Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Author: admin (Page 153 of 220)

Bringing home the baking.

Delicious! It could be there is only one thing that tops the aroma of fresh-baked cookies: the taste of those gooey-chocolatey rounders, right out of the oven. Guilty as charged.

You didn’t think I’d place them out without a sample, did you?

Clicking on the image will enlarge the picture and you can see that the display is missing a single cookie. Proof of my will-power that I stopped at one.

The oven arrived this morning and I’m able to do a little cooking in the kitchen, so I fired it up and made a dozen, just to try my hand.

If someone was to invent a canned spray that had the scent of chocolate chip cookies, it might be a seller. Undoubtedly, it would be loaded with calories enough to pack on pounds just by breathing it in.

Things are still coming together.

A couple of more items added to the wall, in the other picture. I discovered several more boxes of books that still need to be reckoned with, and I’m still fighting with the computers. They don’t want to talk to each other.

It isn’t a drawback that affects the store operation, but there are some items on the older machines that I’d like to access without having to email them to myself (my current system of file-sharing). Maybe before the day is out…

I did discover that tragically-slow running machines can be greatly improved. My once-fast Dell desktop had such a case of the Slows yesterday that I thought someone had filled it with molasses. Figuring that there must be some programs running in the background to slow even the internet access, I checked the Startup file and removed a dozen or so programs that began automatically when the computer started.

Voila! When I rebooted the machine, it was back to its old zippy self.

I just need to find a way to recover my old zippy self…

(Chocolate chip cookies are likely not the answer.)

Trash and treasures in moving boxes.

It’s Sunday afternoon, over a month after getting the keys to the new building, and I’m still moving boxes. It is a humid day and I’m already feeling the need to wring myself out.

Today’s focus is getting the antique Sony Vaio and its younger but equally slow brother connected to the primitive store network. It isn’t so much a network as it is three computers strung together in a desperate attempt to preserve the data that exists separately on each machine. Programs and such.

I did transfer the customer database over to the laptop and have been using it since switching the Open sign on last week. The older machines give me a spot to save a backup copy. No ‘cloud’ storage here yet.

Baby steps.

Moving is a colossal pain, but it presents the opportunity to review the life-long collection of what-nots that are being dragged around over the course of a lifetime. As I tend to save rather than ditch them, I’ve assembled a pretty large collection of precious junk.

There have been times I have wondered whether it would be better to send some of these things off to the dustbin, but then I run across something that is worth a smile and a couple of memories. You can click on the image for a close up look at that Gladstein Plumbers infield. We were a mighty foursome. I’m the third from the left in my pre-beard days, back when caps did not signify receding hairlines.

That was the same year I got selected to play on a McAlester Boys Club all-star team for a game in Fort Smith, and during the opening warm-ups tripped on the raised infield turf and took a throw from the catcher on the forehead.

Knocked me out cold.

It also bumped me right out of the ballgame, thus ending my all-star career without so much as an at-bat.

I did take home a nice trophy, in the form of an egg-sized lump just below my hairline.

Needless to say, that was centuries ago, back when Charles Dickens was covering sports and the typewriter had yet to replace the quill and inkwell. In fact, I believe the sport of baseball had just been invented. Actually, looking at the photo credit, I noticed the name of Steve Lalli, whose younger brother Jim was a classmate of mine at St. John’s school in McAlester and quite the artist. I didn’t recall Steve being so much older that he would have a job at the newspaper, but perhaps he was a prodigy in the field of reporting. I was no prodigy in the infield of baseball, but I loved to play.

Maybe that’s why I have the clipping in a cardboard box. Who knows? It is, no doubt, the perfect time to rid myself of all the other papers and flotsam filling this particular carton.

But of course, I’ve closed the lid back up on it and taken it up to the loft for safe storage – for who knows what reason.

As to the store’s progress: Books are being sold, folks are wandering in everyday, and the kitchen equipment is still being assembled for the rollout of the bistro. Hopefully it will be in the next couple of weeks.

As for me, it’s back to the boxes and reconnecting the computers, feeling just a little older at having seen how long ago my sports prime actually was.

Waking up the coffee maker.

A complete month! The first in the new location, and WOW! how time speeds along. Here it is, a rainy end to April, and the occasion is being marked by the official fire-up of the coffee-maker.

We’ve had some test runs along the way, but no way to accommodate those of you who might want cream or sweetener. Those are laid in and ready. The coffee is hot. The open sign is on.

Monday is here.

The brand of choice is still undecided. This morning the scent in the air is coming from the Rainforest Alliance certified select, which – to my taste – has the distinct flavor of coffee. As I’m readily admitting to anyone who might have a passing interest, the morning cup is not my – well, it’s not my cup of tea. Or coffee.

I can pass a blindfolded taste test over sodas, with a taste discerning enough to identify Sprite as compared to Mountain Dew, or Diet Coke from Dr Pepper (or even Pepsi). Hot coffee, hot cocoa, hot chocolate: not for me. Something about the burning sensation on the lips and tongue do me in. I have a cup of this Rainforest Select in front of me, but it is sufficiently cooled that I can drink it. As to its wake-up factor, aroma, robustness, bold-character flavor, and other java-related properties, I just haven’t had enough morning brew to render a qualified opinion.

The package is attractive, anyway.

Earlier I had intended to use Gevalia brand, a European coffee that supposedly is held in high regard. I was led to believe that it was rather exclusive but I saw a huge display of it just yesterday in Reasor’s. I don’t imagine that the coffee at McHuston Booksellers has to be one-of-a-kind, but I was hoping for something that would be a little different than the home cup. Maybe Gevalia is different enough, or even this Rainforest Select.

The taste is starting to grow on me.

The plan is still to offer a second, flavored coffee in the morning and I’m thinking the Rainforest Caramel is probably going to be the blend. Everyone who has tried it has returned a favorable opinion.

As a non-coffee drinker who liked it, that fact alone carries a lot of weight.

The pix this morning are of the kitchen and the coffeemaker. There are a lot of restaurants that don’t want you to see where the food is prepared, for one reason or another. In my days at Paddy’s Irish, I wasn’t ashamed of the kitchen, but it wasn’t a source of pride either. The equipment was older and mismatched. The space was confined and irregularly laid out due to the shape of the building. It passed the health department inspections.

The kitchen at McHuston Booksellers, on the other hand, is one that I am proud to show off, although it still isn’t quite ready. Still waiting for the installation of a freezer and refrigerator before the food service can be implemented. The office is a completely different story, as you can see in the image. I’m still working to get the last of the boxed books out on the shelves, and the office-related items put into some kind of order.

My son Dustin and I finished off one of the two storage units on Sunday, moving extra shelving units and items out of one to combine into a single spot and bringing back a last load to the store. It’s good to have that part taken care of.

The final image is taken from the peeking-through-the-front-window vantage point, which a lot of folks have been doing. I suppose an open sign on the front door is in order, to complement the lighted sign at the other end of the glass windows. It is a little tough to see through the slightly-tinted windows, and thus, the shielding-hand peek approach. It’s okay to open the door and come on in though.

We’ve got your cup o’ coffee ready to go.

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