Today, the burglar alarm is being installed. Strange beeps and bongs are emanating from the front hall even as I type.

Himself has been toiling like a Trojan, hauling books all over the house, and we are now down to only eight (from about 55) two-cubic-foot boxes of books on the garage floor. On the other hand, we're rapidly running out of shelf space, although we have one large Victorian bookcase and two half-height IKEA Billy series bookcases still to come. The big old one, built in Quebec sometime around 1890 and inexplicably painted circa 1952, used to contain three (count 'em, three!) sets of encyclopaedia plus 25 years' worth of the Britannica Book of the Year, so it's going into Himself's office to the law books -- but the guy who's stripping and refinishing it has to recover from his back injury first! The Billy bookcases, made as they are of spit and sawdust, will go in the basement where the novels live.

Himself keeps complaining about books he thinks we should get rid of, while I insist (to his fury) that everything be unpacked and appropriately shelved, or stacked on the floor in front of the bookcase where there is no more room, before we start purging. I hate confusing two sorting processes; if we start purging now, books will end up stacked higgledy-piggledy all over the house and we will soon lose track of what is to stay and what is to go.

The garage also contains seven 5-cubic-foot china barrels full of "the good stuff" (a Wedgwood dinner service for eight and fancy glassware galore), one 4-cube box of rarely used cooking tackle and three 2-cubes repacked with excess china. All that stuff has to wait until the kitchen/pantry/dining room project is finished, however, which could be Christmas.

Meanwhile, Himself's office is still Pepto-Bismol pink, the bedroom is still deep purple and the guest room is still grey. I haven't heard a peep from the painter, and I should email him before he takes on another sub-division contract.