overtime; The Art of War, military history, etc.

PM's car was being repaired today, and things turned out to be more complicated than expected, so I ended up closing in her place. Both BW and MS were very kind and stayed a bit late in their own shifts to make sure we got all the two-person stuff done (i.e., things that take more than a minute or so in the back room, and consequently require a second person out front to mind the counter and keep an eye on the customers).

And then, typically, it was utterly dead after about 6pm. Which left me enough time to finish all the rest of the daily list, put up the book order, check for duplicate magazines (we always get duplicates when new ones come in, because there are no hard and fast rules on where any given magazine is shelved), and do half of this week's inventory counting. Plus I snipped useful articles from a convenience store trade magazine for PM to review, because I am occasionally efficient like that. :-)

---------------

In other walks of life, I am currently reading The Art of War, which is one of those things I'd always meant to read but never got around to actually reading, beyond a few excerpts in a military history class several years ago.

(That class, btw, was like a textbook example in some sociological study. It had about 70 students. We started with a 1:6 female to male ratio -- eleven or twelve girls -- and dropped to almost a 1:8 ratio by the second or third week. It baffled me; military history is fascinating, and when you do it right, it's about so much more than names and dates and blood. But apparently a heavy gender bias remains in the field.)

Anyway, this edition/translation/compilation/whatever of The Art of War includes pieces of various traditional Chinese commentaries, as well as some useful introductions to explain the historical situation in which and for which it was written, as well as some of the ways it's been incorporated into Chinese culture over the past... 2300-2400 years now, assuming it was written sometime between 400 and 300 BC.

Wow. I hadn't flipped the dates that way in my head yet. Two thousand three hundred years. That is one old book.

Astonishingly modern in many ways, too. Which is either fascinating, or depressing, or maybe both, depending on how it affects one's view of human nature and the concept of social progress.

overtime; The Art of War, military history, etc.

PM's car was being repaired today, and things turned out to be more complicated than expected, so I ended up closing in her place. Both BW and MS were very kind and stayed a bit late in their own shifts to make sure we got all the two-person stuff done (i.e., things that take more than a minute or so in the back room, and consequently require a second person out front to mind the counter and keep an eye on the customers).

And then, typically, it was utterly dead after about 6pm. Which left me enough time to finish all the rest of the daily list, put up the book order, check for duplicate magazines (we always get duplicates when new ones come in, because there are no hard and fast rules on where any given magazine is shelved), and do half of this week's inventory counting. Plus I snipped useful articles from a convenience store trade magazine for PM to review, because I am occasionally efficient like that. :-)

---------------

In other walks of life, I am currently reading The Art of War, which is one of those things I'd always meant to read but never got around to actually reading, beyond a few excerpts in a military history class several years ago.

(That class, btw, was like a textbook example in some sociological study. It had about 70 students. We started with a 1:6 female to male ratio -- eleven or twelve girls -- and dropped to almost a 1:8 ratio by the second or third week. It baffled me; military history is fascinating, and when you do it right, it's about so much more than names and dates and blood. But apparently a heavy gender bias remains in the field.)

Anyway, this edition/translation/compilation/whatever of The Art of War includes pieces of various traditional Chinese commentaries, as well as some useful introductions to explain the historical situation in which and for which it was written, as well as some of the ways it's been incorporated into Chinese culture over the past... 2300-2400 years now, assuming it was written sometime between 400 and 300 BC.

Wow. I hadn't flipped the dates that way in my head yet. Two thousand three hundred years. That is one old book.

Astonishingly modern in many ways, too. Which is either fascinating, or depressing, or maybe both, depending on how it affects one's view of human nature and the concept of social progress.