One or Multiple SWFs and is 1.6 MB way too big for a SWF?

hello,

i am teaching myself flash and web design in general to post a digital portfolio. ultimately i will have a main menu page that will link to my portfolio, bio, blog, etc… my portfolio will consist of a bunch of different projects with the same back ground image. i started making each project into its own swf and imbedding it into its own html page, now i am wondering if my site should be one huge swf or what. also, my swf is 1.6 mb which is large and it is taking a while to load. i’ve already spent a ton of time on this so i’d rather not start from scratch can someone please help me and give me some advice. here is one of the portfolio galleries:

www.alissawilson.com/transientarch.html

if you press the alissa wilson williams text in the lower lefthand it will take you to the main page which is just an html page as of now. the idea is you will click on ‘portfolio’ which will open the book then take you to a glossary page that will have the same background as the portfolio pages with thumbs of each of the different galleries you can navigate to. am i making any sense? thank you!