WANTED

Ever since Catherine, Laurie, and I went to Marshall, Illinois last October and ended up with some bricks from the old National Road, it has been the joke amongst everyone that if there's something we need for the exhibit, we'll just go "borrow" it from somewhere :-) We didn't really unlawfully remove the bricks from the road. Outside of Marshall there is a stretch of the 1920s brick National Road that is all grown over. For some reason we were driving along it, and there was a big pile of bricks that had been chopped out of the road, so we just collected a couple of souvenirs. Everyone wants to have a National Road brick in our exhibit, but Aly and Alisha are convinced that it wouldn't be "ethical" to use one of our bricks because we don't have any signed permission forms. :-) So I made this poster to hang up in the grad. lab.

There is a winter blizzard outside! It has been so cold, snowy, windy, and icy all day. There is a layer of ice on everything. When will spring come? It was so stormy this morning that the power even went out for a little while. I feel really bad because Dr. Reid called me today and said that her dad found out he's going to need to have his foot amputated :-( So she will be in St. Louis for a few more days with him. I told her not to worry--I'll take care of the kitties, and we went ahead and cancelled tomorrow's class. We were going to go to the Lincoln Log Cabin to learn about "living collections"--i.e. sheep, corn, pigs, etc., so it will be better to do that after it warms up anyway. Poor Dr. Reid and her dad. I feel really bad about that whole situation. I've been enjoying taking care of Dr. Reid's cats though. Eleanor and Katie are super cute, and today they were licking me all over and snuggling with me on the couch. Well, I'm off to tonight's meeting--if my car isn't frozen shut!

Hitlery

They bear a striking resemblance, don't they? She could be his daughter. Hmmm, maybe she is. Maybe the New York Times should write an article about that? Hitlery is really, really, really scary. As you all know, I am not a John McCain fan, but I think it's dumb that people are trying to conjure up things to make him look bad. The whole time they were talking about his possible "inappropriate" relations with his lobbyist--of which there is no proof--I kept thinking, "Hello, what about Bill Clinton???" People have just forgotten the whole gross fiasco about his immorality and his blatant lying about it. There is something seriously wrong with people who want Bill to be the new first lady. Anyway, I thought these pictures were funny :-)

I stayed up really late last night writing my scathing review of the book Shopkeeper's Millennium that I had to write for Dr. Barnhart's class tonight, but then this afternoon Dr. Barnhart cancelled class. I'm glad he cancelled it, but I could have used a few extra hours of sleep last night :-) Unfortunately a few of our professors are going through some hard times with their parents right now. Dr. Barnhart's mom who lives in Ohio was in a serious car accident, and he needs to go up there to check on her, and then today Dr. Reid had to go over to St. Louis because her 95-year-old dad was sent to the hospital. He had surgery on his foot a few weeks ago, and then his foot turned black, and he has been really sick, so she's quite worried about him. I am currently on-call to take care of her kitties if she ends up having to stay there longer than she is planning. I feel bad that they are so stressed about everything--I guess that we students aren't the only ones.

Today I graded papers with Dr. Hardeman for about four hours, and we got some funny test answers as usual. My favorite one was about the Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists were a political party that opposed Federalists such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton wrote the famous "Federalist Papers," advocating the ratification of the Constitution). The Anti-Federalists didn't approve of the Constitution because they believed it gave too much power to the central government, so they refused to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added. Anyway, one of the identification questions on the test was about the Anti-Federalists. This one student wrote: "The Anti-Federalists opposed the Federalists. They also wrote the Anti-Federalist papers." :-) There's no such thing as the Anti-Federalist papers, but it made Dr. Hardeman and me laugh. Well, I'm off to finish my paper so I can e-mail it to Dr. Barnhart. All of this talk about springtime and blossoms in South Carolina is making me quite envious of the Agate family! We are still marooned in the middle of winter here in Illinois. In fact, we had some freezing rain this evening, and we are currently under a "Snow and Blowing Snow Advisory." Luckily I don't have to go anywhere tonight. I want some blossoms on the trees!

Vandalia Vantage Point

Look at this picture I took of the moon last Wednesday during the lunar eclipse! That was pretty cool to see. Last night the moon looked a little crazy here. It was HUGE and it was kind of a reddish-orange color. Last night Greg and I saw the most exciting movie of all time--Vantage Point!!! It was crazy and intense. By the time the movie was over, all of my muscles were a little sore from being tense the whole time. It wasn't a very long movie--only about 1 hr. and 20 min., but they probably knew that if they made it any longer it could be a risk to people's health--keeping them in suspense for so long :-) It was really very exciting, and it was done in a different format than most movies.

Before going to the movie with Greg, I got to go on a little adventure to the town of Vandalia, Illinois with Laurie and Dan. It's funny that there is a town here called Vandalia because the town right across the Mississippi River from Natchez was called Vidalia--so sometimes I get the names mixed up. As there is in every Illinois town, they have a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Vidalia. You can see Laurie and me with him up there. He is sitting right across the street from the original Illinois state capitol building. Vandalia was the capital of the state until 1839 when it was moved to Springfield. It would seem like in Vandalia they would be kind of mad at Abe because I believe he was the one who was instrumental in moving the state capital from there up to Springfield, but I guess they like him because there was Lincoln stuff everywhere. In fact, we went into an antique store with a lot of random things in it, and I saw this cool, old picture of Abe Lincoln. I looked at the price tag, and it was $15,000!! At first I thought, "This can't be right. It must be $15.00," but it really was $15,000. Supposedly it was an original 1850s print. But that was the only really expensive thing at the store--so I'm a little suspicious :-) The main reason we went to Vandalia was to photograph the Madonna of the Trails statue for the upcoming museum exhibit. You can see her in the second picture up there--with Laurie and me trying to look like interested tourists. We must have done a good job because right after Dan took that picture, a man with a big, long, white beard walked by and said, "Are you all from Colorado?" :-) There is a series of Madonna of the Trails statues across the United States commemorating the pioneer spirit. Ironically, there is no official Madonna of the Trails statue in Utah--the #1 pioneer state--but at least we have a lot of our own statues there to honor the pioneers. I was really, really glad that Laurie wanted to come along because it would have been really weird to spend the day just with Dan. As it was, we all had a good time. It takes about an hour and 20 minutes to get to Vandalia, so it was a good little jaunt. We ate lunch at a funny little diner--and, as it always is at the little restaurants in little towns, the food was very tasty.

Speaking of tasty food, after I got back yesterday Greg came for a visit and we ate dinner at the Thai restaurant here in Charleston. They have exceptionally good food there, and I discovered what I believe to be my new favorite dish last night. I always love the pad Thai noodles and the curry, but last night I decided to go out on a limb and try the dinner special. I can't remember exactly what it was called--it was something like pad su-yum, or pad sa-yum, or pad so-yum. I think it ended in "yum," or maybe I'm just thinking that because it was so yummy! It was a noodle dish with big, fat, pan-seared egg noodles, beef, broccoli, and scrambled eggs, with their "special homemade sauce" on top. It was SOOOOOO good! The sauce was just a tad sweet. I ate my leftovers for lunch today, and now I want some more! After dinner we went to see the totally exciting "Vantage Point" movie, then we came back and had my new favorite treat--cherry chocolate Dr. Pepper floats. I can't find any of the new cherry chocolate Dr. Pepper here in Charleston, so Greg has to bring it from Springfield, but we tried it in the form of a float last night and it was really delicious. We also watched the crazy and exciting #1 Memphis vs. #2 Tennessee basketball game, and Tennessee won at the very end! Memphis previously had a home court winning streak comparable to BYU's, but after getting beat at home last night, BYU has the longest home court winning streak in the NCAA--cool! So, it has been a fun weekend. Greg stayed in Sullivan last night and was going to go to church with me today, but somebody died last night and he had to go take care of the body this morning. At least we got to have fun last night! My compadres wanted to come over to our apartment tonight for an "Oscars party" (they just invite themselves over these days), but thankfully the party has been cancelled due to the fact that we have a 10-page paper due tomorrow in Dr. Barnhart's class--which I don't think anyone had started on before today (because we've had other stuff to do). So, I'm off to write and write and write.

Good Milk

Illinois has weird weather--we've established that already. It also has no mountains. But, the state does have a number of things going for it like Abraham Lincoln and . . . milk. I have decided that Illinois has some of the best milk I've ever had. My family knows that growing up I was never a big milk drinker. I only really liked chocolate milk or regular milk if I had some chocolate to eat with it. But, I love milk now! Illinois has a lot of cows--fat, happy cows--and the milk that you buy at the grocery store is from local Illinois farms. So, I've decided that this must be why the milk is so good--because it is so fresh. It's so cool--the expiration dates on the milk are like two-and-a-half weeks after you buy it! My favorite brand is Prairie Farms milk, which is produced in Carlinville, Illinois--about 100 miles west of Charleston. It's declicious.

Anyway, today has been a good day except that it is really cold and snowy outside. Poor Stryder was carrying around about 100 extra pounds of salt and slush junk down around his tires, so I spent about a half an hour tonight knocking excess snow junk off of him. I think that this is the most it has snowed all year--there are probably about four inches or so on the ground right now. Earlier today we had to meet at the Dudley House to film that video we're doing for one of our class projects and for a university competition. My job today was to drive up in my car and walk up to the house like I'm totally cool--so all I had to do was act natural! :-) The next phase of our movie will need to be filmed at night sometime because part of the movie is supposed to be about the ghost that lives at the Dudley House, but I don't know when we'll do that. After the movie filming, I worked with Dr. Hardeman grading papers for the afternoon. He didn't fall asleep once! The funniest thing we read today was a student's essay about the 13 colonies. They were talking about different acts imposed by the British, and they referred to the "Currency Act," which, according to them, was England's way of saving the environment. The Currency Act, the student claimed, prohibited the colonists from printing any more newspapers because they were wasting a lot of paper. Actually, the Currency Act prevented the colonists from printing their own paper money--because everyone was printing their own, and all was chaos. Dr. Hardeman and I decided that the student who wrote that essay must be a big "green" person. It's a good thing that the British were so environmentally conscious back in the 1700s!

Tonight I'm going over to the local hang-out spot, the Panther Paw, to meet Catherine's new boyfriend Kevin who just flew in from Detroit. She is quite enamored, so I'll go meet him and see if I approve :-) Tomorrow it's off to Vandalia, Illinois to take some photographs for the upcoming exhibit. Thankfully Laurie is looking for something to do tomorrow, so she will be going with Dan and me. I really wasn't looking forward to hanging out with Dan by myself, so that will be good. Then Greg is coming in the afternoon, so we can hang out for the rest of the day! I love weekends!

The Reality of Logistics

Aw, I don't think I can get the kitty :-( Tonight I spent some serious time thinking about the logistics of it all, and I really don't think it could work right now. As fun as it would be to sneak him into my apartment so he could sleep on my bed at night, I did sign a lease saying that I wouldn't have any pets in my apartment. And even though my neighbors don't always hold up their end of their lease (like when they drink alcohol and listen to really loud music), that doesn't mean that I shouldn't do what I signed my name to in the lease. Then there would be the question of what to do with the kitty while I'm working on my internship. It wouldn't really be fair to leave Greg with the kitty for an indefinite period of time--especially since he has his little doggies to tend to. As many of you know (I'm sorry to those of you who I haven't been able to talk to in person about this), Greg and I have slightly adjusted our wedding plans due to school and internship stresses. We had originally planned on getting married on June 7th, but I discovered that my school schedule does not allow time to plan a wedding, and none of the internship possibilities in Springfield have been panning out. So there is a good chance that I will end up in Utah at Camp Floyd State Park for my internship for a few months (which would be a really cool and fun internship). That would just mean that we'll bump the wedding back a little bit until I can get my school requirements in the bag and can be in a better position to get married. I will keep you all posted, and I am grateful that Greg is being so understanding of my crazy schedule.

As far as the kitty goes, since I will probably be driving back and forth across the country, I don't think it would be possible to adopt him right now. I also realized that I have a hard enough time just barely taking care of myself each day, and I wouldn't want to be a negligent kitty owner. Catherine and I decided that some nice family in Michigan will surely adopt him because he is so very cute. Thank you to those of you who encouraged me to get him--I certainly wish I could! But I think he'll make some nice Michiganders very happy. Aunt Karalie sent me some pictures of her cute kitties, Zoe and Dumpster, and the cute Michigan cat looks like a mixture of the two.

Yesterday I received the cutest valentines ever in the mail! Thank you Camden, Riley, Sidney, and Eliza for sending such wonderful Valentine's Day greetings. You are four of the most adorable girls in the whole world.

I'm having a hard time going to sleep tonight, so I made a video about World War II war bonds. I have no idea why I did that, but it was kind of fun. You can see it by clicking here: http://americanimage.unm.edu/clip?id=415. Oh, man! I just barely found out that Aunt Karalie had to start chemotherapy last week :-( That is the worst news ever! I hope that she can make a quick recovery when all of this is over, and I am looking forward to being able to visit her during spring break. Everyone please keep her in your thoughts and prayers!