Woke up and looked out the window and saw a dusting of snow on the ground. Pete and I immediately got into it, with him saying it was a heavy dusting, and me saying it was a light dusting. We finally settled on the term moderate dusting. I have learned in dealing with Pete that I need to get things exact, or he will do this for me. This is not such a bad thing – I have learned to look closely at the situation at hand and choose my words carefully.

It continued to snow as we got ready to go to town. Pete first went for a walk – I continued to clean the house. Last night I worked on the parts of the upstairs that we call the clothes area and bedroom. I began by sorting socks and then moved on and did some serious shop vacuuming. I next worked on cleaning my study, but of course I didn’t get very far. I took a bin of books to the hotel today and brought back a bin. It is, what I am experiencing, an overabundance of riches. Too many books – this is what Frank Soos would have called a happy problem.

As I worked today, it continued to snow. I boxed up books heading for Chiniak, which is on the far side of Kodiak Island. I boxed up 10 boxes of nonfiction, Pete labeled and tagged these plus ten more boxes. He will be taking them to the post office on Monday.

There is now a dent in the BLBP inventory, a good thing. We have not yet had so many books around that we are stumbling over boxes. I won’t let this happen.

I sometimes wonder how things would be different if instead of being a nonprofit, the BLBP was instead a real bookstore. We now have enough books on hand to pull this off. But would the books go? Yesterday a woman came in and took the Tarzan books. They’d been around for two-three years. This goes to show that eventually, even obscure books will go.

I next worked on sorting and categorizing the Christmas books. I did this in the back room, and as I was working, I likened the small, rectangular space to Santa’s workshop. This gave me an idea (oh oh), which is to decorate it, maybe get a few items at the Bishop’s Attic thrift store across the street and then decorate the space. This way, on December 6th, when the children from the Iditarod School come in, they can come and pick the books from the workshop. And beforehand, I will read them a Christmas story or two – right now I’m thinking about using The Polar Express.

Maybe I can get a few other schoolteachers to bring their students over. Hmm, looks like an ideas evening.

The other night, I laid awake and began working on Alaska State Fair plans – ideas nights are not at all a good thing. In fact, they are a bad thing. Just don’t want to be losing sleep over such things. It isn’t worth it.

Next: 313. 11/17/24: I Don’t Know What to Say