Stained Glass and Stryder

Whoa--it sounds like no matter where you are--whether it's warm or cold, 'tis the season for car trouble. That was crazy that Sarah and Joel's window shattered in their car! I'm glad that everyone was okay. 'Tis also the season for sickness, and I'm sorry to hear that both Mom and Rich have the gomboo now. Last night I was afraid that I was coming down with something too--I had a really bad headache and thought I might be getting the flu, but the day in Springfield seems to have cured me, and I feel much better. I hope that everyone else can get better soon too!!

I finally got Stryder back today, and he is happier than ever to be alive! It seems that replacing the distributor did the trick, and now everything works great. $668.34 was a pretty hefty price tag, but it's worth it to have the car up and running again.

Today we went to Springfield for the Collections Care class, and it was a long day, but we had a great time. We started out at the Old State Capitol building where I gave a presentation to the class about preserving historic textiles, and then we got to catalog some textiles from the Vachel Lindsay Home. Then, Dr. Reid treated all of us to lunch at this cool restaurant called the Feed Store. I had a tasty sandwich, and Catherine and I shared a piece of apple cake.

After lunch we got to go to the Dana-Thomas House in downtown Springfield. It is seriously one of the coolest houses I have ever seen! It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1902-1904, and it is about 12,600 square feet, has 35 rooms, and 250 decorative glass windows. It was built for this really rich lady named Susan Lawrence Dana who was the social queen of Springfield at the turn of the century. My two favorite rooms were the gallery and the dining room. The original dining table has 16 leaves and can seat 40 people! Just one of the original Frank Lloyd Wright lamps in the home is worth about 2.3 million dollars. My favorite feature of the home was the bowling alley downstairs--it was so cool! We were supposed to go to Abe Lincoln's tomb today to talk about historic landscape preservation, but unfortunately we ran out of time because we were having too much fun at the Dana-Thomas house. Dr. Reid tried taking a shortcut on the way back to Charleston, but we ended up getting lost in the cornfields between Mattoon and C-town. Luckily we made it back, and I even had time to pick up Stryder before Midas closed. It was another fun day in Springfield! I wasn't as grouchy today as I was earlier this week--maybe it's because tomorrow is Valentine's Day and this year I have a Valentine! :-) I have decided that I have two new favorite things: Hershey's chocolate syrup (for making chocolate milk), and the show called "Ghost Hunters" on the SciFi channel.