Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Passwords, passwords, and damned passwords

Yeah, there's my quote for the day.

Just updated my Thunderbird and it asked me for my master password.

My WHAT??????????

So then I have to ask it politely, which ONE, dang you?

Then I have to go through all the passwords in my head and try them all.

Of course, the ones I try WON'T WORK.

Then in desperation, I try my normal password (which, by the way, was the first one I tried....)

And it took.  Sigh.

One of those days, huh?    Of course, I have LOTS TO DO TODAY. And I've just spent 15 stupid minutes wasted on passwords.

Hopefully the rest of the day will improve from here.

Oh, by the way, I got an email yesterday for a job interview.  This is GOOD NEWS.  Now all I have to do is look and act like the right person for the job.   Keep your fingers crossed.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Do you know how hard it is to get a cat to SIT STILL for a picture?

FIVE PICTURES....

Just to get this.

Sigh.  

Other people's cats sit still for pictures because they LIKE getting their pictures taken.  

Mine, well,  Izzie here isn't the only cat in the house, but after it took so long to get this sad photo, I gave up for the day.
The thing in her mouth is her ball.

Izzie fetches.  But only if you have the Izzie approved type of ball.  Has to be soft and fluffy with some sort of puffiness to it. It has to be something you can throw far away. 
Then she has to be in the right mood to bring it back.

Don't know if I've mentioned this before but Son Number Two named Izzie -- officially she's Queen Isabelle or Queen Isabella of .... (don't remember what he said about where).

NO one calls her Isabelle. Or even Isabella.

She's Izzie.  

She's a tomboy.

She's BIG.

And she's very playful.

So --  there you go.  The requisite cat photo.

I'll have to see if I can get pictures of the rest of the gang another time.


Back in the saddle again.... metaphorically speaking

Yup, definitely metaphorically speaking, as I am NOWHERE near a horse at this moment and haven't been in a saddle with a horse under it in oh.....15 years at the least.

The Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair is now old news.  I did better than expected, which is to say I expected to not be able to make my booth fee out of gross receipts.  I was happily surprised that I not only made back my booth fee (so I could pay it....) and that I actually made MORE than that.

HA!


Well, it was nice while it lasted.  Unfortunately, since the last two months prior to this book fair have been DISMAL as far as book sales go... well, lets just say a couple of bills got paid from the proceeds of the fair, but it would have been nice if there had been even more sales.

I did take pictures of some of the dealers and their booths.

 Chris Lowenstein of Bookhunter's Holiday.
Lovely booth, lovely books, lovely lady.



 Some of Chris's stuff. 


 More of Chris's Stuff.


 Vic Zoschak of Tavistock Books with a few of his books.
Cool stuff. Always.



Three goofballs-

Wendy Maxwell, wife of Bill Maxwell of Maxwell's Bookmark.
Cool Lady as well - and a great Jazz singer. (she's on the far left)
Next comes Peter Siegel of Bea and Peter Siegel's Books - Cookbooks to DIE FOR!
And Susan of Robert Gavora Fine and Rare Books (sorry Susan, I don't remember if your last name is Gavora or not, so I'll be safe and not sorry later)
Blurry picture. Sorry.


Also notice that I FORGOT to get pictures of my own booth, and of several other booths that I SHOULD have -- but time ran out and my camera battery started to wobble as well.  I took the pictures about 10 minutes before opening bell (which didn't actually go off and people were thronging in while dealers were chatting and away from their booths).



More info on the fair to come as I think of it.

Overall, better than expected, at least for me. Others I know... not so great. 

I'll get to that later.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Remember that work thing? Well, here's what I'm doing tomorrow and Saturday.

Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair

Sept 18th -- That's THIS SATURDAY!!!!

Thirty boxes + packed in the car today and I'm nearly ready to hit the road tomorrow.  As you've probably guessed, I tend to over-pack (Ya think?). At any rate, I'll take the thirty boxes with me -- whether I stuff all those books onto the shelves is entirely a different matter. But I'll have them if I need them. Tomorrow is set up day, with the book fair on Saturday, bright and early at 10:00. 

Personally, I'll be out the door on Saturday morning at 6:30 AM to make it to Sacto with extra time.

I'm bringing a goodly number of new items in all sorts of subjects -- I've got a bunch of new Modern Fiction, some funky Non-Fiction items, some ephemera (found the sheet music the other day, so I'll have some of that too) Most Science Fiction / Fantasy and more (yeah, thirty boxes worth -- here's the math for you ..... thirty boxes of books with approx. 35 books per box (more for the picture books -- which tend to have 60-75) ...
averaging out to 1100 books.

Yeah, I'm over-packing. But hey, it works for me.

As far as sales -- well, I'd love to have LOTS, but in reality, I might have somewhere around 35-40 books sold by the end of the day (and yes, this is a fraction of a percent of what I'll be bringing ....  if my calculator is correct, and if I've worked the problem the right way around it comes to .0333 percent of the books I bring).

If, however, one of those books has a somewhat higher price tag, it works for me.

So why, you might ask, do you bring ALL THOSE BOOKS when you might just bring your high end stock and sell one or two?

You try it and see why .... I've said this before and I'm not the first one to say it. Book fairs are like a game of craps... it's entirely up to chance what a customer is going to buy. Sure, you might get J. P. Getty type come past your booth and wave his hand and buy up your entire booth, but more likely you'll get the guy next door who's looking for a $20.00 book that will fill a niche in his collection.  Nothing wrong with either end of the spectrum... it just means you have to have VARIETY (price and subject matter).

That's why I tend to go overboard with my boxes of books.

Ce la vie!

Hopefully it will be a good day. We'll see soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to attend, let me know and I'll email a free pass.  If you're not able to or not interested in coming this time, I'll try and have a blog summary about it sometime next week.


See you there!

Another month gone by in a flash.

You'd think I'd be able to keep track of time better than this -- it's nearly a month since my last blog entry.  School has long since started, the soccer games (not just the practices) started last week, even Cub Scouts have started for the year.... and still I can't get my blog updated daily.

Yeah, about that.... well, all of the above have now ADDED ON extra time.

Soccer takes up four nights a week (minimum two hours per day- right at dinner time). Plus all day Saturday.

School.... Son Number Two signed me up as a volunteer (well, to be accurate, I signed myself up, but he bugged the teacher into remembering) and now I'm at the school for an hour+  Monday through Thursday helping with MATH class (if you know me, that's an interesting fit). 

And then there's scouts....

Scouts (sigh).  I love the Cub Scouts. I love being a den leader. I don't mind volunteering to do extra (Popcorn chairman... sure, sign me up.... and yes, my garage is filled with popcorn  for the foreseeable future), but when the Cub Master from last year couldn't continue (for a variety of reasons that don't matter here), well then we had to re-organize.  Luckily, I dodged the bullet and didn't end up Cub Master myself -- it was a close shave however.  On the good / GREAT side, the Cub Master who has stepped up has already done more in two months than the last one did in an entire year. 

However, currently, I'm the senior person .... NO, not the OLDEST... I'm the person who's been there the longest because Son Number One started several years ago and has since moved on to Boy Scouts...now I'm finishing up with Son Number Two (he's a Webelos II and will be graduating to Boy Scouts in February).  I'm the only one who remembers what sorts of things the pack has done and generally how we did them.

Not to say there won't be changes. Of course there will, but for the moment, we want to keep continuity going and I get to do extra work to help facilitate this.

Which means that so far, in the past four weeks I've spent no less than 10 hours a week (not including my own den meeting times or prep for my den meetings) working on Cub Scout stuff.... including endless emails, calls, making up and sending out fliers, driving all over town, etc.,etc., etc.,.

I don't mind, but in the mean time, I still have WORK to do -- which has to squeeze into an ever smaller amount of time.

AND THEN--- this weekend is the Sacramento Book Fair!

Don't ask me how clean my house is -- you'll either get a rude answer and a foul gesture, or I'll start to cry. (CAT HAIR IS EVIL INCARNATE!!!)

Yeah, I might see some time off sometime after the month of September, but I have a feeling it's probably not going to happen.


I'm enjoying all of this but.... and this gets back to why the blog has languished....

My time is a bit lacking lately, and the blog suffers because of it.


So that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Now I gotta get back to work.