Ethanol

Thank goodness I got gas yesterday when it was $2.78/gallon. Today is jumped up to $2.95! What's going on? The gas here in Illinois is made with 10% ethanol, but since we have an overabundance of corn, why don't we bump that percentage up a little bit and send the prices down a little :-) Just kidding--that probably wouldn't be good for car engines. There is certainly enough corn around here to make a lot of ethanol though. It's been a long and busy day today. I just barely got back from the library. This morning Catherine and I went over to T-Dud's house in search of information. We read a bunch of letters and newspaper articles, and I think I figured out why he didn't spend a whole lot of time with his kids--he was a workaholic! We found a list of personal statutes he set for himself back in 1931. Among other things, he committed to not attend social events more than once a month, work only on the most important court cases while actually at work, and save the court cases of lesser-importance until he got home in the evenings. As Catherine was reading things, she said, "Did he ever have any fun?" I don't think so. It's good to be reminded of the dangers of becoming a workaholic.

This afternoon we had our material culture class--my favorite. I got to report on the Queen Anne chair I wrote about yesterday. We received our analytical essays back today, and even though Dr. Reid really liked mine, and she said I displayed a "higher level of analysis than most," I only got an 89 :-( That's okay though--I think that grad school grading is just kind of silly. It's still my favorite class. Whoa, something crazy happened during class though. We were sitting there discussing a book we read, and all of a sudden we heard a girl out in the hall crying. The walls in Coleman Hall, where our classes are, are paper-thin, so we can pretty much hear anything going on outside. So, this girl starts sobbing quite loud. My first thought was maybe she got an upsetting phone call or something, but then she starts shrieking and yelling, "Stop it! You're hurting me!" (Yes, this sounds familiar--this is the same thing Rodney's former girlfriend was yelling the other night outside the apartment.) Then we saw all of these people running down the hall, and someone yelled, "Call an ambulance!" Dr. Reid went out to scout out the situation, and she learned that this girl was sitting in class and had a panic attack. We think something traumatic must have happened to her in the past because all of a sudden she just started freaking out and yelling. Some people helped her out into the hallway where she waited for the EMT's to come. But in the meantime, she was out there screaming that someone was hurting her, and she was crying and sobbing really loud. It kind of upset everybody, and no one could concentrate, so we moved our class downstairs to the grad. lab. Never a dull moment around here! I hope that the girl will be okay. I'm glad she wasn't actually being physically hurt, but whatever was going on in her mind was obviously very real to her, so hopefully everything will be okay.

After class I went to the library for a long time and read, read, read, read, read for my historic preservation class tomorrow. We have a ton of reading for that class, but it's all pretty interesting. When I got home, I made myself a tomato and cheese sandwich using fresh tomatoes from Dr. Small's garden! It made me feel very nostalgic for home--because we always have tasty tomatoes during the summer. Tonight we're all going to go get French silk blizzards at Dairy Queen--yummmmm!