my own personal bookstore

ever since i moved from brooklyn to chicago i have had some boxes in storage in brooklyn. periodically on visits to my boyfriend, i would walk over to the storage place and shuffle through my belongings. one of the major reasons for keeping the storage unit for so long (2+ years) was that i couldn't afford to move the stuff here. shipping or otherwise. but then my boyfriend's apartment building had a fire, he was homeless, and his stuff had to go somewhere. so a lot of it ended up in my storage unit. (he then took on the payments himself.) now that he has his very own place, and actually was able to unpack all of the boxes he had in his possession, he decided that we needed to empty the storage unit. what a daunting task!

labor day weekend, when i was there for the long weekend, we hunkered down in the basement of the storage place and proceeded to go through the boxes deciding what to keep, ship, and give away. first round to go was the shipping boxes. we quickly marched those over to the local post office. (notice to everyone: it's cheaper to ship books than move them! ask for the media rate. 50 bucks for 4 heavy boxes of books to be shipped from brooklyn to chicago! 50 bucks!) smartly we rented a moving truck for everything else. we didn't have time to drive to the goodwill shop, so everything went up the four flights of stairs to my boyfriend's apartment.

the only good thing to come out of this is the pile of boxes filled with books in my living room. though there aren't as many books as expected, there are a lot that i've missed over the last couple years. the shipping news. a prayer for owen meany. the entire collection of sherlock holmes. there's even one book that i missed so much i bought a new version. now i own two copies. oh how i love books! too bad i don't have the shelf space for them!