Goodbye Forever Barnes and Noble

Besides shopping at the Goodwill bookstore and ordering books from Amazon so that I don't have to wait in line while chatty salespeople have their social time at Barnes and Noble, I found another bookstore that will be getting my money.

I had seen signs along Rosedale Hwy for BOOKS MOVIES MUSIC turn right here for a few months now, and the other day as I was coming back down the road from a trip to Beverly Fabrics downtown, I decided to turn right and check out the store. It's called Bookhounds and is in one of those industrial building complexes, and it's absolutely WONDERFUL! I was expecting the usual used bookstore prices of half off the cover but the prices are the same as at Goodwill, 99c for a paperback, $1.29 for a hardback, and anything with a blue sticker was another 25% off. I had to go to the bathroom and didn't see a customer restroom so cut my visit short and just got a few books, but went back yesterday and spent a lot longer browsing around and filling up my shopping cart. They had a lot to choose from and I had made a list of books I've had on my Amazon wishlist so found a few of those and then a lot more that weren't on my list. About half the books I got had blue stickers, so my huge stack of books that filled up three big bags cost a little over $30.00. The seven or so books from Barnes and Noble that were so annoying to stand in line to buy were $55.00. Hmm, let me see, which store will I be shopping at from now on?

Buddy has been a real pain this week, he's either really bored or missing Keith, who has been out on the coast working this week. The last two evenings he has been wandering around the living room doing his restless meowing thing and then BITING me. I've tried playing with him but that doesn't seem to do the trick. I have to walk carefully if I head to the bathroom or something because he follows me around rubbing on everything and getting under my feet and I'm afraid he is going to BITE me again. Keith says to just throw him out of the house when he acts like that, but I'm also afraid that then all the other cats will want to go out, too, and I'll spend all evening trying to get them to come back inside so that I can go to bed.

Today is Keith's last day at work, he will be driving back from the coast and getting back to the shop in time to do his exit interview and pick up his last paycheck and on Monday will start training to be a BNSF conductor. A job that he has been trying to get for about six years now. I am crossing my fingers in the hopes that there will be no family or personal crises this time to derail things because I want this to be the last job he gets and be a job that he doesn't dread getting up in the morning (or evening in the case of railroad work) to go do.