Another day, another stack of books

Modays are always my clean-up day. I try not to do "Book" stuff on the weekends so I can spend time with my family (and most weekends are packed anyway, so I hardly even get a chance to sit down at the computer.  This weekend was no different.

Saturday was Soccer stuff (two games and pictures taken).

Sunday was scout service project stuff and then a birthday party.

Somewhere in all that I tried to paint one wall of my bathroom (said bathroom is the one that took a month just to remove the old peeling wallpaper -- in the process I removed all the fixtures except the toilet paper holder: the mirror, the medicine chest, the towel hangers). Most of the items ended up in the bathtub for lack of a better place to put them.  It's really rather awkward to have to leave hand towels out on the vanity counter and not hang them up, but I THOUGHT that it would be very temporary.  Yeah, right.

So now it's about two and a half months later.  (PS: I had no weekends in September available due to book fairs, etc, so I didn't even bother to try anything then). I finally settled on a color of paint. I've put the primer down as a first coat.  This weekend I decided to paint one wall (see, the old saw is, if you paint from corner to corner, doing a wall at a time it shouldn't show strangely so I figure I can DO a wall at a time in the time I have available).

I do like the color.  However, it looks as if I'm going to need at LEAST two coats per wall. Possibly three.

This bathroom isn't going to get finished anytime soon at this rate.

I am, however, at least farther along than I was last month.

Sigh.

But back to Mondays.  Today I was going to process all the orders that came in this weekend (I actually GOT orders, and a couple of nice ones too), ship them off to the post office and then start to plow through some of the other stuff that was laying around for WAY TOO LONG.

Did you know the post office is closed on Columbus Day?

Yeah.  I didn't either.

So I can't actually get the pile of books out of my office. I did get the postage on most of them (except for one package to Australia that my postage program doesn't seem to like).

Then I took pictures of a box of books from the last book fair so I could make sure the pictures and descriptions were together (I only have about 20 more boxes to go in this process).

And then I was going to do TAXES!!!

but I found that I have some how screwed up my database this year.  I don't know if this means I'll have to start over (lucky I'm only on March, right?) or  find a fix for it.

Either way, NONE of that stuff got done.

Now it's off to scouts at 5:00pm and after that, it's the other scout meeting at 6:30.

One of these days, I'll have a day where I actually get WORK done!

Maybe in my dreams.

Harlin Quist books... learn something new every day

For years I've seen books with the publishing imprint of Harlin Quist -- all the books by this publisher have been (with a few exceptions) Children's picture books and I thought (mostly,  I didn't think but didn't bother to do any research) that it was a play on words of some sort.  You know - Harlequin Romances, Harlequins, etc.

Well, today, just for the heck of it (and because I was listing a small batch of new titles I just bought by that publisher) I thought I would do a quick check on the imprint.

Lo and behold, Harlin Quist is (now was- he died in 2000) the name of a man -- the publisher himself.

Harlin Quist started as a theatre producer, but switched to the publishing business in the 1960's.  Quist's publishing operation began in 1966 and regularly produced high quality (though sometimes rather odd and unusual titles) through 1984.  In the later years, the books lost some of their luster and were published only in paperback editions. He did publish a small collection of adult fiction during a one year period - even garnering awards for them, but it was more of an experiment than a real thought to change the focus of the company.

Quist then took a break from publishing for nearly a decade starting in  1984  for another stint in theatrics. But his passion was books and through the 1990's more titles were published, though he switched his base from the United States to France where he was very well received.

Some of the authors published via Harlin Quist books include Robert Graves, Eugene Ionesco, Shirley Jackson and reprints with new illustrations of books by classic authors such as Oscar Wilde, Eugene Field and Edward Lear.  One book includes illustrations by Edward Gorey (He was There from the Day We Moved In by Rhoda Levine).

Harlin Quist died May 13, 2000

He left behind a legacy of a quirky, intriguing books for children and their adults.

Moving Boxes -- Again!

This morning I woke up to an order for an ephemeral item (ephemera is a word for stuff that was made that was not meant to last -- mostly paper things, fliers, programs, receipts, tickets, stuff like that).  I don't have lots of ephemeral material (though I keep hearing that that's the way to go if I want to make money .... but that's another story). I do have some National Geographic articles though, which I keep tucked safely away in a drawer by my desk.

The thing is, there are BOXES in front of that drawer.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

To get to the item I needed so I could ship it out, I had to MOVE BOXES.

Again.

It was quick though, as I wasn't LOOKING through the boxes, just moving them.

But, knowing me, I can't just move the boxes, find the item then move them back -- at least I can't without peeking into at least three of the boxes.  You know, pop the lid off, see what's on the top of the pile, wonder if I shouldn't pull it out RIGHT NOW to process... before putting the lid back on and moving another box.

By the time the item is found and the boxes are back in place (taking up space behind me and making my workroom an eyesore) I have mentally decided that 1.)  I should not buy ANOTHER BOOK AGAIN -- at least until the boxes are gone from behind my chair. 2.) WORK FASTER. 3.) Work 24 hours a day just at data entry. OR 4.) Just give up entirely and get a real job (you know one that can be left at work and not thought about until you get back to it the next day.

I officially announce that I have TOO MANY books.

There I said it.

Maybe I should rather say -- I'm a Bookaholic and I want to reform (or whatever words Alcoholics Anonymous uses).

But then, even though I KNOW I don't need any more books, what did I do this afternoon?

I went book hunting.

Luckily (for me, my house,my family and the world) I didn't find anything I really needed. So tomorrow I vow to tackle the contents of the boxes and make some progress on getting things in the database and out of boxes.

Oh, and I got another order for an ephemeral item so I'll have to move those same boxes all over again.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

No Slogging today -- in fact, no books processed today at all

Well, technically, that's not true. I got two books listed from my pile, but that's it. Today was clean up after the weekend day, finish the book and review that I had due (and that ALWAYS takes time) and then get ready for the scout meeting tonight. 

I'm overdoing it with the scouts again, but this year, I feel a bit less stressed about the meetings. I have a schedule worked out (which has changed ALREADY -- that's why I put it in pencil) and I have not only lots of activities and paper work for them to do (being Webelos, the boys have more actual "work" as compared to the mostly fun of the earlier scouts.

I have remembered to include my packet of M&M's for bribery purposes.

I will keep calm.

I hope to gross them out with info about poisonous snakes in California -- send them home with a tiny bit of information and somethink yucky to tell their parents. That way they'll remember what we talked about.

If all else fails, I'll make them do calisthenics.

Tomorrow I should get back to regular data entry

AND

I have to really buckle down and work on the tax stuff. It's on my pile -- on the TOP of my pile (if you want proof, I'll take some pictures for you, but it's really there, believe me!)

This weekend was FULL

mostly doing kid stuff (two soccer games, soccer pictures and selling popcorn for the Boy Scouts) but also a day's worth of  CLEANING (which I haven't been able to do since before September) and pulling down the pool.

It's time.  It looks as if summer has gone away in a rush -- today woke up to 48 degree weather (at 5:45am) with a possible high of 72 degrees.

Right now it's 70 degrees.

Last week it was 98 degrees.

Next week, who knows, but there is a definite snap in the air and I had to pull out my extra blankets, the heating pad for keeping my hands going while I type and start on the extra cups of hot tea today.

More Christmas stuff - and slogging through the boxes from the book fairs

Some of the holiday books I pulled out of boxes are just too .... cute ...
for words.

The Santa book above is for tiny kids new to the season -- it's a touchy-feely book (with an added scratch-n-sniff patch too!) that a little kid sitting in the back of the car can play with to his (or her) heart's content.  I had to spend a bit of time playing with it myself to make sure everything was A-ok (yup it is - AND the scratch-n-sniff works wonderfully too)

This book is filled with stickers that can be torn out and added to the story (also a great back seat of the car activity book for somewhat older children who are on their way to a relative's house for Thanksgiving).  This is the sort of book that would have amused me for about five minutes when I was little, but these days, I find them quite endearing and wish that I HAD had them for myself when I was young.

Other than that, I actually slogged through two boxes of books which returned with me from the book fairs -- I checked to see which were listed with FULL details and which had pictures... then which were listed online or not (all one slick process for the most part). I have one medium sized pile of books that need pictures, but the descriptions should all be there and then they go back on the shelves for another year.

This is REAL progress!

Hopefully it will continue.

Now if I could just get enough time to do the tax stuff too....

Sometimes, you find gold among the dross

This week I've been BAD -- I've gone out book hunting every day when I SHOULD have been doing data entry (well, I do a bit of data entry every day, but instead of doing LOTS of data entry, I packed up early and went hunting).

Most days, I find SOMETHING.

Some days I find nothing worth much, but still enjoy the time spent.

And then there's the days you go out KNOWING that there's something out there for you that's gold -- not fool's gold, but REAL GOLD.

On Tuesday (yeah.... let me think - today's Thursday, right?  Yeah, Tuesday.)  I went hunting and I KNEW there was something out there. But I kept thinking I was going in the wrong direction. That I needed to go to another of my haunts and; not the place towards which the car kept driving (good sentence structure is sometimes SO AWKWARD).

I was thinking I had made a mistake and gone to the wrong place after all, since I had only found a handful of good, but not great books.  Then, on the last row I checked (I was watching my time carefully as I had to pick up kids from school and needed time to get across town) I glanced down at a PLAIN, DRAB book with gilt lettering on the title that could hardly be read as it was on the lowest shelf of the bookcase.

Even so I picked it up.  When I SAW the title,  I nearly dropped the book.

No, not going to tell you what it is yet -- I have a BUNCH of research to do to list this puppy properly -- but I'll get a blog entry on it at some point. Hopefully soon.

It's completely out of my normal area of interest, but it's definitely gold.

So the moral is -- if your gut and your car keep dragging you in a particular direction, it BEHOOVES you to go there with an open mind and to LOOK CAREFULLY.  Because sometimes you DO find gold among the dross.

Christmas stuff - and data entry

Last week - I don't know if I mentioned it or not - but I spent TWO DAYS going through boxes of books that haven't made it to the database yet. I was looking for a couple of books that I thought I had so I could quote them to customers (turned out I didn't), however, in the process, I found a small bunch of Christmas books.

Every year I mean to put all seasonal books in separate boxes and enter them into the database BEFORE the season is over -- you know, to SELL the darned things -- so I pulled these out and put them in the TO DO NOW pile.  Which means clean, get pictures taken, then enter the darned things.

This isn't ALL the Christmas books I found, but a few of the cute ones that I've entered into the database so far. I do have more (and keep finding more when I go out hunting! BAD ME!)

So I thought I'd put up a few pictures for you.  ALL OF THESE ARE AVAILABLE (as of this writing).

This particular book -- The Christmas Spider is a book that's been hanging around our house for a number of years -- it's got some wonderful craft designs, etc. from Poland. My mother got this to check out the paper cutting artwork and how to do it.  We tried it a couple of times -- I might still have a box with some decorations on it, but I am truly one of the NON- Arts & Crafts creative types. My designs are sad and copyish....and... did I say sad already?

I like many of the Christmas books for children that are available. I know it's a subject that  gets DONE TO DEATH, but sometimes, good authors and illustrators can add special meaning to the Christmas experience.  Russell Hoban seems to have that knack.

Other than answer a stupid, LONG customer phone survey this morning, these books were where I spent my time today.  After this, I need to work on the DREADED TAXES (dreaded taxes, dreaded taxes...echoes off in my head) and then it's work on unpacking more boxes from September's book fairs, clean, fix dinner and do soccer practice.

I know it's a bit early for the Christmas spirit overload, but if I don't get these books listed NOW, it ain't gonna happen!