Tag Archives: books

How to Save Your Own Life, in 8 Easy Steps

August 7, 2008 – 12:20 pm

how to save your own lifeThis week I have been doing a job in our business I don’t normally do, packaging book orders. This is normally Deb’s job but she is still in Colorado so I took a stab at it to try not to get to far behind. Looking at each individual book title before it leaves is not something I am familiar with, and although I do know what books we have in our store, some of the titles really crack me up, like this one.

As I was looking for this book, How To Save Your Own Life in Eight Steps, I was truly amazed at how many book titles we have listed that are “how to” books. Are we now a society of “how to’s” as given by someone else, it appears so. I know many of these do have some value to people, but there is a “how to” for everything now.

Just for fun, I decided to pull our “how to” books and list them below. The vast selection of subjects was fascinating to me. Maybe to you as well. This is a partial (yes not total) list of our “how to” titles. I just love skimming the title below.  Looking through the titles tells me I have a vast amount of knowledge just sitting on our shelves to help me, some of these are rather comical, if not all of them.  But, I can see that there is always a how-to book on something, especially when it comes to improving your life in some form or fashion.  I think I will stick with the one how-to book I know doesn’t have some kind of bias or ulterior motive of some kind (not that any of these below do that).

How To… Do Just About Anything

How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes [Hardcover] by…
How not to worry about the love life of spiders by Tucker, Earl
How They Chose the Dead: Stories by Summers, Hollis Spurgeon
How to Arrange Seasonal Florals If You Think You Can’t …
How to be Blessable by Pat Robertson DVD
How to Be Happily Retired by Waitley, Denis; Seyfer, Eudora
How to Be Sure You are a Christian Transferable Concept 1…
How to Build Walks, Walls & Patio Floors [Paperback] by…
How to Deal With Difficult People by Braunstein, B.
How to Defend Yourself Without Even Trying by Terry Chitwood
How to do Christmas Florals if You Think You Can’t [Hardcover]…
How to Draw and Paint Characters (Clowns & Characters 62)…
How To Earn $50,000+ A Year With Your Home Computer:…
How to get a job with the Post Office: Clerk-carrier, mail…
How to Get Angry Without Feeling Guilty by Bry, Adelaide
How to Get Lost and Found in Japan (How to Get Lost &…
How to Get Out of Debt (One Hour Guides) by Thomsett…
How to Handle Grief Tracks of a Fellow Struggler by Claypool…
How to Install Paneling, Valances, Cornices, Wall-To-Wall…
How to Install Protective Alarm Devices [Paperback] by…
How to Make Love to a Man [Mass Market Paperback] by…
How to Make Love to a Woman [Hardcover] by Morgenstern…
How to Make Money in Mail-Order by Wilbur, L. Perry
How to Make Someone’s Day: 365 Ways to Show You Care…
How to make your life work;: Or, Why aren’t you happy?…
How to Make Your Own Fishing Rods [Paperback] by…
How to negotiate the labor agreement;: An outline…
How to Outsmart Your Allergies [Hardcover] by Ulene…
How to Parent by Dodson, Fitzhugh
How to Play Better Baseball by Jackson, C. Paul
How to Play Winning Bridge [Mass Market Paperback...
How to pray for your children by Prange, Erwin E
How to Prepare for the National Teacher Examinations...
How to Prosper During the Hard Times Ahead: A Crash Course...
How to Read a Play [Paperback] by
How to Reconcile a Marriage/Audio Cassette by Dobson, James
How to run a meeting by Hegarty, Edward J
How to Run a School Newspaper by Goldberg, Enid A.
How To Stay Alive And Well In The Fast Food Lane…
How to stay union free by Jackson, Gordon E
How to Succeed as an Independent Consultant by Holtz…
How to Succeed on Your Own: Overcoming the Emotional…
How to Survive Acls! (Books) by Doernbach, David P.
How to Talk So People Will Listen by Brown, Steve…
How to tell fortunes with Cards [Hardcover] by Brown…
How to think straight about psychology by Stanovich…
How to Turn Failure Into Success by Sherman, Harold
How to Turn Your Faith Loose [Paperback] by…
How to Use Shepard’s Citations [Paperback] by
How to Win Over Depression [Hardcover] by Tim Lahaye
How to Win Over Worry: A Practical Formula for Successful …
How to write a hit song and sell it by Bruce, Robert
How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper by Day, Robert A.
How to write irresistible query letters (Writer’s basic books…

The Biggest and Best How To Book Ever

One of my favorites is How not to worry about the love life of spiders by Tucker, Earl, I had to actually take that one off the shelf and flip through it.

Anyone who knows this blog, knows where this is going. Most of us already have the biggest and best “how to” book, the Bible, but I do think their are books of interest other than just the Bible. The Bible is our book of authority, history, stories of life, instruction, and a how to of life, and it could even be called a book on “how someone else can save your own life“.

The book title caught my attention because it was a book on how to save your own life. I suddenly had a glimpse into the person who purchased this book, and wondered what they would learn or take out of the steps outlined in this title.

What is Your Favorite How To?

So, which one on the list above is your favorite? There is something for just about everyone.

What other “how to” books have you come across, which ones do you like? I am not a big “how to” person, even less of one that wants to read about it, but I am curious, so I flip (usually back to front) through many how to titles. What about you?

By damascus | Posted in Faith | Also tagged bible, culture, how to, saved | Comments (0)

Boxes and Boxes of Books for Amazon and Charity

May 2, 2008 – 6:30 pm

Friday was a book moving box lifting day. Today was order day and we processed and packed up all our current orders to ship out. This includes moving all the boxes to the car and then taking a visit to our book warehouse to lift more boxes of books, which is the photo shown here.  We usually collect all new books, clean them up, organize, and then stock them on the shelves both here at our business and here.  Today was hot, and required a lot of heavy lifting.  It is quite a work out to move 50-60 pound boxes every day for a good part of the day, but it also gets very tiring physically.

boxes of books

I took this quick image with my phone on our way out, these will be left for another day. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particular blog, one of our Internet businesses is dealing in books. Deborah and I have sold books on Amazon for quite a while now and part of our daily routine is a lot of heavy lifting of boxes and boxes of books. It can be quite exhausting being that both our offices are up one full flight of stairs and each and every single book has to make its way up, then down.

Everything Else

Some new music did arrive today from my trading buddies over at LaLa. On this list for today was Robbie Williams, The Ego Has Landed (which arrived broken in half), and The Bravery with their self titled album. It was an exhausting day and I am looking forward to the weekend where there should be plenty of grass to cut.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged orders, work | Comments (0)

Lifting Books for Amazon and Some Clear Cut Logging

April 16, 2008 – 6:26 pm

It finally warmed up a little bit, just in time for me to do some heavy hauling. What I felt like I did all day was carry boxes up and down the stairs, that’s about it.  It is a real workout to carry 50-70 pound boxes of books up and down a full flight of stairs all day, but that is what the work requires right now.  My legs have grown much stronger (and more tired).

A Day for Boxes and Books

Today was a day for moving boxes and books. We finally picked up our last load of book/boxes and did not have the energy last night to bring them into the house. So, after going through my daily email and minor work items (and some food) it was off to unload the trailer. Probably about 1000 pounds in total, which I brought up our flight of stairs to fill the landing area, the last bare spot in the house.

Boxes and Books and more Boxes

The house is now completely full of boxes of books. Probably over a years worth of boxes to go through and list, sort, sell, shelve, and so on. It was a great blessing to receive such a large supply but also an eye sore that will be with us for a while now. Deb can only go through and list about 50 books in a day, twice a week, it is just a very time consuming thing to do. The other days we have to package and ship said books that have sold. At least as far as inventory goes, we are greatly blessed.

Images Transfer Continues and Blogging

I am still trying to transfer over all my stored images on disc, to my large HDD. I can only do a few a day but I am cranking through them when I have time. I have about 75-100 CD/DVD’s in total, which is I guess about 250 GB’s of images to be moved over. I started working on the blog for my mother in-law, Georgia, which is where this journal blog got its start. I posted the first journal entry, Sunday, June 2, 1991, which should go through 3-4 years of posts, if I can keep up with it. I doing one journal entry per post, when I get a chance. Suddenly I have way more things to do than I have time to do.

A day I was finally able to get in a full walk about. I got in a full hour of walking at about 5 miles (and a little hoops as well). My daily walk, once around the beautiful trees of green now has the view below. I think they are finished clearing this one area, must be, not much left. They are supposed to replant at some point.

Logging for the Mill

There is Work To Do Too

Of course, my daily routine of work items continues each day. This varies from day to day but I finished up some consulting work and hopefully will start to bid on some projects on Elance.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged music, nature, trees, work | Comments (0)

We Are Officially Amazon Book Sellers Now that We Have Inventory

August 17, 2007 – 4:09 pm

We have been slowly wading through the books and posting them for sale. Problem is that when you list them for sale you have to house them somewhere until they sell. Here is our temporary solution. Yes, free postal supplies come in handy for more than just shipping. We really could have used a two car garage.

Bookshelves

Bookshelves

At some point we will have to get an outside building or unit for the book inventory or keep the books held in inventory at this level. There just isn’t any more room anywhere but for now this will work. The bookshelves seem to be a little wobbly but we have them tied off in several areas. So I am not sure if this is what a typical amazon seller looks like, I don’t recall seeing photos of any of our fellow amazon sellers on their own blogs, but this is what this amazon seller looks like.

The sorting order was something we worked on for a while and have not come to any great conclusion as to what is best and easiest for pulling.  Right now they are all in alphabetical order by title (which isn’t easy at all with books that have multiple titles).  This may change as we move along but I hate changing the pulling order after the fact, it just takes a long time.

By tiger | Posted in Business | Also tagged amazon, work | Comments (0)

We Now Have a House Filled With Nothing But Books

April 25, 2007 – 9:09 pm

There is a history to that statement. You see, in any of our business enterprises we have undertaken my mother and dad have always been there to help as, jokingly, free labor. Mom has always learned how to do tasks associated with the business and dad has made many of the products we have sold. When we had the quilting business and traveled the country my parents would meet us in their motor home and help us work the shows, as well as make the products we sold. We moved into the bead business and mom was there to help count all those little packages of beads. We have moved on again into the book business I really haven’t given much thought to what their roles would be now.

That is until last week. After we had the pallets of books delivered to us (previous post) we began preparing to leave last Friday on a trip to Florida to look at a sail boat. On Thursday afternoon we collected another donation of about the same amount of books that we had received earlier in the week. The books were delivered to our driveway and when we got home around 6pm we had to move them all into the house before we could pack for the trip. AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

From the photos below you can see why I want my mommy!!

THERE ARE BOOKS EVERYWHERE

book1.jpg

book2.jpg

book3.jpg

book4.jpg

book5.jpg

By tiger | Posted in Business, House | Also tagged inventory, work | Comments (0)

Anyone need a book? We Recieve a Huge Book Delivery Today

April 15, 2007 – 7:20 pm

We had 8 of these pallets of books donated to us today. Man do we have our work cut out for us now. There are boxes of books all over the house. We are so grateful for our blessings.

harvest1.jpg

By tiger | Posted in Business | Also tagged Delivery, inventory | Comments (1)

We Decided to Go Book Hunting in Miami Florida

February 25, 2007 – 9:03 am

To celebrate St. Valentines day this year we combined business with pleasure, as usual, and took a much needed escape (I mean trip) to Miami. We found a book distributor (NOT - more about this later) in Ft. Lauderdale who sold books by the pallet. We decided to go down and check them out to see if the books were worth our time. On the way down we stayed in Orlando and went to Universal Studios for dinner. We didn’t care much about going to the theme parks, but just outside the entrance to the theme park is the Universal Studios Mall. It is an open air mall with about 20+ restaurants. The largest two resturants there, in size and name, are the Hard Rock Cafe and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, where we ate. The atmosphere at Margaritaville was fun and of course laid back. They had a solo guitarist who was loads of fun with his crowd interaction. After dinner we decided to go play a round of putt-putt at a course across the street from our hotel. I won the putt-putt game, even after landing in the ruff, but Scott beat me at the air hockey table in the game room afterward. These first photos were taken with a cell phone so the size is pretty small.


Hard Rock Universal Studios


Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Universal Studios


Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Universal Studios


My expert golfing landed me here.


The Nascar Budweiser Car at Universal Studios

On To Ft Lauderdale to the Book Distributor

The next day we headed for Ft. Lauderdale and the so called book distributor. I say “so called” because we were expecting a warehouse with stacked pallets of books and what was actually there when we arrived was a 30′ x 100′ “warehouse” full of mostly made in Taiwan items. He had books in the back of the unit, but most had either fallen off their pallets, been crushed, or been subjected to so much humidity they were coated with mildew. We opted out of taking a pallet home and decided to continue looking elsewhere. This meant that the utility trailer that we had taken with us to bring back a pallet was still empty and that we now had room to take home a few plants from the wholesale nurseries in Miami. Yipee!!

Miami was packed with traffic congestion everywhere we went, but we managed to make it to the hotel and to dinner on South Beach. The water and sand was wonderful, but we have ruled this out as one of our spots to frequent because of the shear number of non-tourist people everywhere.


Beats the 40 degrees back home!!


The Hotel


Scott on the beach outside our hotel.


The temp may be 84, but the water is still cold!!


Walking with sand between your toes, what could be better?


Cleveland’s Miami Beach

We took the Hwy 997 route back home where we picked up some fabulous plants for our new house and a Key Lime tree just for the fun of it. Across the Everglades and up through Sarasota. The weather was changing as we were on our way back up north. The wind picked up and the temprature dropped from a cold front that was blowing through. We went to the beach anyway. Our last evening we ate at Boston Market (one of my favorite places) and stayed at a Comfort Inn Suites in Ocala that had been open about 2 weeks. It was probably the nicest, cleanest, and best smelling hotel we have ever stayed in. Then it was back to the house and back to searching for more suppliers for books.


Bird on Sarasota Beach


Me, cold again….

By tiger | Posted in Travel | Also tagged beach, florida, miami | Comments (1)

Book Sales on Amazon are Picking Up

December 16, 2004 – 8:01 pm

My third book in a week just sold off of Amazon’s marketplace. I can’t believe I am able to sell these books this way. It is great knowing that someone is going to get use out of these great quilting books that I never had the time or inclination to use. The money for these books is going into the boat fund.

Just got back from helping mom put up the Christmas tree. It came from their new property. It looked pretty sparse when she and David set it up, however after we finished decorating it it looks pretty good. Kinda reminds me of the Charlie Brown Christmas story.

Scott and I are going to meet dad tomorrow for dancing at Red River club in Dallas. It sounds like a nice place, but I would prefer to go to the Czech club on military parkway which is a non-smoking facility that has Czech music and country dancing too.

By dk | Posted in Business | Also tagged amazon | Comments (0)