Boxes of Books

So, in my living room, I have 8*5*3=120 boxes of books right now.  It's a large living room, there's a lot of space left over.  Moving them from the garage freed up a bunch of space for more stuff from Portland. OK, 15 or 16 of those boxes are fiction magazines, mainly science fiction. And then an additional 15 boxes of magazines, mainly woodworking journals.  Then four boxes of DVDs and VHS tapes.

Mind, those boxes are right where the stereo equipment wants to go; this isn't a long term storage solution, I need to put up shelving and debox this stuff.  And there's a bunch more boxes of books still in the basement in Portland, waiting to move north.  But my underlying philosophy of life is simple: walls are a place to put shelving for books.  My reality is that I may not have enough walls.  I might actually find myself having to weed the collection, something I hadn't done previously because, well, due to various incidents many of my books had been in boxes for a while and couldn't be gone through.  And the whole weeding criteria of do I see myself seriously needing access to this book in the future, and if so, could I reasonably do so without owning a copy?  I've got a lot of books where the answer to the second question is no, I couldn't obtain access to it if I didn't own it; lots of SF and Fantasy novels have only been published in paperback, and libraries don't have copies of them anymore.  The same holds true for genre romance fiction.

Then there are the works for which there are electronic versions running around.  And there the question is how is access controlled, and can one download replacement copies if you've had a disk crash?  How stable is the economic outlook for the company controlling access to the electronic versions; will they still be around if I needed to redownload?  Borders went out of business, after all; mind, part of why they went out of business was that they hadn't latched onto electronic media to the extent that Barnes & Noble has, but there are lots of people out there who don't utilize electronic media, Borders just hadn't diversified enough to weather the current depression when book sales took a dive, unlike Barnes & Noble which has added a great many things to their market presence, and we won't talk about how thoroughly diversified Amazon is.

But I wander a bit astray from kvetching and kvelling about how many books I have.  The reality is that I don't have as much space as I had in Portland. I have less storage space all around, even given the huge garage; after all, the garage is supposed to become a shop.  So at the least I'll be making decisions about what goes on open shelves, and what stays in boxes, and how I keep track of what is where.

That's enough for now.

Weeding!

Talk about weeding!  Tacoma provides an absolutely ginormous yard debris container, and I'm already 3/4 full and still working on the front yard.  Like, lots of weeds.  But most are this type with really strong tap roots, so over 90% of the weeds I pull have all the roots removed, so there'll be very little repeat weeding, which is nice.  I kinda like this weed, given the roots pulling so cleanly.  I should take photos and post them, shouldn't I?  My weeder is a tool that Lee Valley sells as Grampa's Weeder; mine isn't Lee Valley's edition, mine is indeed Grampa's weeder, as in a family heirloom from when it was first sold; my sister, however, has Lee Valley's version, and having used both, I can safely say that the Lee Valley edition works just as well as the old Simplex edition that I have.  Garrett Wade also sells this weeder, as Grandpa's Weeder.  Both sources sell for the same base price, $27.50, although Garrett Wade has a sale on sets of two. So unless one has a preference of stores, I suppose shipping and handling would determine who to buy from.

Well, I've officially, and really, moved. I now live in Tacoma, Washington State. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, organizing stuff, especially so that the remaining stuff from Portland has space to move up here. Of course, most of my tools are still in Portland, so I'll be borrowing some tools from Karen for the nonce.

It only took 11+ months to get this far along the way in my moving. The hope is that we'll be able to hire the rest of the move.  I'll be needing to work on organizing things in the house to clear space in the garage for the remaining stuff;

Anyway, just thought I'd post that I've moved.  Next week will be busy, dealing with various governmental agencies that I couldn't deal with before the move, to establish food stamps, driver's license, voter's registration, library card, etc.; all the fun things in life.  And I get to deal with pumping my own gas again (Oregon doesn't allow people to pump their own gas, unlike most states.)

It's bed time, so I'll be saying good night.  Oh, almost forgot, I've already started on the massive weeding project that is my yard, both front and back. And then the Ivy control project.  Since the Ivy comes from next door, it can only be control, not eradication.

Didn't I say something about going to bed?

Well, it's been 11 months since I bought a home in Tacoma, Washington
State, and I'm finally moving. We did the first moving expedition Mother's Day weekend, and the second foray into moving is scheduled for June 16th and 17th, Father's Day weekend. I suppose I should look up Children's Day to see if this is a trend or not...

This won't be everything moved, there will still be quite a bit in the basement awaiting moving, but I'll be out of the apartment and residing in Tacoma.

Oh, and how about a current photo, taken today, showing what I currently look like? And on the weight loss regimen, I'm now down to 170lbs, all thanks to diet (changing what I'm eating, and how much I'm eating, in a very healthy fashion.)