It seemed like a good idea at the time …

Yet another episode in the tragicomedy of Watch Sam do too much stuff without thinking about the implications.

A week or so ago, Michelle was looking at the dining room after game night and said something like the following.

You do realize that you’ll need to put all the games away at the end of the summer, don’t you? How about if we use the bookshelves in the dining room for all of the big games, and store the remaining ones under the cabinets.

It was an interesting proposal. The bookshelves in the dining room are filled with my science fiction and fantasy collection, and I’ve already filtered that collection at least twice. At the same time, my games were scattered in more than a dozen places [1] and I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place.

And so I made a plan, albeit an incomplete plan. I would box up the too many volumes of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for when I next felt like reading them [3]. I would box up my other science fiction and fantasy anthologies. Those two sets of books are on the second set of shelves in the dining room, and I could move some of the authors I particularly collect [4] to that location, as well as a few others. The bulk of the CS could move to the bookshelves in the second floor hallway. The books on those shelves need to be sorted anyway and I can probably discard some. Of course, I had no idea where the rest would go. But there is that space in the family room and my home office that would be freed by moving the games, plus Michelle said that she might move some of the books she has in the dining room, so ….

This past Saturday, I started the process of rearranging things. I had grabbed a few boxes from work to help transport and store books and other stuff [5]. I figured it would take most of the morning, but that would be about it.

What happened? I mis-measured the shelves on the second floor [6], and there was not enough room for all of the primary collection. But I solved that problem by putting the books two-deep on the shelves. That even allowed me to keep most of my anthologies out. I ended up putting the Fredric Brown and Harlan Ellison collections on top of the bookshelves in my home office [7]. The de Lint books, the Wellmans, the Bissons, and some others [8] went to the wall unit in the dining room. Along the way, I put all of my Howard Zinn books together and discovered that more of them were signed than I had remembered. My favorite is one that he gave me when I got my Ph.D.

All of the square-box games fit on the shelves in the dining room, but they went floor to ceiling. A few others fit into the cabinets that had previously held some of the square box games as well as some other games. I love the wall of games; it will make it much easier to find games when I’m looking for them [9]. I’m less fond of having to put games in cabinets, but it worked well for some of the huge ones, particularly Yacht Race and the League of Legends board game [10].

How long did all of that take? I had predicted that it would take one morning. In reality, it took all of Saturday and half of Sunday. That probably wasn’t the best choice of how to spend a weekend given that classes start in less than three weeks. But, as I said, it’s nice to see all of the big games in one place.

Am I done? Unfortunately, no. I still have to do something with the books from the second floor, which are currently in boxes. I have to decide where to put the box of The Year’s Best … [11]. I have two boxes of games that didn’t fit in the cabinets that I have to decide where to put. I’ve started to move them back to the game cabinet in the family room, but haven’t finished. I wonder when I’ll find time to do the rest of the work. And I have a bunch of small boxes that lived on the upstairs shelves that need to go somewhere, probably under the cabinets in the family room.

It will be nice to get all of that done. Unfortunately, I think it will have to wait until my classes are all prepared, as will alphabetizing the games on the bookshelves and any other tasks that come up along the way.

I hope that some day, the things that seem like good ideas really will be. Oh well, at least I got the subject for a musing and I got to name drop some authors I really like and even one [12] that I know.

[1] Did I make this list already? Oh well, it’s appropriate to write it again. Let’s see … where are the board games? Out in various places in the dining room. In the south cabinet in the dining room. In the all-but-south cabinet in the dining room. In the north cabinet in the dining room. On a table in my home office. On the top of the bookshelves in my home office. Under the desk in my office. On a side table in the family room. On the south bookshelves in the family room. In the cabinet in the south bookshelves in the family room. On the north bookshelves in the family room. In the cabinet in the north bookshelves in the family room. Maybe elsewhere [2].

[2] Yeah, I’m an addict. I’ll muse about the game addiction at some other point.

[3] There’s no reason they should be on display.

[4] Charles de Lint, Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, Manly Wade Wellman, and Terry Bisson ’64

[5] I underestimated the number I needed and had to go back to get more.

[6] More precisely, I correctly measured all of the shelves, but there was about a week between measuring and moving and, in that time, I forgot to do the calculations and somehow convinced myself that the books would fit.

[7] Michelle likes the de Lint novels and had asked me to keep them more accessible.

[8] Lord Dunsany’s The Collected Jorkens, a set of reference volumes on fantasy literature, and some books by Shirley Jackson.

[9] Unfortunately, I still can’t find some, such as two of the expansions to Cosmic Encounter. They must have migrated elsewhere. They also are not square boxes.

[10] Don’t laugh. It’s both huge and awesome to play.

[11] I know, I should give them away. But there are times that it’s nice to have short fiction at hand.

[12] Or two … I also found a book autographed by my godfather (more or less), Salva Luria.

Version 1.0 of 2017-08-08.