You see weird things from time to time. I snapped a picture of this on my way to lunch on Friday -- it doesn't come out terribly well, but it's actually a sports-tractor. Or something. Maybe it's just a new model of tractor. But it's totally hot-rodded out in appearance. Not a great picture, but a Mac truck just out of frame edged it out a moment later, and then it was gone, so it's all I've got.

In the meantime, work continues. And continues. On the bright side, I've made a fair bit of progress, and in fact, few books remain to be received for the expo. After mentioning the darn thing, I should link it. Before I go into an exhaustive expose on the perils of working in a bookstore, go here and check out the BookGroup Expo website.

Neat, huh? Anyway. This is Friday morning, when I came in -- stuff finished for the expo. The 'F' isn't a badge of shame (though, the blank spots on the boxes beneath the letters are; I put the wrong labels on, and had to cut them off). They're for an event on Friday -- the first event that we're doing. But mostly, this picture is for reference. The last shot I had of this space had a lot more books in it.

Now this is those books (yeah, I went back into the crawlspace just for this shot. Neat, huh?). I had to hold the camera at a high angle, and you can see that the boxes go aaaaalmost all the way to the ceiling, since the light bulb reduces the top of the image into light bloom. Oops. You can also see the folding chairs just in-shot on the right -- so even though the angle didn't capture the floor (most of it's boxes, anyway), it should provide some sense of scale.

Turning around, this is the other side of the pile -- directly to the left of the previous image. I didn't move the camera too much except to lower it and rotate it to the left. The ceiling is lower here, because the crawlspace is beneath the stairs. That post is in the center of the stairwell (it's actually square, but ... you know. Stairwell). The pipe is probably drainage from the cafe upstairs; I don't know their layout too well.

It's good to be done, but irritating in regards to pay. I get extra hours, but not on the week where we get a bonus dollar-an-hour. Still, you take what you can get, and extra hours are extra hours.

Anyway. Back to the task at hand, we've got what had been done by the morning when I came in. My boss (Manager Eric) took care of the ones I couldn't, since we're not allowed to have overtime (I only left him three of those boxes, but still -- he's a great guy to help me out). This shot is missing some of the boxes I got today -- I'll get another one tomorrow, probably with the missing VHPS and Simon shipments. At least one of them, I imagine.

This is just another angle (you'd think I was a box fanatic, huh?), but shows some of the intricate stacking work that has earned me the title 'Box Puzzle Master'. This is how you put those Tetris skills to work, kids. Reading between the lines: STAY IN SCHOOL. Unless you want to do this.

Then again, my stepfather got a math degree, and it was only good to get a job delivering televisions, so watch out what you study, I guess. Hm.

Aaanyway. This is the other pile, the one behind my workspace (kind of). Those shelves are typically for returns, but now are blocked off/overtaken by BGE. Either way, by Friday of this week, I should be done with those boxes for good!

Well. Until it's time to return all the books that didn't sell, I guess.

Dangit.