Sunday Salon: Past transgressions

Clearly I can never commit a crime. I don't cover my tracks very well. I have had this e-mail sitting in my in-box for a while now to allow me to laugh at myself. As a little background info, I don't generally lend books. I do lend books to my friend C. because she treats them like I treat them (and she doesn't fuss when I keep her books for appalling amounts of time). A lot of what C. likes to read is YA or vintage middle reader stuff. I have little of the former but a fair bit of the latter and she had fun browsing my shelves and making off with some stuff the last time she was here. Some time later, this is what she sent me:

in your copy of Ben & Me was a receipt. And such a long receipt from a bookstore I have rarely seen! This looked like a receipt from my Vanderbilt Bookstore days, not a B&N, but yet it was from your days at the Little Professor. You spent over $350 AFTER your 30% staff discount on 36 books!! Damn girl! I'm also shocked that sales tax was only 5.75%. And I now have your visa number. (In case you're wondering, this happened on 10/22/96.)

I hope she doesn't throw the receipt out as I'm curious to see what all I bought back then (and most likely still haven't read). Looking at the date she's mentioned, that might have been my very last day of work at Little Professor as I was three months pregnant and terribly, terribly sick with morning sickness. (Do you like how I can rationalize the appallingly large bill even this many years later?) If that wasn't the last day, it certainly was only shortly after that that I quit for good. Boy do I miss that discount! Perhaps the receipt should go in W.'s baby book so he knows what I gave up for him? ;-) Here's hoping I've gotten better at covering my book buying tracks in the ensuing 14 years although I suspect that my shelves might give me away even if the receipts disappear.

Life has sort of ganged up on me this week so it's not been a stellar reading week. Instead it's been a hibernate in bed and eat ice cream kind of week although I did spend time in India and America watching two families both impacted by one daughter. I read about a 25 year old virgin. I lost a job and a fiance with a young chef who then bolted to Italy in order to find what she really wanted out of life. And I eavesdropped on a sister and a husband as they face the idea of the biggest person in their world losing language entirely. Where have you spent your week traveling?