President Hinckley

I was really, really sad to hear tonight that President Hinckley died. I knew this day would come--because I guess he couldn't live forever--but it always seemed like he would. I remember President Benson and President Hunter, but President Hinckley has been the prophet for most of my life, and it's pretty amazing to think of everything he accomplished during that time. He has done so much good all over the world and has helped the Church grow and develop in many respects--especially with the building of temples. It's just hard to imagine General Conference without hearing him speak. His death is a great loss to the Church and to the world, but it's good to know that now he can be with Sister Hinckley again. I bet he had a wonderful reunion with her. And I also like to think about what it must have been like for him to meet Joseph Smith. I had the opportunity several times to be in attendance when President Hinckley was speaking either in Salt Lake or at BYU, and I am grateful to have been at the Conference Center when he gave one of my favorite talks of all time: "Becoming the Woman of Whom You Dream." He is a great example of having a positive outlook on life and of working hard at doing good things. I guess that you can't blame his body for giving out after 97 years of helping people! I truly feel grateful to have been on the earth during the time that President Hinckley was the prophet. I was feeling pretty sad tonight, so Aly fixed me some hot chocolate to help me feel better :-) She thinks President Hinckley sounds like a pretty extraordinary person.

Other than tonight's sad news, today was a good day. Greg was able to go to church with me, and once again all of the Relief Society ladies were making a big fuss about the engagement :-) Since the end of the month is approaching, today was a pretty busy home and visiting teaching day. My home teachers came by, and then I went visiting teaching tonight. Aly thinks it's funny (but cool) that church people are always coming over to check on me. Well, I'm off to bed to try to get some rest for what will surely be a busy week ahead!

Bucket List

Today Greg and I went and saw a fun movie called "The Bucket List" starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It was kind of sad, but very funny and very good. The basic premise of the movie was these two men who found out that they had cancer and only had a few months to live. Morgan Freeman's character, Carter, had started writing something called the "Bucket List"--which was a list of all the things he hoped to do before he "kicked the bucket." :-) I think if I made a bucket list, it would be really, really long. Here are a few things that would be on it: make people happy, spend as much time as possible with my family, finish my master's degree, visit Washington D.C., visit Abe Lincoln's birthplace, use my talents to help other people, go to the top of the Sears Tower, and ride in a helicopter. Visiting Gettysburg would be on the list too--but I could cross that one off now! Going up to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis would also be on the list--but I crossed that one off back in 2004. I think I also want to visit the Alamo someday. Oh, and I want to go to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game too :-)

Anyway, today was a very fun day. Greg came down to C-town, and he was nice enough to just hang out while I did some school stuff, then we were able to have some fun together. We went and had lunch at Cracker Barrel in Mattoon before the movie, and then later tonight I made some Jambalaya (thank goodness for Zatarain's!) and cornbread (thank you Mom and Lehi Roller Mills!). Thankfully it seems to be warming up a bit here. I totally don't understand the weather. The other day it's -15 degrees windchill, and then on Monday it's supposed to get up to 50 degrees! Very strange--but I will not complain. Anytime it wants to be unseasonably warm, I will not object.

Yesterday it was frigid outside. I didn't have classes, but it turned into a busy day anyway. I worked with Dr. Hardeman in the afternoon and practiced employing my new strategy of skipping to the ends of paragraphs when I'm reading to him so that he will wake up. It's funny that when I start reading he falls asleep, and when I stop he wakes up. Yesterday evening all of the HA compadres gathered at Catherine's house to watch this hilarious movie called "The Washingtonians." It's supposed to be part of a series of horror films, but in my opinion it's too funny to be considered a horror movie. The basic plot in the movie is that George Washington was a cannibal who ate children and made forks out of their bones, and there was a group of people who would dress in colonial garb and eat people to honor the tradition of the founder of our country. :-) Maybe it's so funny because the plot is so ridiculous. We thoroughly enjoyed several lines that were dropped into the movie about historians. Our favorite was: "Historians are nothing but PR people for the past! Everything they say is a lie!" I also liked the quote: "George Washington chopped up cherry trees, not people!" Ha ha ha. He actually technically didn't chop up cherry trees either, but it's okay to say he did--because then we have a reason to eat cherry pie on President's Day. Well, I'm off to bed and am looking forward to Sunday!

Big 'n' Fluffy

Today was a "big 'n' fluffy" day--meaning it was necessary to break out my big 'n' fluffy red coat for the treacherously cold weather outside. It was FREEZING all day today!! This morning when we went to class, it was one degree outside, but the wind was blowing, so it felt like it was well below zero. My big 'n' fluffy keeps the bulk of my body warm, but my hands, legs, feet, and head freeze--even if I wear gloves, scarves, hats, etc. The sun was out, but as Aly and I were walking from the parking lot to Coleman Hall, we felt like our faces were going to fall off! I think this is the coldest it has been here all winter. I checked weather.com, and it said that the low tonight will be ZERO degrees. I don't think I'll be going outside anymore this evening! Luckily tomorrow it will warm up to a balmy 27 degrees.

Today was kind of a long day of classes and meetings, but we got a lot done. It was a little hard to stay awake in Dr. Barnhart's archives management class this morning--after being outside in the cold and then coming in to the warm building. I think I've said this before--but it's amazing how much he can talk! :-) This afternoon for Mr. Riccio's Digital Applications class, we had the university web guy come meet with us and work out a way to do the Tilford Dudley website. That was a good way to do it--then we were all able to give our input, and it wasn't like I was in charge of the whole thing. I threw out the idea that instead of uploading the pictures of the Dudley collection to our own website, we should upload the pictures to e-bay and sell the Dudley family artifacts to raise money for our spring field trip, but Mr. Riccio and Dr. Small weren't agreeable to that :-) Speaking of our mandatory spring field trip, it will probably take place during the first week of May--after we finish finals. We had hoped to go to New Orleans or Washington D.C., but we don't have enough money or time to do that, so Dr. Barnhart and Dr. Reid are going to take us to Cincinnati, Ohio to see, among other things, the Underground Railroad Museum. That should be pretty cool.

I was supposed to go visiting teaching this afternoon, but after Mr. Riccio's class, we all met with Dr. Small and the Tarble Arts Center lady to discuss the script for the upcoming museum exhibit. They thought what we had was pretty good overall, so thankfully there isn't too much we need to change on that. We will, however, have to change the floor plan of our exhibit so that we can fit everything in, but hopefully that won't be too bad. Dan and I have been given the assignment to go take pictures of random transportation corridors and gas stations throughout the area, so hopefully it will warm up a little one of these days and we can get that done. I've been trying to be nicer to Dan, so he's been a little nicer to me, although he still makes random derogatory comments about Mitt Romney. He can't say too much though, because he's one of the classmates who is from Michigan, and we all remember what happened with the Michigan primaries! I'm pretty tired tonight, so I'm glad that tomorrow is Friday. It will still be a busy day, but at least I won't have any classes. It's cool that I have a three-day weekend every weekend, but unfortunately it always kind of turns into a zero-day weekend because of all the stuff we have to do :-)

The latest news from Coles County is that a group called Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Farm are going to try to sell deeds to square-inch property plots from a four acre tract of land that used to be owned by Abraham Lincoln. The funny thing is that Abe never farmed the land--he just purchased it so that his dad, who owned the adjacent land, could use it for growing crops. I don't think that the city is going to allow the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Farm to divide the land up into such small sections, but we'll see what happens. You can imagine though, that if the deeds go up for sale, people will be jumping to buy some Abe Lincoln land! As I said yesterday, you know you're famous when mice found in the walls of your house are mummified and put into a museum collection. And, I might add, you know you're famous when people want to use your name to sell souvenir land plots of farmland you never farmed!

Three Mummified Mice

You know you're famous when . . . mice found in the walls of your home are mummified and put in a museum collection. Abraham Lincoln was indeed famous. :-) Today we had a really fun day going up to Springfield again for our Collections Care class. We got to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of Abe Lincoln's house, and the curator there even showed us the special collections stored out behind the home. It was here that we saw the three mummified mice: Abe, Mary, and Eddie. The mice were discovered in a nest in the walls of the Lincoln home back in 1874 and, since by that time Abraham Lincoln had become a national icon, the mice had to be saved--because anything and everything having to do with him was important. Honestly, the three mice didn't look like mice anymore, but that's okay--it was still funny. It was really cool to see where they store everything and to see all of the cleaning and artifact care procedures they use there at the park. We also got to go on a special tour of the Old State Capitol building (where we cataloged artifacts last week), as well as the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site. None of us knew who Vachel Lindsay was, but we learned that he was one of those famous poets from the early 1900s. Our main topic of discussion today was "agents of deterioration." We learned about all of the different things that can damage collections and how to prevent that from happening. It was all very interesting. Did you know that dust particles are sharp and can actually scratch the surface of things? I didn't realize that dust particles were all that complex. My classmate Angie and I loved seeing the park rangers at Abe's house today. We both miss being park rangers! Well, I'm off to do some homework. I love our field trips to Springfield!

Happy Tiffy

I have decided to make an addendum to some of my recent blog entries that, I now realize, have been kind of negative towards school and my classmates. I think I've had the Happy Bunny attitude you see here of, "Whatever. Can I have an A?" I think some of my negativity has just come from frustration with having too much to do, not enough time to do it, and having too much to think about. But I'm going to do better at looking for positive things to be happy about. I really am lucky to be at school here, and it's amazing to think that I only have one more semester of classes and an internship before I'll have a master's degree! And, I get a sweet deal here at EIU with my graduate assistantship and monthly stipend. So, I really am grateful for a good setup. I am also grateful to have Alyson as my roommate. She is very nice, and having a great roommate makes all of the difference. She and I share a lot of the same interests, and she's a lot of fun to be around. All of my other classmates are very nice, and I'm going to try to get along better with Dan--though I will still stick up for myself, I need to not be mean to him even if he's kind of mean to me. Even though everybody loves meetings, it's okay because it just means they're trying to stay on top of things, so I'll be grateful that people are on-the-ball rather than lazy. And, even though I don't see eye-to-eye with all of my teachers, they are very nice people, and I absolutely love Dr. Small and Dr. Reid. In short, life is good, and I'm sorry if I've made it sound like I'm not happy--because I am--but it's just been a little stressful. I'll try to be more positive though, and when things get hard, I can just remember the good times I've had recently at home and in Pennsylvania, and I can look for things to be happy about here.