Sure it's a three-day weekend

and I'm at work on the Saturday and the Sunday. But there was a bit of blue sky today when I opened the doors to DeskSlave Central. As I unlocked the first one and held it open for a boy of about 10 and his younger sister, the boy burst through and shouted "Yahoo!"

A little later a toddler was lead by a parent toward the kids' area. As they approached, the toddler broke into a run and shouted, "I'm ready!"

I know, not much, but we take what we can get.

Maybe you can explain?

I was unlocking the front doors at one minute before official opening time today. I like to do that, give people that little "extra." Anyway, there were the usual type of MUST GET ON THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW people there, who invariably shove past as soon as the door opens a crack and who dash in to get their Information Mainline fix. There was a guy who would go right for the Classifieds in his neverending search for employment. And there was this other guy I had never seen. He was not young, but he was dressed in clothes I typically associate with the young. As the of six doors was unlocked and I beckoned the assembled in, he said, "Very nice, you get a cookie."

Others laughed like this was a good joke, but I'm not sure what he meant. Maybe it was just I was a dog who performed a trick? But that doesn't seem enough for such merriment. So is there some cultural reference I'm missing? I don't watch a lot of TV, so generations of catchphrases sail right by me. Help? Anybody? Beuler? <--there an elderly pop culture reference proving that I am current up to about 1986.

I don't know anything about it, but I still want it

Years ago I worked at a small college library. One evening, a very nice young woman came in and told me about a friend of hers who had found this great math book that really helped him get ready for some test that she now had to take. It was a great book. It was orange. She thought. Did we still have it? I gave it a shot, taking her over to the math area and scanning spines for things in the red-orange part of the rainbow. No dice. I asked her to ask her friend for a little more information and we could try again. And that was the last I saw of her.

Today, a young man came up looking for a book he had read himself, though it was a very long time ago. All he could remember was that one of the characters was named Lenny. He couldn't remember if it was a kids book with pictures, an adult book or something in between. He didn't remember when in his life he read it. In fact, when we got right down to it, he wasn't even sure if the guy's name was Lenny. It might have been something else.

"What the heck," I thought and did a title search on "Lenny." Of course the Dustin Hoffman film, which I did not like back in the day, came up. Lots of kid books with Lenny in the title, but he gave up before I did. So we will never really know.

Hey Book Nerd!

Here is an interesting article from abebooks about the strange an interesting things found in used books. People after me own heart. Interesting stuff. My fave:

“Once I found two business cards carefully taped together. I picked at the edge and they came apart revealing a three-foot long accordionfolded panorama of 1970s pornography. I also once found a chocolate chip that was wedged down between the book cloth and the mull of the spine. The chocolate chip was dusty and dented, but otherwise unsullied. I wondered how one wedges a chocolate chip into the spine of a book, and how long it had been there. The book’s copyright was 1889.”

I just get junk from doodlers at the Internet. Oh Well.

Another question for you

When the Christian homeschooler makes multiple photocopies from the children's religious book, is it a sin, or merely copyright infringement?