An unexpected find

Enough time has passed since my interview a couple of weeks ago to where I can reasonably deduce that I'm not in the running for a job offer. Oh well. I'm pretty happy where I'm at anyway, so it was a no lose situation for me to begin with. Doesn't help that it was one of the crappiest interviews I've ever given. It'd be nice to get some sort of notification that an offer was made to someone else, but there seems to be a rash of spinelessness on campus when it comes to such things. An opportunity gone...maybe another will open up?

Perhaps karma made up for things last Thursday evening. The family and me had a late afternoon appointment that day, so we dined out afterwards rather than risk eating dinner after 7:30 (which just messes up my stomach quite badly). As dinner wrapped up, I suggested a quick stop at a nearby Borders as I wanted to see if a book I had been wanting to read was back in stock. Although it was a school night for our daughter, my wife thought a trip to the bookstore was a good idea, especially given how much our daughter loves to read.

I like Borders because it's reasonably close to work and I can make trips there in the late afternoons when I need to. I'm also very familiar with the layout of the store and where each section/topic can be found. But I must say that I prefer Barnes and Noble and their selection of books. As many times as I've looked, Borders has never carried a Jean Shepherd book, whereas B&N usually has at least two different books in stock by Shepherd.

We arrived at Borders and I headed off for the back corner of the store where the biographies can be found, while my wife and daughter disappeared in the kids section. For Christmas I had put a biography of Jimmy Stewart on my wishlist. Didn't get it. But it was back in stock last Thursday and I grabbed a copy. Around that section of the store are the CDs so I decided to take a look to see what I could find. In particular I was looking for music that I can often find there but not anywhere else. A quick look for the Andrews Sisters was unfruitful, what was in stock already in my collection. Tommy Dorsey? Nope. Les Brown and his band of Reknown? Nothing doing. Glenn Miller? Bingo! The first CD I found was a collection of his better known tunes, but the next one was quite a surprise. It was a two CD set of songs from radio shows sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes from 1939 and 1940 featuring the Andrews Sisters doing the vocals. Up until I saw this set I never knew it existed. I knew I was about to spend more money than I expected to when I walked into the place, but there was no way I was leaving without that CD. Certainly it would be gone if I came back in a few weeks and with my luck of late, I'd never find it online ever.

I left the store with my book and a CD, happy as a kid in a candy store, and raced home to rip the CDs onto my computer so I could listen to them without damaging the original discs. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, after completing my tasks as the Easter Bunny, I sat and watched "The Glenn Miller Story" starring Jimmy Stewart. It never occurred to me until the next morning that the movie tied in both the book and the CDs I purchased just a few nights before.