Abe Lincoln's Hair

Greg is the most thoughtful guy ever! He found a couple of strands of Abe Lincoln's hair for sale on e-bay and bid on them for me! He got outbid in the end, but it's the thought that counts. He knows that I'm the type of crazy history buff who wold love to hang framed strands of Abe's hair in my room :-) One time I read this book called Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. She is very liberal, and I didn't enjoy the political underpinnings of the book, but overall it was a very entertaining read. In the book she goes around and visits all of the historic sites having to do with the Lincoln assassination conspirators. She mentions that one year for Christmas her sister gave her a frame containing two genuine eyelashes from the infamous abolitionist freak John Brown who was hung after trying to start a slave revolt at Harper's Ferry. Sarah Vowell said that you know you've become a true history buff when friends and family start giving you gifts like that, and I think it was so very nice of Greg to try to buy some of Abe's hair for me--it makes me feel like a real history buff.

Yesterday was a very fun day in Athens/Springfield. I went up there in the morning, and it was a beautiful sunny day. Greg and I drove into Springfield to get some new tires put on my car and then we went to mail an internship application for Aly (she wasn't going to be able to make it to the post office yesterday, but the application needed to go out asap), so I said I'd take it with me). I didn't know where the post office was in Springfield, so I called Mom and she checked it out online. She found some post offices for us, but all were closed, so I called her back and she saved the day by finding a mailing place over by the car place. The lady who worked there at the mailing place was a little crazy, and this other lady in front of us in line was trying to mail a chair to Mississippi, but there wasn't a box big enough for it, and then when they finally got a big enough box it was going to cost $100 to ship, which made the lady mad, so it was quite the dramatic mailing experience. We finally got the application sent off though--after about an hour :-) After the mailing extravaganza Greg and I went and got some dinner, then later in the evening we watched the third Jason Bourne movie: "The Bourne Ultimatum," which was very exciting.

Today Greg was able to come to church with me, and as you can imagine, all of the Relief Society ladies were very excited about the engagement (other ward people were excited too, but no one gets quite as excited as the RS ladies). Greg and I had a fun lunch together (I made chicken!), and now he's on his way home while I'm off to read my exciting book called American Architecture. (I was being slightly sarcastic when I said "exciting.") Dan keeps bugging me about the exhibit website--even on Sunday! I think he's a little obsessive about it. He said he finished putting together the templates for the web pages, and he thought that each of us could work on three of the six pages that will be a part of the website. I'm going to tell him that that's fine with me, but I'm not going to do my three until MARCH (at the earliest)! We have plenty of other stuff due before April that we should be working on before we even think about the website--grrrrr. Well, I'm off to do some reading. Typically I would be a little disheartened at having to start another week, with the prospect of Mr. Riccio's and Dr. Barnhart's classes looming ahead on Thursday, but this Thursday I'm off to Pennsylvania for a few days, so if I can survive Dr. Barnhart's Monday evening class, it will be a good week. Tomorrow is Dad's birthday, and I wish I could be there for the family dinner tonight, but I hope he has a wonderful day tomorrow and has fun with everyone this evening!

Friday

Today is Friday, which is a good thing. Sorry if I sounded a little upset yesterday--it was just a long day of crazy classes. Thankfully this semester I don't have classes on Fridays again, so I was able to get some other work done around the apartment. I still hadn't really had a chance to unpack, so I did that this morning, did laundry, did homework, etc. Then I had to go over to school and start on the exhibit website with Dan, which was totally pointless since we don't have anything to put on it yet, and it's not even supposed to go online until April. But Dan insisted that we get started on it, so I sat there and watched him mess around with text in Photoshop for a little while, and then I thought to myself, "This is lame," so I told him I had work to do and that we could work on the website later. Then I left. I figure he already dislikes me anyway (and acts accordingly), so why go out of my way to cater to what he wants to do? This is why this semester is going to be better than last--I'm going to do what works for my schedule--not everyone else's :-)

Tonight Aly wants me to make stir fry, so I guess we'll do that, and then tomorrow I get to go up to Springfield to see Greg! That will be a good change of pace after a crazy first week of the semester. It's been quite cold here this week--after the warm weather and tornadoes blew through. I guess they had some nasty tornadoes in Mississippi--but luckily not in Natchez. Speaking of Natchez, Ranger Donna called yesterday and I told her the big news about the engagement, and she was quite excited. After Donna knew, the word spread like wild fire :-)

Dudley won't Die

As you will see at the bottom of today's blog entry, I finally figured out how to add the "Comment" feature, so if you would like to say anything in response to my mindless rambling, please feel free to do so. I enjoyed Lindy's comment on yesterday's post. :-)

Unfortunately, I have only been back at school for four days, and I already strongly, strongly dislike this semester ("hate" is a better description, but it is such a strong word). I am afraid that this semester is going to be a disaster. You'll notice that I didn't feel this way until after having Mr. Riccio's class this afternoon. The Dudley website he wants to do for our Digital Applications class is going to be a mess. He's thinking that we'll have to re-scan a bunch of the stuff we scanned for the Dudley exhibit last semester so that it will be able to go up on the web. Scanning more Dudley junk is the last thing I want to do--especially since then we'll have to figure out how to put it online! It would be really nice if he knew what he was doing, but he doesn't, and then he expects us to figure it out. Also, even though our Museum Exhibits class won't be starting until February 12, we had to talk about it today in class, and as I have said before, that whole thing is going to be a disaster. I'm not usually pessimistic, but my common sense won't let me be otherwise when it comes to Mr. Riccio's projects.

Thursdays have definitely become my least-favorite day of the week. In addition to Mr. Riccio's class this afternoon, this morning we had Dr. Barnhart again for the Archival Methods class. Talking about archives is not exactly the most exciting topic, and when you couple that with Dr. Barnhart as the teacher, a lethal form of boredom emerges. The other bad news is that in all FIVE of my classes, we have to write a research paper! We only had two research papers to do last semester. Five will stink. In addition to the research papers, among other things, we have to write three 10-page book reviews for one of our classes. Yes, this semester stinks big time.

I made my reservations to go visit Angie in Pennsylvania next week before I knew that I would be having two classes on Thursday. So when I first found out that there are two classes each Thursday, I got a little worried because I'm leaving for PA next Thursday morning and will be unable to attend either class. But after today, I am thanking the heavens that I won't have to be in those two classes next week. They are both extraordinarily boring, and all of Mr. Riccio's new ideas for the website, the exhibit, etc., etc. make me a little insane. I've only been here for four days and I'm already needing a break--this is not a good sign! :-)

Sombreros and Styrofoam

Why am I doomed to always have to wear the sombrero at Mexican restaurants? I can't escape it--whether it is really my birthday or not, I always end up looking like one of the Three Amigos. The top picture was taken in June 2006 when the park rangers took me to La Fiesta in Natchez, Mississippi to celebrate my birthday. The Wesselmans and McClures took me to La Fiesta again on my birthday this past year, and again I had to wear the sombrero. The picture on the bottom was taken last night at Los Potrillos here in Charleston where the compadres decided to take me for my "half birthday" (since we'll be done with classes by the time my real birthday rolls around). Except--it wasn't even my half birthday yesterday--that was back on December 29, but since we were not here at that time, they decided that last night after one of our crazy meeting,s we needed to celebrate something (I thought we should just celebrate Elvis's birthday which was really yesterday). So, once again I got stuck in the sombrero with a sopapilla and a chocolate cake in front of me. Sorry that the picture from last night isn't very good--it's a scan of the Polaroid picture the Los Potrillos people took of me :-) I guess if we have to have one of our lame meetings, we might as well have fun too.

Today was the first day of my Care of Historical Artifacts (aka Museum Collection Management and Artifact Preservation) class from Dr. Reid. It will be a great class, but it is going to be freaking hard!! Basically we're going to learn all about preserving different types of materials and cataloging large quantities of artifacts. Today we had to identify a whole bunch of archival materials. I never knew there were so many types of foam! There's of course styrofoam as well as polyethylene foam, polypropylene foam, ethafoam, and ester foam. Styrofoam is bad for artifacts whereas the others are good for artifacts (except for this one type of gray mushy foam we talked about, but I can't remember what it's called). There are also many types of plastic document protectors (actually referred to as archival polyester), papers, adhesives, packing materials, and fabric gloves. It is going to be a chore to keep all of this stuff straight! This class will entail much, much, much reading and many field trips. We'll be going on a field trip pretty much every week. We go up to Springfield five times (the first time is next Wednesday) to meet with people at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, the Lincoln Library and Museum, and, of course, Abe Lincoln's house. The unfortunate thing is that for each of our field trips, we have to leave Charleston at 6:30 a.m. and won't return until 6:00 p.m. or later. Dr. Reid is going to try to cram two class sessions into each of our field trip days so that in April, when we're having to set up our exhibit over at the Tarble Arts Center, we won't have to meet for this class.

Today's class will also require us to each write a new collections care plan for the Coles County Historical Society, as well as a research paper about some aspect of the course material. After having only three out of my five classes so far this week, I already have three research papers to write this semester! :-( If tomorrow's two classes also require a research paper, I might as well just throw in the towel right now (just kidding). It will indeed be a busy semester, but I will surely learn a lot. I've already learned far more than I ever wanted to know about foam.

Weird, Wet Weather

No tornadoes came through here last night, but 'twas not the case in other parts of the state. There were a number of reported funnel clouds throughout central Illinois--the closest one to C-town was probably the one that was spotted in the city of Auburn which is about 80 miles west of us. I was reading today that they haven't had tornadoes in Illinois in January since 1950! Though there were no tornadoes in C-town, there certainly was a lot of rain. Alyson and I went to campus this morning to work out at the gym, and when we came outside after, we got SOAKED. I was wearing my rain jacket, but I was still sopping wet. We had fun at the gym today--Angie and Catherine were there too! We've all decided to start out the semester well, but we'll see how long that lasts :-) I went and picked up my text books today too. There are not as many as there were last semester, but there's still a pretty hefty stack of them. I have a number of riveting titles such as "The New Museum Registration Methods." That one will surely be a page-turner. I also went and visited Dr. Hardeman and Dr. Reid to tell them my big news and they are both very excited about "The Gregster," as Dr. Hardeman calls him :-)

Now I am back here at the apartment trying to get some finances, unpacking, and other miscellaneous things done that I didn't have time to do before school started yesterday. Dan has been bugging me about getting our museum exhibit website up and going--in fact he wanted to work on it today. BUT, the Tarble Arts Center lady said she doesn't want the website to go up until April, and we don't even have our Museum Exhibits class until February 12--so why would we work on the website now? We don't even know what to put on it yet. Dan is crazy. I think he is trying to punish me for not being in love with him. Oh well, I told him I'm too busy today. He seems obsessed with having all of his work done months in advance.

I haven't played basketball for a while, but for some reason I've really been wanting to lately. So today at the gym, after the elliptical machine and lifting weights, I checked out a basketball and shot some hoops. It was so much fun! I think that is a good way to burn off nervous energy--which will certainly accumulate in my system this semester. I hope Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire today.

Tonight we're having our weekly meeting and going out to eat in celebration of my half birthday. I told them I thought it was silly to celebrate my half birthday, but they're always looking for an excuse to go out to eat or something like that. So, I need to go finish some things before the evening's festivities. I don't think I'm going to have many free evenings this semester. I talked with Angie on the phone yesterday and we discussed some of the things we're going to do when I go visit her next week. I am SO EXCITED for a trip to Pennsylvania (for Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend)! She told me that she's going to need to take me on a very detailed tour of the Gettysburg National Battlefield to practice for when she has to take a Bulgarian general on a tour there in February. She gets to do weird, cool stuff like that for her job. The problem is that said general doesn't speak a lick of English. I told her I'll try to learn some Bulgarian words to make her practice tour with me seem more authentic.