentally knocked to the floor, not intentionally).
I've learned my lesson and it's plastic from now on. Also, I just need more signs up.

The printing of labels may or may not happen this morning... We all go in at ten to prep to open at noon, but there's a lot of little stuff to do. 
And we're down staff.
Of course I can print them in the coming days––(labels, not staff--3D printing isn't up to that ... yet)––if, pleasegod, I don't get sick (or die).
We're all so excited to be opening, the mood is great---but I know there's risk...

And we're already getting careless again, two weeks after BB had Covid. We all tested negative (for what that's worth), and we wear masks, but we don't always keep distance--including me, who suggested we take a group photo yesterday.

I can't post it because half the people don't like their photo online, but here are three of us who don't mind. We aren't usually so close, and that face shield is NOT an adequate face-covering.
I laugh more with these two than the others, but they look serious here. In the group photo, you can see we're all smiling behind our masks.
Here's what I've learned from the pandemic: humans are SOCIAL animals and trying to keep apart is almost impossible.
We're wired for contact, and it's like we'd rather die than not touch each other. That makes sense, on a species level, but individually, it's .... well, it's like saying, I'm willing to be the disposable one!

ABOVE, L to R: Jesse, whose favorite dinosaur is a Tyrannosaurus;
me, Custodian of BOOK's; and Sára, the cultural anthropologist from Hungary--when she and I have a complain-fest, I tell her she should be taking notes for her magnum opus, Life in a Grungy Thrift Store.
We're not so grungy at the moment though: can you see that, in fact, we're quite shiny!!! Even water-stained ceiling tile was replaced.

So... I got so little time to work on BOOK's, but I rearranged the sections. Here are most of them. (Minus a few shelves.)

Body and Mind...

Arts and Crafts

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and Religion/Spirituality (not Xtian)

Auto/Biography

...And PETS

NATURE & SCIENCE

Some (3) of the History & Society Shelves
(A nice thing about being down on stock is I can face more book covers forward.)

Minnesota. It's become a joke that we have to fight customers off who want to buy the canoe bookshelf--one guy had even started to remove the books!

MUSIC--because the audio electronics section has moved over here--and BUSINESS books--I put them here because no one buys them, and they're bright, so this dark area is fine.

Mystery/Crime--all 49¢ each. These are for you, River!
There's a bookshelf full of Romance books too.

My Favorite: Cool Old Books & Things
Needs restocking from that stash I showed you yesterday.
However... Everything is on sale for 25% off this Fri & Sat, so I'm holding off. (True Confession: I haven't gotten around to it.)

I moved the CHRISTIAN Books to the back wall---Bibles sell well, but the other stuff doesn't. 
Below them is GARDENING, which sells well in the early spring...
And below that, SPORTS, which really don't sell.

BARGAIN BOOKS, 33¢ each. 
Again, sparse at this time... I culled a lot of books that'd been on this (and other) shelves for a year or longer and sent them to recycling.
I didn't want old customers to return and see the same selection as in March.

Spanish and Other Languages.

Other Places/Travel Writing; Games and Humor; 
Child birth and rearing (better name?)

Fiction & Literature (e.g. essays by Emerson, etc.), starting with A––

 Etcetera...

BELOW: Children's Books, in the front room
Ass't Man asked me if he could move the black-and-white image of the girl to this section, saying, "We should have more diverse representation."
Great idea, I said.
(You can't see the art above, here, but it tends toward white, cherubic children with halos of blond hair.)

Aaaaand... my work space. CHAOS! 
Most of the boxes are filled with books to be recycled---we really need donations but are holding off for now--everything else is swamped. For now, BOOK's will just have to go on with what's there.