Save the Bread Pudding!

I was horrified tonight when I received an e-mail from my old Natchez roommate, Jessica, saying that Silver Street in Natchez is currently closed because of flooding!! Noooooooo--not Silver Street, where Magnolia Grill is located!! Somebody save the delicious bread pudding that they serve! My heart is broken. I love that bread pudding. Look how crazy it is in Natchez with the flooding. The first picture you see up at the top is one that I took during the summer of the Mississippi River at Natchez at its usual 15-foot depth, and then below that you can see the picture that Jessica sent to me of the flooded river. You will notice that the river has flooded a lot of the low-lying areas along its banks. There were some farms along there, so I imagine that they got flooded out. Next you will see the Isle of Capri Casino riverboat at the bottom of Silver Street. Usually it is far down the riverbank and a long ramp is required to get out to the boat, but as you see below that photo, the boat is now significantly higher than usual--it is now even with the street!!! Jessica said that the water in the river is still rising, so that's not very good news. Hopefully they'll be able to figure out some way to get rid of the extra water and open Silver Street again.

I am soooooooooooo tired. I didn't get home tonight until 11:30 p.m.--and we started exhibit construction at 9:00 this morning. There has been quite a bit of drama here because Aly's boyfriend of two years, Darrin, chose last night, of all nights--the first day of the busiest week of Aly's life, to break up with her. She is totally devastated. Last night I heard a loud knock on my door and then I heard her hyper-ventilating outside my door. I opened my door to find her there sobbing, and her whole body was shaking. She told me that Darrin had broken up with her. He's a jerk. Even though she wouldn't want to hear this right now, the truth is that she's better off without him. I can't believe he chose this particular week--just a month before she'll be heading home to New York, to break up with her. Bad timing by him. If anyone even looked at Aly today, she would start to cry, so it was a little rough for her. Poor Aly. I hope she will be okay. I sat on the couch with her last night for a while and wrapped her in a blanket so she could cry and cry. I was just glad that she didn't pass out from hyper-ventilating.

This morning I had to do some touch-up painting at the Tarble, then I put some caulking on some pieces of wood that were uneven, then I painted an entire wall, then I moved object pedestals around, then I built a mount to hold our railroad switch ties up, then I painted over the screws in our 18-foot-long temporary wall (which got fixed today so it is now "structurally sound"), then I went and picked Dr. Hardeman up from a meeting and took him home, then I went back to the Tarble and attached some pictures to the "interactive flip panel," then I helped assemble the train car walls.

My one reprieve today was having dinner with Greg and his mom! Sister Bowles flew in today from Arizona to start packing things up at the house in Sullivan. Greg brought her to Charleston on their way back from St. Louis, and we all went out for Thai food. It was a wonderful break from the day and it was fun to see Greg and his mom. Well, I am really, really tired, so I am going to go to sleep for a few hours before I have to get up and start all over again in the morning.

The Horoscope

Today is Mr. Riccio's birthday. Who better to spend it with than us? He said that he was thinking of laying low for the day--sort of taking the day off--but then he read his horoscope. He brought the newspaper in with him to show us because he didn't think we would believe it if he didn't bring it in for us to see. It was so funny! It said something to the effect of: "Today you will need to give guidance to a group of individuals working on a collective project. They may need guidance, so don't hesitate to lend them instruction." Thank you horoscope for telling Mr. Riccio what we have tried to many times! What an appropriate horoscope. My horoscope today, which was also appropriate, said: "It may sound a little harsh, but it is possible that you will get suckered into something today! Someone may appeal for your help, even though they're not entirely prepared to do their bit." Story of my life here. :-) Maybe there's something to horoscopes after all.

Today was a crazy day. We began at the studio this morning at 8:30 to start loading everything into vans and trucks to be transported to the Tarble. There was so much heavy stuff to move, and we all had our turns almost getting crushed by large pieces of wood, but we had no casualties. Then, we all drove over to the Tarble and then had to unload everything we had just loaded. We were all exhausted when we were done with that! Once we got everything unloaded and the assistant director of the Tarble Arts Center looked at everything (we're having to work with the assistant director because Kit, the director, broker her ankle), and then several problems started to become apparent. Problem #1: We have a large, 18-foot-long wall in one of the galleries, and Mr. Riccio had planned to support said wall with just two pieces of plywood. Assistant director Mike said "no way" to that idea because the wall could tip over--crushing visitors and paintings. So, now we don't know what to do about the wall. We might have to construct a framework out of two-by-fours to hold it up. Then, our temporary wall in the other gallery just looks bad because it's made of plywood instead of the material that we had originally ordered--the stuff that got stuck on the train near Chicago. But we're hoping that with some creative lighting techniques we can hide the fact that the wall looks really cheap-o. This wall could also easily be pushed over, but we have no ideas for making it stand up, so we'll just have to hope that nobody pushes it :-)

Then, Catherine and I were sent off to Champaign with some vague directions to a place called Illini Plastics to get some help gluing together the Plexiglas case Mr. Riccio was trying to build. We took my GPS with us in hopes that she would help us find the plastics place, but we didn't have an address, so we just kind of had to drive around until we found ourselves in the "industrial" part of town--by the train tracks. Then we saw the Illini Plastics warehouse and took our Plexiglas box inside. When we showed the box to the Plexiglas guys, they started to laugh. They said, "Wow! How old is that Plexiglas?" We had no idea. Then they wondered what had been used to cut the edges. We had no idea. Then they wondered how old the glue was that Mr. Riccio had tried to use on it. No idea. And finally they wondered where the Plexiglas had been stored because there was a thin film of something greasy on top--grease is not good for gluing Plexiglas. We called Mr. Riccio for answers to the questions, and all he knew about the age of the Plexiglas was that it was "really, really old," and the greasy film on it was caused by some paint thinner he had put on the Plexiglas to remove some spray adhesive he had put on it to keep the surface from getting scratched. When we told the Plexiglas guys this, they started to laugh really hard. They said that paint thinner disintegrates Plexiglas and showed us that if you even touched the face of the Plexiglas, it would get scratched because the plastic particles were being eaten by the paint thinner. So, what we ended up having to do was have the Plexiglas guys build us a new box. While we were waiting for it to get built, we went out on the town in Champaign for a little while :-)

Then, we made it back into town just in time to see the award results from the i-movie competition in which our Dudley video had been entered. We got second place! Then we had to go have a debrief meeting to discuss what we finished today and what still remains to be done. Much still has to be done, but hopefully it will all come together. I'm so excited because Dr. Rugh is coming on Friday!!!! She will be our distinguished guest speaker at the exhibit opening on Saturday. It will be fun for her to see campus because it was actually she who suggested that I check out Eastern Illinois University (she's friends with Dr. Reid and had heard about the program from her)--and I never would have met Greg if I hadn't come here! She's planning to stay here all day on Saturday and come to the dinner we're having that evening, so it will be fun to get to catch up with her a bit. Well, I'm exhausted so I don't think it will be too long before I head to bed, and I am going to be really sore tomorrow!!!

Let the Games Begin

Exhibit construction week has officially begun. It was kicked off today by a seven-hour work session at the studio. Fortunately I was able to go to church with Greg first! But the remainder of the day was spent painting walls, sanding wood, grinding the rough edges off of hinges, sanding more wood, painting, wallpapering, and painting some more. :-) It was a long day, but we got a lot done. Unfortunately, even though construction week doesn't technically start until tomorrow, we had to work today because we still had a lot of unfinished work. I would have preferred to not have worked today, but my classmates quite possibly would have banished me from the program had I not shown up. Now, tomorrow we have to undertake the foreboding task of moving everything we have built from the Art Park West studio to the Tarble Arts Center on campus--a distance of approximately 4 miles. The problem will be dealing with the size of the things we have built. Remember how the train car parts are 8-feet tall? Hmmmm, we'll see how that goes.

We've been encountering the usual "last minute" mishaps. Mr. Riccio was building Plexiglas cases today, but the special glue he had was eating away at and cracking the Plexiglas, which is not good, so we're not sure what to do about that. Also, the material we were supposed to get to build the temporary wall for one of the exhibit galleries got stuck on a train just outside of Chicago. The train people said they could deliver it to us by Wednesday, but that would be too late (because we would still have had to paint it). We thought of finding some horses and staging a train robbery like Jesse James, but we realized that might not be too effective. It actually wouldn't be a robbery though, since we already paid for the material. But anyway, Mr. Riccio ended up getting some plywood for a us to use instead. The problem is that even after a few coats of paint, the plywood still looks like plywood--not very museum-ish, but we'll work with it. I think if we strategically place the exhibit panels and paintings, we'll be able to cover up the most noticeable spots.

This week will be pretty crazy. We all have to have a turn being the "project manager" for a day and making sure all of the required tasks get done. Our teachers have scheduled no class sessions for this week, but in addition to installing the exhibit, there's a bunch of extra school stuff we have to attend, which will make scheduling kind of hard. Tomorrow we have to attend the "i-Life Movie Awards" to see our Tilford Dudley film's campus debut. Then on Wednesday, as part of the Graduate School Expo, we have to host a reception at the Tarble Arts Center so that people can watch us installing the exhibit and we can tell them what we're doing. It will probably be kind of like watching monkeys at the zoo! Then on Thursday afternoon we have to attend the Graduate School Awards Ceremony to accept the award we were given for our Tilford Dudley project. Whew! It's going to be crazy.

It snowed today. What happened to spring? Supposedly spring will be returning this week. Tonight Aly and I watched part 6 of 7 of "John Adams" on HBO. It was so good! The relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson has been getting pretty tense. They used to be great buddies, but then they started viewing things very differently, and they slowly grew apart. John Adams won't die until next week's part 7, but I was thinking tonight about the story of John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's deaths--it is SO WEIRD!! Talk about a coincidence to the tenth degree. They both died on July 4, 1826--the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence!!! Is that crazy or what? John Adams' last words were supposedly "Thomas Jefferson survives." But, Jefferson had actually died a few hours before. Maybe John Adams saw his old buddy in the spirit world right before he died? Hmmmm, very interesting.

I am very, very, very, very glad that Greg and I got to have such a fun weekend together! Hopefully I'll get to see him this week again. His mom is flying into town to start moving things out of the house in Sullivan, so we're hoping that we can all meet up for lunch and/or dinner this week. Everything seems better when Greg is around, and he keeps me sane even though I'm surrounded by crazy classmates :-) I love him very much!!! Well, I'm off to bed to get some rest before this crazy week begins.

Dancing in the Rain

I was going to complain a little bit tonight about my classmates and the train cars, but then I read Lindy's blog and saw the quote from Grandma Barrett, who has waaaaaaay, waaaaay, way worse trials than just having to deal with annoying classmates! The quote she likes says: "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass . . . it's about learning to dance in the rain." I realized that even if it's rainy and cold here, and my classmates are mad at me and drive me nuts, there are still a lot of things to be happy about, so I need to do a lot less complaining and start doing more dancing in the rain. Last night and today were really, really fun because Greg came!! We hadn't been able to see each other for a few weeks because of our busy schedules, but luckily we were able to spend some good time together this weekend.

Last night we enjoyed some Thai food and watched a movie, then Greg headed back to Sullivan. This morning he came back to Charleston and I made some breakfast burritos. And then, we got to go see the cutest little puppy ever! My classmate Sarah just bought a little beagle puppy named Ivy. Sarah's boyfriend Adam surprised her by bringing Ivy down here from Chicago this weekend--Sarah didn't think she'd get to see her until next weekend. Ivy is totally cute with her big paws, her floppy ears, her little droopy eyes, and her white-tipped tail. Greg and I then took a little excursion up to Tuscola to the most wonderful restaurant in the whole world: Flesor's Candy Kitchen--which has the BEST Reuben sandwich in the universe! Their Reuben is so delicious, that I have found that I don't enjoy Reubens anywhere else anymore because nothing compares to the one at Flesor's. Greg even agreed to stop at the antique mall in Arcola with me on our way back! We were able to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and watching TV and movies. I did do some homework and we even went over to school for a minute to work on some things, but for the most part I was able to have a much-needed break from school stuff. (It's back to the exhibit construction grindstone tomorrow right after church.)

Yesterday before Greg came I had to go over to the studio to work on train car stuff, and I ended up having to paint the rest of the crate--which Kristen was supposed to have done the day before, but she didn't. It was okay though because honestly, the part she painted didn't look like wood at all--it didn't even look like fake wood! So I was able to finish it how I wanted to. There is still so much more stuff we have to do before we start installing the exhibit on Monday, but I will not worry about that tonight. I also don't even want to think about how we're going to get all of the stuff we made from the studio over to the Tarble Arts Center! But it's all good because no matter what happens in the next few days, one week from today Dr. Rugh will be here to speak at the exhibit opening, the exhibit will be up, and life will be good.

Yesterday when Mr. Riccio and I were moving a big 8-foot-tall piece of plywood, we almost blew away (literally). It's been really windy for the last couple of days, and a big gust of wind picked up the plywood. We would have both blown away had there not been a pole right by where we were walking, which stopped the flight of the plywood. :-) It's supposed to be pretty stormy tomorrow, but I'll try to remember my new resolve to dance in the rain (or snow)!

Crate & Barrel

Here are the infamous chairs! Now, remember that the space where the chair will be placed is a little 6 x 6 foot fake train car which will also contain a table and some luggage--not much room. And, said chair will only be part of the exhibit for three months--not very long. Soooo, which chair would you choose? The big honking wicker chair for $50? Or the nice little leather chair for $2? Any sane person would choose the $2 chair, but I have stopped worrying about it because it's not my problem. I just think it's funny. :-)

Then, here's today's project at the sculpture studio: a fake crate to go in the fake "boxcar." Aren't museum exhibits supposed to show people real things--not a bunch of fake things? But, anyway, since there was no stopping them from making a fake crate, I thought it might as well look good, so I volunteered to do the wood "graining." While I was painting the Masonite planks to look like wood, I was thinking about the pioneers who used to paint wood to look like marble. Their skill was much cooler than mine! While I was painting the crate, Dan, Aly, and Kristen were building a bench for the fake "economy car." It was really funny because Dan was trying to pretend like he knew how to use a drill and other power tools, but he's never used them before, so it wasn't working out so well. It took them a really long time to finish the bench, and it did look cool, but the problem was that when you sat down on it, it would tip forward--not good for museum visitors. Why did this happen? BECAUSE WE ARE HISTORY STUDENTS--NOT ARCHITECTS OR CARPENTERS OR FURNITURE MAKERS!!! We have not spent a semester studying bench configuration. But try telling Kristen that, and she bites your head off. I know this is bad, but as she was puzzling over how to make the bench stay up when someone sits on it, I was chuckling inside :-) I have to go to the studio again tomorrow morning to work on stuff, and hopefully we can get everything finished since we need to start putting it up at the Tarble Arts Center on Monday!!

Thankfully, once again, the weather did not turn out as bad as they had predicted. Originally, we were supposed to have super bad storms here all evening. We did get a lot of rain all day, and they're saying that there is flood danger again, but that's a lot better than hail and tornadoes! We really only had one nasty thunderstorm blow through at about 7:30 p.m. It was kind of funny because I was sitting on my bed, and I had been really tired all afternoon, so I was even kind of drifting off to sleep, when all of a sudden it sounded like a bomb went off outside. There was a HUGE flash of lightning and a monstrous boom of thunder. It's like the lightning bolt shocked the life back into me because when that happened, it jolted me awake, I jumped out of bed, and I have been busily getting stuff done ever since then--and I'm not even tired! :-)

I've been hearing on the news that in Mississippi they've had some pretty crazy flooding going on. In Vicksburg, some houses are under water! I was hearing that the river gauge reading was almost 50 feet there, so I went back and looked at some pictures I had taken along the riverfront in 2006. I was shocked when I realized that the Mississippi River would currently be up to the bottom of the river gauge shown in this photo!!! This river gauge is on the back of the wall containing the Vicksburg riverfront murals--so the water is basically up to the lower part of the downtown area! When I took this photo during the summer, I was standing at the top of the concrete boat ramp that, at the time, dropped down about 30 feet to the river--which is typically about 20 feet deep. But now people wouldn't even need to use the boat ramp--they could just go get in their boats in their backyards and float away. I read that in Natchez the river crested today at 54 feet and is expected to reach 56 feet after today's rain--yikes! Every morning on the radio during the summer, they would state the river gauge reading, and it was typically at about 15 feet--or 17 if we had a big rain storm. So I can't believe how much higher than usual the Mississippi River is right now! I hope that Natchez Under-the-Hill didn't get flooded. That's where Magnolia Grill is located--and they have the best bread pudding in the South, and the best chocolate pecan pie, and they have some pretty tasty sweet potato fries there too. So I hope they're okay. Well, I'm off to bed--maybe I'll dream about Magnolia Grill's bread pudding.