Shipping 500 Books

After about six months of having 500 copies of a book in boxes along the wall behind my desk, today I actually got clearance to ship them out.

They'd been destined for shipping the entire time, but the author they belonged to hadn't been able to pay for the shipping costs. So they stayed in their boxes behind my desk.

I had gradually come to use them as a shelf. I had other books stacked on them. I put my coat on them when I came into the office in the morning. I had come to assume they would never be leaving.

And then the author actually got in touch and gave me a credit card number - which declined - and then a new one, with a different billing address, which actually went through.

So I spent this afternoon re-packaging 500 books and labelling the boxes for shipping. A courier picked up 250 of them at about 3:30. UPS picked up the other 250 just before 5.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow when I get in and don't have anywhere to put my coat.