Books!

This past weekend was Independent Bookstore Day and Local Yarn Store Day (the weekend before Maryland Sheep and Wool too, someone hates my wallet). I roped a friend into doing the DC Bookstore Crawl with me. I had, because I apparently like to stack a day, also planned a vet appointment for my cat. So we did that in the morning and then headed out around lunch for books and yarn. The DC area is really having an independent bookstore moment right now. I can remember when hitting six stores (the minimum for the book crawl prize) would have involved at least two suburbs. And I know friends elsewhere often still have to drive two hours to get to an indie, much less a romance and other genre friendly one. 

So we started with Bold Fork, the cookbook and food book store. They also has some ice cream and drinks from some partners outside, along with a deal where you could take your receipt to two other local businesses for a discount.

Then we went to Lost City, where the romance is upstairs. This day involved more stairs than I remembered. 

After Lost City we went to Looped Yarn Works which was not officially participating in LYS day, but they are my LYS, so got some yarn. 

Then we stopped in Second Story which continues to have a wide selection of used books. Fantom Comics is right nearby but also involves stairs. 

Then we took a brief tea break before heading to East City. We made a bad transit choice, going above ground forgetting there was an event of sorts in DC that evening so more people than usual downtown (even though the event was actually closer to where we'd been before, people are weird). But we made it. And shopped a little there. Stopped in at Labyrinth Games to admire some things. And then to Little City, which I had ridiculously not been to yet. Little City was our sixth stop, so in addition to the prize wheel, we also got our totes. (Many of the stores ran out of the official prize totes, but offered up another tote, which was fine by me.)

And then we ended at Loyalty, where I found a lonely looking Independent Bookstore Edition of a book along with some other goodies. 

It was a lot of fun, if a bit exhausting. I find in spring I always sort of walk around a bit more (though not usually quite this much) and remember all these cute places that I love visiting. It's also so great to see stores packed full of bookish people. I hope the booksellers are recovered. 

I also took advantage of Libro FM's audiobook sale, so my TBR is good for at least a few days. 

End of an Era?

It was an odd year to be a Caps fan. After they exceeded expectations last year, they of course got rewarded with higher expectations, and did not quite live up to them. There's a business adage about under promising and over delivering, and it's because if you say it will be done Friday, but deliver Thursday, people will be pleasantly surprised. They sort of never talk about how next time, they will just subtract a day from whatever you say, that you can only under promise so much, before people expect constant over delivering. 

Each season is of course it's own thing. And then a player or three gets injured. Folks leave in the summer. And the calendar provides a different number of matchups. Plus of course the Olympics meant that the calendar was hard this year. Less breaks, less rest all the way through. 

And, as happens when you are an athlete of a certain age, they started talking about Ovechkin as old, despite the numbers he was putting up. As a person of a certain age, I am aware that age will make itself felt in recovery, in rebound, in speed loss. 

And then at the trade deadline, the Caps traded away two key players. Clearly they were planning for future seasons, not the one we were still playing. And, as Ovie has said in interviews, as a player that's hard. If you have twenty games left to play, but management already thinks you can't win, it's hard to play hard. To risk your body for that. 

I know we are closer to the post-Ovie part of the Caps than not. I hope he gets to finish out however he would like. 

Relative Risk

Wikipedia has an entry on relative Risk that I find fascinating. We all, for very good historical and biological reasons, factor in our own experience when calculating risk. So sure, there's research and evidence, but you also are gonna say, nope, I got food poisoning last time I went there, so never again.

It also means when something happens near you, in a place you visit all the time, you discard it as an outlier. And when the same kind of thing happens somewhere you don't go, you assume you can personally avoid such risk by continuing to not go there. 

It does also mean that when talking with people who live three neighborhoods over, you are sometimes doing different calculations. And you find yourself trying convince them that your calculation is the correct one. 

But of course that's where the relative part comes in. If I have no contrary experience somewhere, the new article or that one time my friend went there, seems more objective.

And someone else trying to convince me something else seems less credible. But when it's my neighborhood, or one I frequent, I feel more certain of my own experience. But may have more trouble convincing folks who have only seen it on the news. 

Being a Fan

I went to a men's college basketball game earlier this year (My sports superstitions for basketball are basically non-existent unlike other sports.) It reminded me of a story.

I went to a family wedding up in Connecticut. As we arrived at the reception, the person next to me grabbed my arm and said, "Oh my God that's Geno. Look, it's Geno!"

I said, very sincerely, "I don't know who that is l,but I am very excited for you."

"I'm going to talk to him," he said.

"Go for it," I said. 

We later found out that a relative at the wedding, who worked at UConn, had been in conversation with Geno Auriemma who was helping a kid find a spot for their own wedding reception. So relative said, oh you can stop by our family's reception and see if you like the set up. Little did they know they made other guest's day and possibly even year. 

Being a fan of things is fun. Other people being fans of things, even when they are things I am not deeply into, is so much fun. Half the fun of all the "Heated Rivalry" discourse has been watching people go all in, comparing books to show, making fan edits, discussing their favorite scenes.

Being excited about things is great stuff. Being excited about books, or sports, and/or books about sports is so wonderful. 

Be a fan of things. 

Tara Kennedy

Note: If you are reading this outside of your work hours, feel free to hold off response until work hours.