Daughter of Auntie of St. Louis

One pick-up truck. Four people. One steep flight of basement stairs. Forty six comics long boxes.

Ow.

That, of course, does not count the boxes the day before which we (just two of us this time) hucked up the basement stairs to muggy garage and thence into the packing pod, which the company came and took away two days later. Let’s see, there were 12 comics long boxes full of science fiction paperbacks — which weren’t that heavy, thankfully. There were six short boxes of old comics magazines — those we’re going to sell when we get home, so if you know anyone who’d be interested in late 70s to late 80s comics memorabilia and magazines, have them drop me a line, please! ;)

Continuing with the litany of weights… there were also the shorter and wider office boxes, and we had a doozy of a number of those! There were 18 of them full of game magazines, gaming notes, tabletop gaming books, and personal papers — dear heavens but those were heavy! Then there were another 15 or so which were full of all sorts of wonderful old games: boardgames, table-top games, that sort of thing. Those boxes were pretty light, which was a good thing considering how pooped we were by then. Finally there were various personal effects — old clothing, posters, cookbooks, quilts, and such — and that made up about 12 more boxes of goods. Trudge trudge trudge… I am SO glad that cube is packed and gone now! ;-j

My knees and feet feel truly hammered, and to my surprise so do the pads of my fingers. Paper or cardboard is surprisingly hard on skin. Fortunately we were careful to stay hydrated, and took frequent rest pauses as necessary. Also, there was some lovely cool rain while we were here, and thus the mornings weren’t too muggy when we started. Consequently, while we got hot and (incredibly) sweaty, no one got nauseous or fell over.

Despite my dislike of oppressive heat, however, there are things I really like better about St. Louis. I mean, I live in the Silicon Valley — you’d think there’d be plenty of money available for important things like educating the next generation of happy little computer geeks, or having good libraries, right? However, as an example, my closest library branch — the Cambrian — is open only four days a week. Other library branches are open on the days mine is closed, but what good does that do me if the book I’ve ordered is waiting in the closed branch? There’s a curious lack of “grouping” in the San Jose area too, in that I’ve been told it’s apparently quite difficult to get groups on a common interest started — and once they’re started, it’s apparently an equally difficult struggle to keep the group focused on doing some good rather than simply becoming a chat or lunch club.

So I figured Affton, which on the map is nothing more than a podunk li’l suburb outside St. Louis proper, would have similar issues, right? I mean, that seems reasonable, especially since St. Louis was apparently much harder hit by the recession than San Jose — a lot of the construction and heavy manufacturing jobs have just gone away. So let’s do a comparison here: what are the hours of the closest library branch? I was astonished: 9:00am to 9:00pm Monday through Thursday, 9:00am to 5:00pm on Friday and Saturday, and 1:00pm to 5:00pm on Sunday! What the heck?!

Argh. There is no justice. Or maybe there’s just no decent budgetary oversight in San Jose. I don’t know, but I’m now officially peeved at the San Jose government. Oh, and to add insult to injury? The library is simply teeming with things to do, authors to come listen to, groups that meet there, and classes you can take! Makes me want to start something in San Jose just to say I did! :) Not sure what it would be, though… probably something that I want to learn more about, maybe?

Also, apropos of nothing, really: Woo! Two full weeks of daily postings — yay, me! :)