Friday, February 03, 2012

After the Party ...


I was so anxious to post yesterday, but never got a chance due to the weirdest situation. I was down the basement preparing the week’s books to be hauled to the antiques mall which I often do on Thursdays. More than an hour slid by before I went back upstairs to the computer. By then a ton of emails crowded my inbox – everything from orders to not exactly junk, but not exactly top priority either. Feeling rushed to get over here, I zoomed in immediately on the orders of which there were three. Order one was from Alibris for The Book of the Unimat. Nancy thinks that one ought to have been written by a Tibetan monk, though the subtitle – “Including SL and Mk3 A Guide to Its Operation, Accessories, and Possibilities Aimed Primarily at the User as a First Timer”  resoundingly squelches any notion of peace and meditation. It’s about machining (another of those technical things I like) and is not exactly a New York Times bestseller. I got it with a large book collection from a guy in Mt. Gilead, Ohio three year ago, so an order was enough to inspire some subdued whirling and twirling.
Order two came from biblio – a nice normal book about musical chords. Again, no stress, so on to order three which came from Abe. You will NOT believe this. I did not believe this!  The book requested was – ta da! -- The Book of the Unimat; Including SL and MK3 A Guide to Its Operation, Accessories, and Possibilities Aimed Primarily at the User as a First Timer. I would guess maybe four people in the entire universe would want such a thing, especially at $45, and yet two of them showed up in my inbox ten minutes apart. Because orders are backwards when you read them (that is, the first one to arrive is the last one you see) the ABE customer should have been the winner, but wasn’t because I processed the alibris order as soon as I saw it. I mean, really – what were the ODDS of two takers after three years?

My fulfillment rate at ABE is -- make that WAS  -- 99 per cent and I’d  been shooting for a perfect hundred until Unimat singlehandedly took care of THAT. Silll  I was more than ready to move on,  so for a whole five seconds I did just that – until up pops another ABE order. This time  it’s for a Cessna plane manual.These I’m not so crazy about, but I have a whole stack, thanks to the Late Great Elmer about whom I have written many times here. I’d have bet the extra copy of that cool Missouri history and genealogy I got Sunday  that I had it, as it had been a long time since I sold one. But It wasn’t in the box with the rest of them. It wasn’t shelved with either the technical books or what’s left of Elmer’s aviation stuff. I searched business ephemera. I searched how-to. I was so desperate I even searched catalogs and science. Two hours later I still had no Cessna manual from 1965. I decided to let the order sit and give it another go in the morning after I got back from the mall. But while I was AT the mall  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take  a quick look around on the half chance that  -- GOT IT!!!! Oh, the relief! The joy! The whirling and twirling!

Anyway, here I finally am, neither jangly and twitterpated, or whirling and twirling, and what do I do? Instead of telling you about the Christmas/Edgar Nomination/Hallmark Movie party I fixate on my neuroses. But here’s the thing. The party was wonderful. We opened our presents beside the Christmas fern, toasted our rising star Dandi with pinot grigio (she’s next to me in the photo above and I’m the one with the light emanating from her ear), had dinner, ate Darwin Cake, laughed a lot, and most importantly, made a hard, fast commitment to return to the old days when we met every single month and EVERYBODY showed up with a manuscript to read.

Everybody.
Non-negotiable.
Uh-oh.

2 comments:

Saturday Evening Post said...

Hah! I know who the 3rd person in the universe is! I've owned a Unimat 3 for over 30 years, and I might buy that book myself. But I may have to go where the lines are shorter.

tess said...

Of course you do. I was sure you were one of the four people in the universe to care about it! I'm not surprised in the least.