You can imagine my panic when I realized I had three pretty much identical voice mails on my work phone when I came in this morning: “Good morning, Mr. Snay. It’s Julia from the management office, at [time], and I’m going to be taking someone on a tour of your apartment.” Which is kind of shocking, because from what I know, the only time they’re supposed to be doing that is the month before you move out, and as far as I was aware, I wasn’t planning on moving.

The worst part is that I got to my desk a little before seven, and the management office doesn’t open until ten. The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure the messages were left on Saturday, which means that, while yes, I was not home during the first two visits, I would’ve been sprawled half-naked on my bed with the a/c blasting when they arrived for the third. Really, one wonders why they called my office line, instead of my cell phone. (This sort of ranks up there with the time, a week ago, when they sent me a letter dated in May, about my not having paid my April rent … I guess it got lost in the Out Box? And since they never responded or made earlier attempts to get in touch with me, I assume they realize the rent was paid.

Anyway, so why was I half naked on my bed on a Saturday afternoon?

We’re moving books at the Bookstore. It’s called a “re-organization.” Customers ask, “But why?”

(Well, one guy said, “I knew you guys were closing! And you said you weren’t! But clearly you lied to me!” And at this point he just started flapping his arms at all the empty bookshelves. I hope he’s not too sad when we don’t close.)

Because Corporate likes to keep us busy, we reply (to everyone but the “I knew you were closing!” crowd). Truthfully: we finally gained a Biography section, and we’re doing a “teen shop” on the lower level, which essentially involves wrapping Popular Fiction (Mystery/Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Romance) around Manga, Graphic Novels, and Young Adult. We’ve also compressed our music section, and lost two CD shelf fixtures. Magazines got shunted back behind the Information desk so that customers can see books when they look in through our beautiful new windows. Moving sections allows us to open up floor space for table displays at the front of store.

While I can see why Corporate might want to implement this “teen shop” design at suburban stores, it really makes no sense given our particular location: We’re in a downtown business district. There are no schools nearby. There is generally nothing in the area to bring teenagers here. Kids, in general, are very rare at our store. When we do “kids’ activity days” (mandated by corporate, of course), it is very common for no children at all to show up! Yet someone still has to wear a stupid self-made construction paper hat and have activities planned in case someone does arrive.

I was not scheduled Friday night, but I went in anyway to work on the merchandising (which is generally a catch-all phrase for ‘moving books around’). I was tasked with moving the Sci-Fi/Fantasy books from its previous location (center of the store shelves on the lower level), to it’s new location: two bays of much taller bookshelves to the left against the wall. I grabbed a library cart and proceeded with gusto. In all honesty, “building” a section is a lot of fun, especially to a book-a-phile like me. It’s not just sticking one book spine out, and the next face out. I mean, for one thing, books I’ve enjoyed (regardless of quantity on hand) got prime shelf location: face out! (That’s why, even though we have only one copy of the Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in section, it’s a face-out).

Personally, I loved it — really, there’s not that many ways to display books on a shelf. You can do spine-outs (when the spine of a book faces out from the shelf), and face-outs (when the cover faces out). I also got to do quite a number of mass market mashes*: that’s when you have a massive quantity of the same title mass market, and you lay one or two books flat on their side, and then do a combination of face-outs and spine-outs on top of those. If you take a peak at Charlaine Harris’ books in the Sci-Fi section at the Bookstore, you’ll see most of them are MMMs. Visually, it’s quite stunning (I just wish I hadn’t had to split them between bookcases).

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as moving the books onto their new shelves. Turns out, Untranslated Literature was supposed to have been moved, and wasn’t. I came in on Saturday, my day off, and spent four hours loading that section onto four library carts. Sadly, it wasn’t enough, but I was able to finish moving Sci-Fi. And it wasn’t bad: because I wasn’t scheduled, I could work with my iPod plugged solidly into my ears, and with no employee lanyard or bulky radio and headset. Actually, it was a lot of fun (although I was pretty tired by the time I left — hence the whole half naked on bed bit, plus I walked to and from, a good four-mile round trip).

It actually took until Sunday to get everything finally sorted — there was a “flow chart” (this section should flow into this section should flow into this section) which had been ignored, but Goatee and I spent two hours and moved Poetry and Shakespeare and Drama into the proper places. There was also a considerable amount of bookshelf dragging, lifting, forcing, and screwing. No, we weren’t having sex with the bookshelf — one of our units, several months ago, had been taken apart by the police while they were looking for a gun. The gun turned out to be fake, their suspect was arrested anyway, and our night crew just decided to take the whole unit down. Which wasn’t a problem until we needed the space again. (One of those shelves was used in our break room for all our advanced reader copies — they were stacked on one of the lunch tables last I saw).

*I don’t actually know if it’s called a “mass market mash”, but it should be. Depending on the height of the shelf, this can also work with QPs (over sized paperbacks).

What you’re looking at is a bookcase that serves double duty as a staircase. Or a staircase that is also a bookcase. I found this image doing a random Google search, trying to find a picture of a “mass market mash” to illustrate a post I’m working on. Instead, I changed course, and a quick Google search (first result for “stair bookcase”) turned up more information on the stair bookcase pictured above.

The 70m2 apartment was remodeled by London-based Levitate Architects, who created “a new bedroom level and increasing the floor area of the flat by approximately one third.” The staircase is both the way to access the bedroom and a perfect place to store books, movies or CDs. “With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome,” says Levitate’s Tim Sloan, who also pointed out the unique structure of each step, allowing for anyone to comfortably sit down while picking a book.

While I’d love to have a bookstairshelf in my Dream Studio/Loft/Batcave, I’m going to have to vote “no” on the bathtub bookcase. Books and water just don’t mix.

Generally, I’m not a big fan of memes. When I’m tagged on one, I usually just ignore them.

So when Life of MB tagged me on the “keepsake blog award” last week, I just sort of put it out of mind and made a mental note to leave a “thanks, but no thanks” comment on her blog.

And then …

Well, I started thinking about keepsakes. I mean, the rule of the meme is pretty much “Post a funny or sweet keepsake that tells something about you.”

I don’t know that I actually have anything that I would describe as a keepsake that says anything about me. A collection of old movie stubs dating back to the 1990s? A bayonet my grandfather brought home from Europe?

But there was this image of a fishbowl nagging at the back of my mind: a transparent yellow little plastic fishbowl, scuffed and dirty. It might be cheating to write about it, as I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m not exactly sure how it came into my possession. Really, the only thing I can remember about it is that when I put my nose to the opening and inhaled, I could smell the scents of my 3rd grade best friend Miguel Molina’s apartment.

For first through sixth grades, I attended a private Catholic school in Montgomery County. Then my folks moved us to Columbia and I attended public school, but that’s another story. In any case, during my third grade year, a new student joined us: Miguel. His father was a Venezuelan military officer assigned to Washington, DC. Miguel and I quickly bonded over our mutual love of Lego and Star Trek: The Next Generation. We built giant spaceships out of those little bricks, and what we couldn’t model in plastic, we built with out imagination.

The time line of our friendship is not well remembered: I know he was in the States for several years, but that he wasn’t at the same school after 3rd grade. Where he went, or if he was home-schooled, or even if he moved back to Venezuela but made frequent trips back to the US to visit his father, I don’t remember. I remember goofing around in the house of Mrs. Jeanne, Miguel’s brother’s nurse, reenacting the scene in Batman where Jack Nicholson blasts Jack Palance. And I remember his little brother, who was always sick, dying.

I mean, I wasn’t there when it happened. Some problem with his respirator, a tube that came loose.

I remember the last time I saw Miguel. At the airport. We hugged, and he went through the security checkpoint. We (I think it was me and my Mom, Dad might’ve been there, but I don’t recall) must have taken the Metro down, because I can remember walking back to our car through a parking lot, with a Metro station elevated above us. I remember that a Lego spaceship I made was on the floorboard of the car.

I never saw Miguel again, and as is the case, even though we traded letters for a while, we eventually completely lost touch. Unfortunately, his name is not exactly unique, and although I have tried to find him on the vast reaches of the internet, I’ve never been able to. It hasn’t stopped me from messaging random Miguels on Facebook who have Venezuela as their group: “Are you the same Miguel who attended 3rd grade at…”

No luck – yet – but what is it that’s said about hope? It springs eternal.

I don’t even know where that fishbowl is anymore. In the space of multiple moves, it might’ve cracked, or been thrown away. For all I know, it’s buried deep in a box that itself is tucked far, far away in the depths of my parents’ basement. I just hope that, if it is still somewhere in my possession, it’s never been cleaned — via the nostrils, it’s a time capsule, and without that, it’s just a chunk of ugly cheap plastic. I wish I’d kept more care into possessing it.

Donde esta usted, Miguel?