posted 2008/07/09 at 23:50
This past weekend I picked up a CD/DVD rack from Best Buy. Mind you, I haven't exactly been buying that many CDs or DVDs (or even video games) lately, but I have bought so many books that I needed to repurpose one of my DVD towers for books. I put the storage rack together over the weekend, and it was a huge hassle because the directions weren't all that clear; I had to put several of the supports on three different times before I got them assembled in the correct order. It was only after I got the storage rack put together that the real fun began, though, because I had to move my big heavy bookcase about six feet to make room for the new storage rack. This required unloading the whole bookcase first, moving all the books into my sister and brother-in-law's old bedroom, and then moving the bookcase and loading it right back up. After that, I was finally able to move the new rack in here and get it fully loaded up, something I didn't manage to finish until late this afternoon. I had some more rearranging to do after that, and I still have a large pile on unsorted papers and other items in front of my television, but for now I finally have all my media organized the way I want it, and I have room for it to grow once more.
My big bookcase, which had been behind me at my workstation here, is now just off to my right, and I literally had less than an inch of space to fit it in between the wall and the windowsill, but it's here now. The shelves, particularly the top ones, are starting to sag, and I know that I've probably got twice as much weight on those shelves than what they're rated for, but I still want to keep this bookcase if I possibly can. Not only is it a good fit, but it's made by Sauder, and Sauder is one of the few local companies that produces stuff that I like. (I don't know if Sauder products are marketed outside of the Toledo area, but they make good-quality, inexpensive furniture and storage solutions.) I'm starting to have so many "big" books, though, that I may eventually need to buy a second big bookcase to house them, and I don't have the space for a second bookcase in this room. I could always put an extra bookcase in the loft or the vacant bedroom, but I don't feel comfortable having my books and other stuff in another room like that.
The other big development that came from this most recent rearrangement of my stuff is that I've finally given up on finding spare plastic cases for my old Nintendo games, and I'm just shelving the cartridges by themselves. (I have a small "library" of manuals in the new storage unit.) I had tried forever to find those old clear plastic cases like they used to put the games in at video rental places, because I thought they looked good and did a better job of protecting games than the sleeves Nintendo packaged the games in. Let's face facts, though; what kind of luck was I going to have trying to find standard-issue plastic cases for NES games in 2008? Finding these empty cases was hardly my life's work for the past few years, but it was something I kept trying every so often for the past several years. Rather than continuing to fight that battle, I just took the games out of the plastic cases, and now they're by themselves on my new storage rack (and taking up a lot less space, too). I guess now I just need to find someone else desperate for these old plastic cases and see how much money I can get for them.
Labels: books, dvds, personal, toledo, videogames
posted 2007/11/12 at 21:15
Several months ago it was hard not to notice just how many piles of entertainment media I had in my room. These piles had started accumulating a little over a year ago as my time just got completely sapped up with finishing my MA, but even after graduating I noticed that the piles just kept getting bigger and bigger. It wasn't that I didn't have free time, but I lacked the initiative to go through them for some reason. Granted, in some cases I was kind of dreading that I wouldn't like things as much as I was hoping I would -- particularly new CDs by Björk and Tori Amos -- but a lot of this stuff was stuff that I actually wanted to listen to or see or read, and I just couldn't force myself to go through them. Finally this past summer I did force myself to go through these piles, although I never did get through the DVD pile.
I've been trying to go through the DVD pile a bit at a time here, and a few days ago I finally finished going through the boxed set of Chef! which I'd been watching an episode or two at a time before going to bed. Chef! is one of those great British comedies that appeals to my darker, less nice side, and I hadn't been able to watch it for several years since our local PBS station took it down due to viewer complaints about all the cursing in it. However, I can't say that I was too thrilled to watch the final season, which I hadn't watched before and had heard didn't live up to the expectations set from the previous two seasons. Still, it was something of an accomplishment just for me to get all the way through that set, and now I can only hope that I can start going through the rest of my DVD pile in similar fashion.
That being said, all of a sudden I have a book pile starting again, and it looks like it's only going to get bigger over the next several weeks. I've said before that for someone with two degrees in English, I seemed to play video games a lot more than read books when I was growing up. Now that seems to be changing, though. (Let's forget my dancey games for a moment here, since for me they're more exercise than video gaming.) I've got a lot of books that I really want to get through in my pile, not even counting stuff on my shelves that I've either never read or want to re-read. I just can't seem to find enough time in my days to get through all this stuff, and considering my teaching load is being doubled next semester, I'm starting to wonder just how to make the most efficient use of my time. I'm certainly not doing a good job of it right now.
Labels: books, dvds, entertainment, television
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon