The Glamorous Life of an Independent Bookseller (or My Adventure with Captain Underpants)

Dear Reader -  You know you got something special goin' on when you say to your dog and cat, "I'll be right back, ladies! I have to go on a mission for Captain Underpants . . ."

Spot and Nellie were riveted at the prospect.

Rewind a tick, I was on the phone with Linda (who was filling in on Wednesday evening for Zac [who's away at an economics conference {you know, I really gotta do a posting on our little biblion family - we have some really-super-cool-not-your-garden-variety-cliched-hipster-snob-bookstore-employees who work with us}]) about an electrical matter when a crisis arose in the shop: a kid who'd been in earlier in the day and had seen two Captain Underpants books was back, only to find them gone - and, you guessed it, some other kid was probably curled up reading them that very moment. He was bummed - and who would be? Captain Underpants is singularly awesome.

I thought I might have more up in the sorting room, so hung up with Linda (who was gonna go search biblion's stacks, just in case), made my aforementioned declaration (I really am in danger of becoming the crazy pet lady when Miss C goes off to school, talking to the pets like that - and she's only been gone a week this time around!), left Nellie and Spot, and headed up to pile through the boxes of kids' books. Sure enough, I came up with two. First I found the classic, Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants:

And then I found a bit of an outlier - a rare find, so to speak, in the Underpants world, The Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book o' Fun:

And who doesn't want their books o' fun to be extra-crunchy?

I called Linda back. Predictably, she'd had no luck. I told her of mine, but then I confessed my next obstacle: I'd changed from socially-acceptable clothing and was now wearing the most ratty PJs that a respectable crazy pet lady would wear - some Capri bottoms with dubious elastic in the waist and a crew shirt donated to me by my friend Emory. I knew that time was critical (a boy can only wait so long for Captain Underpants), so I scooped up Nellie, walked outta my house onto the streets of Lewes as if nothing was amiss, and drove my ratty-a__ self a couple blocks over to the shop - tossing the books out to Linda as we did our drive by.

Man, it was a here-I-come-to-save-the-day moment if ever there was one - one that deserves a little Andy Kaufman in its wake:

Socially-acceptably, if not glamorously, dressed  - Jenny

Happy, Happy Birthday, Nellie!

Dear Reader -  Today is Nellie's first birthday!

It's hard to believe that she's only been with us for these few, short months - she feels so much a part of our lives here at biblion and Casa J&C.

We're celebrating the day with a little "sale" in her honor - giving an extra 5% off to anyone who spends $21 or more!

Here's the first picture I ever saw of Nellie (she was Penelope then - safe in the arms of her breeder, Candice Kane):

Her eyes turned out to be just as compelling in person, if not more so - and, as you may remember, it was her eyes that brought her to us, as mentioned in my first mention of her back in June (what kind of insanity makes a newly-minted retailer decide to get a puppy just before the resort summer hits, and then to save that darn kitten to boot? - ah well! - Nellie and Spot have become the best of friends, wreaking havoc on our household [and especially the other cats {yes, I'm in danger of being dubbed a crazy cat lady, gone beyond my two-cat minimum - I've decided that because Miss C and Nellie are part of the equation, we haven't tipped the scales, yet}]).

She has turned out to be an awesomely awesome shop dog, save for her tendency to bark (okay, she yaps, it's embarrassing really; we try to tell her that nobody likes a yappy dog - that it's simply unattractive - to no avail) at other dogs. Here's a shot that I took of her with my iPhone to share with one of my card reps the other day. She spends most of the day sleeping under my desk, coming out to greet the guests who want to be greeted:

So, stop by if you can and join us in wishing Nellie a happy, yappy birthday!

Celebratorily yours  - Jenny

Random, if belated, musings and newsings from an errant blogger

Dear Reader -  Okay, I confess that I let myself get totally daunted by the technical issues with my little blog, and I didn't have any girl-starting-new-business energy to spare for taking on the little bytes that were messin' with my mojo. I have now taken the somewhat drastic step of deleting everything I'd attempted to draft, in the hope that clearing the decks'll be the ticket to erradicating whatever it was that kept crashing my doggone blog!

So here's what we've missed sharing while we've been in the midst. . .

1. The press has come to visit - multiple times. Henry Evans from the Cape Gazette wrote a stellar introductory article about us, and then followed up with a great article about the Royal Hoopla here at the shop:

Henry's awesome - a compelling writer and a truly fun, funny, intelligent, and interesting person to boot! He found us with the help of Lewes's leading historian, Hazel Brittingham:

Hazel and Henry are worthy of blog postings of their own. Hazel knows everyone and everything about Lewes. She kindly stopped in one day to bring me the Historical Society's writeup on our building, and she loved the shop so much that she asked Henry to do a story about us.

Part of what connects here to biblion is the building itself, since she and her husband owned the little restaurant called Britt's back in the 50s that we chatted about in January. Her ties to the place even pre-date that experience, quite literally, as her date to her prom was one of the Coast Guard fellows who ate in the commissary housed in our shop during the war. Henry came and ended up sticking around for a couple hours on his first visit, chatting with me for a bit and then losing himself in biblion's cards (he's since been back to check out the books, too).

We also got a visit from Delaware Today, who featured us in their "what's new at the beach" edition (which was super nice!). Keith Mosher, their photographer (and a compelling blogger himself), hung out with us for a couple hours, too - though his time was all focused on his art:

 

Keith's picture that DT ended up featuring had delicious color, gorgeous line, light, and composition:

Then it was Baltimore Style Magazine who stopped by for their "what's new" edition as well:

 

Their photographer, Kirsten Beckerman, and Senior Editor Laura Wexler had a blast with us, getting some great shots and picking out a couple cards. I haven't gotten to see the magazine, yet, but it was fun to see us featured on their home page!

2. We've added to our biblion family, bringing on Grace and Zac and Linda, allowing us to expand our hours to 10 to 9 daily for the summer season - yippee! The evening crowds have really been fun, sometimes keeping us here 'till closer to 10 with their browsing and reading and giggling at our shelves. We love that. Truly, dear Reader, it is beyond gratifying to see individual after individual have a meaningful experience here - it's nice to know that it wasn't just some passing magic that first weekend, but a true reflection of what little biblion has turned out to be.

3. And our final, very special addition to the biblion family is our shop dog, Nellie. Here's a picture of her with her breeder (one of the few pics that shows her kind eyes):

Nellie was originally pegged to be a show dog for her breeder, Candace Kane of Besitos Havanese; but as Nellie matured, it turned out that her eyes were not dark enough for the breed standard and her front legs bowed slightly, so she was free to come and be with us! Hooray for us!

We really wanted a shop dog, and we'd originally intended to rescue one - but then we thought of our guests with allergies and how tiny our shop is, and we decided that we really had to go for one of the non-shedding, hypoallergenic breeds. Having always lived with big dogs, I figured we'd get a big dog - but all of the non-shedding options needed a lot more exercise than we booksellers could reliably provide.

Then we started to get visits from other Havanese (named for Havana, reflecting their Cuban origins, where they were originally bred to herd chickens - yes, Nellie is a herding dog - a fact which proved quite helpful to Miss C when one of those middle school mean-girl-wanna-bes tried to diss on Nellie by calling her a mere lap dog - to which Miss C was able to reply, "No! She's a herding dog!"), and, man, were they awesome little dogs. Very mellow, very obedient, very connected to their families. And Nellie has proven to be the same. She's a super shop dog, and I'm sure that I'll end up indulging in book dog stories for you from time to time!

Well, I've blathered on here for quite awhile, and I've had NO ghosts in the machine! Looks like we're back in the blogging saddle, dear Reader!

And here's a little Gene Autry to celebrate:

And a little Steven Tyler for the joy of stark contrast:

Glad to be back, dear Reader!  - Jenny