More (Building) Blocks

Hello family, friends and friendlies, the noon hour is approaching!

So, in an effort to respect attention spans, I have broken this long overdue update into building blocks. The FIRST of which can be read here.

I had taken a Wednesday off from Greenlight to chaperon a field day in Prospect Park, then do some Laundry, Reading and Scribbling on Thursday.

Friday, it was back to work, which meant putting books on the FINALLY FINISHED (and finely finished) shelves! I also got to take a stroll around Fort Greene and Clinton Hill to put up fliers announcing the launch party for the store.
It took about two and a half hours to go up Dekalb and down Myrtle, jaunt down Flatbush and then back to Fulton, putting up the hand-printed posters.
When my coworker and I returned, we witnessed the very first sale! A local businessman came in to buy a book about brewing beer right out of the box!

The very next morning, I was trained on the cash register and Greenlight was go.
We had a whole week of a soft-open where we were cash-only and still made plenty of sales. By the time Saturday's launch took place, it felt natural to be open in Fort Greene, and the whole community had welcomed us with a very nice big hug. We've been officially open about a month now, and it's been very positive.

We have a lot of local authors coming in and telling us about their books, lots of community members stepping in to share their praise and thanks.
If the pictures of the crowd at our launch party are any indication, Greenlight has been very warmly received. I mean, it was buckets of cold rain were falling out of the sky, and we were having to turn people away at the door, because we were so packed. I was on sticky-finger patrol, but if anyone had wanted to rip us off, they would have had a hard time getting out the door.

I have been put in charge of receiving at the store, which means I check in all the shipments, count quantities, verify details and put the stock on-hand. It's a nice increase of responsibilities and it's something I like to do.

I'm still interested in other work.

Grad School, for instance. You may recall that I applied for Grad School
(I would link to that entry, but I don't know the HTML for directing a window to open at a specific place on the page, so the reader might be forced to actually read the entire entry on the screen before finding the exact reference.)

Anyways, I have only one out of the two letters of recommendation, the second of which is apparently hinges on a dialogue of one participant. I was short on time, in any case, and money as well. So I opted to pay rent and buy a new I-pod shuffle since the charger for my old one broke, in place of the application fee.
Currently, there is a change jar labeled "APPLICATION FEE", and the History Masters program at CUNY has rolling admission. So, a February deadline and a chance to be exceptional, I'm going to seek out scholarships now and get a competitive age for a bout with the admission process. Ditto FAFSA, which I can submit in January.

Also, there is a Marine-Theme Highschool on Governor's Island, which is basically MAST on the Hudson. They need a bilingual secretary, but Mom's right, I could easily learn Spanish. Time to purchase a Spanish-English dictionary. I can already comprende plenty. I think the easiest thing right now, is to volunteer, perhaps as a crew coach, and get to know the school that way.

Nu, it's time to move the first load down the line and find room for the second and start washing the third.