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ravenEr, not to be a one-track record or anything, but I love my job. I have been gone for three weeks, and in that time, they have had a wasps' nest, a smashed window, a fire, a lot of water, a total shop rearrangement (okay, nothing new there), the Crosby shop has been demolished, there was that thing where they take all the books out of the toilet and and then put them back again, and then there's the bit where Tony was on national radio this morning. It seems I go away and everything happens, including - gasp - the earning of money. Now summer's over, there are actual customers and less of the situation where there are two people perched on a counter all afternoon because there's nothing to do.
Actually, Tony on the radio this morning was something of a surprise. I was awake for it, because I woke up abruptly at five and couldn't go back to sleep again, and I turned on the radio sleepily and found myself listening to Gordon Brown being given a good grilling. Always fun, so I listened to that for a while - after a bit they got to grilling him less about David Cameron and Tony Blair stepping down and more about what's on his iPod ("everything from Bach to the Beatles!" - groan) - and then I jerked out of a daze at the prospect of "local bookshops" next. And there's Tony, sounding surprisingly nervous and rattled. Apparently Gordon Brown overran and sliced up their time slot. As I said later, there are probably worse people to be overlooked in favour of. That sentence made no sense. Never mind.
(And the fire, too, was much less of a disaster than it could have been. It wasn't in the shop but in the flat upstairs, which is inhabited by a stoner who set his bed on fire with a spliff and didn't realise until a passer-by called the fire brigade. Who got the fire out, but not before water had started seeping through the floor into the bookshop, which is never good.)
Anyway. I had a quiet afternoon, barring the wasps' nest under the broken window - we barricaded half the shop off and quivered on the counter, waiting for the sound of frantic buzzing - and spent most of it on the phone to a small bookshop in Ireland, trying to track down a street map for a tiny town in County Limerick. (Problem - when you search for maps of Limerick, what you get is lots of books of limericks.) I'm a big geek, but I absolutely love this kind of detective work. I've had my job long enough to get fairly good at it, and it's fun - ringing people up, and trawling through websites, and thinking of people who know people who know other people who might know what you're looking for, and so on and so forth. You end up acquiring a lot of general knowledge, and knowing a lot about what other people might know about. Today it all ended when I got onto this tiny bookshop in County Meath, who were delightfully helpful, and wanted to know exactly where in the county was this tiny place we needed a map of, and when I didn't know, I overheard them shanghaiing their customers and demanding to know what knowledge they could contribute to the geography of Limerick. After a minute they stumbled over a man - there was shouting and exclamations of joy - who had grown up there, and eight euros later my quest is over.
I occasionally think that one day I'll have a small bookshop of my own so I can do this all the time. It's a geek thing.
In other news,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eternalwings SAW ALEXIS DENISOF. In Liverpool. Shopping, on his own. I wouldn't have dared go up to him and ask, "Are you Alexis Denisof? but I'm filled with geeky squee that she did.
Actually, Tony on the radio this morning was something of a surprise. I was awake for it, because I woke up abruptly at five and couldn't go back to sleep again, and I turned on the radio sleepily and found myself listening to Gordon Brown being given a good grilling. Always fun, so I listened to that for a while - after a bit they got to grilling him less about David Cameron and Tony Blair stepping down and more about what's on his iPod ("everything from Bach to the Beatles!" - groan) - and then I jerked out of a daze at the prospect of "local bookshops" next. And there's Tony, sounding surprisingly nervous and rattled. Apparently Gordon Brown overran and sliced up their time slot. As I said later, there are probably worse people to be overlooked in favour of. That sentence made no sense. Never mind.
(And the fire, too, was much less of a disaster than it could have been. It wasn't in the shop but in the flat upstairs, which is inhabited by a stoner who set his bed on fire with a spliff and didn't realise until a passer-by called the fire brigade. Who got the fire out, but not before water had started seeping through the floor into the bookshop, which is never good.)
Anyway. I had a quiet afternoon, barring the wasps' nest under the broken window - we barricaded half the shop off and quivered on the counter, waiting for the sound of frantic buzzing - and spent most of it on the phone to a small bookshop in Ireland, trying to track down a street map for a tiny town in County Limerick. (Problem - when you search for maps of Limerick, what you get is lots of books of limericks.) I'm a big geek, but I absolutely love this kind of detective work. I've had my job long enough to get fairly good at it, and it's fun - ringing people up, and trawling through websites, and thinking of people who know people who know other people who might know what you're looking for, and so on and so forth. You end up acquiring a lot of general knowledge, and knowing a lot about what other people might know about. Today it all ended when I got onto this tiny bookshop in County Meath, who were delightfully helpful, and wanted to know exactly where in the county was this tiny place we needed a map of, and when I didn't know, I overheard them shanghaiing their customers and demanding to know what knowledge they could contribute to the geography of Limerick. After a minute they stumbled over a man - there was shouting and exclamations of joy - who had grown up there, and eight euros later my quest is over.
I occasionally think that one day I'll have a small bookshop of my own so I can do this all the time. It's a geek thing.
In other news,
eternalwings SAW ALEXIS DENISOF. In Liverpool. Shopping, on his own. I wouldn't have dared go up to him and ask, "Are you Alexis Denisof? but I'm filled with geeky squee that she did.
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no subject
on 2006-09-25 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-09-27 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-09-25 09:44 pm (UTC)Also, ALEXIS DENISOF. So pretty.
no subject
on 2006-09-27 12:16 am (UTC)EEEE yes. So pretty.
no subject
on 2006-09-27 03:29 pm (UTC)