The post with all the pics of the bookcases - because you demanded it

Well, some of you did anyway. The bookcases are set up and the books are in place, but we can't use the word "done" just yet; the shelves need frontpieces to match the face frame, and the whole thing needs to be sanded and finished at some point when we don't have plastic on the windows. Still, I'm very happy with how they look:

Also, there will be doors on the bottom row to make cabinets, so we won't be looking at the puzzles and games and Playstation wires. Yes, the TV is huge, but the books still dominate. At least I figured out how to turn off the blue circle around the ON button so the TV isn't glowing at me all day.

The bookshelves which were formerly in the living room are now done in my office:

This is where I keep all those Heinlein, Clarke, and Niven books I fully intend to read sometime soon. It's also where I store Christmas presents for people I haven't seen since my birthday (*hint, hint*). I moved the tall bookcase from my bedroom down to the office as well since it matched the others and allowed me to have two whole walls of books in the house, so this is what my reading nook in my bedroom looks like now:

That bookshelf next to the rocking chair is my Backspacer bookshelf. The keen eye can pick out the Ally Carters, Mark Bastables, MJ Pearsons, Lynn Sinclairs, and a Jackie Kessler (I have some other Backspacer books as well; that's off the top of my head).

Now, part of our extensive pre-marital negotiations was a break-down of the big jobs we both like to do. Quin got furniture assembly (good thing too, now that we're out of the semidisposable stage of our furniture buying), I got electronics. So here's what I've been doing all week.

The keen eye will see that the computer desk in the living room is now on the other side of the piano; this was so I could hook the computer up to the stereo. Good-bye, 5-disc changer; hello, iTunes! Plus the new TV hooks up to the computer as well, so we can browse record covers from the couch (or anywhere in the room since we have a wireless keyboard and mouse). Every CD in our collection is now on there (even the stuff I can't stand like Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary). 7604 songs, it would take 20.7 days to listen to it all. Of course I can't complain about the folk music too much; to Quin's chagrin, even if he unchecks the songs so they won't play he can't make the album covers go away, and by virtue of staring with an apostrophe, this band is always on top:

I'm not sure how much we'll actually use this "see what's on the computer using the TV" feature. A hi-def plasma TV is very much overkill for your average YouTube video, but it is perfect for those episodes of Veronica Mars (season 3) I downloaded so I could be all caught up when the new episodes start up again next week. But I'm sure the most common function will surely become: