Chapter 712 Cataloguing Machine

I’m pleased to tell you that a house call late last week ended with my purchasing a small collection of 75 books. I’m also pleased to tell you that the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair is coming up next Saturday, March 24 and I’ll be exhibiting in my usual space right inside the entrance to the main hall. Stop by if you’re in the area, and if you know you’re planning to come, leave a comment below and I can email you a free pass! And, yes, I’ll be bringing as many of those new finds as I can get priced and catalogued to the fair, so stop by if you’d like to see them.

I now have to catalogue and cover with clear, mylar dustjacket protectors all of these books by the time I leave for the fair at the end of week. Since that’s a big task, and, frankly, not one I’m sure I will completely accomplish given my other responsibilities, I’m going to take a blogging break until I return from the fair so I can do my best to get the job done. My plan for the week is to be a book cataloguing machine.  You can expect a full report on the fair when I return.

Meanwhile, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in our usual way around here:

The Leprechaun visited, and though he was disappointed that everyone around here has grown up so much that they no longer build a trap, he left his footprints, a card, and a couple of treats behind.

I baked two loaves of Irish Soda Bread (my Nana’s recipe, which came from her mother, who came to this country from Ireland at the turn of the 20th century). One of our longtime St. Patrick’s Day traditions — one that’s been around even longer than the Leprechaun trap — is that we make a Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner for some friends and sometimes for extended family, too. None of them are of Irish descent, but they’re all coming over for a big meal later tonight. I haven’t got the heart to tell them that I have yet to meet anyone who actually lives in Ireland who actually eats Corned Beef and Cabbage. It’s an Irish-American dish, sure.

I took a few minutes to have a hot cup of “tay” from my Irish china teacup:

And, even though they are getting too grown up for Leprechaun traps, Tom and Huck will never be too old for mischief.  They got this shirt for our dog, Molly. We got her eight years ago on St. Patrick’s Day (hence her Irish name).  We don’t ever dress her in clothes. We’re just not the sorts who think dogs need clothes, but put Tom, Huck, a holiday, and the clearance bin at Target together and here you go:

Molly, though she is a grand little dog, is not amused. You can tell by her face that she finds covering her gloriously soft fur with a t-shirt from Target to be extremely undignified.

I think that once Molly can get this shirt off, she will be quite content to sit at my feet, undisturbed by the boys, while I catalogue the recent acquisitions this week.

See you at the book fair!