Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Category: Blog (Page 150 of 153)

Easter eggs & dying. (Or feeling that way…)

The telephone call-list indicated on Monday morning that I had missed several calls on Easter Sunday. Here is my public admission: I surrendered in exhaustion mid-afternoon. I hadn’t had a morning shower (occupied at the time) and after several trips to storage lugging boxes to haul into the shop, I just gave out.

Not to be a whiner. There were several muscles left that did not ache.

Instead of spending the remainder of the day hauling, I took a long, hot shower, bought some vegetables and cooked up an Easter evening dinner of ham, mashed spuds, fresh green beans, Philly-cream corn, and steamed carrots.

The couch called, and I didn’t miss that one – getting positioned just in time to see Bubba knock a curveball out of the forest and onto the green to win the Masters tournament. Read a little David Copperfield and fell asleep early.

Before ten in the morning on Monday, I had already brought over another couple of loads of book boxes. (The cartons are actually liquor store cardboard which have caused several passersby to wonder whether it’s a bar going in to the space. Nope. They are just a good-sized box for packing and carrying books.)

I’ve uploaded some pictures as proof that I haven’t been slacking too much. Perspective is an amazing thing. A couple of the images show the store from the front and the back with the boxes in view. In the other picture, I’ve positioned the camera so the stacks of cartons don’t show. You may click on any image for a larger view.

Hopefully, the store will soon be as organized as it appears to be in the well-positioned shot.

One of the two storage spaces is nearly empty! I have spotted the back wall and continue to search for that last box!

April update: no foolin’.

I’m grabbing a minute to give an update on the store’s progress – lots of folks have been asking and dropping by. I’ve been leaving the front door unlocked and have met some people and have had a chance to catch up with former customers wondering where I’ve been hiding.

The inventory is going on the shelves in spurts, I’m afraid. Monday brought with it grand intentions for bringing over several loads from storage, but after two trips there were a number of things that demanded immediate attention in other areas. Errands prevailed later. Finally, early Tuesday I managed to get the remainder of the boxes unpacked with the aid of my sister Kathy, who had part of a day off from her activities as proprietor of Martha’s Health Food in Broken Arrow. (Just down the street and around the corner these days…)

I’ve included some pictures that show the interior with a few of the books in place.

It isn’t easy to decide a logical way to arrange the inventory, but it’s getting there. Okay, so it isn’t brain surgery, either. Basically it has boiled down to fiction on the walls and on the right, non-fiction to the left. Exceptions expected and permitted.

The little almost-Irish-green tables came Saturday, courtesy of a now-closed restaurant west of Tulsa. They aren’t exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll admit I like them better in the McHuston interior than I did in the storage unit where they were stashed when I bought them. At the price, I couldn’t really turn them down, and I do like the chairs. Sturdy and comfortable.

Food service is still intended to put those tables and chairs to good use. Questions have been posed as to whether it will be a printed menu or daily chalkboard, and the truth is, I don’t know yet. I have a menu ready that could be printed in a jiffy. I also have a white board on an easel. After running the bookstore all alone for the past five years, I realize that the kitchen will bring on an addition set of tasks and chores. With a five-month hiatus, I’m not in a position to hire someone to help while waiting for customers to come in. That point will arrive soon enough, I hope.

In the meantime, I cannot be worrying too much about cooks and kitchens. There are plenty of books that need to be unpacked and organized before moving on to phase two, which is getting the doors open – for business.

Getting to the point. Eventually.

March is winding down and the store is still in the prep-stage. There remains a remote possibility that the grand re-opening will make an April 1 deadline, but it may take just a while longer to move all those boxes of books and get them resettled.

In the meantime, the work carries on assembling the shelves from the old store. More than 25 bookcases were pushed, pulled, dragged, and carried by my wife and me, from one of the storage units to the store on Sunday and were organized on Monday morning. The picture shows the line of cases from the front to the back of the store interior.

Monday afternoon – after bringing the shelves and supports from storage – the wall units were assembled along the south wall. They came apart a lot easier than they went back together. (I had taken the trouble to mark each shelf and matching support, but upon reassembly decided they were all constructed to match and disregarded my identifying marks. They don’t all match. Therein lies the difficulty.

At last, the wall is full of shelves from the bistro-tables-area in the front of the store leading to the back of the sales area. By Wednesday, the north wall shelving should be completed as well. There are a couple of interim projects between now and then.

The outside of the store is looking good and will look better once there is time enough to get the windows washed and cleaned. A little shelf on the front window bench will do nicely to display some new titles. (I’ve placed The Hunger Games in trade paper and a special boxed-edition copy on display, along with a boxed set of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, which I have not read, but have enjoyed on television.)

Once the shelves and cases were removed from the storage unit, I was able to see the boxes of books that were hidden behind. It’s a bit misleading to say they were hidden though – sort of like saying a tsunami snuck in. There are almost exactly a thousand boxes waiting to be unpacked, and when the last couple of bookcases were moved out of the way, stacks and stacks and stacks of boxes were revealed.

An imposing sight, to say the least.

It is exciting though, the idea of getting those books on the shelves and ready to go.

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