(no subject)
My sis and I are doing our annual fall outing in a couple of weeks -- this time to the Hocking Hills, the area just southeast of me that's full of sandstone gorges, cliffs, caves, waterfalls, and other gorgeous natural features. I realized about a week ago that I needed something a little more substantial than my usual cheap sneakers if I was going to be schleping around on rocky, sometimes slippery paths. So I poked my nose into Dick's Sporting Goods (don't you love that name?) and couldn't bring myself to spend $80 for what looked like a glorified pair of running shoes. Frankly, I was having difficulty with the idea of spending $70-100 for something I wouldn't be wearing more frequently, and even more so because they honestly didn't look like they were worth that much. Hell, for $100 I want shoes that make me look 50 lbs. lighter and 4 inches taller. So a friend (whose role, as appropriate, is to suggest that perhaps I don't need to spent money on this, or, as in this case, to tell me that it's OK to spend a lot on that because it's something I need and will later regret not buying) dragged me to The Walking Company, which just screamed "EXPENSIVE SHOES" to me. (I'll talk about the $16 socks later.) I tried on, I loved them, I waffled, I asked the salesperson to hang onto the shoes while I checked a couple of other places, I went elsewhere, I tried on, I was utterly ruined for anything less than the Keens I started with. So I spent the money, and told them that yes, I understood that half the battle against blisters and other foot problems was good socks, but, SmartWool or not, I absolutely could not spend $100 on a single pair of shoes AND shell out $12-16 for a single pair of socks on the same day, it could result in a sudden drop in blood pressure and possible swooning. The upside is, although they're hardly high fashion, they look fine with business casual clothes, so I can wear them to work sometimes as well. And goddess but they are comfy.
Late last week I was finally run to ground by one of the two volunteer coordinators from the library who were trying to get me to fill a slot at some event. The first one had left me a couple of messages asking about my help at the gigantic main library book sale over the weekend - I really was going to call her and tell her that I wasn't available, but then the other one caught up with me at work and wanted me to work at "Family Fun Day." Ugh. "Family" implies children, and I'm not all that crazy about them in quantity. Individual kids, fine; even in groups of two or three. Much more than that and I'm an unhappy puppy. I think what happened next is that I used up my "No" on Sue and when she then transferred me to Sandy my resistance was down, and I ended up saying Yes to the 1:00-3:00 p.m. shift at the sale. On Sunday. The day they have the "bag sale," which is where you can get a paper grocery bag full of books for a flat rate of $5.00. Unfortunately, that means that all day Sunday, leading up to the last hour and 45 minutes when they do the bag sale portion, you have to contend with: 1) people who want you to hold a bag of books for them so they can come back after 3:15 and only pay $5 for what probably would have cost them $15-20 at ordinary prices ($2.00 for hardbacks, CDs and DVDs, $1 for paperbacks and books on tape, VHS tapes $5 for a whole bag, children's books $1 for hardbacks and $.50 for paperbacks and board books); 2) people trying to squirrel away in odd places the stacks of books they want to try to come back for during the bag sale; 3) people arguing that they can't come back during the bag sale portion so they should get their bag of stuff for $5... Fortunately I didn't really have to deal with those people - there were regular staff who got to be the hardasses. I, on the other hand, got to be a Stealth Volunteer - when I got there they didn't have any more of the volunteer ID tags everyone else was wearing, so I went around incognito and, when I spotted one of those hoards of books in the wrong place, put them back in the proper sections. I also kept my eyes open for people who were trying to hide books in unlikely places (for instance, in the plastic bins with the CDs.) The way they handled the "hold this bag for me" thing was this: at about 2:30, they announced that they'd be closing the door at 3:00 to do a little tidying up in preparation for the bag sale, and that anything still on hold at that point would be returned to stock. At 2:45 they advised people to bring any purchases to the front, and promptly at 3:00 they closed the doors and spent 15 minutes trying to bring the room back into some sort of order (not too bad, actually; we'd been keeping up pretty well all along with restocking the bare spots and straightening out where people had pulled things out of the stacks.) Everybody who wanted to get in to the bag sale had to get in line and were let back in at 3:15. Fortunately, I was only scheduled until 3:00, so I got to BAIL just before the madness began. My "payment" was a cool "Friends of the Library" tote bag, 5 free books of my choice, some snack stuff and bottled drinks, and two hours of prime people-watching. I still think I'm going to keep myself to the branch library sales - less craziness by far.
Late last week I was finally run to ground by one of the two volunteer coordinators from the library who were trying to get me to fill a slot at some event. The first one had left me a couple of messages asking about my help at the gigantic main library book sale over the weekend - I really was going to call her and tell her that I wasn't available, but then the other one caught up with me at work and wanted me to work at "Family Fun Day." Ugh. "Family" implies children, and I'm not all that crazy about them in quantity. Individual kids, fine; even in groups of two or three. Much more than that and I'm an unhappy puppy. I think what happened next is that I used up my "No" on Sue and when she then transferred me to Sandy my resistance was down, and I ended up saying Yes to the 1:00-3:00 p.m. shift at the sale. On Sunday. The day they have the "bag sale," which is where you can get a paper grocery bag full of books for a flat rate of $5.00. Unfortunately, that means that all day Sunday, leading up to the last hour and 45 minutes when they do the bag sale portion, you have to contend with: 1) people who want you to hold a bag of books for them so they can come back after 3:15 and only pay $5 for what probably would have cost them $15-20 at ordinary prices ($2.00 for hardbacks, CDs and DVDs, $1 for paperbacks and books on tape, VHS tapes $5 for a whole bag, children's books $1 for hardbacks and $.50 for paperbacks and board books); 2) people trying to squirrel away in odd places the stacks of books they want to try to come back for during the bag sale; 3) people arguing that they can't come back during the bag sale portion so they should get their bag of stuff for $5... Fortunately I didn't really have to deal with those people - there were regular staff who got to be the hardasses. I, on the other hand, got to be a Stealth Volunteer - when I got there they didn't have any more of the volunteer ID tags everyone else was wearing, so I went around incognito and, when I spotted one of those hoards of books in the wrong place, put them back in the proper sections. I also kept my eyes open for people who were trying to hide books in unlikely places (for instance, in the plastic bins with the CDs.) The way they handled the "hold this bag for me" thing was this: at about 2:30, they announced that they'd be closing the door at 3:00 to do a little tidying up in preparation for the bag sale, and that anything still on hold at that point would be returned to stock. At 2:45 they advised people to bring any purchases to the front, and promptly at 3:00 they closed the doors and spent 15 minutes trying to bring the room back into some sort of order (not too bad, actually; we'd been keeping up pretty well all along with restocking the bare spots and straightening out where people had pulled things out of the stacks.) Everybody who wanted to get in to the bag sale had to get in line and were let back in at 3:15. Fortunately, I was only scheduled until 3:00, so I got to BAIL just before the madness began. My "payment" was a cool "Friends of the Library" tote bag, 5 free books of my choice, some snack stuff and bottled drinks, and two hours of prime people-watching. I still think I'm going to keep myself to the branch library sales - less craziness by far.