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Schnooks for Books
We’re both English majors. Everyone knows this. And we both have books accumulated before and after our college days, and new acquisitions seem to fill space as if the books themselves were breeding.
For quite some time, we’ve tracked our book inventory using software for the Mac called Delicious Library. It allows barcode scanning using our attached iSight camera, so it really cuts down on data entry time. We had some help with a big scan one summer from our niece, and the pile of books eventually looked like this:
We have one room we call “the library” in our fixer-upper house where we keep a giant bookshelf we purchased from the Helen Kate Furness Free Library for $100. It’s not much to look at, but it has capacity. (The room wasn’t much to look at either when we first bought the place, as one might see from the renovation photos.) The room also came with a big fireplace and we now have a player piano given to us by Tiffany’s parents. Her father restores musical instruments as a hobby. It’ll be a nice room one day once it’s organized and we put a few finishing touches. Although we call it the library, books are shelved all over our house — witness the recently completed shelving of Sci-Fi, Mystery, and Thrillers in our bedroom — and stacked in various places while we figure out what other shelves we need to get everything off the floor.
After years, I think we finally have a handle on the inventory. Here are some interesting facts I culled from the software and a little calculating:
Total Volumes – 2293
Hardcover – 21%
Paperback – 79%
Most popular genres:
Literature & Fiction – 34%
Romance – 20%
Mystery & Thriller – 10%
Science Fiction & Fantasy – 6%
Children’s Books – 4%
Here’s a pie chart showing a breakdown of genres (click to zoom):
I posted a browsable summary of our library contents as exported from Delicious Library. Ignore the total count of volumes, which is quite a bit higher than the actual number. It’s an artifact resulting from the reality that some books are listed in more than one genre and absolute numerical accuracy conflicted with the “smart shelves” that were listed based on genre. It’s kind of an interesting, browsable interface once the data exported, but there’s much more flexibility within the program itself for searching and organizing than there is in the web export. Maybe this presentation approximates the piqued interest one might feel from visually scanning a person’s physical collection.
We don’t count eBooks, of which I’ve probably purchased only a couple dozen using tools on the iPhone including Amazon Kindle for iPhone, Barnes & Noble EReader, and Stanza. We don’t count audio books either, although we have a few of those. I’ll probably never put non-physical books in Delicious LIbrary since each applications tracks digitally acquired books in its own way, which is good enough for now.
Tiffany reads at least twice as fast as me, so two-thirds of these are probably hers. She’s made some good choices, and more than once I’ve come across something while sorting that we already own that I’ve always wanted to read. I’m in the mode now where I only buy five or six new books per year, and it’s easy to go back to our own shelves to find something “new” of interest. Now just to find the time!
Thanksgiving “Break”
Here are the highlights for how we spent our all-too-brief holiday break:
- Cleared and set our dining room table with new centerpieces and a holiday theme
- Baked pie
- Brined and cooked two turkeys, one at our house, one elsewhere, as well as prepared associated trimmings
- Had delicious Thanksgiving dinner
- Went on three separate shopping outings, including an early one on Black Friday, another to buy a suit for an upcoming wedding, and yet another to Philadelphia Premium Outlets to hang out with family
- Gave Bram his first through fifth rides on bouncy cars and airplanes (totally worth $2.50)
- Cleared bookshelves and dressers in the master bedroom of various clutter
- Steam mopped the main level of our house
- Finally replaced X10 wired receiver for dining room fixture (killed many months ago by lightning)
- Sorted DVDs into binder, disposed of about 100 cases (100 more to go and our collection will be neatly organized and out of sight)
- Began planning holiday party
- Collected 3 batches of stuff we no longer wanted and left free items on curb (all taken)
- Sorted old baby clothes into lots – 0-6 months, 6-12 months, 12-18 months, 18 months-2T
- Sorted Tupperware, tossed dozens of old plastic containers kept “just in case,” prepped much unused stuff for sale
- Packed old China and other dishes for sale
- Made 5 postings to Craigslist (see clothes, Tupperware, China above; one transaction complete so far)
- Trimmed Christmas tree
- Hung up 10 pictures from various vacations and life events
- Sorted dozens of other pictures as candidates for placing in newly purchased frames
- Cleared space for Department 56 Christmas village display
- Hauled an embarrassing amount of trash to the curb
- Ran the dishwasher pretty much continuously
- Washed laundry
- Paid bills
- … and many other mundane things
I think it’s fair to say we’re not very good at relaxing, but we’re coming out of a few days off feeling good about some of the things we accomplished.
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Paint, and Then Faint
After five years, we hit another milestone as we renovate the space that’s meant to become our library. Scott did a nice job with the sheet rock and priming. This past weekend we painted the ceiling and walls of that space, and oh, what a difference! It’s a 30×16 foot room, and boy, did it take awhile. The weather was perfect though, and we were in good spirits as we listened to tunes and kept chugging along. We ditched the mocha and went for a warm gray on the walls, with a lighter shade on the ceiling. It will really pop with the white trim which I will one day install. My memories of the dark wood paneling and red shag carpeting are fading fast. Only about, oh, 15 or so more subprojects to go before we’re finished!
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Drywall!
Our library now has drywall! This is a major milestone! Still a ton more to do now, including paint, trim, installing bookshelves, redoing the floor, getting the fireplace ready for winter, and more! Still, it’s a major step. If anyone needs a local contractor who can do a spectacular job, we’ve got a fellow to recommend. Mail us!
And we look forward to inviting you over soon to enjoy brandy and cigars. 
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Snowed In
We had a terrific storm about a week ago that practically buried us in snow. All the remnants are practically gone, but we did take a few pictures while winter was in its glory.
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Step Right In
We had a little break between home improvements for awhile, but now we’re starting to make some progress again. We recently installed a nice new front door with an arched piece of leaded glass and full sidelights. Photos will go up sometime as soon as there’s paint and trim! (Regular readers can keep their snide comments to themselves.) As soon as we have some good weather, that will happen. Also, Tiffy’s dad donated some of the oak that had been “aging” in his basement and we ripped a few pieces into new thresholds for this new front door and our bathrooms. It’s all coming together. This March will be our four-year anniversary in the house, and now you can’t see any of the subfloor at all. We’re moving right along. 
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Scraping By
We always seem to need some kind of big event to push us along toward continuing to make progress on our house. It’s a big project, as most of our friends and family know, and we’re taking it a bit at a time. This time around, we had five guests coming in for the weekend, and not enough room to accommodate them all.
You see, Tiffy is a bridesmaid for her friend Krissy’s wedding. As part of the festivities and because of our geographically central location to various other parties, it was decided that a bridal shower would be held here. At our house. And we have only one semi-finished guest room. You see where this is going?
We needed to get the other guest room ready. The quarters would still be tight, but they would be manageable. (Good luck to the five folks who had to share one bathroom, of course.)
Wel, we mostly did it. Here’s the breakdown:
1 day for ripping off old wooden panelling
1 day for scraping off construction adhesive beneath the panelling (Thanks Dad!)
5 days scraping and sanding off wallpaper and wallpaper paste (The pain!)
1 day of patching (If you say the word “spackle” the right way, it sounds like a curse.)
1 day of priming and painting (Go Tiffy!)
A couple hours of installing a new six-panel pine door
A couple hours of installing new outlets, switches, and a light
(We didn’t quite have enough time to install baseboard and window trim. Who needs trim? You guys with houses, you know what I’m talking about. Trim is what you do when you run out of other stuff to do.)
Anyway, the long story short is that the room was well enough ready to accommodate three guests. It’s so nice in there, we may visit it someday once we’ve recovered.
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We Can See Clearly Now
I know what you’re thinking. “Did they get tired? We haven’t heard anything about their house in a while.” No, we’re still working on it. It’s nothing really interesting, though. We finally replaced the bulk of our windows, most of which were single-paned, hazy, dirty, and generally ineffective. I mean, sure, you could see out of them. But everything looked fuzzy. Most of our rooms now have nice, new windows with unbroken seals, so it’s quite a difference. We also replaced our big, 9×5-foot bow window in the front of our house with a new one that actually opens. We have fesh air now, and a beautiful view of the dogwood tree in the front yard. That window was huge and heavy, so it was one of the things we were willing to pay to have someone else do.
In other news, we’re trying to make our home office a more fun place to hang out in. I had quite a lot of fun finally installing a ceiling fan that we purchased two years ago, and it makes a big difference in how comfortable the room is. If we get some more free weekends to spend at home, we’ll accomplish more there, like finishing the installation of our built-in closet/desk unit for storage.
Tiffy’s been a real Viking with the wallpaper removal in the hall bedroom. That’s not going to be a fun job. Contact paper is glued to the walls, and there’s construction adhesive all over the place from the ugly yellow panelling that used to be installed.
Want to come over and help?
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Dampered Chef
We spent the week prior to last Friday busting our, um, backs, trying to get the house in shape enough to host a Pampered Chef party for our friend, Debbie. Friends and regular readers of this site will recognize that our household is generally in a state of — oh, how shall I put this? — dumphood. Nevertheless, we committed to inviting 30 of our closest friends to our home to get liquored up and purchase dangerous, sharp kitchen gadgets from catalogs and to get demonstrations from Debbie about how to make wholesome and tasty treats.
Work during the week consisted mostly of installing vent covers and baseboards and getting the powder room in shape enough to be used without embarrassment. The baseboard part was fun, but GP‘s help was an asset. I did most of the cutting and fitting — still searching for that 90 degree corner that I know I’ll never find — while Greg handled hammering and Tiffy did caulking and painting. The powder room took a lot of time because we had to get rid of a bunch of brass pipe that wouldn’t fit under the pedestal sink and replace it with PVC. One of the cold water supply valve washers was so old that it leaked right after the first test fit of the new sink. Ah well. We’re used to that kind of thing now, but it’s a bother to be slowed down. Long story short: it all works now. TP and towel hangers, plus new mirror and light fixture, are all in place. The new lockset was an 11th hour addition to preserve guest privacy. The room still needs a few finishing touches, but it’s good enough for now.
It was the first really big gathering we’ve had in the house. We should have officially called it a housewarming party. People keep giving us gifts, though, so perhaps we’ll keep everything unofficial until the presents start dropping off. Then we’ll soak everybody.
We had a nice mix of people at our gathering, which even included the odd youngster here or there. Most people seemed to have fun, but the important thing is that nobody got so sloshed that they had to stay over. There was occasional rowdiness from some of the group — You Know Who You Are — when Debbie was doing her presentations of the various gadgets. I supposed we could have withheld drink until afterwards, but who thinks that far ahead?
Props to Geoff for his work pouring cosmopolitans and hoisting guests off the floor. He actually worked hard to engage just about everyone in conversation, which is something I was quite negligent about. Special thanks to Debbie for producing the delicious chicken broccoli braid and banana split cake, both of which were promptly devoured by our friends, whom I like to refer to charitably as The Jackals.
We’ll do this again. In a couple years. Possibly.
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Slackers!
We’re weblog creating slackers. Haven’t updated since before Christmas. But, we do have a good excuse. We worked out butts off over break getting the house in shape. We have beautiful new ledges between our kitchen and living room and dining rooms. Our foyer and kitchen are painted. (Which is way more hassle then it sounds like. Really.) We’re tired, but happy to have so much done. ‘The break was very relaxing otherwise. It seemed both very long and also like it passed in two days. In addition to working we both did a lot of reading, Adam played lots of Spiderman on the Playstation and Tiffy played Zoo Tycoon on the PC. We also saw The Two Towers and Catch Me If You Can. Tiffy also took Emily and Kristen to see Two Weeks Notice which was underwhelming.
Tivo continues to be great fun. It seems to be getting more of a handle on what kind of tv we like to watch. It went through a phase where it was convinced we were a five year old boy with an anime fetish, but now it has settled in to taping lots of cooking and travel shows which is fine by us.
Back at work today. But, at least we can look out the window at the very pretty snow….
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