Here’s the bookshelf that took us three days to buy, two days to put together, and a couple of hours to stack:

It’s about six inches taller than me and exceeds my wingspan, covering most of an entire wall in our house. And that’s not even all of the books we have. We also have a smaller bookcase on the other side of the room as well as several double-stacked shelves on this one, and there’s the handful of books just sitting around the house in various states of read.

While I normally wouldn’t take a photo of a piece of furniture, I’ve spent the last several hours in this office room, trying to copy and compile all of the mixes I received from the road trip CD project. I can’t speak for all types of love or love in general in an articulate way, but if you want to know what it feels like to be loved (or at least impressed by your friends’ desire to show off their taste), get a mix CD project going. It took me 4 days to drive across the country and I didn’t come close to listening to everything. I can’t even find all of them now. I know that some must be in the car still and I think I’ve seen a few in the house but can’t locate them at the moment, and I feel bad because those are whole mixes that either weren’t heard or can’t be added to the Best Of “thank you” mixes, and plus, you know, people made those for me.

I had whole categories for the Best Of Awards picked out, only I lost the piece of motel stationary I’d begun writing them on, and now that I’ve misplaced a handful of mixes, I don’t think it’d be fair to release the definitive awards list. Plus I got so many awesome mixes from so many awesome people, and some songs popped up more than once, and I couldn’t possibly pick out as many terrific submissions as I’d want, and this is a really hard job when you know so many wonderful people.

But I have to award someone something, so with this in mind, the only award I have to bestow is the Overall Most Thoroughly Enjoyable Mix Ever, which goes to Ben and Vern for their double disc contribution. I actually received a few multi-disc submissions (Kat and The Brad and Mike and Abbi tie for six apiece I mean come on can you even), but as any man wants to be able to tell you, it’s not the size that counts (all the time, that much, for everything). Something about Ben and Vern’s mix underscored how grateful I was to have received any response to this project at all, and in between the classic road trip songs (The Eagles, CCR, etc.) were songs that brought me thisclose to crying (because of love), sandwiched right around songs that made me think “you both think you’re so funny, don’t you?” (New Kids, Will Ferrell’s cover of “Dust in the Wind”).

If you contributed, know that something on your mix made me laugh hysterically, miss you terribly, and thank the world that I know such kind people who sent me music that got me through one monster drive full of lots of scary moments and times where I wondered what I was doing.

I’ll have the thank you mixes early next week. Although I’ve spent a few hours on them already, also know that I can’t do this project justice, and that you’re all way better than some paltry “Best Of” mix could ever say.