Day Five: The Reckoning

It started out peacefully enough......and we'd managed to miss the international potato art festival.The trouble started when we decided to check out an interesting-looking bookstore......only to discover it was a little too specific for our tastes.Not to mention the store right next to it--a one-two punch of misery for us as book-lovers.The nearby Book Warehouse was a little better, although it brought up flashbacks to my days working in one, with a manager who once had us rearrange the entire fiction section face-out in a chessboard dark-light pattern rather than alphabetical and, upon seeing repeat customers, would ask "Why'd they come back so soon?" as if a book were some sort of appliance.Still, some of the customers didn't have a real sense of personal space or politeness. Erm, no, that is not all right, lady. Just to see how long this would last, I stood right there for about three minutes while this woman got closer and closer, rooting around my legs looking at the books, with nary an excuse me or a pardon. At one point, I could've pushed out my stomach and smacked her in the cheek. Oy. As it was, I was able to snap a couple photos while she was oblivious...All this unintentional bad luck must've turned us into the Flying Dutchman, as not a half hour later, coming off of the highway into a yield-sign with no overflow lane situation, Ann had to slow down and the van behind us smashed into us at 30-40 mph and totalled Ann's car. The back compacted into the trunk and structural damage along the sides. The shade guards in front just about flew off. Luckily, no one was hurt, just banged up a little. Still, we had four good days before this. But I'm never walking past three such bad-luck bookstores in a row ever again.This week is all books, all week, with book video, book reports, book reviews, and book analysis forthcoming...