I didn’t mention on Thursday and Friday about real estate worries. Early in the week I got a property tax bill from Santa Clara County for the 2340 Tasso house. Not sure what to do with that. I used the SCC.gov website to inquire: hey guys, I sold this property 27 August and the escrow included a prorated tax payment, what up? They replied that yes, they would send out a new bill to the new owners “in November”. Since the bill is delinquent early in December, I worried on behalf of the new owners, so I wrote to Chuck.
He replied saying I didn’t need to do anything, they’d be fine; but oh by the way, he was getting phone calls from Davey Tree service about an unpaid bill. Eh? I knew I had the invoice for that in my 2340 Sale folder; surely I’d paid it. I look for that amount in the online statements for my two checking accounts. Nope! So I called Davey. Nice phone lady agreed, nope, that had never been paid. Apologized, and mailed a check that day, Friday I think.
Saturday, 10/19/2019
For the first time in maybe years, I slept past 7am. What up, body? Had breakfast in the dining room, and about 9am went to FOPAL, figuring by now there would be some books backed up for the computer section. Indeed there were, six boxes. But also, when I got there, I realized that I had forgotten to do the post-sale inventory. That’s where I go through all the unsold books still on the shelf, and decide for each, whether to leave the price as-is for another month, lower the price, or give up and consign the book to the Bargain Room. I could have done a post-sale count as well, but since my stand-in had not done a pre-sale count, there’d have been no point. Anyway that takes an hour. Then culling the waiting boxes, and pricing and shelving the keepers, takes another two hours, then I did an hour of sorting, before coming home with a glow of accomplishment.
Later in the day I spent an hour implementing an idea I’d had last week. Each time a donor comes in to drop off books, they may or may not request a receipt, and they may or may not ask about sale dates in which case we give them a bookmark with sale dates on it. But they never get anything that would encourage them to volunteer. FOPAL runs on volunteers and always needs more; and that point of contact it seems to me, is the ideal time to try to recruit. So I made up a one-page flier headed “What happens to my books now,” outlining the process, with nice pictures, emphasizing the scope (40,000 books a month! $125,000 a year to the library!) and that it’s all done by volunteers, and you could be one, too!
I thought it was pretty good, so I sent it off to Janette (the one paid staff person who runs the whole zoo). We’ll see if she likes it.
Codgerville 