Desperate House Guests

Was it just yesterday that I posted my last blog entry? Much has happened since then. Dr. Hardeman remained asleep throughout the rest of the afternoon, despite my sporadic efforts to wake him. Then, who should roll into town a day early but Aly's boyfriend Darren and his friend Stephen. Unfortunately, outside of BYU land, the social "norm" is for everybody to stay with their girlfriends, and since Alyson pays just as much rent as I do, I didn't really have a say on whether or not the boys camped out here at our apartment. Thankfully I have my own private room with my own bathroom, so I can come in here and pretty much close everything else out, but unfortunately Stephen, who slept out on the couch, likes to watch TV until 2:00 a.m. When I opened my door this morning to leave for school, I was shocked--it didn't look like the apartment I had just cleaned yesterday. Stephen had taken over, and the window was open (it's cold outside!), and there were Cheetos, towels, clothes, blankets, and shoes strewn throughout the living room and kitchen area. Luckily I didn't have to linger in the pigsty for very long. I found a banana buried beneath the mound of Cheetos and took that with me to eat for breakfast.

My classes were both really good today. Dr. Reid gave me a card and some $ for taking care of her kitties, and the card is HILARIOUS!! She said that she tried to find a thank you card, but when she found this one, she couldn't resist. It has this funny, old picture of a girl dressed in a bonnet and this crazy Swiss-looking dress. Inside, printed on the card, is the caption: "Tiffany misunderstood when her date said let's go Dutch." Ha ha ha. Everyone got a good laugh from that one! Dr. Reid rocks.

Today before class Angie showed us a picture of an "exhibit" that is showing at the Tarble Arts Center right now (that's the place where our exhibit will be shown in the spring). The current exhibit is totally ridiculous. It's called "minimalist" art. This "artist" lady came and set up her "exhibit" in one of the galleries there at the Tarble. Said "exhibit" consists of a few pieces of paper hanging above the gallery windows and a paint brush hanging from the ceiling. That's all that's in there!!! This gave us a good idea though--we're thinking that maybe we should do our exhibit this spring according to "minimalist" style. We figured that we could set the brick I "borrowed" from the National Road in Marshall in the middle of the gallery with a spotlight on it. Then we could have Mr. Riccio's toy train going around the brick. Then we could let people draw their own meanings about transportation corridors from said objects. It certainly would be a lot less work for us! :-)

In Material Culture class today, we talked about Historic Furnishings Plans for historic house museums. We got to use the Melrose furnishings plan as an example, which was fun to talk about. It made me feel very nostalgic. Speaking of nostalgia, I read an article yesterday while Dr. Hardeman was sleeping about the history of homesickness. It was so interesting! I learned that during the Civil War, doctors began to diagnose homesickness as a medical condition, which they called nostalgia--because it sounded more medical-ish. There are a number of Civil War soldiers listed as dying of "nostalgia." They found that severe nostalgia would lead to other health problems and in some cases, death. During the 20th century, however, the word "nostalgia" took on a more romantic meaning, and homesickness, later known as just "homesickness" became less of an official medical condition. Isn't that interesting?? I loved the article--especially because I get homesick a lot. I think if I had been a Civil War soldier, I would have been one of those who either died or was discharged because of "nostalgia."

This evening, in place of the previously planned Thanksgiving dinner, which was cancelled due to everyone's tendency to freak out, we all went out and got Thai food. Greg came down from Athens, which made tonight's dinner even more fun. Everyone was there . . . except for Dan. Dan, who always comes to all extra curricular activities, did not show! Well, I actually wasn't surprised because--come to find out (after I started dating Greg) Dan liked me and I think thought that there was the potential for a relationship. That definitely wouldn't have worked, but now Dan is super mad at me. He doesn't really talk to me anymore, which makes it a little awkward since we work on the exhibit photography team together. Once talkative Dan has become offish, curt, sarcastic, and bitter Dan. I feel bad, but I don't know what to do about the situation.

Tonight at dinner, Matt (one of my classmates) bonded wonderfully with Greg. He says that Greg is his new best friend, and he wants to go up to Athens to play video games with Greg sometime. :-) Matt, who, as the "big brother" figure of the group, informed me that he would need to approve of Greg before I continued to date him, gave his whole-hearted support of the relationship. :-) It was a really fun dinner--and we had great food too!

Thankfully, after dinner Greg and I decided to head up to his parents' house in Sullivan to watch a movie. I say thankfully because upon returning home this evening, I found that our desperate house guests had been drinking a little too much booze. When I pulled into the parking lot, I could see Darren standing out there next to his car shivering in the cold. When I got out of the car, he said in a slightly slurred voice, "Tiffany, ith that oo?" I said, "Yep. What are you doing out here?" He said that he'd gotten a little too drunk and was trying to sober up by standing in the cold. He said that since he'll be driving back to New York tomorrow, he wanted to get all of his drinking in tonight--great logic (not). I convinced him to wobble up the stairs with me to go inside before catching pneumonia. Upon coming inside, we found that Stephen was also drunk, but saw no need to go sober up in the cold. Great--not only do I have two guys staying in the apartment, but now it's two drunk guys! Oh well, I have again barricaded myself in my room, and at least tonight is the last night I have to deal with it. They'll be rolling out of town tomorrow after Aly and I finish class. Hopefully all will be sober by then.

Wake-up Call

I am in Dr. Hardeman's office right now, and he is completely passed out over in the corner. I tried waking him up, and he would wake up for a second, but then was snoring again before I even had time to ask him what he wanted me to do. So, I am writing on my blog. He is snoring very loudly :-)

Well, this morning my alarm went off at 7:40 a.m., and I rolled over and stayed in bed until about 7:50 a.m., then I finally got up and jumped in the shower. Just before jumping in the shower, I heard my phone ringing, but decided to just let the caller leave a message, and I'd respond after the shower. When I got to my phone, about five minutes later, I saw that the mystery caller--someone from a 217 Illinois number that I did not recognize--had called multiple times within the last five minutes. "Hmmm," I thought to myself, "this person must really want to talk to me." So I dialed the number, and a gravelly male voice said, "Tiffany? Is that you?" I thought to myself, "Who on earth is this?" I said with uncertainty, "Ummmm, yes?" Then, as he started talking I realized that it was Dr. Barnhart. He was talking about a million miles a minute, but I caught that he had a meeting in Springfield, needed to cancel class today, and mine was the only phone number he could find.

Hooray--no class this morning! His is truly the most random class I've ever had :-) We don't really have reading assignments anymore--heck, we don't really even have class anymore. Alyson and I went over to school anyway to get some work done, and multiple professors were very suspicious of why we weren't in class. :-) We told them that it wasn't our fault, and they finally believed us. We had to work on a scanning assignment this morning which took a while, but it was nice to have the extra couple of hours to work on it. Now I'm here at work, and then later this evening we will be having one of our lovely weekly meetings. Dr. Hardeman is still snoring--even more loudly that before. He's been out (on and off) for about 40 minutes now. Oh wait, he almost woke up. Nope, now he's snoring again. Oh dear! Do you think he falls asleep during class?

Teamwork

Someone stuck this "motivational" poster up in our classroom :-) Ha ha ha, it's perfect for all of us HA students because we frequently feel like flattened mousies. Since we have to do basically all of our projects together, we all either share the cheese or get snapped in the trap.

Remember what I said yesterday about freaking out? Well, today more than ever I saw the need amongst the other students to heed the advice: "Don't freak out!" I am not freaking out (I've decided that it's not even worth it to freak out--otherwise I'd always be freaked out), but the other students definitely are. We were supposed to be having a Thanksgiving dinner this Wednesday, but everyone has decided that there is too much to be done before Thanksgiving, so we cannot have any fun between now and then. Party poopers! :-) Just kidding. Alyson and I are still going to have fun though. Her boyfriend and his friend are arriving in town Wednesday afternoon, so they, Greg, and I will be going out for Thai food that night. So it should still be a fun day.

Museum Exhibits class was soooooooo boring this morning! :-) It was so boring that it was funny. Mr. Riccio was talking about museum exhibit lighting, which could be an interesting topic, but we started going into bulb wattage, window screens, and all of these different mathematical equations to figure out how much light certain types of objects can handle. At one point, after Kristen had literally fallen asleep, we all just looked around at each other and started laughing because we had no idea what Mr. Riccio was talking about, and we were all totally bored. What can I say, it's Monday! :-)

After class I went and picked up my car at Midas after having the oil changed and tires rotated. Having the tires rotated helped a lot!! The car had been sounding kind of loud when I was driving, and I think it was because the older tires were in the front, and now that the newer tires are in the front, it sounds a lot better. They found a little oil leak in the engine, but they said it's not too bad. Well, I'm off to do homework.

"Time Won't Let Me Go"

One of my all-time favorite songs is called "Time Won't Let Me Go" by a band called The Bravery. If you want to hear this song, you can click here to go to the band's website, and they have a place where you can listen to clips of their songs. Anyway, this is how I'm feeling lately--like time won't let me go. I realized today that time totally controls my life, and it either goes too fast or too slow :-) For instance, it seems like I've been here at school for about 10 years, but at the same time, I can't believe that it's mid-November already and all of our seemingly far-off assignments are due! It seems that there isn't enough time in a day to get done all that needs to be done. Oh well, I realize that everyone probably feels the same way, so I'll just keep going and accept the fact that time really does control my life--but that's okay. There is much to be done before I skip town next Saturday, but it will be good to work towards the goal of seeing my fam and having a little break.

This morning I thought that I was dreaming about a thunderstorm, but then I woke up and realized that there really was quite a hefty thunderstorm going on outside. Of course--it hasn't rained for two weeks, and then the day after I get my car washed, it rains. :-) I went over to feed the kitties this morning and still can't get over how cute they are. Unfortunately today was my last day to take care of them and I returned the key to Dr. Reid this evening. She said I can still come over to visit sometimes since the kitties and I became the best of friends.

After kitty duty, I drove over to church and had a nice time there. People keep giving me copies of last week's newspaper article, and one lady at church today said, "You're like a movie star!" Ha ha ha. Nooooo, not a movie star. One of the speakers in sacrament meeting today never showed up, so Bishop Stowell spoke instead. He offered everyone some suggested steps to surviving life. I can't remember all of them, but two of them were: #1: Don't freak out (meaning realize that life will throw you some curve balls, but it's okay) and #2: Don't wait to be happy--just be happy now. I thought that was good advice--especially the one about not freaking out. Maybe I should share that tip with my classmates. :-) Today in Relief Society we had the lesson about Joseph Smith, and the sister who was teaching it held up the Joseph Smith book by Susan Easton Black with paintings by Liz Lemon Swindle. She was talking about the paintings in the book, and how Sisters Black and Swindle had made calendars and various other things featuring the paintings. This rocket launched me back a couple of years to when I was working for Sister Black at BYU, and we were in charge of finding historical information to go on each day of the year that would correspond with one of Liz Swindle's paintings--that was definitely a lot of work, but it's kind of cool when later on you can see that your work actually made a difference for somebody.

Today I was enlisted to befriend an 18-year-old girl who is thinking of joining the Church. Supposedly she's kind of been hanging with questionable crowds, and since I'm the closest "stable young adult" to her age, everyone thinks I'd be the most likely to be able to get her involved in church stuff. I will do my best, but going back to the time issue, the trouble is that I barely have enough time to deal with my own problems, let alone other people's--but I guess that's what life is all about. The situation sounds a little questionable though--it'll probably make me feel like I'm in high school again. :-)

Today after church Alyson, Kristen, and I went over to the Dudley House to entertain all of the visitors that were supposed to come as a result of the publicity from our article last week. Well, I think the novelty of the Dudley House has already worn off because we had zero visitors from 2:00-4:00 p.m. :-) Oh well, at least the interest lasted as long as it did. Today, in honor of Veterans Day, they draped a huge American flag over the front of Old Main there on campus--it looked really cool! Well, I'm off to do some work. Aly and I have been cleaning the house because we were elected to host Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday--yikes! And Aly volunteered me to make a sweet potato pie for said dinner :-)

Books, Books, Books

I love books. I probably love them a little bit too much. So, you think I would be happy that my bedroom was absolutely bursting at the seams with books this morning, in preparation for writing some research papers, but the problem was that there were so many books that I couldn't really move around my room. So I took a bunch of books back to the library that I don't need anymore, but then I had to go get some others that I do need, and unfortunately I came home with even more than I took back. I decided that something must be done, so I got another cool little bookshelf to help me keep everything straight. Now hopefully I can find the books I need when I need them.

Today was pretty much spent just working and running errands. I tried to get my car serviced, but Midas was too busy, so I'll drop it off on Monday before class. I went to the post office, the grocery store, and the gas station to get a car wash. I also filled the car with gas, which was a painful experience, as gas is now $3.06 per gallon :-( I also did a whole truckload of laundry, which I now need to fold, and I typed up some of the house surveys we completed. I'm pooped! I'd better keep working until bedtime though, since there is still much to be done.

I went and took care of the kitties at Dr. Reid's house yesterday and today, and they are SO CUTE!!! I can't even believe how cute they are. Everytime I go over, Katie sits on my lap, and Eleanor sits on the back of the couch right by my head. Katie also goes and plops herself in the sink while I'm in the bathroom scooping the kitty litter, and it's totally adorable. She curls up in a little ball and fits perfectly in the sink. When I left today, there was a kitty in each window watching me go. They are way too cute for words :-)

Just when we thought we were done with the Dudley stuff, more Dudley responsibilities have arisen. Due to the publicity of the article last Sunday in the local newspaper, the Coles County Historical Society would like us to have the exhibit at the Dud's house open tomorrow and next Sunday for the public to come see (with some of us there to answer questions). It's good that people are showing interest, but I'm beginning to think that Tilford Dudley is now a permanently-attached appendage that we will always have to carry around with us :-) One week from today I get to fly to South Carolina for Thanksgiving break!!! When I think of all that has to be done between now and then I get all dizzy, but I won't think about that--I'll just think about how nice it will be to have a break, and work hard until then. That's one awesome thing about EIU--they give us an entire week off for Thanksgiving!