Week 400.

A beautiful day! In the 60s. Sunny. Calm. The next 10 days will be in the 60s. Will March be a nice month? Is winter behind us?

The first daffodil just opened at the warehouse. It is at least a couple of weeks late. There are always daffodils in February. Maybe that reflects how brutal the winter was. Spring got pushed back 2 weeks.

Ernest is driving us down to Gaithersburg. I’m meeting a sign contractor. I also need to inspect and make sure we are ready for the wall demo tonight. We are removing interior walls so we can change the entrance and counter area.

We will have In and Out doors!

It will be a massive week in other ways as well. The shelving contractor contacted me over the weekend. He is coming on Wednesday to take down the 60 bookcases we emptied in Hagerstown. We will have at least three vehicles in play to transfer them to Gaithersburg. The contractor will go there and put them up.

Instant bookstore!

Not exactly. There will be a lot more than 60 bookcases added eventually. But this will get the new space started.

Now comes the planning as to what categories will move in there. As well as what categories will be expanded… everywhere.

Pretty exciting.

It is Monday.

The weekend was brutal.

I’m still way behind on carts.

The time change didn’t help. It didn’t help this morning either. My “Atomic Clock” didn’t automatically reset, so it was an hour later than I thought after waking up and looking at the “trustworthy” device. I don’t take my phone to bed. It rests in the charger on the kitchen counter overnight. I keep temptation out of reach.

My bed has a book or two. A couple of legal pads should I get inspired to handwrite something. I usually toss my laptop on it when I get home. Some dogs. That’s about it besides pillows and bedclothes.

I’m letting the woodstove burn out during the day. The thermostats are turned off. No reason to heat when the days are in the 50s or 60s. I’ll light a fire every evening though. It doesn’t take long. I just break up some kindling and pile it atop some crumpled newspaper or a piece of cardboard from a pizza box. I put some 3-4 inch diameter branches atop the kindling and then put a match to it. I don’t have to pay any attention to it. I know in about 20 minutes I can stick a log in and damper it down. Then another bigger “overnight” piece before going to bed.

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Another stunning day.

We are going back to Gaithersburg to see if the drywall removal took place overnight. I had trouble sleeping, wondering if the workers were there and doing their thing.

Maybe I was frazzled by the complex day. It ended with me emptying another load of mulch I picked up from the county landfill. It cost just over $7. I tried to talk them down, but they said all prices are by weight and non-negotiable. They weigh the truck when I come in and weigh it when I leave.

The Mulch Road is so attractive. It used to be bare and uneven.

It will look great when I rake the fresh piles smooth.

Then I took the plow down and dug out more gravel from the sides of the road. Most of it had been pushed off by the snowplow. I think I recovered about half of it.

At home, hundreds of aconites are blooming all over the property.

They are planted as pea-sized tubers, and if you’re lucky, they will propagate. I’ll put another thousand in this fall.

The hellebores (Christmas Rose) are starting to bloom finally.

Again, very late.

I think there are about a hundred mature ones up here. Hundreds more seedling and youngsters.

I was pretty sore by the time the leftover wings were heated up. There was also a wedge salad I’d barely touched when I went out on Sunday night.

We acquired a new van on Monday. Vehicle #11 in the Wonder Fleet.

This gives us the flexibility to have multiple vans parked at all three stores to absorb buys and drop offs that come in. Some days, we may get over 30 transactions. Sometimes the house clear-out companies show up unexpectedly and may bring a couple hundred boxes.

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Wednesday

Wild days!

Ernest and I are driving the third van full of bookcases this morning.

Clif took the first. Bryan the second.

I don’t know how many more trips we will need to do today, but it is off to a fast start.

When the contractor gets the last bookcase down, he will head to Gaithersburg to start putting the bookcases up. But first he needs to get the record bins set up.

Monday night after closing, the landlord’s contractor took down the drywall around the cramped “Record Room.” When I arrived on Tuesday, it was amazing. The space is so much BIGGER and airier!

Last night, he took down the former break room walls.

Fingers crossed there won’t be any glitches.

I’m always juggling things—a lot of things. This has added a whole lot more balls to keep in the air.

On Tuesday, I also met with the sign contractor in Gaithersburg.

There are four signs there we want to replace, plus the fifth new one high on the facade.

We decided on the one on the right. Maybe people can glimpse it from Shady Grove Road a few hundred yards away.

The compressor needs repair or replacement.

The compactor still hasn’t been replaced.

I’m not sure what else is wrong.

We were so desperate for carts yesterday I had a lot of them emptied onto tables.

I still have to go through them, but at least some carts were freed up.

More work for me this weekend.

Ernest and I dropped the bookcases off at Gaithersburg.

The old break room walls came down last night. More space!

Now we are heading back to Hagerstown. Will we need to bring down more bookcases? Or will the two vans returning before us be able to bring them all down?

It’ll be a surprise.

If not, Ernest and I can come back with the full van of book buys from customers.

It turned out we didn’t need to go back up. There were only 9 bookcases left, and those were squeezed atop book buys in the van that was parked there. The staff there and the people we brought from Frederick and the staff at Gaithersburg were heroic! Amazing what can happen when everyone pulls together.

We’d brought tables to Hagerstown to replace the towering bookcases. The result is better than the original, I think.

Amazing!

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And so it begins.

The first daffodils opened on the mountain yesterday. It was a surprise. Not just a “first” single blossom, but a dozen or so decided it was time in unison.

And the hellebores are coloring everywhere.

Their flowers are beautiful, but the plants, though evergreen, are pretty rough until they green up later in the spring. Sadly, the flowers are shy and most bow their heads toward the earth.

I was exhausted when I got home last night. I just wanted to take a beer outside and empty another truckload of mulch. But the contractor working down in Gaithersburg needed some remote decisions before he could continue to put up record bins. My phone had died, so I needed to linger around the charger on the kitchen counter waiting for images and replies to my sketches. While I waited, I stir-fried some frozen bulgogi dumplings from Trader Joes. They come in a big bag, so cooking them frozen makes sense, and that’s what the bag instructs. Melt some butter in a skillet. Add some dumplings and some olive oil. Low heat. Turn the dumplings frequently with a spatula. I put them in a little bowl with black soy sauce and some sriracha.

Delicious.

Soon, we had a meeting of the minds some 35 miles apart, and I could go out and play in the dirt.

I lit a small fire in the woodstove to take the edge off.

A big Vidalia onion got sauteed, and when it had cooked enough, I put some Jimmy Dean sage sausage in the skillet and cooked. Yummy to pick at.

It had been a monumental day.

I can still “do it.”

Everything is coming together.

So far…

Ernest and I are driving southeast on I 270 yet again. I’ll meet with the shelving contractor for the final layout on record bins and the beginning row of the 60 bookcases we transported from Hagerstown yesterday. (The 9 that didn’t make it? They are in the van behind us now.)

Once the shelving row is established with a chalk line on the floor, the rest will follow in ranks.

This scruffy bookshop will be transformed. It will become a glowing presence in the DC area—just one and a half miles from the Shady Grove Red Line Metro stop.

Well, it will still be a little scruffy. It wouldn’t be Wonder Book without some scruffiness to keep any pretensions down.

So much more to go though.

More drywall to take down.

Relocate the counter and entry.

Alarms.

Paint the exterior so it can’t be missed.

Shift categories.

The LPs, DVDs and CDs will all be in the new space. But there will be plenty of places for more books.

Paperback Lit will definitely be in there. Graphic novels. A double row of glass cases for collectible and fragile books.

Wow!

Just WOW!

44 and a half years on, and Wonder Book is on the move again.

What’s come in this week? Lots of cool stuff.

How about hundreds of Hungary books?

Recent and vintage. All put on carts for my verdict. No one else here knows what to do with them. Hell, I don’t…

I’m forcing a lot online. I doubt we will sell many, but I’ve got to give some a chance.

Reproductions of illuminated manuscripts. Folk dress and crafts. Quality history, recent and ancient.

When I was in Budapest a couple years ago, the guides were still of a generation that had experienced Soviet occupation and the repression and hardship that caused.

Comments like, “It was a gray life.” “The only difference between the Nazis and Russians was the flag.” …

One guide’s father had smuggled in a bottle of Coke and the Beatles’ White Album during the brief period when Hungary was given a little more freedom than the other vassal states. Both were considered contraband. He would let classmates hold the bottle for the equivalent of a dime.

I don’t need to understand Hungarian to recognize that a book’s subject is about the 1954 uprising or the end of the Soviet Empire 3 decades later.

(At least the “first” end. Russia can’t seem to stop fighting for more land and cultures to dominate.)

It is torturous work. No fun. But we have to work with whatever comes in and get the best results we can.

We are driving back now. The space is transformed. The cramped “record room” is now bright airy with the unnecessary drywall removed.

This will be the new entrance.

The new space is taking shape.

Three rows of LPs.

A wall of CDs.

And a lot of rows of books.

We will be able to “recycle” so much more paper and plastic—or as we prefer to call it, “rescue.”

This begs the question, “What’s next?”

Sadness in the lee of the whirlwind.

How many more?

Blood tests this morning.

A doctor appointment this afternoon.

Good news?

Bad?

No change?

Physically, I feel fine.

(Maybe that’s not a good sign?)

The doctor didn’t have the results yet. But he seemed optimistic. My numbers have a long way to fall before things get too concerning. All my symptomless diseases…

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Friday, March 14

A massive week. Much more massive than usual.

So exhausted at the end of each day, but still doing spring outdoor work when I get home.

Maybe it is the lingering effects of the “virus.” Last year it lasted months.

The Blood Moon poured in my window.
Its cold light blanketed my bed.
Magic is in the air
as the forest spirits rise
along with flowers and ferns
The forest floor brown and dead
only a week ago
is awakening everywhere
with green fingers and tendrils
rising toward the light.

It wasn’t red when it rose in the east. Supposedly, that came after midnight. By then it was behind the mountain. I was asleep anyway.

I lit a fire as the day stayed the high 40s. I lit some candles too. They’ll be put away soon.

I bought this cocktail-hour-scented jarred candle a couple months ago.

I swear it smells like my mother’s ashtrays. I dislike the smell but have lit it some nights for the nostalgia of my youth around a smoking mom.

Bless her heart.

After the truck was emptied of another load of mulch, I drove down to get the big blue recycling “trashcan.” I also picked some huge sheets of bark a dead tree is shedding near the mailboxes.

This is the second load I’ve brought up. I’m laying them atop the “Mulch Road” as further natural ground cover.

I know. I do weird things. But I think it looks cool.

I’ll blow the dead leaves off the beds—maybe tonight. In winter, they act as a kind of blanket to mitigate the hard freezes. When things start growing, they can stifle or even smother smaller weaker seedlings.

In a week, there will be hundreds of daffodils blooming. Soon thousands. The parade will go on into May—maybe June since this year everything is late.

The erection of bookcases and record bins continued into the night Thursday.

The transformation is amazing.

Can I make it a legendary bookstore in the DC region? I will try.

The glass cases still need to be built and installed.

And… so it begins.

The little ole 50-year bookshoppe gets a new incarnation.

And the DC Region gets a new very large book and “physical media” bookstore.

May it last another 50 years.

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Alan Robinson sent a package that arrived yesterday. He’s had even more health issues. He thanks me frequently for the commissions.

The watercolor was a concept we came up over a year ago. When I was in London in the fall of 2023, I visited the V&A and was struck by a large silver bust. It was a saint’s reliquary. I wrote a poem then.

The Empty Reliquary

Whose bones did your head hold?
Surely you had no heart
A dry cold silver skull
Empty, doubly dead
But you survive raison empty of purpose
Sightless blank metal eyes gaze
And I wonder at your hollow beauty
Better that than anonymous nothingness
I thank you for this eternal instruction
Your cold silent silver lips speak volumes
An empty precious reliquary
I adore your ageless beauty
But I would not trade
Gazing from your old glass shelf
upon this warm frightened living head
I suffer pain to know pleasure

The other stuff is two books loose in sheets of his work, The Fowl Alphabet. He has a number of his books unbound. He did two original watercolors for each. I’ll get boxes made for them rather than getting them bound.

So many other cool finds. Many get posted on our Instagram sites: @wonderbookandvideo, @merryandpippinlotr, @booksbythefoot.

These ugly things certainly screamed out for the pulp bins.

Until I opened them.

Wow! Just WOW!

Hmm… what’ll I do with them?

A reader from California sent this picture. She luckily dodged the fires.

The sunrises are moving north.

Soon the sun will rise in a leafy forest, and I will only get peeks at it before it clears the tree line.

Another season.

Another era gone, and a new one to begin.