Black Friday bookstore

I do most of my Christmas shopping at the Mall of My iPad — open 24 hours, no traffic, no lines, no parking, no other people.

However, my mother-in-law likes to go with my wife the day after Thanksgiving, so my father-in-law and I joined in for the trip to the shopping plaza near their home in Connecticut.

They went off and did their thing; I hung out at the bookstore, mostly adding to my own list.

Somebody might be getting the calendar of his favorite baseball team that he gets every year (Aroldis Chapman is over my right shoulder as I type this), but the store didn’t have it in stock.

But I thought it was funny to see this calendar not long after reading a post about both “adulting” and its use as a verb in Sunshine With Savannah.

My husband and I use it pretty frequently, usually paired with long sighs, venting sessions, and moments of existential dread.

All young adults have to come to terms with their changing roles. We go from students to active members of society. We transition very quickly, moving from a classroom to a cubicle in a blink of a Lasik-needing eye.

Sometimes, we’re just not prepared for what we have to deal with. We’ve all joked about learning more about the mitochondria (it’s the powerhouse of the cell) than taxes in high school, and suddenly you go from using the free university health center to figuring out if your insurance covers this visit to the doctor.

I’m old enough to be her father, so I’ve done most of these, although I need to be better not so much at dealing with trolls online, but not wandering into arguments that I know aren’t going to go anywhere no matter how right I am (and of course I’m always right).

Fortunately, it’s almost always about sports.

I admit, all the typing I do has pretty much left my handwriting a disaster. I mostly scribble notes for work, and that’s half-printing combined with looping some of the letters together just because it’s convenient — basically a lazy man’s cursive.

However, I try to make my name somewhat legible. Then again, my autograph is pretty much only in demand if I’m using my credit card, so I’m not signing dozens to hundreds of books in a short time.

Any guesses as to who belongs to the signature above? The answer will be at the bottom of this post.

Years ago, I worked with Kelly Anne Chase. I am immensely proud to be able to say I “knew her when.”

Spend enough time in a bookstore, and sometimes you get an almost-operatic version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and sometimes you get a song from the “Mamma Mia” soundtrack.

I can be a traditionalist in some ways, but I’ll never get why records have become a thing again.

It doesn’t sound as good, even though some people I know swear that it sounds better, and isn’t as convenient.

Sounds like a plan!

Lists are being exchanged, and I’ll start shopping soon enough. The proper Christmas season has begun.

My wife and mother-in-law eventually came to claim my wife’s father and me, and after lunch, my wife and I were off to New York to visit my parents, their cat who couldn’t even muster up some decent hatred, my brother and the rest of the family members who came to the annual post-Thanksgiving dinner.

Lists are being exchanged, and I’ll start shopping soon enough. The proper Christmas season has begun.

So, have any guesses about the author whose signature is above?

Here you go.

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