Of course you do. It has probably haunted your nightmares.
Those pictures don't even begin to do it justice, though. They were taken very soon after we finished remodeling. In the couple years since then, more and more stuff found its way into that room until it was stuffed full like a hoarders paradise. I didn't take a picture of that. Why would I take a picture of that? It was the room I liked to pretend didn't exist. Only problem: it is the first one you see when you walk in the front door.
But finally we decided to do something about it. So we got bought some used shelves, and got some cabinets from the Restore and made this:
I tell you what. Trim is kind of a magical thing.
Then we had to get all the stuff out of there and paint the shelves. Which brings us to this:
Yeah. We didn't quite manage to get all the stuff out of there. There is also a very large stack of (cough-Richard's!) stuff in the front hall. We've gotta finish the shed before that stuff has a home, so stop obsessing over it already.
So back to the shelves.
They are pretty.
They are also full of books, for those of you who have trouble interpreting things you see in pictures.
Most of our books had been in boxes for over 15 years. They've been in boxes ever since we moved into this house, just waiting for this day. When we built the shelf we worried that we wouldn't have enough books to fill it, but we ended up with way more books that space. We got rid of several boxes full. And now we are forced to really only keep the ones we love.
I'm not sure all of these books qualify, which actually brings me to my point.
I wanna talk about my books.
So here is what I'm gonna do. Go through the shelf. One book at a time (or maybe a series at a time, cuz who cares?) and tell you how I feel about it. It's gonna be fun. For me. I don't know if it is going to be fun for you or not. That's not really up to me.
We discussed several different organization options when we were stuffing the books up there, even tried out a few, but in the end we just shelved them alphabetically by author, with all the genres all mixed up together. Which means the very first book on the very first shelf is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
This is very fitting, because it is one of my favorite series of all time.
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy started as a radio show. (feel free to correct me. I could go look it up to make sure what I'm telling you is true, but I'm way too lazy at the moment.) Then Douglas Adams wrote the book, and then it became a miniseries on the BBC. That is where I was first introduced to it as a kid. He kept writing until there was a trilogy, and then wrote a few more. They call it a trilogy in five parts.
I was reading one of the later books in the series on the couch in my parent's living room. Arthur Dent was trapped on some alien planet, where he had stuck a chicken bone in his beard. Another alien landed on the planet whose soul purpose in life was to insult every being in existence. He walked up to Arthur Dent and said, "You're a jerk, Dent. A real knee-biter." And then he climbed back aboard his spaceship and sailed away.
The whole scene was so hilarious to me I was laughing my head off. I lay back on the couch, so overcome with mirth, that I kicked my feet in the air.
Have you ever read a book that made you laugh so hard you kicked your feet in the air? I may have forgotten lots of stuff about the story, but the joy of that moment is cemented in my head forever.
So thank you, Douglas Adams. I guess that is all I've got to say. Elesa out.
