It's been ungodly hot here and I don't have much motivation to knit tonight. Also, this was my longest teaching day (three lectures and a lab, and EVERY FREAKING ROOM has a different procedure to project materials on a screen and it's driving me spare because it's hard to remember, "okay, in this room the smartboard is coded as 'monitor 3' so if you don't have 'monitor 3' activated nothing will show up" and in another room you can write with a stylus but ONLY with one program open, and you can't save what you're writing, and I AM GOING TO GET A NASTYGRAM FROM DISABILITY CONCERNS OVER THIS so now I have to call IT and harass them yet again about this.
So after lab, it was about 3 pm, I decided to do something for MYSELF.
I was surprised to find, when looking something up on bookshop.org, that we were getting another small local bookstore. It is literally the size of my living room, it's in a "suite" in a little office building that also has a hearing aid shop and a prosthetics shop. They had said they opened Saturday and that they were a "pop up shop" (which makes me wonder how long they'll stay), so I wanted to get down there.
Drove past on Saturday. There were literally 65 people in line to get in. I figured because it seemed small they could only let in small groups at a time. And it was VERY hot that day (it's VERY hot always now, and I'm not sure I can believe it ever will not be again), and I didn't want to stand in a long line in the heat.
They also billed themself as "romance forward" or something similar and yeah, I get it, that's one genre that actually still sells and people who read a lot of romance buy a lot of books so it's a smart business decision (beyond being what the owner likes). But I am less of a fan of romance. Oh, I'm fine with some romance-adjacent things - I liked The Spellshop and while I never quite finished "The Enchanted Greenhouse" I liked it too. And I had seen a reference to a book called "Moss'd in Space" which was "cozy" sci-fi with some romance. (I really, really like the Monk and Robot books, which, if not "cozy" sci-fi per se, is friendly and nice and "hopepunk" and I REALLY need more "hopepunk" right now.
So I decided to go down there and see if they either had that book, or the ocean-and-sailing-themed new Sarah Beth Durst one (which happens in the world of The Spellshop).
Struck out on "Moss'd in Space" (but the owner said she knew it, and should have it in a couple weeks, and it sounds like she'll be here at least that long?) but
Yeah, I bought it in hardback. (I have the other two in hardback). I've gone back to buying more hardbacks of books I might want to keep and re read, and anyway, I like them to match. (This one also has the dyed page edges - Spellshop has purple, Greenhouse has green. This one has blue. It's a little thing but it's a thing that makes me happy)
I should pull The Enchanted Greenhouse out and restart it, and finish it this time. But then again - I'm almost done with Hoof Beats (a history of horse domestication) and I'm almost halfway through "Proto" (A history of Proto-Indo-European, which is very readable and is really interesting to me, unlike the other, bigger, earlier scholarly tome I tried to read and bogged down in twice. Also I'm seeing come connections with the book Between Two Rivers I read earlier this year). And I'm still working on "Far from the Madding Crowd" but I also kind of want to restart that and get a notebook for while I read so I can note down unfamiliar allusions and the odd word I don't already know so I can look them up. (I don't keep my phone in my room, and I like to leave it on charge overnight, or I could have it and directly look things up) (I suppose I could have a pencil and softly underline things; it's a book I own and I tend not to think it's a crime to write in a book you personally own)
But the tiny break, and a very brief conversation with a friendly person about something not-work was probably what I needed. I hope the store continues; I hope the huge crowd of people on its opening is an indicator there's a market for this in town. The woman working there apologized for not having any bags (but I was just buying the one book, so it was easy to carry) because their Saturday was so busy they went through all of them.
I'd really love to see "microbusinesses" in town where there are a lot of little shops offering specialized things; and different businesses to the ones that are super abundant (nail salons, "medspas," auto parts stores, weed dispensaries) because none of those things are "for me." And while a romance-themed book shop isn't exactly my genre, it's nice to see it, and there are occasionally books in that genre I would read....
I had to run another errand or two and when I got home I deemed it Too Hot to fix food, so I called up the new-ish good local pizza place (just a few blocks from me) and ordered a pizza margherita to pick up
But yeah, this week feels too long for it to only still be Wednesday.
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