I cleared the pictures off of my camera, so you get this post

My couch got taken away today for repair which left me with an unheard of amount of empty space in my living room.  I decided to take advantage by getting a picture of the block of manga shelves I have running along the back of the room.  Normally my couch hides much of the view or I can’t get far enough away to get a good shot.  I have a total of 6 shelves there, but the ones on either end are dvds/graphic novels and the other holds most of my fantasy fiction.  I am always amused by first time visitors to my apartment who stare at the shelving amazed at how many there are.  Because really… if I could I’d add more!

So yeah.  I decided to do a picture post.  I’m a geek.

My main set of shelves are in my living room - these are generally things I am currently collecting and favorites that have finished. Most shelves have two rows of books, but I've tried to stagger them so things in the back peek out. This also makes it easier to find things!

Before my last move I plastic wrapped about 500 or so volumes to free up much needed shelf space. Those boxes now live in my living room closet along with my 3 last boxes of comics. Some day I will actually label them just in case I ever want to find anything again.

One of my yaoi/shonen-ai shelves. Along with a stack of unsorted manga, that Clover omnibus that I have yet to get around to reading and a Totoro musical figurine I bought in a craft village in Japan. (When the clerk heard I was bringing it back to Canada she said, "Ooooh! Totoro is going very far away!" Then she did the shushing gesture and slipped a free magnet in my bag. I liked that clerk.)

Yaoi shelf #2. Carefully edited out is my collection of Fruits Basket stuffed animals that live on top of the shelf along with Mr. Saotome, P-Chan and a few Chococats. That middle shelf holds books I'm planning on covering someday with a second layer. They aren't things I reread much and so are hideable.

When I first put everything away in the new place I went with themes for each shelf.  #1 was shojo, #2 for shonen, then a weird sort of logic for the other 2.  Sadly, the first consideration for the yaoi books are size.  :)  It makes it easy if you’re browsing for roughly the same kind of manga, but I have literally lost things since then.  If a title is tucked behind the front row I’ve had a really hard time finding it.  I’m thinking of switching to alphabetical order.

I do feel the need to point out that Shojo Beat has THE most boring spines ever.  I’ve stood in front of my shojo shelf and tried to find titles that have blended in with the other red, basic print spines.  I make an effort to alternate the occasional CMX or Del Rey series just to break the monotony!  If you look at the top picture, the first shelf on the left is the most boring visually.  It’s mostly Shojo Beat books.  I can identify virtually everything on my shelves from that picture based on the spines *except* that one.  I think Viz is trying to be less yawn-inducing (based on Magic Touch and Otomen, anyway) but it’s already too late for my shelves….

I’m also going to say that while I felt pretty geeky taking pictures of my shelves, when I was looking at the top one and wondering if I should crop the sides I found a graphic novel that had gone missing.  I’ve been trying to lend the first Mouse Guard book to a friend and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I finally decided that I must have lent it to someone and forgotten about it (which happens, and then you can only hope the person who has it brings it back!) and gave up looking.  Nope!  For some reason I stuck it on the shelf next to my Kelley Armstrong books instead of where I normally keep it.  Sigh.

Random short post

I have decided that my next new toy is going to be a netbook. The only thing left to figure out is if I’m going to get a red one (which would match my ipod and ereader) or a blue one (which is very pretty).

So. I was hanging out in Best Buy today playing with their netbooks (I have to wait until June to get one and I’m trying to make it easier) and I noticed that the computer on display has a bunch of fansubbed anime on it. Heh.

Did someone return it like that? Use the wifi connection to download random episodes? Either way, I found it vaguely amusing.

A random blog post just to say I’m still here.  Working more because ’tis the season, starting a massive cookie bake just because I can this year and sadly far too busy to read much manga right now.  I’d say the best of what I’ve read lately is Venus in Love #5.  Everyone is so damn happy in this series.  Or blushing ’cause they’re in love, then laughing about it.  One of those hard to describe books since it’s just a group of friends in college doing their thing and falling in love.  And laughing a lot, which I keep mentioning because that’s normally the kind of thing that would drive me nuts (I’m cynical and sarcastic, yo) but Venus in Love makes me happy.  Go figure.

Now I’m off to throw some chocolate pinwheel cookies in the oven before hitting the hay.  I had a long day at the bookstore and I need the rest.  My customers have been great (seriously – I hear retail horror stories at this time of year and my worst customers are just slightly pissy.  Believe me when I say I appreciate it!) but my frustration level was rising as the day went on as I repeated the same things over and over.  “Oh, it just came in let me check the back” was first.  Then “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find it.”  Arg arg.  I hate not helping people, and damnit I couldn’t find a thing all day.  By the end of my shift I was just kind of laughing and sagging against the counter when I found out that I had to go look through those damn boxes again…

Cookies are more fun.

Why is that there?? What is it??

Phrases of the day as I spent hours and hours cleaning the new apartment.  I think Laurie was tired of my plaintive cries by the end of the afternoon.  My hands are utterly ravaged.  I still have the floors and a couple of cupboards to clean, but for the most part I’m done.  My two amazing friends gave me a hand today by putting together some furniture and painting my living room ceiling, which I thought would be a good idea… not sure why.  It seemed logical at the time.  My job was cleaning, which was complicated by the fact that whatever crud is caked on the bottom of the oven defeated my best efforts and four applications of oven cleaner, and by the fact that for a portion of the day there was no hot water.  Welcome to the building!

Some of my lovely surprises today came from cleaning the cupboards.  The random rice left in one… the onion peels in the cupboard above the sink… etc etc.  Favorite discovery had to be the blue gum stuck in the upper corner of the door frame.  Who puts gum up there??  Why would you leave it?  It’s kind of a shame the dude who lived there before me was so messy – the apartment actually looks pretty good.  (I have two closet door issues, but it’s in surprisingly good shape!)

I finally headed home at 1:30 to discover streams of water pouring down my street.  Who do you call about that at 1:30 in the morning on a Sunday?  I finally decided to call the police station and the switchboard person told me a water main broke on the next street over.  I admit to a certain amount of fear when I opened the door after getting home – I fully expected to find a layer of water down here!

I’m going to pack a few more boxes, then I’m off to bed.  Tomorrow I have a ceiling to paint, packing to finish and some floors to clean.  Sigh.  It’ll all be over soon…

3 am blogging

Several things:

It’s almost three in the morning and I am somehow refusing to go to bed.  I need my head examined because this is not a week I can be losing sleep in.  Now I’m blogging instead of taking out the damn garbage and turning in.

I’m picking up the keys to my new apartment tomorrow night!  Yay!  So I can go in early and do things like measure windows and scrub cupboards before the big move in day.  Which is Tuesday.  Arg.  Intellectually I know that I am more than on track with the packing, but my panic mode cannot see past the mess in the living room.  My panic mode needs to get a grip.

I’ve now wrapped about 450 volumes of manga.  I took a big chunk off of each bookshelf to put in storage, so I think when it’s time to unpack I should have plenty of room for expansion.  Because that’s what I need.  More manga.  BTW, through trial and error (the error being me not paying attention when I buy the bags so I bought four different kinds) I have discovered the following things: 1) regular sized comic bags aren’t bad unless you’re anal about little corners and things sticking up when you wrap the plastic around the books.  I used a lot of tape trying to pin things down.  2) regular sized comic bags plus sticky strip to seal them closed have the same wrapping issues, but have the added comfort of being slightly more waterproof.  Slightly.  3)  magazine sized bags with the sticky strip are better for me because it’s easier to wrap the plastic around the book and I used a lot less tape.  It’s harder to press the air out with it sealed, though.  4)  magazine sized bags with NO strip are my favorite.  Wrapping is easy, the air can escape making the book lie flatter but I’m still confident that water and/or other damaging agents will have a hard time getting in.  Just in case you ever feel like doing this to your own collection.  :)

I watched the first two episodes of Skip Beat today and had a blast.  It follows the manga plot exactly (down to the freakin’ clothes) but there was something new about seeing everything in full motion and colour.  Kyoko’s tantrums and evil spirits are a lot funnier when you can see them zipping around.  Also, Sho is a huge tool.  He seemed a lot nastier to me here, which I will credit the voice actor for.  Same deal with the actress doing Kyoko.  She had such a light, sweet voice at first and makes an excellent transition into Psycho Kyoko.  Speaking of which, some of the best moments so far have been of Kyoko stalking Sawada to get him to let her into the agency.  It was so over the top and crazy.

I should say I’m off to bed now but it’s possible I’d be lying.  I’m sure the tiles in the bathroom need polishing, or something.

The packing. It progresses.

Slowly.

Ha.  My place is a complete mess right now, but I feel very organized.  Today I bought a little shredder and destroyed about 1/2 of a box of old pay stubs, bills and other random paperwork from 1999 I’ve apparently felt compelled to keep all these years.  Sheesh, me!

I’m also having fun pulling stuff out of my storage space and rediscovering things.  Tonight I found my portable stereo (ghetto blaster!!), which I totally forgot I owned.  It plays tapes.  I don’t think I even have any cassettes left.  I’m going to donate it to Value Village, I think.  The cd player part of it should still be useful to people.  I find it’s just a lot easier to listen to music on my computer now.

The first box I pulled out was my poor afghan, started a year and a half ago and abandoned once I got bored.  I’m very fickle.  I decided to finally finish the darn thing this weekend so it moved from “be careful with the project” status to “it’s a damn blanket, cram it into a bag” status. 

I think it turned out okay.  I was running out of wool and instead of buying more decided to make it 4 squares instead of 6, which was a bit of a cop out.  Still, I think it’s a decent first effort, though next time I decide to crochet a blanket I’m making it more of a patchwork with much smaller squares.

Now I’m off to wrap 11 more volumes of manga before turning in.  That brings me up to 300!