Who's got the 10 and a half?

Yup. That's right. It's time for another 10 hour shift for the Juice man. Mrs. A and Mrs. C are out for the day at a meeting of the minds over in Town-D's branch.

Running tally for the day proceeds here...

8:50 a.m.-- I arrive at the library. There's a large SUV parked out front that I don't recognize. I figure it's a patron waiting for us to open, but no one is in it and no one is banging on the door to get in. I go to unlock the back door and find it's already unlocked and slightly ajar. Uh oh. Now I'm thinking the patron is inside, taking advantage of a door left unlocked by one of the librarians as they departed this morning. This kind of thing has happened before. As I cautiously round the corner of the computer hall, I get a line of sight on the circ desk and see Mrs. A there. Whew! Turns out it was Mr. A's SUV.

8:52-- I turn on the light switch for upstairs and blow the breaker.

9:00-- Mrs. C turns on the downstairs light switch and also blows the breaker. Mrs. A is irritated at this and swears we will not be paying to rewire the building since we're within a two year spitting distance of a brand new building altogether.  As a result of the breaker blows, though, a third of the lightbulbs in the front room have gone.  At 5'9", I'm still the tallest employee so it's always my job to change them. No doubt half the bulbs upstairs have also blown.

9:20-- Both patrons who've come in so far have given me cheerful yet marble-mouthed greetings that I don't understand. They are not together.

9:33-- First phone call for Mrs. A.

9:41-- Mr. & Mrs. Smiley arrive.


10:00-- I start changing bulbs.

10:19-- Boring assed task for the day: Stuffing fund drive envelopes. Mmm, boy howdy! At least I have Shawn Colvin's Whole New You album playing on the circ computer to keep me company. Great album.

10:35-- First computer patron of the day.

10:50-- A library staff member from Town-R's branch phones. Mind you, she doesn't identify herself whatsoever so I didn't know she wasn't a patron at first. The conversation followed:

CALLER: Is MRS. A there?

ME: No, I'm sorry, she's out of town for a meeting today. Can I take a message?

CALLER: Well... When I turned on my computer it said I have an error.

ME: (Realizing this is probably another library and not some derranged patron) Uhhh. What sort of error?

CALLER: (Dimly) It said "an error."

ME: Okayyy. Did you try turning it off and back on?

CALLER: Yes. It still says I have an error. I just want to know how to get it to stop telling me I have an error.

ME: (Since our branch is the regional hub for all computer issue requests, I realize I'll need to note this.) Well, if you'll give me your name I'll tell MRS. C when she gets back this afternoon.

CALLER: (Ignoring my question) I can still use the computer. I just want to know how to get it to stop telling me "error."

ME: (Trying not to get angry) I realize that. If I can have your name, please, I'll let MRS. C know about it.

CALLER: (Adopting a tone that says I should know full well exactly who I'm talking to) This is TOWN-R library.

Actually, I really should have known. If I were to make a list of the most computer illiterately staffed libraries in the area, Town-R would top it.

11:19-- Out of coffee and in need of a change in music. I'm going to my car for some Neil Finn.

11:40-- The wife calls to say she's going to join me for lunch.

12:15 p.m.-- The wife joins me for lunch. She brings us tasty non-Atkins approved goodies such as pizza and a pecan encrusted stickybun, both baked by one of our fine downtown bakeries.

12:44--Holy shit! Stoner Lad just came in! I cannot believe my luck. Just when I thought today was going to be way more boring than I'd hoped, a long lost Rogue makes an appearance. We've not seen Stoner Lad in here for well over two years. He walks up to the desk and says, "Hey, uh, long time." Then he mumbles his way through a request to use a computer, saying he has something he really needs to print out. (Dare I hope more angsty half-literate teenage screw-letters?)

"Sure thing," I say.

After I log him on he says, "Uh, how clear are the lines today?"

"Pretty clear. We got DSL since you were here last."

"Sweet!"

Stoner Lad still dresses like he used to, which is to say small town gangsta wannabe, but with an auto-racing themed ball cap. His facial hair has gotten better too, as evidenced by his pointy goatee. He also dosen't seem to be actively "on" anything and has no trouble making eye contact when he speaking. Perhaps he's been away in rehab?

12:46-- A lady comes in and asks to use the bathroom. I don't figure this out until later when they leave together, but this turns out to be Stoner Lad's mom. Stoner lad prints out a few pages, pays for them and then leaves with mom, saying, "Bye." On their way out, she says something about having an old wallet of his with his library card still in it. Yeah, his OLD library card. Looks like maybe he's back in the area for a while.

12:55-- An assistant librarian in a neighboring county, who's head librarian is currently at the same meeting that Mrs. A is at, phones to ask to speak to Mrs. A. "Oh, wait... she's at that meeting," he says. Riiiiiiight.

1:02-- Oh, great! It's old rogue day! Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch just came in.

1:10-- Jimmy leaves after paying for his prints. I am irritated that he is coming here again, particularly since from everything we knew a few months back he was supposed to be going to jail for embezzling money from his employer. The last we'd heard he was supposed to have received his sentence in June, but we never learned what it was. He's been in a few times since then and was in yesterday. Evidently he's under house arrest or town arrest or maybe just was let off altogether. Who knows. Maybe he turned state's evidence against Bladderboy and was given a light slap on the wrist. Never did hear if the cops caught Bladders after their high-speed chase a while back.

1:22-- Harry the Killer Midget and Buddy come in. I've not written about Buddy before. He's a mentally handicapped man who comes in with an Unobstructed Doors aid. I call him Buddy because he once asked me if I would be his buddy, therefore I assume he is mine as well. Buddy is a really nice guy. His only major distinguishing characteristics, beyond the whole being my buddy thing, are that he's very tall and he always wants to know if Mary is working today. Nearly every time he comes in he asks one of the staff if Mary is working today. We always tell him, "No, Mary's not here today," at which point he responds, "Mary must be at home." None of us know who Mary is, nor has anyone named Mary ever worked here in the past thirty years, so we're not sure who he means. He didn't ask about Mary today.

2:48-- I've been running kind of silent. Mrs. C is supposed to come in to relieve me so I can go on break, but I don't know exactly when. Gotta keep my nose clean til then.

3:00-- Still no Mrs. C. One of our board members, Mrs. Aitch, comes in to do some fund-drive letter related paperwork. I'm jamming out to Neil Finn's One Nil when she arrives. Not sure if she approves.

3:50-- Mrs. C arrives to relieve me. I head to the post office to ship out ebay auction items, pop by the shoe store where I fail to find any decent shoes.

4:30-- I swing by the comic shop for the latest Bloodhound, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, the Supreme Power spin-off Doctor Spectrum book and something else I can't recall off hand. I'm terribly happy that the comic shop guy is now stocking Neil Gaiman's Sandman collections, after months and months of me bugging him about it. Now I'm going to have to do a Sandman symposium to get folks to buy it--uncultured peons!

4:45-- I pop by Ornathological Coffee, (not its real name), the local gallery/coffeeshop down the street for a cup of Sumatran coffee that is just slightly not hot enough, but is nevertheless tasty. While I'm there, I hear a familiar voice say, "So, how many books do I have now?" I turn to see Mrs. West, one of our regular patrons. Mrs. West almost always has books on hold with us. This is because she goes down the list of all the latest bestsellers that are out and has us put her on hold for them. Then she asks us to put her on hold for just about every other new fiction arrival as well. We're happy to do this. Trouble is, she NEVER answers the phone when we call. We have it on good authority that she's usually at home when we call, she just won't answer for whatever reason. This would be okay too, but she also refuses to purchase an answering machine saying they're annoying. Yes, they are annoying, especially when they don't pick up the phone and allow us to tell you your books are in. So our hold shelf is often CHOKED with holds for Mrs. West, which after 5 days have to be passed to the next patron on the list. I told her she had three waiting for her. She said that sounded like enough to justify a visit up the hill.

4:50-- I'm back on the job.

4:55-- A different board member, Mrs. Emm, comes in from the meeting they were having next door and asks if its true we have music CD's. It is. We got the same allotment of Remainder Closet material all libraries got after the big music industry settlement. I tell her that I don't promise it's all good, but there are some gems here and there. I guarantee her that the Shawn Colvin and Ben Folds Five are quality. She goes over and finds lots of things she likes (including the Colvin & Folds), then begins suggesting music to me, including Kas3y Chamb3rs and Gr3g Br0wn. "Br0wn's kind of folky," Mrs. Emm says, adding, "I like all sorts of music, though. Folk, rock, country, rap... I love Eminem!" I sort of just stared at her blankly for a few seconds on that one. Nothing against Em, but I just had trouble reconciling whether Mrs. Emm was really into his stuff or if she was just searching for some kind of street cred with me and Mrs. C.

5:00-- Mrs. C leaves via the back door before any of the other board members she see's lurking out front can find her and assign her something she doesn't want to have to stay extra to do. Good for her!

5:10-- Oooh. I'm asked by a computer patron to override our internet blocking software. It's the same guy who always asks us for overrides. In fact, I think he's the only guy who's ever asked us for an override. He's always trying to look at some album cover involving J essica Ra bbit. For some reason in the past I've never been able to get the override to work properly, but today it does. (And no, I didn't get a peek at it before I turned the station back over to him.)

5:27-- We are paid a brief and pleasant visit by the brother of the Purple Nun.

5:39-- Mrs. West, true to her word, comes in for her books.

6:03-- I begin attempting to eat my supper; a nice hunk of pork roast that I first cooked two nights back, plus some cheese and a spinach/artichoke dip I made. Mmm tasty, I love it.

6:22-- Still haven't been able to finish my food. We're plenty busy.

6:32-- A patron asks if he's smelling good food from one of the nearby restaurants or if that's coming from my food. I say, "Yup, that's probably my pork roast." It's not even heated and it smells good.

7:00-- The last patron departs, making sure to print out four pages just after I finish the daily cash box count. Thanks! I lock the doors and try to finish up my closing duties.

7:03-- Still closing up when someone starts pounding on the door to get in. Sorry, we's closed.

7:05-- Going home. It's a day.

Ministry of Bread Part II: It's Carbin' Time

Our downtown festival event went very well today. My diet, not so good. But what are ya gonna do when you're selling nothing but loaves of raw empty carbs?

I bought several loaves of bread, including one of Mrs. C's pecan pie bread loaves and a lemon ginger bread Mrs. A baked that the wife had requested. Still, I didn't eat any of it. Not right away, at least. I remained admirably faithful to the philosophy of low-carb dieting, until about 1p, when I told Mrs. A I was going into the depths of the festival in search of food. I was trying to be good in my search too, but I accidentally walked by a fried apple pie booth and the sugary little dough pockets of piping hot apples in syrup cried out to be devoured. I burned the hell out of the roof of my mouth as penance for eating it. It was great.

After that, I figured what the hell, I may as well eat what I want. I finally settled on the German-themed booth, where the sign declared that I could get bratwurst on a hoagie roll, sauerkraut and German potato salad for $5. Sign me up! Only after the man in the line handed me my plate with the bratwurst and bun and a second man slapped some sauerkraut next to it did I learn THERE WAS NO GERMAN POTATO SALAD TO BE HAD AFTER ALL!!!!

"Um, where's the potato salad?" I asked the man.

"There is none. So we dropped the price by a dollar."

Well poop on me! That was why I went in there in the first place. After all, if I'm gonna stuff carbs in my gob, they should at least be in tasty potato form. It had all been a clever ruse! Bastards! (I will say, the brat and sauerkraut was very good--and I don't even like sauerkraut.)

While I was in the downtown area, I did get a chance to check out the location of Garin the Comic Shop Guy's new shop. He's been in business for just about one year as a kiosk shop in the local "mall" but even from the first day I walked in there I thought it had potential. (Heck, just check my commentary on it from back then.) He did some great things with the kiosk shop and really showed how much could be done with one, but I figured that he would trade up to better digs before long. He definitely has. This shop is downtown central in a prime shopping location and next door to my favorite coffee house no less. He's also sharing floor space with the local paintball/ski/scuba guy, in a store that has plenty of room for both. And the Billy-Mayes-Screaming-Oxy-Powered Added Bonus to this is that the shop is located a mere two minute walk from the "liberry" itself. This means I get to cruise on down during my break without having to fight traffic to race across town to the "mall." I could even go in and hang out before heading on in to work.

At the moment, only a portion of his inventory was on display, the decorations weren't complete and the store won't open full time until the first of next month, but damn it's nice to have a full fledged comic shop to walk into.

I spent the rest of my time there working the festival booth, hockin' bread to the masses. The masses were hungry, too. Much bread was sold.

Around 2p, I began trying to find ways to speed the eventual teardown of the booth cause I wanted to hit the road ASAP. The wife is doing an Emergency Room rotation in Princeton, WV and I had a bit of a drive to get there. She's living in student housing there, since her 12 hour shifts are so close together that she has no practical amount of time to come home.  If we're to see one another at all this month I need to drive to her, and I wanted to get over there to spend as much time with her as possible before her 7:30 p shift began. So I started consolidating the remaining bread onto as few tables as possible just to speed things along. I must have also looked pitiful, rushing to cart boxes and chairs and tables back up the hill, because Mrs. A let me go at 2:30.

The wife is doing pretty good in Princeton. I think we miss each other even more now that she's a little closer to home than Clarksburg.  She's at least sharing the student house with one of our friends from school, so she's not as lonely as she was last time she did rotations in Princeton.

We put away quite a few more carbs of brown food down at Ryan's. (For the record, the Princeton Ryan's is the best Ryan's we've ever been to. The service is great, the place is consistently cleaner than most others of its kind, the food is excellent and there's lots of it.) She told me about some of the cool things that have happened to her in the ER.

It was sad, though. We had very little time to spend with each other--even less than we thought, it turns out. She thought she was supposed to go in at 7:30p, but as we looked at her schedule to plan our next rendezvous she noticed she was supposed to be there at 7, a mere 10 minutes away. It was awful to have that half hour snatched away from us like that. So I walked her over to the hospital and said goodbye. Then I drove all the way back home again, with my Patton Oswalt CD for company.

Sayonara, Bear Piss San

Today's Sunday shift went pretty well over all, but it sure didn't seem like it when I started out.

I nearly broke my and my car's ass trying to get to work on time. After church I barely had time to dash home, snatch up a plate of cabbage and boudain and hit the road.

(By the way, for those not in the know, boudain--pronounced boodan--is an exquisite New Orleans delicacy involving spiced pork, beef, chicken, liver and rice ground into a dressing and stuffed in a sausage skin. Done right, it can be as heavenly in a savory way as cinnamon rolls are in a sweet way. Most of the country, and indeed the world, is ignorant of this stuffed wonder. You can't buy it anywhere within at least eight states of here, so we had to import ours from friends passing through New Orleans. It's been sitting in our freezer for just over a year now, so we decided that since the wife and I are taking a minor break from our usual low-carb habits--due to her being stressed out at having to take the second round of board exams this week--we'd cook those suckers up today.)

So here I go, racing from home to make my usual 15 minute journey in 10 minutes. Never mind that the Fair is still going strong and traffic is nutty. I realize as I'm driving, though, that even if I'm a couple minutes late to work, the only person who will be inconvenienced is Mr. B-Natural, who's almost always waiting for us to open. Sure enough, he was the only one there when I drove up, a full two minutes before 1. By the time I actually opened the doors, Mr. B-Natural had been joined by Mr. Smiley, concentrating the world's population of grumpiest old men on our front step.

Mrs. H, who worked Saturday, had quite a busy day according to the circulation stats. She didn't even have time to finish the ILL's, so that was on my agenda. Eating my lunch was also on my agenda... that is, until Bear Piss Man wafted in for a computer. I didn't have a computer free for him, though, so he just stood around stinking up the front room until I did. Bear Piss Man still smelled like bear piss, but he had obviously tried to cover it by spraying himself down with some sort of air-freshener. It did not help whatsoever. He smelled exactly like a urinal cake.

"Been to the fair yet?" he asked, still trying to ply his free entrance to the freak-show favor. "Oh yeah, you went for the cinnamon rolls the other day," he said, remembering that I'd told him that. "Better go today, cause it's your last chance til next year."

I didn't reply. I finally put him on a computer and he proceeded to stink up the computer hall for the better part of two hours. When he left, he said, "Well, if I don't see you before next year, it's been a real pleasure." Then he reached out and shook my hand. And his hand was every bit as clammy as you'd expect it to be. As soon as he'd left, I booked it to the sink to wash my hand, trying not to breathe too heavily least I smell something on it.

I was unable to eat my beloved boudain until the place had been given quite a while to air out.

D-MINUS: 12

Cinnamon Roll Day

Every year, we have a fair in town for a week and every year the whole Tri-Metro area is thrown into bedlam and confusion as people from all over the region descend upon our heads, tie up our roads and make life a good bit more stressful. Many local citizens choose this week to leave the area on vacation just to avoid it. Those of us who have to stay quickly learn the back roads to get around the glut of traffic between us and work. Even the "liberry" reduces hours of operation to close at 5 p.m. all week just to compensate for the lower patronage. This royally horks off the internet crowd, though, so it's not all bad.

I first encountered the Fair Cinnamon Roll two years ago while visiting the fair with my in-laws. We'd already eaten our share of the usual fair food and were feeling kind of bloated from it, but spied the cinnamon roll stand on our way out. The wife and I bought a roll to share, but didn't actually eat any of it until we'd been home for an hour or two. Upon having our first bite, we knew we'd made a grave error in judgment. Not because it was cold, mind, but because if we had known how amazing these giant sugar-coated balls of heaven truly were we would have bought several more. To get more, we would have to pay upwards of $7 just to get into the fair, then another $5 a pop for each roll. It was quite an expensive endeavor, but dammit we were addicts now and had to have them!  I finally wound up bribing Mrs. A to buy three cinnamon rolls when she went to the Fair to work the literacy booth. The wife and I each had one and we generously gave the third to our next door neighbor.

I missed out on the rolls last year because I was visiting my sister in Austin, but I more than made up for it by eating my weight in Tex Mex while there.

This year I was determined to get my hands on at least one cinnamon roll and I knew exactly when I was going to do it.

Today. 

See today was Free Day at the Fair. This doesn't mean you can get into the Fair free all day, but you can get in free between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Just in time for breakfast! So I left all guilt and the chain-rattling ghost of Dr. Atkins at the house and headed out at 8:15 to secure my cinnamon roll.

After negotiating my way through the free-parking lot, running over a bottle in the process thanks to the kindly direction of the parking staff, and maneuvering through the mass crowd of families who were headed in for free day with no intentions of leaving until they ran out of money or were forcibly removed by carnies, I was finally there.


I felt very lucky that only a handful of people were in line at the cinnamon roll trailer, waiting to make off with some of the earliest rolls fresh from the oven. I needn't have worried.  The lines for this booth usually rival those of It's A Small World at Disneyland.  And the rolls are always fresh because they have no time to sit around because of the demand.  And, if you get close, you can watch their blessed creation...

The cinnamon roll guys roll out the dough right there in front of the big window. They lovingly put around 16 pats of real butter all over the surface of the dough, not skimping, before sprinkling the whole thing with a quarter inch of sugar and cinnamon. Then they roll that sucker up, slice it into huge chunks, put the chunks on a baking sheet, bake it for a while, then slather the whole piping hot tray in a gooey sugar/cinnamon icing. Eating one is like becoming David Bowman at the end of 2001. "My God, it's full of stars!"

"I'll have a coffee and two cinnamon rolls, please," I told the man at the window. He took a spatula and gathered up my rolls into little plastic containers, slid them into a white paper bag and poured my coffee. My total price was $11 and I knew already it would be worth every last penny of it.

I took my bag of cinnamony sugary carb-laden goodness to find a spot to sit and eat. The picnic tables were infested with teenagers waiting for the rides to open, so I decided to use the mostly uncrowded concrete front step of one of the exhibit buildings as my dining table.

Take a good close look at the full-size picture of my cinnamon roll to the right. A beauty isn't it? My stomach's been living for this moment for months now. This is to be the pinnacle moment of low carb-cheating for my entire year. All other cheats--including eating half a box of Golden Grahams, by myself, in one sitting, a month back--pale by comparison.

I take the first bite. It is every bit as good as I've been hoping it would be. I can taste the salt from the butter as it has a menage a trois with the sugar and cinnamon across my tongue. Only by eating one of these can you understand just how on the money all those scientific studies showing how men equate smells of warm cinnamon buns with sex truly are.  Well... if you're a man, I guess.  I take another bite. It's just as good as the first. I then proceed, bite by bite, through the entire roll over the course of six or so minutes.

While eating, I try to analyze the experience as best I can, cause it turns out there are highs and lows to it.

I've come to the conclusion that, for me at least, the first seven or eight bites were probably the best. Eight put me about half-way through the cinnamon roll. After that, each bite was diminishing returns.  I'm really not a sweet-tooth at heart and I can only stand so much sugary richness before the endorphin flow begins to trickle off. At around four bites from the end, I could really see the logic in merely sharing one of these rolls with someone else. That way, you get the best parts of the experience and not so much of the whole long haul to the finish line praying for merciful death thing. The penultimate bite was painful, cause I could see the last one coming, and it was a big one. I didn't get sick or anything, but my poor sugar-deprived stomach was definitely feeling confused as to what to do with the mass influx of sucrose.

After that, I walked around the fair for a while, looking at all the other food booths that are just opening up. I knew that while I was in for free I really should indulge in some of the better edible attractions, but my gut was full of roll and I just couldn't imagine eating anything else, particularly something sweet. After twenty minutes or so, I went home with my other cinnamon roll, which I planned to offer to my sweet baby upon her impending return from Clarksburg.  I even mentioned it to her on the phone tonight, secretly hoping she would turn it down.

"Noooo, I don't need any more sugar," she said. "You should eat it. Don't let it sit around in the congealed butter grease and get nasty."

I didn't need to be told twice. I popped that sucker in a bowl, nuked it for a couple of minutes and feasted on warm cinnamon roll that was almost exactly as good as the one this morning. I even ate some of it on the phone so she could live vicariously through me.

Frankly, I think she's a bit jealous of my near adulterous relationship with the rolls.

The Grampy Patrol (In Color!)

So I go to Wal-Mart the other day.

Sure, I know I'm depriving my community of needed revenue by shopping at the corporate giant, but dammit I needed Russell Stover sugar free low-carb peanut butter cups and all the locally owned businesses charge $8,000 for them if they have them at all. I'm only human!

(Oh, and a word of advice to you low-carbers out there.  Allow me to assure you that it is a VERY bad idea indeed to eat the suggested serving size of 5 cups of the Reese's brand of sugar-free mini-peanut butter cups. That is, unless you've got a hankering to spend the rest of your evening running carefully to and from the toilet to do your best impression of the Serial Shitter. Not so much trouble in that department with my boy Russ, so that's my brand.)

As I was maneuvering my Malibu through Wally World's parking lot, I got behind an older gentleman driving a big Pontiac who was slowly turning into one of the parking aisles near the store's southern entrance. I immediately recognized him as a member of that international fraternal brotherhood and cabalistic society known as the Grampy Patrol—a loose-knit organization of elderly men who drive around in big vehicles, preferably pickup trucks, at irritatingly slow speeds, take twenty minutes to make a turn and who always wear hats while doing so. They are among my many arch-nemeses and will remain so until I'm old enough to join them and subvert them from within.

I pulled into the same aisle and then had to slow down to maintain the car-length of distance between my car and his, since he refused to go any faster. It was a good thing that distance was there, though, because the man suddenly came to a halt. Much to my surprise and annoyance, he then threw his car into reverse and started backing up toward me. Turned out, the man had driven right past the empty handicapped parking space near the door and had decided he wanted it after all. However, my car was at that moment perpendicular to that space, blocking the way. The man didn't seem to have noticed this, though, as he had not bothered to even look in his rear view mirror to check if anyone was behind him before throwing it into reverse. He wasn't exactly flying back, though, so I kept waiting for him to catch a glimpse of me and stop. He didn't, because he was not only NOT using his mirror but he wasn't even turning his head to look behind him at all as he backed up. Instead, he was watching the parked cars to his right to gauge his progress.

Seeing that he was going to hit me, I threw my own car into reverse. Fortunately, I DID check my mirror and saw there were several people in the pedestrian walkway directly behind my car. I couldn't back up at all without backing over them. I was trapped!

*HONK*HONK*HONK*, I honked. This seemed to get the man’s attention and he slowed to a halt. For good measure, I gave him several longer, angrier honks. Only then did his head finally swivel around and actually look at me. Still the man remained in reverse. He was actually waiting for me to get out of his way.

FINE!

When the crosswalk was clear, I backed up and took the next aisle down where I found a parking space and quickly got out of my car to go find this guy and vent my fury.

How could someone have such a colossal failure to exercise common sense in driving? The guy was old enough to have been driving for several decades, so he should know better! Anyone could have been behind him, closer than I was. Hell, a pedestrian could have been behind him and he hadn't bothered to look at all!

I soon spotted him. He had exited his car and was slowly making his way across the pedestrian crosswalk; had his Grampy Patrol hat on and everything. I started in his direction and noticed that he was already looking nervously back over his shoulder in my direction. (Oh, sure, NOW he looks over his shoulder?! ) I'm sure I had a fiery expression of rage on my face, but as I watched this frail little old man hobble along toward the door of Wally World, I was internally starting to soften.

What good could really come from me yelling at this guy for nearly testing my front bumper? Probably none. No one had been hurt, he had hopefully learned the lesson that it was a mistake to blindly throw his car into reverse and I'd already gotten to righteously honk at him, which is always fun. Embarrassing the man in front of half of Wal-Mart was probably not a good idea and would definitely not be respecting my elders.  By the time I'd reached the crosswalk myself, I'd decided I wouldn't yell at him at all.

"Pssst! Hey, pssst!" I heard from my left. It was an equally old man seated on the bench outside of Wally-World's entrance. He was jerking his head at me in an effort to beckon me over. He wasn't wearing a Grampy Patrol hat, so I figured it was safe.

"Yeah?" I said, coming closer. The man nodded in the direction of the thoughtless older man, who was only then reaching the doors of Wally World.

"That's him," the man on the bench said, still nodding in the first one’s direction. I nearly burst out laughing. Dude on the bench was trying to start a fight. Oh, sure, he was wrapping it up in civic-duty, trying to make it seem like he was just helping me find the man who nearly backed into me, but deep down this guy was trying to cause trouble.  Then, as though he had judged me too dim to "get" what he meant, the man on the bench lifted a hand and pointed his finger at the first man, now well within Wally World’s breezeway, and said, "That's him. That's the guy."

"Yeah. I know," I said.

I didn't bother hunting down the Grampy Patrol driver, though we did see one another a couple of more times while I was shopping. Whenever he saw me, he'd look nervous again and maybe shuffle his shopping cart a little faster down the aisle.

Great, I thought, now I'm inadvertently bullying the elderly.

Freaky Friday

Our National "Liberry" Week open house went okay today. Mrs. A made her pecan pie squares, which are an old favorite of mine from back in my pre-Atkins days. I had a sneaking suspicion, though, that the celery I brought with lunch probably tasted better than the pecan pie bars, so I did a taste test between the two just to make sure. I really couldn't decide from just one of each, so I had a couple more pecan pie squares and a couple more sticks of celery to better make the determination. Eventually, I ran out of celery, but I didn't let that stop me. The patrons also seemed to appreciate our having goodies out, some a little more than we might have hoped. Parka, for instance, made at least four trips to the table to gobble up our food.

One guy who I think was glad we had food was our very first drifter--or at least the first that I've met. I read other library blogs from library staff in larger cities (I highly recommend the ones in the side bar to the right) and one of the major issues they have to deal with is that of homeless people and drifters some of whom are quite troublesome. We don't get a lot of that in our little Tri-Metro area. Our drifter today was a drifter by the definition of the word; a guy who was passing through town on foot, hitchhiking and walking his way from Pennsylvania to Florida. He had the big pack with sleeping bag, supplies, etc. and an American flag on a stick that was protruding proudly from a pocket of it. Probably helps him get lifts. He seemed about five years my junior and struck me as a pretty smart and world-saavy young man who was just trying to get from one place to another as cheaply as possible and wasn't afraid to hoof it. I imagine he appreciated the grub and I didn't begrudge him eating it at all. I chatted with him a bit and learned of his destination. He asked what the best way was to get to I-77 and I pulled out our Atlas and showed him a couple of routes. "Is it hilly?" he asked. I just smiled. It's West Virginia; of course, it's hilly. I gave him a map of the local area, as he seemed like he might want to stay in the area for a few days.

An older couple, visitors to our town, came in to use the internet. They were doing geneological research and mostly printed several things and then began making photocopies from some of our geneal0gy books. Unfortunately, this meant they had to use our devil copier. We hate this bloody contraption. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It's extraordinarily tempramental and refuses to do its job without jamming, compressing the offending copy into an accordion of paper, about 80 percent of the time. And if anyone other than a staff member tries to do anything with it, it jams twice as fast. We used to think it was just picky about copying anything dark, but we've recently concluded that it's just a big ol' cranky piece of shit no matter what we put in it. We pay a local company to service the copier and we used to call them on a regular basis to come bludgeon it into working order. However, whenever the repair guy comes in, the copier is suddenly on its best behavior and nothing we do will cause it to jam. So the repair guy thinks we're a bunch of loons. Unfortunately, it's not a rented copier, so we're stuck with it.

So the couple camped out at the copier with a stack of books. Every minute or two one of us would have to go over and unjam the copier for the couple.

While this was going on, Wal-Mart Jesus came in and went to the reference hall. After 20 minutes or so, he came into the main room with a stack of books of his own, which he was planning to have us copy pages for him. After standing in line to get to it for a few minutes, though, he abandoned his plan, gathered up his bag and cudgel and left.

The Big FAT Lie

No one's actually asked me, or anything, but regulars here who know that I'm on the Atkins program might be wondering where I stand on the issue of the recent medical record releases and the subsequent revelations concerning the condition of the late Dr. Atkins at the time of his death.

For those who don't know, the Wall Street Journal recently ran an article based on the illegally released medical records of Dr. Robert Atkins that showed that at the time of his death he weighed 258 pounds and had heart disease and failed kidneys. On the surface, this information would seem to back up the claims of Atkins detractors that the diet causes kidney failure and heart disease, just the sort of thing they've been looking for for years. Many allegedly reputable news organizations, the Wall Street Journal itself being far from the least of these, jumped on this story and ran with it, utterly failing in their journalistic obligation to actually research the claims and show what the reality of the situation is.

Allow me to put this in perspective from a semi-learned medical point of view. (My wife IS a third-year med student, after all.)

Yeah, Dr. Atkins did weigh 258 lbs at the time of his death. That tends to happen when your kidneys fail and your body begins retaining all the water the kidneys can no longer process. And kidneys often tend to fail after the body's systems begin shutting down following a massive head injury (like the one Dr. Atkins received when he slipped on ice last year) and resulting coma (like the one Dr. Atkins was in at the time of his death). What the Wall Street Journal article also fails to mention is that Dr. Atkins weighed 196 lbs when he was brought into the hospital following the above head injury, a darn fine weight for a 6 foot tall 72 year old man.

What about the heart disease? Sure thing. At the time of his death, Dr. Atkins was suffering from cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscle that is completely unrelated to diet intake and which, in Dr. Atkins case, is thought to have been caused by a virus. (Dr. Atkins own doctors say he had almost negligible cholesterol build up in his arteries.) Also, Dr. Atkins was hardly trying to keep his heart-condition a secret. He openly spoke of it on Larry King Live after first being diagnosed with it a few years back and it was a well known fact among the Atkins community. He was still in phenomenal shape and very active for his age.

The truly shocking thing to me, though, is the fact that the Wall Street Journal published this article in the first place. The information in it came directly from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, who gave the medical records to the journal as the basis for the article. The PCRM name sounds nice on paper, but they're actually an animal rights activist group who illegally obtained Dr. Atkins medical reports in the first place, evidently for the purpose of smearing his name and getting people to eat less meat and therefore fewer tasty animals. Don't think so? Take a look here.

Why is it illegal to release medical records? Cause the law states that they MAY NOT be released without prior consent of the surviving family. Mrs. Atkins in no way authorized this, so anyone else leaking the information is in violation of the law and should be prosecuted.

Now granted, the above information comes from an article at Atkins own website from his own organization. Sure, they have a bias toward the good Doctor in the first place, but who else in the world would have a vested interest in getting the FACTS of this case right and try to head off the media ignoring them?

I highly recommend anyone interested in this check out the articles on Atkins website where the information has been nicely summed up. You might also give Mrs. Atkins own article a gander.

The unfortunate part of all this is that most of the newspapers and sundry media that were so quick to jump on this story in the first place will also utterly fail to report the truth about the issue since it will just make them look like the half-assed bunch of ball-dropping hacks that they are.

As far as my own feelings on the diet program are concerned, I'm still all for it. As a future medical professional, my wife has done a lot of research on Atkins. She felt it was her duty to know what it was all about and see how it worked. As such, she has combed medical journals looking for any evidence that Atkins and similar diet programs are harmful. She had not been able to find a single study that debunks the Atkins program. In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine states that it does in fact work and work well for most people who use it. NEJoM says that people on the program tend to lose weight, have less high cholesterol and diabetes associated problems and live longer as a result. They, of course, admit that they don't know HOW the program works, as Dr. Atkins program flies in the face of the government's nutritional guidelines and just about everything the medical community has been saying about how the body is supposed to work for the past century, but they still admit that it does work.

The program is not for everyone. Some people, my own step-mother included, have had gasto-intestinal problems on it that they felt made it unsafe for them to continue with it. And people with bad kidneys to begin with should definitely avoid it. All of these warnings are spelled out explicitly in Atkin's book. No one should be able to claim they walked into it unawares.

And as for its effectiveness, I've been on it since early October and have lost 27 pounds. (Course, I probably gained back a bit of that over our Valentine's Weekend Cheat-A-Thon, but I'll drink a bunch of water, go on a couple of power walks and be back in the swing of things within the next few days.) And I feel great. In fact, the only gastro intestinal difficulties I've had as a result have come on the few occasions when I've cheated and ate a bunch of carbs. Then I feel bloated and sluggish and gassy for a day or two until I can process all that out. Probably more information that you cared to know, but it's the truth.

Valentines Day

It's been a splendid Valentine's Day. In fact, it's been a downright splendid Valentine's weekend.

My wife Ashley and I decided also to forego all the cards and flowers and traditional Valentine's day gifts in favor of just eating whatever the hell we want all weekend long.

See, my best friend in the world, Mr. Joe "Damn" Evans and his girlfriend Lorna Abbigail (not her real name) drove in from Richmond to see the play I'm in and hang with us for the evening. We thought it would be rude to subject them to our monastic diet, so carb-chomping we did go. (In fact, when I finish this sentence, I'll be devouring the final bite of a crazy-tasty peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with genuine Jiff peanut butter on two slices of fresh, heavenly Tuscan bread. Mmm, that's some peanut butter goodness for your ass.)

As far as Liberry-related stuff goes, it's been a phenomonally boring week there. About the most exciting thing that happened was the decision to do not one but TWO Patron Appreciation Days this month.

For the past year or so, we've done an open house PAD the last Friday of every month. This is a day where we the liberry staff bring in home-baked goods and sundry sweets, set it all up on a table with punch or cider and let the patrons have at it all day Friday and, if we're feeling especially generous and have stuff left over, Saturday and Sunday too. (Patrons, though appreciated, are still not allowed to cart their punch back to the computers, thank you VERY much Mr. B-Natural.) Ostensibly we do this because we like our patrons, but I think we secretly just want to make the other libraries in the county look like they're slacking off and hate their patrons, which is quite possibly true in many cases.

The weather being what it's been around here, we didn't do a PAD in January. So Mrs. A and Mrs. C decided that since it was Valentine's weekend, they would do PAD's on Thursday AND Friday of this week.

"Oh, great!" I said when I heard the plan. "Now I'll have TWO days of sheer torture instead of just the one."

See, the trouble with all these PAD's is, I always have to work them and since I've been doing Atkins I can't eat any of the tasty goodies and wind up having to eat low-carb stuff like pepperoni, peanuts and pork rinds just to stave off my cravings for what's on the sweets table. I was able to save myself on Thursday by tucking into some mixed nuts. By Friday, though, I was feeling kind of weak-willed. I decided that since we were going to be cheating later on anyway cause of Joe and Lorna I could go ahead and eat what I wanted and it wouldn't really matter in the end. With that firmly rationalized, I started biting and managed to put away several cookies and a heart-shaped Rice Crispies treat before I could be stopped.

The only other exciting thing that happened during the first PAD was a visit from some of our mentally handicapped friends from down the road. They saw the table of goodies and naturally wanted some. This is cool with us, as they are some of our most faithful, and usually great patrons (Ron the Ripper, excepted). Their aid, who I believe is the same greenhorn who was so appalled at Ron's behavior a few weeks back, didn't seem to think it was a good idea for his two clients to have any food. I guess if I was him I'd live in fear of sugar-rushes too. Finally he relented, though, after his clients completely ignored all of his attempts to verbally draw them away from the table.

"Excuse me," one of the clients said. "Could you come pour some of this for us?" He was pointing to the little crock pot full of hot cider we had set up.

"Sure thing," I told him and came around from behind the counter to help out. Unfortunately, our choice of cups was not ideal. Mrs. A had brought in those thin, clear plastic cups, that do cold drinks great but tend to melt when hot liquid is poured into them. I found this out after pouring a ladle of cider into one, which nearly scalded my hand through the cup itself. I only filled them to 2/3's full so there would still be a sufficient lip for the men to grab on to.

"Now, be very careful with these. They're really hot," I said, passing the first cup to the man who had asked me to come pour. I poured a second cup, which the other man snatched out of my hand.

"Be careful, it's hot! NO! WAIT! IT'S HOT!!!"

Too late, the man lifted the cup to his lips and took a big gulp. He immediately began blinking rapidly and licking his lips, but didn't seem all that put out otherwise.

This morning we arose and drove 50 miles down the road to breakfast at Biscuit World. Allow me to sing the praises of Biscuit World. It's just aFrickin'Mazing! When you order a biscuit sandwich from Biscuit World, you're playing with live ammo. Don't make the mistake of assuming you're gonna get the traditional crappy tiny biscuit the fast food world has become known for. No sir, Pepe. You're getting a big ass cat's head biscuit, piping hot with your choice of toppings.
After gorging ourselves there, we piled back in the car and headed one exit back east to Grand View. If you're ever in the Beckley, WV, area, besides a manditory stop at Biscuit World, you should head over to Grand View State Park. There you can see one of the best views in the country of the second oldest river in the world, ironicaly dubbed the New River. I won't even attempt to describe how cool it is there, but suffice it to say it's one of my favorite places in the world. You can probably even find pictures online if you're so inclined. We went out and trudged through the snow and stood at the overlook and took it all in. We also stomped around the stage of Theatre West Virginia, where Joe did Summer Stock over four years back, two full years before we moved to the area.

It's just been a great weekend all around.

Being Valentine's day, I'm gonna stop wasting time on the internet and go spend it with my sweety.

Comfort Food Par-Tay

This past Monday we had our "liberry" Christmas party, featuring the previously heralded theme of Comfort Food & Cookies.

The food was fantastic, the company excellent and a glaze of carbohydrate-euphoria (i.e. "comfort") settled over everyone.

The cookie part supposedly involved us mixing and baking 8 dozen cookies to give to our fellow employees as gifts. I cheated and baked 8 dozen store-bought peanut butter cookies with mini Reese's cups in them instead.

And Mrs. J was able to make it too. She's doing much better, though she still can't get around as well as she'd like nor eat much.

My only complaint with the evening is that I couldn't eat much either. Not that I didn't try my best. It's just that my and my wife's digestive systems have now been altered by our near 3 month long stint on the Atkins program so that we, sadly, can no longer consume the mass quantity of food that we used to. I used to be able to put away two brimming-full plates of food and have room for desert. Now, I'm lucky if I have room to breathe after one plate. It's great for our health but is a massive bitch otherwise. When we cheat, we feel obligated to really do some damage, but we just can't now and it pisses us off. We weren't the only ones in that boat at the party, though. After our meal the entire staff sat around looking at all the plates of tasty cookies none of which we had any desire to eat because our brains were screaming "YOU'RE FULL, YOU FOOLS!"

After dinner, we all gathered in Mrs. A's living room where we took turns keeping her dog out of the cookies and telling each horror stories about problem patrons. (Ironic, in that Mrs. A's living room is the former living room of the Dufus's grandmother.) A couple of employees from libraries in neighboring towns joined us at the party and we were surprised at how many problem patrons we have in common, but it was valuable to share our most effective techniques for dealing with them.

Happy Turkey Day

Just wishing you and yours a Happy Turkey Day. We'll be ignoring the hell out of the good Doctor Atkins today and hogging down with the best of `em. And in my family, that's saying something.

On Thanksgiving, it is tradition to gather at my grandmother's house in Missouri, eat massive quantities of turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, dressing, cranberries and that evil evil staple of Thanksgivings nationwide, three bean salad. Afterwards, we're usually too full to do much other than collapse onto soft furniture and snooze. But tradition also has it that some time during the holiday period, my father and sundry uncles MUST get into a screaming argument about religion. While these fights are usually quite heated, they almost always are over minor points of dogma that I contend is pointless to argue about since neither side can EVER prove their point to the other nor make any headway toward even an impass on the subject. I contend that in most instances it would be far preferable and certainly easier on the less conflict-oriented members of the family for all arguing parties to simply wait until they die and then ask God to settle it. Alas, this rarely happens and so some of us have had to resort to staging walkouts in protest of the noise-level.

This will be my wife's first sojourn into Thanksgiving at the AARON household and my first in several years. Should be interesting, as she could hold her own in a religious argument with any one of them and is apt to take on the whole clan if necessary. Fortunately, from what I've been told, the past few years have been quiet on the argument front, so perhaps we'll have peace and tranquility this year too. If not, maybe I can try stuffing turkey down people's throats while their mouths are flapping and let the soothing power of poultry take control.

So may your Turkey day be filled with food, fellowship and fun and not with the screams of my dad and uncles.

I have a photograph

Last night my folks took us out for a semi-Atkins-free meal at Barnhill's. The brown food was good.

The wife and I spent much of last night looking through old photo albums at pictures of me as a baby and of my parents and both sets of grandparents. It's so strange seeing Mamaw young and vibrant. Or my grandma with black hair. Some of these photos I don't recall ever seeing before and it was a great little view into my folks early life when they were my age. Makes me think I better enjoy looking that young while I am that young.

Today I found a bunch more old loose photos in need of albums. A couple are some of the rare photos of me back when I was skinny and had long hair. Most folks think I've been lying about the two years I spent svelte and unshorn, but I now have photographic proof!

We're off in a couple of hours. More to follow...