The Summer Reading List

A phone call woke me up this morning. Again. Yes, it was the Acme. Could I come in at noon? No. I would come in at 1:30, an hour before I was scheduled. I'm completely aware that I should be grateful for the extra hours...and I would be, if they didn't disrupt my mornings and continually forget that some of us can't just automatically jump in a car and run to the store when they snap their fingers.

I spent most of the morning doing things on the computer. There were several lists I wanted to print out, including my reading list. There's a big pile of books I've bought over the years from thrift shops, yard sales, or used book stores that I've either never read at all (the Donna Parker books) or haven't read in some cases decades (I'm currently working on Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which I probably haven't read since I was 11). They include the Carol Higgins Clark mystery Zapped, the remaining Vesper Holly young adult novels I picked up with my birthday Amazon.com card, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, three Dear America books, and four show business biographies (of George M. Cohan, Joan Blondell, Louise Brooks, and Russ Columbo). The reason I'm doing this is to see which ones are worth keeping, and which ones I can donate to the libraries and church thrift shops.

(And this isn't even the whole list. It started in late February with that Dewey the Library Cat biography Linda gave me last fall that I didn't get to then. It just kept growing when I realized how many books I owned that I either hadn't read or hadn't read in a long time.)

I finally made it to work around 1:30. When I arrived, work was dead...which is what I figured it would be. Apparently, the woman in charge of the self-checkout line had called out, which would be less of a surprise if she didn't spend more time out than in. They didn't really need the extra help. The only time we were busy at all was during rush hour, when the lack of help was more of a problem. Otherwise, we were on-and-off steady, and I spent the down times shelving candy.

I was delighted to discover before I left that most of my Amazon.com birthday order had arrived! Mom gave me a gift card for my birthday...but before she sent it, I treated myself to a CD collection of songs from various musical versions of Cinderella, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV special, the Disney animated film, and the 1976 British film The Slipper and the Rose. It was made by Varese Sarabande, the same company that released the Lost In Boston and Unsung Musicals series. I enjoyed this one just as much as those. I really need to find more from that company; I think they may be long gone, which is why most of their CDs are currently hard to find.

Other things that arrived with the Amazon.com order - a USB drive (I'm out of them and they're cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else, including Staples), the Vesper Holly story The Jedera Adventure (which was in bad shape - I'll keep it, but I'd like to look around for a better copy), a new pair of capris (two of my old ones were too tight), and the Webkinz Rockerz Fox. The Rockerz Fox is a pretty beast - get a load of those huge eyes! She's by far the best-looking of the Rockerz pets. I named her Jetta, as in Joan Jett - her theme is hard rock. She naturally has a rock-themed room near Cyndi's on the edge of the house, where she mostly spends time in her private recording studio.