with the busy

[rushthatspeaks]

It's astonishing how having a deadline can make you go off and do other things like mad.

Tuesday evening I went over to eredien's new apartment to help put together her bookcase. It's a lovely bookcase, very tall and very wide in clean blonde wood, and divided into a lot of neat little cubbyholes that you can play Tetris in with your trade paperbacks.

What she neglected to mention to me is that it is also Satan. See, because it's got a lot of little cubbies, it's held together by a lot of little wooden pegs-- the horizontal shelves, which are one piece, peg to the sides; the vertical partitions, which are a lot of little pieces, peg to the tops and bottoms of the shelves; and the sides, top and bottom peg to each other and are held by bolts. What this means in practice is hours and hours of fiddling to try to get all the little pegs in all the holes at the same time, without breaking any of the pegs, because they're delicate. On an uneven floor. Hours. And hours.

Why does it not surprise me that Satan is manufactured by IKEA?

On the other hand, it was probably the perfect environment for putting together furniture. eredien's roommate was having a house party in which we were not involved, and we'd get tired and frustrated and sweaty and then somebody would hand us a margarita. Or there would be nachos. Or popcorn. Or something. All heavy construction projects need to involve someone lurking in the other room with surprise refreshments.

Anyhow. So. I head off to Montreal tomorrow, and when I get back Thrud will have left for Italy. It is very sad, but at least Ruth and I have made arrangements to go visit her over Christmas. The last few winter holiday seasons either Ruth or myself or both have had various important relatives become either very ill or dead, and we want to break this pattern (if our relatives will be obliging); hopefully spending Christmas Eve night in a sleeping car on a train going over the Alps should do it.

I shan't be on the Internet again till Tuesday, so if there's anything that I need to know about in the time between you should email or notify me in a comment here.

Comments

[ckd]

OMG, that's the same bookshelf hr_macgirl and I bought on Labor Day.

The trick we found that finally worked to get the top bit to go on and stay on:

Bolt one side in, just far enough to keep the dowels from slipping out of their holes.

Use two people to shove really hard on the other side to line up its dowels and bolt holes. Shove bolts in really quickly before someone loses their grip. Start screwing the bolts down.

Tighten bolts on both sides until secure.

Go drink something.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Because of the unevenness of the floor, we eventually wound up building the whole thing vertically-- bolt both sides on very loosely at the bottom, make sure shelves are pegged in on at least one side as you work upwards, bolt top on at whichever side is more stable, manhandle other side viciously till it behaves, and then bolt the other side of the top on before tipping it over and tightening the bottom bolts. This actually went pretty quickly as soon as we accepted that gravity and the warped floorboards were not going to allow us to do it in any way which did not have significant danger of something huge falling on our heads.

I feel for eredien, who due to various moving circumstances has had to put the damn thing together twice inside a year.

[ckd]

Oh dear. Yes, that would be extremely difficult. We cleared the living room floor and built it on the flat, which was tough enough.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

What's the bookshelf's name? orawnzva and I have successfully put together two different IKEA bookshelves, neither of which were particularly Satan-ish.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

Edit: Oh...you put it together vertically. That would definitely add to the Satan-factor!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

No, it was Satan long before we started building it from the floor up. I don't remember its name off the top of my head, I'm afraid. I shall ask eredien.

[ckd]

I'm guessing it's the EXPEDIT; that's what we have.

Incidentally, my alternate shark is now the KORELL HAJ.

[aethereal-girl.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not exactly urgent, but as the other bookbinding, imaginary-tv-show-fandom-participating person on my friends list I thought you might be interested in Manly Banister: Gentleman Bookbinder.

Read the comments.

[eredien]

Yes, it is the (badly-named) Expedit.

Or, possibly, it is well-named; you may need an expedition to put it together.

Thank you again--I am somewhat tickled to notice that I helped you avoid a deadline, though. Was it your own, self-imposed? Or someone else's?