Worst Day Ever

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! All of the other students in my program have had their breaking points previously in the semester where they have pretty much come unglued. They have told me repeatedly that I seem to be the only one who can keep it all together . . . until last night, that is. I think I finally hit the figurative "brick wall" that everyone has been talking about. I was planning on going up to Springfield today to spend the day with Greg, and I thought that I would have time to do that, but then the reality of all I have to get done by next week hit me, and a whole bunch of other stuff got dumped on me too.

First of all, a "freezing rain alert" was issued for Springfield, and the weather report said that there would be ice accumulation on the road. I don't even like driving in rain--let alone freezing rain!! So I didn't want to drive up, and then Greg was upset that his plans for the day got ruined, and now I'm kind of freaking out at how he reacted to all of this. The bottom line is, if I had driven up there today and ended up sliding off the road into a ditch, it doesn't matter what he had planned--you can't enjoy Christmas cheer in a body cast. Anyway, there are just several things upsetting both of us, and I don't have the time or energy to deal with any of it right now, so I don't know what to do. I literally can't worry about it today though because there is so much I have to do. Right now I'm going to go write a paper about slavery and then, well, actually, I'm not even going to type the list because it will just make me feel worse. So, I'm signing off now to get to work, and to make things even worse, the freezing rain is on its way to Charleston. Today is pretty much the worst day ever, and if I survive until Christmas break, it will be a wonderful Christmas miracle! :-) My classmates (or fellow inmates) are quite concerned that Tiffany has run into her brick wall--because, they say, what does that mean for them? So, Kristen says that sugar makes everything better, and she's going to hook me up with some of that tonight. :-)

Palestine Tourists

Today I was doing some research for the corridors exhibit (trying to find quotes to go along with different topics), and I remembered this awesome quote from Eliza R. Snow when I was writing a paper at BYU. A book called Correspondence of Palestine Tourists contains the letters of Eliza R. Snow, Lorenzo Snow, George Albert Smith, and others, who began a journey to Israel in 1872. Eliza R. Snow has a perfect quote for our exhibit. In writing about traveling from Salt Lake City to Chicago by train (over pretty much the same terrain she'd traveled by foot and wagon 30 years before), she said: "In crossing the plains, I frequently drew the contrast between the present and the past, and could hardly realize the present to be a living reality. To travel with ease, devoid of fatigue, in three days, a distance which a few years ago required more than three months of weariness and privations to accomplish, is certainly a very great change."

In reading more of her letters, I found some funny quotes. Eliza R. Snow was truly a wonderful writer. After seeing Niagara Falls, which she loved, she made the remark, "I leave it, after drawing the conclusion that Mark Twain was induced to speak indifferently respecting this celebrated curiosity, lest he should be suspected of doing or thinking for once like somebody else." Ha ha. Eliza was referring to a time when Mark Twain wrote that he thought Niagara Falls was overrated. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that Eliza R. Snow may have met Mark Twain, or at least seen him when he came to Utah in 1861. He didn't have very nice things to say about the Mormons (but he did say some funny things), so it makes sense that Eliza would be a little critical of his indifference to the falls.

Then, about crossing the ocean, she Eliza wrote, "I have experienced a slight touch of that disquieting malady called sea-sickness, just enough to make my appetite inexpensive for two or three days, and to cause a little cleansing of the stomach for my future benefit." It was fun to read those things.

This morning all of us when to breakfast at a restaurant called What's Cookin'? It's a cute little place located on the square in downtown Charleston, and they have really good food. I had blueberry pancakes with eggs and hashbrowns--it was totally awesome. Now I'm going to write research papers before going to babysit the Stowell kids tonight. I don't have a lot of energy for babysitting, but they're good kids, so I think it will be fine.

My Evil Clone

Do you love the Christmas tree decorations? I put Aly's and my favorite things on the ornaments: BYU, New York (that's where Aly is from), the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox (that's Aly's favorite baseball team--I don't like them), Salve Regina (Aly's alma mater), and the Utah Jazz. It's hard to see in the picture, but on the star atop the tree we have Abe Lincoln himself. It now feels kind of Christmas-y here at the apartment. I even practiced some adaptive reuse techniques, as historic preservationists call it, in putting a Christmas wreathe on our door. We had a nice fall wreathe with fall leaves on it, and it's so pretty that I thought it would be a shame to take it down, so today I wired some holly berries onto it, put a big red bow at the bottom, and voila--we now have a Christmas wreathe!

So, remember how I talked about my arch nemesis Stanley Thayne yesterday? Well, my sister Lindy sent me the funniest picture she found online of Stanley. You can see him here (he's the one on the left) standing next to Dr. Alex Baugh, one of the BYU Church History professors. This photo was taken after Stanley Thayne won the Mormon History Association undergraduate student paper competition--the competition I was supposed to win with my paper about Confederate General Sterling Price and the Mormons! :-) But you see--I'm cool too--I can hang out with BYU Church History professors like Susan Easton Black, and I have cute nieces! :-) I'm just kidding about all of this, but it's kind of funny. As Lindy pointed out, in this particular picture of Stanley, he bears a strange resemblance to me. Lindy thinks that Stanley is my clone gone terribly wrong. Maybe he's my evil clone? So now he's living the life I thought I would have, and I'm living the one I'm supposed to have--it all makes sense now.

Today has been a good day so far. I had Historic Preservation this morning, which is one of my favorite classes, and we talked about preservation in the Western United States, which I especially enjoyed. After class Dan and I went over to the Tarble Arts Center (awkward few moments there) to speak with their director about the website we're going to be doing for next spring's exhibit. She is really nice, and I think the website won't be too terribly difficult, but what that we do here isn't difficult? :-) I am so excited for the exhibit opening next April because one of my all-time favorite BYU professors, Dr. Rugh, is coming out here to be our guest speaker!!! Our class was offered some grant money if we could find some visiting scholars to come speak to the public here about our exhibit topic--transportation history in the Midwest. I suggested Dr. Rugh, since she did her graduate work in Illinois, and she is the world's best travel and tourism guru/scholar. She agreed to come, and I am so excited to be able to show her around Charleston next year!

I've just been decorating for Christmas and doing homework this afternoon, and then later today I'll be going over to the Bauman's for dinner with the missionaries, then Angel and I are going to go visiting teaching. No rest for the weary!

Chicken Fried Steak

I'm a little sad because KFC in Illinois does not have chicken fried steak :-( At home in Utah, Mom and I would always get chicken fried steak at KFC, and I loved it! I bet I could get some chicken fried steak at Cracker Barrel in Mattoon sometime. I went to KFC this evening because I realized that I was falling into another vicious cycle where I did not have time to eat or sleep. I have food at my house--just no time to fix it. I got spoiled over Thanksgiving break when I had time to both eat and sleep! :-) Since they didn't have chicken fried steak at KFC, I got some chicken strips, which are pretty good. I'm at home for a minute, but then I need to go pick Dr. Hardeman up from one of the school judiciary committee hearings and go work on some house survey stuff with some of the other inmates (that's what Mrs. Miller calls us). :-) The other day we had a discussion about what an EIU Historical Administration student action figure would look like if there was such a thing. We decided that it would be really skinny (no time to eat), have white skin with black circles under its eyes, bloodshot eyes that could pop out of its head (no time to sleep), and have really grungy clothes (no time to do laundry). Ha ha. As the saying goes, "if you don't laugh, you'll cry."

I think I'll be at the library for a really long time tonight because I need to do some reading for class tomorrow, and I need to look at some items for one of my research papers. I was so excited today to see that an item I had ordered over interlibrary loan has just arrived. It's a microfilm of the Prud'homme family papers from Natchitoches, Louisiana that span from the 1700s to the late 1800s! It might night sound very exciting, but I am totally ecstatic and can't wait to go crank up the microfilm reader. That is one of my favorite strange secret hobbies: reading microfilm. Today in Dr. Reid's class we got to talk about how the South has memorialized its pre-Civil War past through the use of Confederate monuments and Southern Colonial revival-style architecture. I was in heaven! Well, I'm off to pick up Dr. H. and spend some quality time at school.

Oh, really quickly I just wanted to say a few words about my arch nemesis: Stanley Thayne. I've met Stanley Thayne before, but he probably doesn't remember me. But he is totally my arch nemesis! He is currently living the life that I thought I wanted, but things have worked out for the best for me. Stanley was an English major at BYU, but then decided he likes history, so he started entering papers in all of these LDS Church history paper competitions. He always beat me out--whether is was the Religious Education Student Symposium or the Mormon History Association, he was always the one who was one up on me. Then, I totally wanted to do the history graduate program at BYU, but didn't get in, but who did? Stanley Thayne. And he wasn't even a history major! Then, I submitted a paper to the Journal of Mormon History--the granddaddy of all Mormon scholarly publications, but it got rejected. Well, who has a 37-page article in the latest issue of the Journal of Mormon History? Stanley Thayne. Grrrrrr. Sorry I'm being mean--he just makes me so mad! :-) Although the editor of the Journal of Mormon History did contact me about submitting a paper that I presented in Salt Lake this summer, so there is still hope--I just need to find time to revise the article before submitting it. Like I said, I think things seriously have worked out for the best for me--even though I used to be really sad that I didn't get into the program at BYU. I bet that Stanley Thayne doesn't know how to draw museum exhibit floor plans, make a website, or judge the structural integrity of a historic house! :-) Just kidding--I shouldn't be mean.

Hide Tide at Gettysburg

How did I get an 8-foot Christmas tree for $3.84? By making it out of green duck tape! Ha ha--it has many benefits: it doesn't take up any space, it weighs zero pounds, it doesn't drop pine needles on the carpet, it doesn't smell and won't catch on fire, it looks cool, and it will be super easy to take down. The next step is to make the ornaments--more pictures will come.

Today was a weird and funny day. Last night Aly had said to me that it would be nice if Dr. Barnhart cancelled class today like he did the week before Thanksgiving. So when my phone rang this morning at 7:30 a.m., I thought I was dreaming that Dr. Barnhart was calling me to cancel class or at least bump class back a few hours like Mr. Riccio did yesterday. Then I realized that I wasn't having a dream, so I got out of bed and answered the phone. Sure enough--it was Dr. Barnhart. He has brochitis and said that he needed to cancel class today. I was still kind of in zombie land, so I don't remember all that he said, but he was talking to me for about five minutes explaining that he is sorry that we haven't had very many sessions of his class this semester or learned very much in his class. He said something like next week we'll just meet to turn in our research papers, and then we'll call it good for his class for the semester. I went and knocked on Aly's door again and said, "You're not going to believe this, but Dr. Barnhart just called me and cancelled class." She was very excited and rolled over to go back to sleep. I called the other kids, and they thought it was so funny. Dr. Barnhart's class is for sure the most random class any of us have ever had. Out of all 14 weeks of the semester, we've had an actual class only about 6 or 7 times. We're a little concerned because some of the readings that we were supposed to have done for that class seem like they would be pretty essential to our field of work--like "Interpreting Historical Sites," and other such articles--but oh well, we're not complaining.

So I just did work all morning until I needed to go help Dr. Hardeman do some grading this afternoon. His students' papers never cease to amaze me--they don't make any sense at all! There were a number of funny things I read today. My favorite was the 15-page paper entitled "Hide Tide at Gettysburg." Dr. Hardeman had me pick a paper I wanted to read, and I said, "How about 'Hide Tide at Gettysburg'?" He got a good laugh out of that one, since the book that the student was supposed to be basing their paper on (which they didn't) was called High Tide at Gettysburg. Then there was the student who said, "Chivalry and Lynching were two forms of public humility in the South." That sentence has issues on various levels. First of all, the student did not mean to talk about "Chivalry" (meaning gallant or heroic action); they meant to talk about "shivaree" (meaning a crazy public gathering). And, the student didn't mean to talk about shivaree and lynching as a form of public "humility," but public "humiliation." There is certainly nothing humble about a lynching! It was quite funny though, because the whole 15-page paper compared chivalry to lynching and, numerous times, referred to the humility caused by these actions. Last but not least was the student who wrote an analysis of the book Mothers of Invention. Their first two sentences read, "Mothers of Invention. Yes, this is the name of a Rock Band, and they are pretty good. But when one considers this phrase as the title of this book, it has more meaning." Oh dear.

Well, I'm off to this week's crazy meeting, which hopefully won't last for seven hours (but you never know).

The Zombies

Ta da! Here it is--the floor plan for the E-Gallery over at the Tarble Arts Center where part of our museum exhibit will be placed next spring. You can click on the image to get a better look at it. This is the little beast that took me about three hours to finish last night in the middle of the night. We had to do a second layout for the other gallery we'll be using, but it didn't take as long as the E-Gallery. I bet you didn't know I could make museum exhibit floor plans, did you? Neither did I.

This morning I got another wake-up call--only it was earlier than Dr. Barnhart's a couple of weeks ago. This one was at 7:00 a.m. I was so pooped from last night's escapades that it didn't even register with me that my phone was ringing. Luckily when my phone notified me that I had a voice mail message, I decided to get out of bed, walk to the phone, and check the message. I was totally in zombie land after staying awake until about 3:30 a.m. The message was from Alisha who had heard from Mr. Riccio that he had to take his son and his parents to the airport and wanted to move class from 9:00 a.m. back to 2:00 p.m. I went and knocked on Aly's door to tell her that she could sleep for a few more hours, but she was so exhausted that when she got up to open the door, she collapsed on the floor. Even though I was still in zombie land and hadn't fully awakened, I became quite alarmed at this. I asked her if she was okay, and she said that she was just tired. So I got her back into bed and told her to go back to sleep. Talk about being exhausted! I also went immediately went back to bed and stayed there until about 11:00. After waking up and at least partially coming back to my senses, I became a little bit upset that Mr. Riccio hadn't let us know sooner that he was going to bump class back today. If we had known, then we could have finished our crazy project today instead of spending all night last night on it. Oh well, I was grateful for the few extra hours of sleep this morning. Luckily Aly seemed better when she got up later in the morning. Even though we all got to sleep in a bit, Mr. Riccio still walked into a classroom full of zombies this afternoon. We were all pooped. Everyone had dark circles under their eyes, and many people were in what appeared to be their pajamas. :-) Mr. Riccio kind of seemed like he was in zombie land too. He said he liked our project that we turned in, but he didn't seemed as impressed as we hoped he'd be. He'll probably give us a "B" on it. He gives all of us "B's" on everything. :-) The worst part of the day was that right after we handed our assignment to him, he handed us two more assignments that are due on December 10--in addition to our label text which is due on December 3 and our exhibit binder which is also due on December 10!!! The two new assignments were not on the syllabus, and all of us zombies just looked at each other with blank stares as we saw our entire academic lives pass before our eyes. How will all of these assignments get done? I have no idea. While we were all still in shock, Mr. Riccio started his class discussion about interactive exhibits and exhibit accessibility. None of us had much to say, and when he broke out his slides of exhibits he'd visited that were interactive, we almost lost a couple of people to the overwhelming power of the heavy eyelid. After about 2 hrs. in class this afternoon, Mr. Riccio's son called to tell him that his flight back to school in Pennsylvania had been cancelled and he needed Mr. Riccio to come pick him up in Indianapolis. Mr. Riccio got the same look on his face that we got when he handed out our new assignments. He said to us, "Well, I guess class is over now," and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief and exhaustion. It was a cold, nasty, gray, rainy, wet, icky day outside, but it kind of went along with how we're feeling about school, so it was quite fitting. Oh, here's a bit of fun news--I put up Aly's and my Christmas tree tonight!! It is the most simple and cheapest tree ever--it's about 8 feet tall, and cost a grand total of $3.84. When I post pictures of it tomorrow, you will all be quite impressed with my ingenuity :-) Aly and I had talked about going out and cutting a tree down somewhere, but then we realized that we'll really only be here for about two-and-a-half more weeks, so we didn't really want to do anything too fancy. Our current tree is the opposite of fancy, but it's pretty cool, so I'll put a picture of it up tomorrow. Well, I'm off to do . . . homework!

CODE RED

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! It is 2:11 a.m. on the morning of Monday, November 26--but technically it is still Sunday night for me because I haven't gone to bed yet. Why haven't I gone to bed, you may ask? Because I have been at school for the last seven-and-a-half hours working on a museum exhibits project that is due tomorrow (well, actually today). I couldn't wait until tomorrow (actually, later today) to write about the crazy evening, so I'm doing it before I go to bed. I'm also having a hard time getting sleepy now because I just drank a 12-oz. can of Diet Coke and a 20-oz. bottle of Mountain Dew CODE RED soda. It was definitely a code red night. Since I'm the only one of the bunch who knows how to use Adobe Illustrator, I got stuck with the task of putting the finishing touches on the assignment (yes, I too am having flashbacks to the Tilford Dudley days), which was basically a layout of our entire corridors exhibit. Thankfully other people stayed with me until the bitter end, working on other parts of the assignment, so no one was left at school by themselves in the middle of the night.

I am quite upset about tonight's assignment, and I need to vent a little bit, which I hope is okay. Mr. Riccio is a very nice man and a good teacher, but he does not plan out our assignments very well. Some of the things he wants us to do are totally impractical, and he doesn't explain how he wants things done until after he gives us a grade--which is never "A" because we never do anything like he wants it done. Maybe if his was our only class, we would have time to do his assignments, but we still have four other classes!!! So, in class before Thanksgiving break, he gave us a two-part assignment which basically entailed planning out the entire layout of both exhibit galleries we will be setting up and writing all of the label text for the objects. The assignment was supposed to be due next Monday, December 3, but then he offhandedly said, "Why don't we make the first part, the exhibit plan, due on November 26." Okay--first problem--everyone was leaving town for Thanksgiving, and it's hard to do said assignment with class members scattered throughout the country. We broke the assignment into parts which we all completed independently, however, and we planned to meet tonight to just put everything together. Unfortunately, when we got together tonight, we looked at the assignment sheet again, and looked at some samples of what previous classes had done for said assignment, and realized that we were way, way, way off, and there were many other parts of the assignment we needed to complete. We had to produce sample panels using a uniform design layout, reorder all of our object numbering systems, plot out where all of our objects would be displayed within each gallery, and propose a method for producing interpretive panels.

I finished the Diet Coke at about 9:00 p.m., and at about 10:30 I broke out the Code Red Mountain Dew. I am now so jacked up on caffeine that I don't know if I'll be able to sleep at all, but I'm totally exhausted, so I guess I'll try. I have a feeling that this is only the first of many, many, many long nights to come. I thought that our last seven-hour meeting was a fluke, but tonight I'm realizing that it might become the norm. Talk about a "Welcome Back from Thanksgiving Break!" assignment! We lost Alyson tonight at about 10:00 p.m. She totally came unglued. She's super sad because she didn't want to leave her family in New York, and she was stressed about everything else, so tonight's project pretty much pushed her over the edge. Matt brought her back to our apartment, and she's asleep right now, so hopefully she'll feel better in the morning. Can I survive until the end of the semester??? Mom noticed the other night that my eyes were bloodshot, and I'm afraid that they will become permanently so before I make it through this program. I also think I'll have completely gray hair by the time I graduate. Or maybe I'll have no hair because I'll have pulled it all out in a succession of stressed out spells! I must say, however, that the gallery layout plans I made in Adobe Illustrator tonight look pretty freaking awesome. We decided as a group that if we don't get an "A" on this assignment, we will start a silent protest and will never speak in Mr. Riccio's class again.

Flies are Falling from the Sky

The weirdest thing just happened--I was sitting here at the computer, and I heard this fly up buzzing around the light here in my room. It was buzzing and buzzing and flying all over the place like crazy. It was really starting to annoy, but then all of a sudden it stopped. I have some papers on my bed, and all of a sudden, I heard this little plop on my papers. I went to investigate, and sure enough--there was the fly. Alyson came in and we were looking at it. It was not dead, but it had flown its last flight. I think the fall may have injured it because it wasn't flying away from us. I felt kind of bad for it, so I scooped it up on a paper and took it outside.

I think that Thanksgiving break was the calm before the storm. It's gonna get crazy for the next couple of weeks! I have to write two research papers, finish the neighborhood house survey, finish writing the Piatt County Museum grant, plan the design scheme for the corridors exhibit, and do a bunch of reading :-( I went and picked Alyson up in Champaign this afternoon, and she told me that she nearly decided not to come back (seriously) because she couldn't imagine how we'll get everything done before the semester ends, but luckily she did come back. With as far as we've come already, we might as well just hang in there until we're done! Tonight I have to go to a meeting with everyone about the design scheme for the exhibit. It's due tomorrow, and since we were spread out all over the country during the break, it was a little hard to work on it before now. The weather is nasty and yucky here. It's cold, rainy, cloudy, gray, and dreary. Hopefully the sun will come out this week and cheer everybody up.

Yesterday I forgot to say hooray that BYU beat Utah!!! Thankfully Mom talked me through the last minute of the game on the phone. I was afraid we might lose, but luckily they came through there at the very end. The Eastern Illinois University football team lost their playoff game last night against Southern Illinois University, but they had a pretty good season, so I guess it's okay.

This morning I went to church, then I came home to get stuff done, then I left for Champaign, and that's pretty much been my day today. Poor Greg--he had the worst day ever today! Last night when he picked me up in Mattoon, I got to ride to Charleston in the mortuary van . . . with Mrs. Castle! Mrs. Castle died in Alabama the other day, and had to be flown to St. Louis so she can be buried next to her husband in Illinois. I've never ridden in a van with a body in the back before, so it was quite exciting. Mrs. Castle didn't say much during the drive to Charleston. So, Greg had to take Mrs. Castle back up to the mortuary in Athens last night, and then today he got a call from the police saying that they needed to come pick up this man who had died at his house and had been there dead for four days--yikes! Greg said it was kind of nasty. I know that I could definitely not do that job! Greg and his boss Rich were putting the new dead guy in the box that Mrs. Castle had been shipped in, but the box fell apart, and a board fell on Greg's foot and broke his toe :-( That totally stinks. I hope that he will be okay! I told him that I would love to come take care of him, but all is academic craziness in Charleston. Maybe Greg should write a book about all of his adventures!

They put the Christmas lights up on Old Main, which looks pretty cool because they have lights clear along the front of the building, so you see the whole outline of the castle. It looks really great if you see it from a slight angle, but when you see it head-on, you see that they messed up a little bit at the very top. Not all of the lights are quite straight. Maybe they'll fix it before Christmas. Well, I'm off to the meeting. Hopefully it will not last for seven hours as our meetings have been known to do!