Florida Here I Come

I woke up this morning and looked out the back of the house and spotted snow falling from the sky. I cursed. I showered and got dressed for work and the snow was still coming down. I cursed again. I walked to the train, and the billowing wind blew my umbrella inside out and it was still snowing. I cursed wildly. I got on the train, late as usual and the floor was soaked with the muddy slushy footprints of the riders. Still cursing.

I sit down in my seat and open up Heat (the book I am reading) and begin to daydream of the upcoming days when I will be in Florida enjoying the sun and sand and warm weather. I wish I was going down a few days earlier with the Doctor, he gets to be warm on Thursday night. I am jealous and I curse a little bit.

Maybe I won't come back to Boston, and if I do it better not be snowing!

Dear Mr. Anonymous Poster

Dear Mr. Anonymous Poster-

It is very clear to me that you do not like me or the things I post in my blog. I do not write this blog to please you, nor do I expect everybody to agree with my opinion. I welcome different people's opinions in the comment section of the blog and I read them all. I appreciate hearing from people around the world. It is fun for me and that is why I write on this.

However, while I tolerate and appreciate comments on my writing and my opinions I don't appreciate attacks on my lifestyle and choices that I make. I do not appreciate you telling me and my friend S to "join in some sort of gay pact and jump off a cliff." This was not necessary and I will not tolerate this. Please refrain from making these negative and hurtful comments.

I have no problem removing the ability to post comments on my blog if you do not stop, however, that would take some of the fun out of the blog. If you are not happy with me and my posts-lifestyle- writing- please just dont read my blog.

Best,
JRH

White Noise

So I finished reading White Noise by Don DeLillo on Saturday. It was Postmodern and funny and interesting and discussed the fear of death brilliantly. I loved the family, I loved the story, great character development....

but I just didn't get the ending, I am either not intelligent enough or I just think differently, the ending was bizarre and it didn't help bring the story to not necessarily closure but some semblance of sanity I felt necessary! Overall a good book with an ending I just didn't get.

The (Semi) Glamorous Life (or so we like to think)

The Doctor and I enjoy being fabulous, you know fancy clothing, parties with famous people, good shoes, brunches with friends, and always looking perfect (even when hung over from a fabulous party). Champagne for breakfast Cosmos for lunch, full on Sex and the City glamour! Now, we live in Boston and not New York City, and while we are pretty damn fabulous, we are not really all that (but we like to think so.)

So last night, we were invited to the Diesel Summer Collection Launch Party, not quite the red carpet extravaganza we would have liked but hey not bad, there were velvet ropes, and most importantly free alcohol! We were invited because we are damn cute and people want to be seen with us! Or maybe just because one of the employees is a former employee of mine, and the store manager has a crush on me! Or because we are fabulous!

We show up fashionably late to avoid the paparazzi and walk right to the front of the line and walk in without even showing our invitations, there was actually a line but since we think we are hot shit (and the manager who has a crush on me was working the line) we went right in! We mingled for a bit on our way to the bar, had an associate check our coats for us, and got our drinks. Since we will be in Florida next week we opted for Vodka with a splash of light cranberry juice. We continued to mingle on both levels, look at and judge the clothing, and discuss important facts like the color story seems to be from 1988 when neon green was hot. OK, so we are critical but if they didn't want our opinion then they shouldn't have invited us.

As the night continues the manager approaches us and strikes up a conversation, of course he wants to be seen with us, I mean who doesn't. The Doctor and I work our magic, and since he obviously wants people to see us wearing the new line, he offers us a 50% discount on anything we buy that evening. Yes, we were the only ones who got the discount, no there was no discount attached to this launch event. We made the financially responsible decision to try on jeans, since there is never a sale on Diesel Jeans we might as well take advantage of the discount in the best way possible. I also need a new bathing suit for Florida, so I decided to pick this up as well. As we shop we have three sales associates helping us, because we are beautiful and important people. We try on a couple pairs of jeans and the sales associates tell us how fantastic they look on us. We contemplate the purchases, and since we fit into size 27 waist jeans we decide that it would be silly to walk out without purchasing these fantastic garments, especially since we received the well deserved discount (just for showing up!) I am sure that we were the only ones who received such great treatment as we sipped our wine and tried on our jeans.

Our glamorous evening ended in a door to door ride home via our limo, (the #1 Bus), the Doctor making some dinner, and us falling asleep on the couch while watching Make Me a Supermodel. Ah as Raf always says, "Do You Know Who I Think I Am!"

For those of you who are going to comment about how big a bitch I am please note that this post was written with a sense of humor that you may not understand. It is written in jest, and it is mainly making fun of myself and the Doctor. It is for fun, don't take it for much more than that.

Amazon Is A Dirty Word

In the bookstore business there are not many dirty words, I don't like to ban books from my shelves or tables because of content or words in the title. I am sensitive to my clientele but I never censor books*. I have put books on tables with the c word, the s word, the n word, the b word, but I am going to start banning books with the a word on the cover, or books that have to deal with the a word. No not ass, or even asshole, I am talking about Amazon, as in amazon.com.

I don't hate online store, I just hate online stores that compete with me. Heck, for that matter I hate any online retailers that sell books. I mean don't you want to come into a friendly neighborhood bookstore and select a book. Pick it up, read a few pages, see what you are buying before you actually buy it? Don't you want the friendly neighborhood booksellers to help you select a book that you will actually enjoy because they took the time to talk to you and get a feeling for what you like? I know I would prefer that over a computerized algorithm that makes random suggestions. Seriously, don't ever buy a self help book online from a.com because the suggestions they will make after will make you want to commit suicide.

Come into the store, support your local bookstores, we won't charge you shipping and I bet you will enjoy the experience a whole lot more. That is my slightly biased opinion for the day. Ah yes, and also when you are in the bookstore if you are just looking for something to buy on a.com at a later date, don't tell the bookseller, it is like a smack in the face.

* I do censor some kids books and teen reading titles, recently a few titles aimed at teens glamorizing drug use (in a way) have been published. I will never put these out on an endcap or table, but I will still carry them spined out in the section. I just feel this is not a subject a teen needs to be exposed to without input from a family member or guardian.

Chaos Calmness Chaos

Monday's are always hard, and as I always tell new hires, "there is no such thing as a typical day at the bookstore." However, today was just kind of nuts.

I came in this morning to an certain amount of expected chaos that was compounded by pages and conference calls and alarms, followed by a calm lunch hour, followed by the eruption of chaos once again.

This morning I was expecting to have to do payroll, it is a regular thing and it is the most important Monday task, otherwise my employees don't get paid properly and riots erupt. Riots are bad! I also knew that I was going to have to train a new employee in the book department today, and that this would take extra time because NN had to work in receiving because his receiver was going to be out for the week. These were parts of the planned chaos, these things I could handle. The unplanned pieces started falling into place as soon as I got into my office and turned on my computer (or tried to turn on). My computer was in some sort of locked in state and it took me 20 minutes to wake it from its weekend coma (and you thought humans were the only ones that could get hung over.) I managed to get things started when my phone rang telling me that my trainee was here 30 minutes early. Early is good but it did not give me enough time to finish payroll, so I go upstairs greet my trainee and get her started on her paperwork. We methodically complete all 14 pages plus documentation necessary to get a job (damn litigious Americans) and I begin walking her through the store giving her an overview of the areas and introducing her to all of the people. I am about 3/4 of the way through the store when I am paged to the textbook department- I pass of the trainee to a supervisor and run downstairs to see what they need. It appears that my CO manager did not know how to accept a scholarship check so I need to complete this transaction, but while I am doing so the power on the lower level goes out. I mumble under my breath, bring the customer upstairs, complete her transaction, and then go try to figure out why my power is out. I am able to fix the lack of juice issue fairly quickly, but then it is time for the Monday conference call, so i go to the conference room and listen to the call without contributing for 45 minutes all the while trying to get payroll completed and sent to the home office. After the conference call things seem to have settled down and are moving in the right direction, so I check in with my trainee to see how things are going, finish up some paperwork, and then decide to take lunch.

I usually take lunch in my office with the door opened because I like to make sure that my employees know that I am approachable and they can come to me whenever they want with whatever issues they may have. Logistically I find it difficult to have an open door policy if ones door is always closed. But after the morning I had, I went to the food court grabbed some soup, and went down to my office, turned off half the lights and sat at my desk with the door closed and ate. While on lunch, instead of reading my regular celebrity gossip, I went to read some of JCH's reviews on www.yelp.com/boston. Yes, the same JCH with the Robo-bird issue! He works for Yelp, which is a site that people use to review businesses in different areas around the country. It is definitely a cool site so I added it to the blog roll on the sidebar of my blog- check it out!

After lunch I felt somewhat revitalized and ready for the remainder of the day, until the ADT man came in to fix our alarm. He didn't know what was going on and I had trouble explaining the issue to him, when he finally understood, he continued to set off the audible alarm in the back room, the audible alarm is really F#CKING LOUD! While this is happening, I am being paged to the front of the store because I have a gentleman who is interviewing for an open position waiting for me and then I have a phone call from a manager at another store who is pissed because one of my managers transferred things to her that actually belong to another store. Shit this day really sucks. About 20 more minutes of chaos follow until I finally make it upstairs to interview the "man" who is waiting for me. During the interview I ask "him" about a couple of the gaps in his employment history and "he" tells me that those are the times that "he" went out on MATERNITY leave. I am totally confused by this answer, maybe he means PATERNITY leave but I am not sure, and I can't press the issue because "he" is not qualified for the job anyway, and I don't want "him" to feel like I am discriminating against "him." Once again with that litigious American culture.

And like i always say, "no typical day in the bookstore," and today was the perfect example!

???

Today while ice skating on the frog pond, JCH said this...

"I am scared of birds, they are like robots..."

Ihave no idea, if you figure it out plase let me know.

The Snow Has Got to Stop

It's March 1 and it is still snowing. I am so ready for the snow to end this year. It's not like we have had a bunch of major storms it is just the pesky snow and ice that seems to be constantly falling from the sky this year. I want ti to be warm, I can't wait for it to be 70 degrees again. I want to Rollerblade on the Charles and be able to walk comfortable over the river on my way home from work. I hate the cold and now that it is March I feel like it should really stop being cold. I mean haven't we suffered enough!

It is time for summer sports and warm weather and tans and all around happiness. It's time for reading my books out on my back deck. Spring in the city is the best time of year. Oh man I can't wait! And if the warmth doesn't arrive soon I may not come back from Florida when I go there at the end of the month.