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09 March 2006
Tote That Bookcase, Lift That Box
We'd taken a break from unpacking for the last few days, but I'm off tomorrow, and since I may be home most or all of the day waiting for two repairmen, I wanted to stock bookcases, but these were all piled in one corner of the soon-to-be library, with the book boxes scattered all over the rest of the room and the papasan chair tucked back near the window.

The first thing we did was rearrange James' hobby room. We shifted all the boxes left there to one corner of the room and prepared three areas he can fix up immediately: his desk area, the area under the future spray paint booth, and the big bookcase and tower. (We later moved a smaller bookcase next to the large one. He will stock these with reference books.) Once he finishes, he can move the boxes back across the room and he can assemble the Enetri from Ikea, which will display his built-up models.

Then we went back into the library. Most of the boxes were heavy, so James had to shift them. We put a couple of bookcases out in the hall, then shifted a few to the other side of the room and were able to put up two sets of bookcases and the tower. To get some of the boxes out of the way, we started to fill the two cases: these had space and science books, pet books, and the miscellaneous volumes that defy classification, like Murder Ink and Harlan Ellison's An Edge in My Voice, and biographies.

James then shifted the big boxes full of my bound St. Nicholas magazines in front of these two bookcases and he was able to move the two 84-inch cherry finish bookcases to the opposite wall. Now I can unbox the St. Nicholas volumes tomorrow and set them up in one. Could put all the Christmas and holiday books in the other, although I'd love to have them upstairs.

Maybe in digging around I can find the rest of the media books, which do go upstairs, and the rest of the cookbooks (ditto) and our organizational/housekeeping books (I have a yen to read my Pam Young/Peggy Jones books again).

Something else I can do tomorrow is truck the encyclopedias upstairs. Pidgie's cage sits on a narrow two-shelf unit which holds his seed, extra toys, millet, and all my budgie books. This shelf is on top of a two-shelf bookcase which holds the encyclopedias. The horizontal shelf in this bookcase was pulled out by the movers, even though it was nailed in to give the shelf a little more support (the World Book is heavy <g>). So I need to "offload" the birdcage, remove the budgie paraphenalia, remove the shelf unit, then tip the bookcase forward and nail the shelf back in before I can shelve the encyclopedias.

The World Book has special meaning to me. My parents bought me my first set when I was seven and I bought myself a newer set in the mid-seventies. Mom still had that set in the house when she passed away. When we moved into the old house ten-and-a-half-years ago, she bought our present set as a housewarming present. That's my mom. She always wanted me to have lace curtains and cut crystal, but when it came to a housewarming gift she knew what we'd both like best and bought it for us.