Keep watching here and on Facebook for new changes that are coming soon!

Many thanks

jeff

It is Thursday evening and the store is effectively complete.  For the very first time I’m comfortable with what I’ve done.  I hope if you visit you will think so too.

Getting books from the boxes to the shelves was tremendously time consuming.  From the very first box there were decisions to be made.  Where do I put a Travel book?  How many bookcases do I allocate for Romance? 

A couple of the basic questions were easy.  Fiction and Romance will be center aisle starting at the front of the store.  History, Military History, and Military Fiction will be on one side with Non-Fiction, Biography, and the other dogs and cats of the book world down the other side. 

So you know where each A starts.  On which shelf begins the Romance M?  Where do I put the multitude of works produced by Robert Ludlum, Catherine Coulter, or Tom Clancy?  Does all of Fern Michaels’ work Romance?  Or are some straight fiction?  Most books were moved several times before finding their final resting place.  The Historical Romance Writers web page and Amazon.com were frequently consulted.

I worked by myself for the the most part.  Vicky De Serisie helped empty boxes one evening.  Cathy and Len Gafga were kind enough to do some alphabetizing.  My sister did part of the decorating and her husband emptied a lot of  boxes one Saturday morning.  All contributed greatly toward getting the store open.  I sincerely thank them all.  Without their help and encouragement the store wouldn’t be opening this Saturday.

I hope you will find the time to visit.

The last half of the bookcases didn’t arrive until Monday night.  Opening 300 boxes of books to scan, price, and shelve was just more than I could handle.  At lunch time today I decided it would take too long for me to scan each book into the database and still open within the next week so I have started just shelving the books as fast as possible.  Most of the books have the correct price, just a tag from a different store.

Here are some pictures of all the bookcases.  Please note, without books.

This is the view from the counter, similar to the earlier picture. 

This is the view from the front door.  Fiction will be to the left, Romance on the right.

This is the view of the left hand aisle looking from the front.  To the left will be non-fiction, to the right will be a continuation of fiction.

I’m still planning on a Wednesday, April 7, opening.  But it will be a close run thing.  Here are some pictures of the work in progress.

This is how it looked after I spent the weekend cleaning and waxing the floor.  In and of itself not a bad job if you have the right equipment.  However my sponge mop was really a foot too short for my height.  Ibopropen is my friend.

These are the bookcases I designed.  They were build by Joel Risbari, a local carpenter who did a wonderful job for me.  There will 45 to 50 in the store.

This gives you a general idea of how the store will be initially arranged.  There will be a park bench in front of each window.

This view makes it easy to see how the bottom shelf is kicked out to make it easier to read the titles on the bottom.

My command post! 

Complete with a full service of that elixir that runs American business – Coffee!

I look forward to meeting all of you right here!

The current plan is to move the bookcases in next week.  I’ll start processing and shelving books will they work on the check out counter.

Shooting for an opening day of April 6!!!!!! 

Keep your fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well!  It is about time!!!!

The last of the bookcases were delivered yesterday.  I’ll pick up the remaining two thirds of the books next week so I can transfer them directly into the store instead of having to unload them into the storage area then move them to the store.

Things are indeed looking up!!!

Jeff

Well, its a little more complicated.  An engineer did go on vacation.  He just forgot to stamp the plans before he left for the sunny slopes of Colorado or wherever he went.  The General Contract was surprised as well.  So, instead of starting work on the store, we are waiting for his return so he can stamp the plans, the General Contract can take them to the county so they can stamp them and issue a much prized, highly anticipated Beaufort County Building Permit.

We expect the engineer to return the week of March 1.  Maybe we can start work sometime that week or the following week.

Signarama is doing the sign.  They can’t put up the permanent sign until the Building Permit is issued.  But hanging a temporary sign doesn’t require a Building Permit.  I paid the down payment so they could proceed with making the banner as well as the regular sign.  To me the banner looks much better than the regular sign will.

It is read by Joe Barrett who is an excellent reader.  His ability to add a different accent, inflection and tone to each character makes listening to him very easy and very entertaining.  Dr. Willam Forstchen was first thrust into the limelight as coauther with Speaker Newt Gingrich on an alternative history trilogy of the Civil War.  The first book of the trilogy is Gettysberg: A novel of the Civil War.  The duo has since produced a trilogy about the beginning of the war in the Pacific and are currently working a book set in the American Revolutionary War.

Forstchen is a prolific writer having published many science fiction and alternative history novels.  One Second After is Forstchen’s attempt to wake America up to the dangers of terrorism in the 21st century.  The books starts with a terrorist attack using an electromagnetic pulse (emp) weapon.  The book’s forward, written by Newt Gingrich, references the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.  This report was released to Congress on the same day the 9/11 Commission report was released.  The press ignored the EMP report and focused on the 9/11 report.

The book is set in the mountains of western North Carolina in Forstchen’s home of Black Mountain, NC, near Ashville.  The students, instructors and staff of Montreat College play a prominent role.  He chronicles the slow realization, slow measured in days, of the populace that this time, Uncle Sam is unable to send help anytime soon.  The lack of electricity to run the freezers so many of us now use to stockpile food.  The lack of transportation to restock the stores.  The realization that what food to be stored must be salted or canned.  Its hard to believe that canning may be a lost art.  I remember helping my sister’s mother-in-law do some canning but I don’t think my mother knew how.  I know I don’t.

Much of the book is given over to meetings of the town mayor and public safety chief.  The doctor counts the dead and describes the next wave of deaths as various medicines are depleted and disease sets in.  Early in the book there is a horrific description of a rest home after many of the staff stopped work to take take care of family.  That desciption alone will cause even the most casual reader to stop and think on their personal situation in life.

The decline of American society is described, sometimes in too vivid detail.  Martial law is established.  Starvation becomes the enemy.  Food hoarding becomes a punishable offence.  Looters are given a brief hearing then executed.  The first looter going to his death demanding a phone call and a lawyer.  Through it all the participants desperately trying to remind themselves that they are Americans even as they realize that there is a rising barbarism throughout the land.  Suicides become common.

One surprising aspect is the affect of the lack of communication.  Remember radios, cell phones, TV’s, the internet, all the facets of our information society are dead.  The President can’t give a fireside chat to the people like FDR did.  There are no 24/7 news stations giving us a blow-by-blow account of the national and international situation.  Travel is reduced to the distance you can walk or ride a bicycle.  Communication to the distance you can yell.  The national Emergency Alert System we rely on for weather alerts doesn’t work because noone, except antique collectors, have a radio that works to receive it.

In the end, one year later, Uncle Sam arrives as an Army relief convoy headed by the appointed military governor.  But by then 80% of the population is buried at the golf course.  It is a sobering book written in a captivating manner.  It is a good read.

Jeff Williams

Well, I can’t open the store until the General Contractor (GC) can remove several interior walls and plumbing.  He can’t start work until the county gives him a building permit.  He has submitted plans for a building permit three times now.  The first time the  the county requested a reasonable change on the electrical overlay.  No Problem.

The plans went back to the county and we expected a quick and easy approval.  After all, he corrected it just like they wanted.  Right?  Not so fast, carpetbagger!  This time the county requested all bookcases be metal and have a seismic rating.  Yes, my bookcases have to be rated to withstand an earthquake.  According to the US Geological Survey the last one in this part of the state was n 1971 measuring 3.4 with an intensity of V. 

Intensity, I think, is a new measure they’ve developed to better describe the effects.  A V is described on the SC Dept of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Geological Survey (SCGS) as:  “Almost everyone feels movement.  Most people are awakened.  Doors swing open or closed.  Dishes are broken.  Pictures on the wall move. Windows crack in some cases.  Small objects move or are turned over. Liquids might spill out of open containers.”

Okay.  I now live in an earthquake zone.  Gee, traveled all over the world, survived an earthquake on a Pacific island and in California, avoided living in earthquake zones with the same fervor that I avoided living north of the Mason-Dixon line, and decide to retire in an earthquake zone.  Gee, who knew to look that up.

George S. Patton drilled his operations staff that nothing is ever as good or as bad as first reported.  I thought about the metal bookcase issue and put it in the “too early to tell” box.  Although I did call the bookcase contractor to issue a stop work order until it was straightened out.

The next bit of news from the county is, well, the bookcases can be wood but they have to be painted with a fire resistant paint.  And they have to be bolted down to the floor.  Hhhmmmm.  Patton’s dictum continues to be proven true.

Now I ask the gentle reader to reflect a moment on the new requirement.  Wood bookcases be painted with a fire resistant paint.  Bookscases for a bookstore.  A used bookstore with mostly paperback books.  Hhhhhmmmm.

So.  We have made the changes to the plans and I have directed the bookcase contractor to used an approved fire resistant paint.  The GC will resubmit the plans.  We will wait for the next pronouncement from the county office.

Bottomline is I can start shelving books two weeks after the county issues a building permit.  I think shelving and cataloging will take about two weeks.  I’m going to have to work hard to make March 1. 

I’ll keep you posted.  jeff

Monday after Thanksgiving, when all the family had finally left, I cleaned the house and started preparing for the move.  I had already packed what I thought was a lot of stuff and taken it to Sun City where I rented a storage unit.  But there was still a lot to go through.  I moved everything out from under the house.  I moved everything out from in the attic.  I gave away furniture I knew I wouldn’t use in my new house.  I took stuff to GoodWill — multiple times.  My daughter took the stuff she wanted.  My sister took the stuff she wanted.

But I was still going through stuff on Wednesday morning when the movers arrived and started packing the house.  I posted stuff on the free stuff list on Craig’s List.  That worked well in Raleigh.  But it was pretty traumatic.  A lot memories were being dragged out and packed up.  Memories I would eventually have to unpack in Sun City.  A little reflection on my part could have made everything a lot easier than it was.

Thursday they loaded the truck.  They delivered everything on Friday and I officially became a Solar Resident of Sun City.