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!

A Long Day's Flight

The only bad part about Thanksgiving break is that is has to end :-( Although I did get a fun surprise when I arrived back in town this evening. I was planning on being picked up at the Mattoon train station by Sister Stowell, but as I was walking towards the stairs, who should appear but Mr. Greg! He had to go down to St. Louis today for work, so I was definitely not expecting to see him there, but he decided to swing by on his way back up to Athens. Come to find out, he and Sister Stowell had plotted out the scenario together--so she was in on it too! :-) It was a very fun surprise and helped me not feel bad about having to come back to school after the long break. I'm pretty pooped tonight--it was kind of a long travel day, but I have decided that I like riding trains around Chicago. I'll get to do it again in a few weeks when I head to Utah for Christmas! This morning (which feels like a really long time ago) Sarah, Joel, and Eliza took me to the airport. Miss Eliza was so cute and smiley the whole way, and it was hard to say goodbye. It was a good flight from Greenville to Chicago, but it was quite a shock to my system when I stepped outside into the frigid Chicago air! It was unpleasantly chilly outside. I caught the CTA train to town, and then walked a couple of very cold blocks to Union Station. I didn't actually get to ride on the Christmas CTA train today, even though the Christmas train with Santa Clause on board was running today. I guess that they only have one Christmas train, and about 5 billion other trains running every few minutes, so the odds of actually getting on the Christmas train are quite slim. Maybe in December I'll get lucky? I boarded the train for Mattoon at Union Station, and had a seemingly long train ride. I realized that it takes longer to take the train from Chicago to Mattoon than it does to fly from South Carolina to Chicago! Air travel is certainly a nice convenience that we enjoy. Well, I'm pretty tired--bordering on delirious--so I'd better head to bed. It has been such a fun week, and I'm not really looking forward to the barrage of projects that need to get done this week, but it's all good. I'm happy to be here, and it was a very fun surprise to have Greg pick me up tonight!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

Since it is the day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas season can officially begin (even though in many cases it began the day after Halloween). :-) Tonight Miss Eliza, Sarah, Joel, and I got to go over to the cute town of Pendleton to attend the Christmas tree lighting ceremony there on the town square behind Farmer's Hall. It was so much fun, and Eliza loved getting bundled up and looking at her reflection in the giant Christmas tree ornaments. It was exactly what you would imagine a small town Christmas gathering to be like--there was music, hot apple cider, and hugs and greetings all around. After the Christmas season kick-off, Sarah and Joel took me to their favorite restaurant: Just More Barbecue, which is only open on Fridays and Saturdays--very exclusive! It was a great place--very Southern. The food there was delicious, the people were very nice, and they had a fun blue grass band playing there in the restaurant. Now I can see why they like that place so much. We were all a little sad tonight though because we had to say goodbye to Mom, Dad, and Rich at the airport this afternoon. Here are some fun pictures that we took at Sarah and Joel's earlier today before they flew back to Utah. That is the one downside of going to school in Illinois--it's too far away from the family! I don't know how I'll say goodbye to little Miss Eliza tomorrow!! She is one of the four sweetest babies ever born (the other three are Camden, Riley, and Sidney)! It has been so much fun to spend the week having nothing but fun with the baby. Her hair is adorable, and her big, wide smile is the cutest thing ever. I'm glad we at least have pictures, e-mail, and phones so that we don't seem so far away from everyone--even if we are far away.

Today after we took Mom, Dad, and Rich to the airport, Sar, Joel, Eliza, and I went on an adventure to the Museum and Library of the Confederacy, hidden in a little neighborhood in Greenville. It was so cool! It was this funny little house that had been turned into a museum. Our favorite things to see were the boots of the tallest Confederate soldier, who, for a time, had the record as the tallest man on earth. He was born in Greenville, SC, so he is especially famous in South Carolina. He was seven feet, seven-and-a-half inches tall! His feet were humongous!! The Sons of Confederate Veterans working at the museum were very nice, and one of the men was telling me about some of his ancestors from Paris, Illinois, which is just up the road from Charleston. He said he's going to send me copies of some of his ancestor's letters, which will be very cool. After the museum, we went to this funny store full of Confederate stuff, and I couldn't help but get the flag of the Mississippi Republic! Did you even know that there was such a thing? I hadn't ever seen one of the flags for sale before, so I couldn't resist :-) When Mississippi seceded in 1861 (it was the second state to do so--after South Carolina), they formed the Mississippi Republic and adopted a new flag featuring a magnolia tree--very cool. I won't be flying it from any flagpoles in Illinois (the Land of Lincoln), but it's kind of fun to have. Well, it has certainly been a fun week with the family here in the South, and I'm kind of afraid to head back to cold Illinois, but I'm also looking forward to seeing Greg and the crazy HA classmates again. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks between now and when the semester ends, but I've gotten some good rest this week and am ready (sort of) to hit the ground running again.