The VIEW from Here to There

Now that's what I call a view--a "view from here to there," as our museum exhibit will be titled. Today the Coles County Sheriff took Dan and me up to the very top of the cupola on the Coles County Courthouse in Charleston so that we could take pictures of "urban sprawl" for the museum exhibit. As you can see, we were up at the highest point in all the land. The first picture there is looking south from the tower--over towards campus (where the other tall-ish buildings are). The second view is looking north towards the tiny town of Bushton. You don't realize just how flat it is here until you see the horizon from up high. I always have to take pictures of myself, wherever I go, so I snapped one up by the cool old bell in the cupola. That's my "I'm freezing" smile because it was freezing up there. It was really cool though--the sheriff took us to the third floor of the courthouse, then we got to go inside a secret door with a really steep, old wooden staircase. It felt like we were climbing forever, and then the sheriff opened up a hatch, and poof!--we were on top of the world.

It was a year ago today that Mom and I left for Chicago to attend the Illinois State History Symposium at Illinois State University in Normal. We had planned to leave on Valentine's Day, but there was a snow storm in Chicago, so our flight got bumped until the next day. We had a great time in Normal (except that it was really, really cold), and then we swung down to Charleston during the week to check out Eastern Illinois University. As you can see from the picture, it was freezing cold in Charleston then--hmmmm, some things never change :-) At that point I had been invited to be interviewed by the facult at Eastern for possible admittance to the program, but I wasn't really sure if I actually wanted to come to central Illinois for school. Since I wasn't going to be able to come back out for the interviews (I ended up doing the interview over the phone from the comfort of my own bedroom), Mom and I thought we'd check out the campus and town while we were out there. We thought that campus was nice, but our first impression of Charleston was that it was a little ghetto-ish. Now I think of it as just "quaint." :-) We did like that when we drove through town we didn't get the yucky feeling inside that we felt when we had first driven through Macomb, Illinois, back when I was planning to go to Western Illinois University. After visiting Charleston for the first time, I still didn't think that I would really end up out here, but they gave me the best offer and had the best-looking program of all that I had checked out. So here I am--one year later! I wish Mom was here in Charleston with me again too! :-)

It's been sad to see some of the details surface about yesterday's shooting at NIU. It's especially crazy that the shooter, who had formerly been a grad. student at NIU was currently a grad. student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign--that made it hit even closer to home! The U of I is just 40 miles north of Charleston, and I heard on the news that the shooter had purchased his guns just last week up there in Champaign. So, it could just as easily have happened at the U of I, or anywhere else for that matter. That's really, really sad and scary.

Yesterday Aly's boyfriend Darrin called and said that for Valentine's Day weekend he was going to surprise her by showing up at our doorstep tonight. Uh-oh. Well, at least he won't be bringing the friend with him who totally took over the whole apartment (and kept all of the windows open) the last time he came for a visit. And, maybe since he doesn't have his friend here to egg him on, maybe Darrin won't get so drunk this time. We can only hope. So, I guess it will be kind of a crazy weekend here, but I'm mostly just going to barricade myself in my room anyway because I have a lot of stuff to get done before Monday. That's the cool thing about our apartment--we each have our own big room and bathroom to ourselves, so if other people are here, I can just hang out in my own private space. I am going to go eat some delicious Valentine's leftovers for dinner, and then do some homework--my most common Friday night activity! :-)