Winter Cleaning & The DVD Shelf

So Swac and I decided to make a Saturday productive for once, and wrote up a list of things to get done. The list included things like cleaning the living room, cleaning out a few closets, finding a good place for our bikes, setting up the turtle in a new aquarium, and building a new shelf for our DVDs. This picture is towards the beginning, and I'm busy dusting and cleaning up the whole entertainment area. It was my goal to get all of our game consoles hooked up to the thing at the same time, so if we had the urge to play some old school game (Like RBI Baseball) we could very easily..

Here are those game systems I was talking about. In between taking the previous picture and this one, I managed to hit my head on my bike's handlebars, drop the Sega Genesis, and shatter the bottom of the turtle's new aquarium. (He was still living in the old one, thankfully... and no, no water was involved.. the thing was still empty.. and now it's all broken... and there are bits of it in my thumb, cause I'm an idiot.) Anyway, the challenge is to get all of these hooked up without having the thing look horrible.

While I was rewiring the stereo stuff, I noticed that the subwoofer wasn't playing.. Further inspection suggested that either the fuse was blown, or the powered amp was hosed. This picture was supposed to help me read what was said under the fuse (the triangle). It did not. [The fuse turned out to be fine (unfortunate) so I've got to take the thing in and get the amp replaced. It will probably cost me one of my internal organs.]

My roommates have many shoes. One of the joys of living where we do is the unlimited supply of salt poured down on the sidewalks every day. So in the winter, our front entryway is completely coated with salt. Cleaning this is very, very annoying. Thankfully, Mandace was over, and cleaned it for us. Thanks, Mandace!

Things are pretty much in place now. All the systems are hooked up, and are hidden nicely behind the left front speaker. In between the time of the previous picture and this one I manages to fall into the entertainment center and cut the side of my head and my ear. I curse physics. We also have a little shelf unit for some of our games.. though I've not yet found a good place to put it. Also, "Goo Gone" cleans IKEA coffee tables perfectly. [It harneses the power of cirtus]

And here is the nicely cleaned living room, and our lovely fireplace.

Okay, we have travelled around, acquired the needed supplies, and will now be building our DVD shelf. Sven loaned us this fancy drill. Woot.

Here are the shelves we bought.

This is where the shelf will be going.. along this wood beam the runs across the living room. The plan was to build the shelf between where the two rear speakers are.

When we went to the store, I also rekindled my friendship with Mr. Boston.

Here's Robb pre-drilling and attaching brackets to the shelves. Robb did a mighty fine job.

We acqured a new tank to replace the one I destroyed, and Swac got a filter for it as well. Here he is getting it all set up.

And here we have Robb and Mandace getting the shelves all set up.

And the shelves are up... well, 2 of them, anyway. We are pleased.

And now they are all up there, and no one was killed. There was much rejoicing. Next step: fill with DVDs.

Here's the shelf, proudly filled with DVDs. I think it turned out qutie good. The movies go up on this shelf, and the TV shows go back on the old shelf that Mandace is filling in this shot.

Homer Simpson now acts as the guardian of our movies.

Compare your life to ours, and then kill yourself.

The turtle now has a new home, and it's a lot larger than it was before. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the importance of "basking".

So here's the turtle's setup...before the filter was added, and the basking stones were added and moved, and the light was moved...