Can I do it?
The things I let people influence me into doing! Or trying, at least. I can't see me churning out 50,000 words in a month. But, you never know if you don't have a go.

For Shirl.....

When you put a jumper/sweater on, do you put your head through first and then put your arms in, or is it arms in first, then head?

When the top comes off, do you pull it up over your head from the bottom or from the neck?

What came first - chicken or egg? Haha.

Jeeezuz!
My ex-school just emailed me a completion of service form today. They are bloody hopeless.

"A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that freemen prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny..." - Winston Churchill.

I wonder what happened to free press? Did it ever exist?

I rang the super people today. They finally got official notification on Friday - the same day I got the letter saying they hadn't!
So now I have to wait another 3 weeks.
The car will be there tomorrow. I'll have to go to the caryard and at least say hello to it.

You Are Emerald Green

Deep and mysterious, it often seems like no one truly gets you. Inside, you are very emotional and moody - though you don't let it show. People usually have a strong reaction to you... profound love or deep hate. But you can even get those who hate you to come around. There's something naturally harmonious about you.

What Color Green Are You?

Daylight saving has started. Guess who forgot. Jeez, it must be old age. The bookshop opened an hour late today. My Sunday Morning Guy will be pissed off.

I am so fucking furious. I cannot believe the incompetence of some people. I resigned from teaching on the 13th October. I saw the financial people, got my super sorted and went out and ordered a new car. Toyota rang me yesterday to tell me the car will be ready on Tuesday. I told them I probably wouldn't have my money through till a few days after that. No worries, I've put a deposit it on it so it's fine. Then yesterday there was a letter from the superannuation people waiting for me when I got home.
My stupid fuckwit of an ex-employer hasn't informed then officially of my resignation. Once they receive that THEN they'll start processing my money - which takes 3 weeks. It's been two weeks since I resigned. They've cut me off the department email system, they've stopped my pay, they've done all those things that suit them. But have they done the one thing that I need them to do....NO. I am so angry. I am more than angry. I am seething, furious, spitting chips.

Hey Shirl....

The fridge is working again. Hmmmm.

The boss has just returned from the accountant. In the last financial year the shop made a profit of a grand total of $100. I guess that's better than being in the red. I suppose.

Speaking of Jasper Fforde, I finally finished The Well of Lost Plots. The concept of a whole world of characters, plots, etc., is very clever. Fforde has an ingenious imagination and his use of literary allusions and puns is very funny. The central character, Thursday Next, also features in Something Rotten which is waiting for me at home.

Meanwhile I've started High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. It begins with the central character's top five most memorable split-ups. Easy to read and very amusing so far.

The Fourth Bear - Jasper Fforde

Another Nursery Crimes novel. Must grab this if it ever comes into the shop. The Big Over Easy was hilarious.

The Barnes & Noble Review:

Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt and his trusty sergeant, Mary Mary, are back in another sidesplitting Nursery Crime adventure from Jasper Fforde: the sequel to 2005's The Big Over Easy. In The Fourth Bear, Spratt must track down a legendarily violent criminal known as the Gingerbreadman, a "seven-foot biscuit with a bad attitude."

After successfully apprehending the infamous Great Long Red-Legg'd Scissor-man, who cuts the digits off children who suck their thumbs, Spratt is inexplicably forced to take a leave of absence while a medical review board assesses his competency. With Mary Mary working as the acting head of the Nursery Crime Division -- and Spratt as her "consultant" -- the misfit members of the NCD are faced with two very different cases: to help track down the deranged Gingerbreadman, who has just escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane, and to find Henrietta "Goldilocks" Hatchett, an investigative reporter who mysteriously disappeared while working on a story about prizewinning pickles. The last to see her alive: a family of three bears who have recently experienced strange porridge problems…

Here it is, 3pm and I've had a total of 4 sales today. Slow as a wet week. The electricians are here doing some work on the wiring - the lights mostly. The way things were just hanging around was illegal so they're making it all legit. Coincidentally the fridge has stopped working. They say it's nothing they've done - of course! Mind you, it's an antique fridge so maybe it's just that its time has come. Mighty suspicious coincidence, if you ask me!

Finally managed to convince eBay that when I requested that our account be closed I meant that I wanted it closed. They didn't like that at all. Tough. It was costing far more to operate than we ever made from it. Serious book buyers don't go to eBay. Now that the lady who ran it has gone there's no need to have the account anymore. If she wants to keep doing it she can start up her own account with her own credit card, not ours.

Bit of a kerfuffle in the gunshop next door earlier today. A man stormed out yelling all sorts of not very nice stuff at the guys inside. Turns out he went ballistic when he tried to buy some ammo and they asked to see some ID. Which they have to do, by law. Seems he didn't like that and got a bit angry. Drove away like a maniac. Makes me wonder what he wanted the ammunition for!!! I don't like having that shop next door. I want to kick them out and use the space for BOOKS! God knows, we've got enough to fill both premises.

It's raining! I just hope it's also raining in the catchment areas and out in the country where it's really needed.

Alchemy.
All it entails is matching colours and/or shapes to clear lines but it is SO addictive!

This month's most popular author: Jane Austen. All of a sudden we're completely out of stock of all things Austen. Not good.

I can't decide what 5 books I'd take to a new planet but I do know which 5 CDs I'd take:
Disintegration - The Cure
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Live Seeds - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Decade - Neil Young
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

This place is a mess! Up until now I've only been working in the bookshop on weekends and school holidays but, now that I'm CEO (hehe) I'm here full time. The lady who was working here Mon-Fri has moved on to another job. I've been trying to figure out the accounts - 'cos it's all been a big secret 'till now. All I can find out is that we've got unpaid bills coming out of our ears! The Post Office account is suspended because it hasn't been paid. The advertising account hasn't been paid and has gone to a debt collection agency. The accountant hasn't been paid. It's a bloody nightmare. Plus the electricity bill just arrived. It's going to take months to dig us out of the hole 'cos we just don't make enough to pay everything off at once.
But I'm going to do it.

Yesterday, fully recovered from my hangover, I went into town to see the finance people about what to do with my superannuation. I can't access most of it till I turn 55 but I can get a bit now.
So......on the way home I bought one of these:
(Mine will be Merlot Red though) Pick it up in 3 weeks!!!!

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
For the first time since I was 17 I am not a government employee.
For the first time since I was 4 I do not have to go to school.
I have such a monumental hangover.

I've read a bit more of McCarthy and I really don't like his style very much and the way he uses the word and all the time and uses no punctuation especially for dialogue she said and the way he doesn't use names and so his characters are he and she and it gets confusing about which he and she he means and I have to keep rereading to figure out what's going on and I think he's a bit too pretentious for me and I might give him a miss for now.

"It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and suckling it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground-shudder watching it till it was gone."

From All The Pretty Horses by Cormac mcCarthy

Whew, what a sentence! An endless sentence to describe an endless train. I like the concept. Hard reading though - I keep having to go back over passages to figure out what exactly he's on about. It'll be interesting to see whether I stick it out on this one or not.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
- Ozzy Osbourne.

What five books would you take to a new planet?

Pinched this from So Many Books.
Hmmm, I'll have to think about this....
Lord of the Rings for sure, but what else?
Does a series count as one? Hehe, then I could take Dorothy Dunnett and Robert Jordan. But I think that might be cheating.

Well it's done. My career of 28 years in the Education Department is over. I will be resigning at the end of next week.
Full time bookshop, here I come.

Eagles by one point. One point!
It was an exciting last quarter - the Swannies very nearly snatched it at the end. They must be devastated to lose by the smallest margin. Poor lads. But, well done Eagles.
Sainters next year!