why do I have so many damn books?

It's taken a few days, but in working little by little, I've gotten all the books in my living-room library boxed up. The empty shelves have been dusted and are ready to be carted over to my office; I'll be donating as many shelves as I can to YB, so as to minimize the number of shelves I need to store.

I divided my apartment into eighteen zones, photographing each one with my gazillion-megapixel digicam; the living room, with its many tall bookshelves, contains the first eight. Zone 9 is the kitchen, which will require a good bit of time to break down and box up; successive zones include the guest bedroom, the two bathrooms, and areas within the master bedroom such as the bed, the dresser, the nightstand, the computer table, and the walk-in closet. Some of these zones are small and will be easy to tackle; others are humongous and might take more than a day to handle. I plan to be done with all the boxing by this coming Friday, which is when my buddy Steve will be coming over. Alas for Steve, the bunk bed will have been disassembled, so he's going to have little more than a mattress on the floor.

I got through seven zones today. If I can proceed at a rate of about five or six zones per day, I might even be done with all the boxing (and bookshelf-shipping) by Wednesday or Thursday. Steve comes over Friday; Mike (plus his family) and David (plus his wife) will be coming over on Saturday, and all of us together will be performing The Big Move. By Saturday night, my place ought to be nearly empty, with only a few items left over to take to public storage, and the bags I'll be taking with me on my flight.


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