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A couple Fridays ago, I went to IKEA with a couple friends, to (in my case) get a couple more shelves for my bookshelf. Last Sunday (as I mentioned in the previous post) I spent time rearranging the shelves, but didn't have time to finish properly, and wasn't really happy with the arrangement. Today I pulled all the books down again and rearranged the shelves. I'm happier with it now, but still not quite satisfied. Things aren't quite grouped how I want them, the board games are currently on a high visible shelf when I'd rather have books in that prominent position, and so forth. Books come in all different sizes, and that makes it tricky to maximize the use of space but still group all the books how I want them.
On a whim, I bought a wire rack for holding CDs and DVDs that fits into the shelves, because I thought it was neat and could be useful. One problem is, if I fit it into my existing bookshelves, I lose shelf space that I need for random things like the board games. Another problem is that my CDs and DVDs are all already shelved in my living room. Now, the CD shelves are just about full, but there's still a lot of unused shelf space on the video side. Also, although I don't actually need to keep the CDs in the living room, as the CD player doesn't work anyhow and all the CDs have been loaded into iTunes on my Mac, I still feel like they belong in the "media center" instead of on the bookshelf in my bedroom. So it seems as if I have no use for this media rack, but I don't want to return it, I want to find a use for it.
Trying to figure out what to do with the media rack got me thinking about rearranging the media center entirely. I could buy a new set of shelf sides that the media rack fits into, buy several more media racks and create a media shelf unit, and put that over next to the TV cart. Then the current side shelves of the media center could be moved into my hallway, where I have a corner space that I've wanted to put shelves in for a while. Of course, I really don't have a need for all that much extra shelving right now, I'd just have a lot of empty shelves. But it is very tempting.
On another note, among the books I pulled down and reshelved were three by Edward Tufte, who is a Yale professor of statistics and information/interface design. That reminded me of the most recent woman to contact me through Salon (as I mentioned in this entry). My profile at the time listed Tufte's book Visual Explanations in the "last great book I read" section. Her message had as its subject, "Hey, I have that Edward Tufte book too," and the message's first line was "I love that book." It struck me again how unexpected it was to make a connection with someone because I listed a fairly obscure book in that section. I'm still surprised and disappointed that she ignored both of my replies, but the important thing to hold on to is that she did contact me because of mutual interests. There are others out there.
On a whim, I bought a wire rack for holding CDs and DVDs that fits into the shelves, because I thought it was neat and could be useful. One problem is, if I fit it into my existing bookshelves, I lose shelf space that I need for random things like the board games. Another problem is that my CDs and DVDs are all already shelved in my living room. Now, the CD shelves are just about full, but there's still a lot of unused shelf space on the video side. Also, although I don't actually need to keep the CDs in the living room, as the CD player doesn't work anyhow and all the CDs have been loaded into iTunes on my Mac, I still feel like they belong in the "media center" instead of on the bookshelf in my bedroom. So it seems as if I have no use for this media rack, but I don't want to return it, I want to find a use for it.
Trying to figure out what to do with the media rack got me thinking about rearranging the media center entirely. I could buy a new set of shelf sides that the media rack fits into, buy several more media racks and create a media shelf unit, and put that over next to the TV cart. Then the current side shelves of the media center could be moved into my hallway, where I have a corner space that I've wanted to put shelves in for a while. Of course, I really don't have a need for all that much extra shelving right now, I'd just have a lot of empty shelves. But it is very tempting.
On another note, among the books I pulled down and reshelved were three by Edward Tufte, who is a Yale professor of statistics and information/interface design. That reminded me of the most recent woman to contact me through Salon (as I mentioned in this entry). My profile at the time listed Tufte's book Visual Explanations in the "last great book I read" section. Her message had as its subject, "Hey, I have that Edward Tufte book too," and the message's first line was "I love that book." It struck me again how unexpected it was to make a connection with someone because I listed a fairly obscure book in that section. I'm still surprised and disappointed that she ignored both of my replies, but the important thing to hold on to is that she did contact me because of mutual interests. There are others out there.
