Apples, Barns, Cemeteries, Dudleys . . .

It is 1:50 a.m.!! So, I guess it's really Saturday morning, but as far as I'm concerned it's still Friday night because I haven't gone to bed yet. So when I write about "today," I am referring to Friday. Why am I up at 1:50 a.m.? you may ask. Two words: Tilford Dudley. The big exhibit opening is this Sunday, and since the exhibit team (which will also include me) has to install the exhibit tomorrow, they wanted to get all of the panels assembled tonight. We started at 7:30 p.m. and left the room at 12:45 a.m. Dr. Reid came and stuck it out with us, and she brought pizza! That was super nice of her. There were several injuries sustained throughout the course of the evening. Aly burned her hand on the iron they were using to press the pictures down, and Dr. Reid got clobbered by a large box that she and I were carrying out to her car. One moment we were both holding it, and the next moment only I was holding it--and as her side of it went down, it sliced her across the cheek pretty good. I hope she'll be okay! We have literally shed blood, sweat, and tears over the Dudley exhibit!

But, to the fun part of the day. Today I went up to Monticello for the Piatt County Barn Tour--it was the perfect fall day! The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and I had a great time out driving through the corn fields. At one point I was driving along, and my car was making this weird noise. I thought maybe it was going to fall apart, but when I got out at the next stop, I realized that there was a corn stalk lodged up under the front bumper! Very fitting. I was relieved that my car wasn't really falling apart--it had just been dragging the corn stalk along the road. Up top you'll see some pictures from the day's activities: first you'll see me holding up the best cup of apple cider I've ever had. One of the historic barn owners had a produce stand set up for the barn tour tourists, and he had some fresh apple cider that was made of pure, fresh apple juice. It was divine! Next, you will see one of the historic barns. This barn is currently owned by the University of Illinois. Unlike the Arthur Cheese Festival back in September, which didn't really have any cheese, the Historic Barn Tour today did have plenty of cool barns. Next you'll see one of the old cemeteries from the tour route--along with the beautiful fall colors. Then, we get to my favorite stop of the day: Allerton Park. Allerton Park is owned by the University of Illinois, and it consists of a few hundred acres of formal gardens, statues, and a gigantic mansion. There was this guy by the name of Allerton who was a really wealthy Chicago businessman back in the 1930's, and he built the estate and had the gardens constructed. Before he died he donated it all to the U of I to be maintained for public use. It was soooooo pretty there! Last year the Illinois Tourism Bureau had a contest to determine the Seven Wonders of Illinois. I'm still bitter that Nauvoo wasn't chosen as the "Western Illinois Wonder!" And when I heard last year that Allerton Park, not Cozy Dog Drive In (where the corn dog was invented) had been chosen as the "Central Illinois Wonder," I was quite disappointed. I didn't think that Allerton Park sounded like a very cool place from its description, but I was indeed wrong--it's definitely "Seven Wonder" status. As you can see from the picture, the Allerton House is HUGE, and it has this pretty lake and all of these pretty trees. The picture of me with a strange, green creature is from one of the gardens surrounding the Allerton House. Mr. Allerton liked weird Oriental sculptures of strange animals, so they're all over the place. :-) I loved walking around through the gardens with all of the fall leaves around. The barn tour covered about 25 miles and consisted of 36 stops. I didn't stop at every place--that would have taken waaaay too long, but it was fun to see what I did. I'm glad I had a nice, fun, relaxing day to myself before having to come back to the stressful world of Tilford Dudley! Well, it's now 2:12 a.m., so I'd better be off to bed. I'm sure I'm going to dream about T-Dud tonight.

"Fall Break"

After class today, "Fall Break" began here at EIU. I put it in quotation marks because for us HA students, it's not a real holiday weekend--because it's only one day: Friday, and we always get Fridays off. So for us, it's just another weekend. Actually, we realized that we haven't really had any weekends lately, nor will we have any for the rest of October. There's always something we need to do over the weekend, and for the next three weeks, we have Tilford Dudley presentations on Sunday. This weekend we'll also have to set up the T-Dud exhibit on Saturday. No rest for the weary! Unfortunately there's also been some grumbling amongst the students--people are kind of forming into cliques and griping about the other cliques. It's like high school all over again! :-) Thankfully I do not belong to any one particular clique--I try to maintain good relations with all, but I'm afraid it could get ugly between some of the others later this semester or for sure next semester. I'll keep you posted on the drama.

I just kind of need a break from everyone and everything, so tomorrow I'm going to go by myself up to Monticello for the Piatt County Historic Barn Tour! Yay--that will be a fun "Fall Break" activity. I'm sure I'll see some pretty leaves, and it made the Piatt County Museum board happy to think that I would come up to support their biggest activity of the year.

This morning for Historic Preservation, we had a guest speaker from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency come speak to us. She talked really fast, and she talked for the whole two-and-a-half hours, so it was kind of like an overload of information, but it was really interesting. After class I did some research at the library for a while, and then it was off to work with Dr. Hardeman. We graded three papers in three hours :-) They were three scary papers too--oh dear. It's a 3000-level course, so you'd expect people to at least be able to write in complete sentences and spell correctly (especially with spell check!), but no--that would be asking too much of these students. We didn't get any more Boston Tea Parties today, but there was some equally disturbing mis-information. At one point Dr. Hardeman wanted to take a break and walk to the Union to buy us some cookies, so we walked across campus. I guess that today was, according to a select group of EIU students, National "Come Out" Day. (It's actually National Autism Awareness Day, so I believe these students were a little confused.) The students had a microphone set up with speakers in the middle of campus, and they were walking around asking people if they had any secrets they wanted to make known. I try not to be judgemental, but it was quite obvious that these students were trying to promote, shall we say, alternative lifestyles. It's times like that, or when I walk through a suffocating cloud of cigarette smoke that I wish for the good ol' days at BYU :-)

Now This is Fall!

Fall literally came to Illinois overnight! Yesterday everyone was sweaty and hot, and today everyone was bundled up. It was up in the high 80's yesterday, but today we had a high of 59 degrees. Even though it was such a dramatic drop in temperature, everyone has been really happy because we've been wishing for fall weather, and now it's perfect outside. It's crisp and breezy, and the leaves are falling off of the trees. I cannot claim to have taken this fall picture, but it was taken up by Urbana, so I think it captures the mood of an Illinois fall pretty well.

Today in Mrs. Miller's Museum Administration class, we did a really funny scavenger hunt. We were learning about accessibility at museums and historic sites, and we had to assess the accessibility of Coleman Hall where we have all of our classes. To complete said assessment, we had to see what it was like to try to navigate the building while experiencing various handicaps. I was the deaf and dumb person :-( Mrs. Miller couldn't find her ear plugs, so I had to walk around with the ginormous headphones on! We came up with a good plan though--I pretended like I was jamming to an i-pod. I still got a lot of weird looks from people in the halls though. My favorite was Laurie--who was supposed to be vision-impaired. Mrs. Miller gave her these wacky purple shades, which she had to smear Vaseline onto to create a very blurred effect. It looked sooooo funny! The best was when they had me put the purple shades on with my headphones. Many pictures were taken, so I'll have to see if I can round up some of those. :-) We decided that Coleman Hall is not very accessible.

This afternoon for Material Culture class we went out to the Hummel's house. They are a couple who live in this really cool house outside of town furnished with all of these cool antiques. We went to identify and evaluate some of their furnishings. We've been out there before, but it's been a while, so I guess that some people were a little unclear on the route to their house. I rode out there with Dr. Reid, so I was fine, but poor Kristin totally got lost and was about 30 minutes late (the Hummels only live about 5 miles from campus). Luckily she made it though! Dr. Reid had made some of her famous brownies from scratch. We decided that this was the best batch of brownies ever--they were totally divine. It was a very fall-ish drive out to the Hummel's, and we had a good time there.

This evening Dan made me dinner since I helped the exhibit team with their Photoshop stuff last week. I got so excited because I saw that they had pumpkin shakes at this place called HcHugh's in town, so after dinner Dan and I went and got a pumpkin shake. It wasn't as good as Arctic Circle pumpkin shakes at home, but it was better than not having any pumpkin shakes! The best pumpkin treats so far this year have been yesterday's praline pumpkin pie, the pumpkin cookies that Mom and I got up in Arthur, and the pumpkin ice cream she and I had in Arthur at the Great Pumpkin Patch. Well, I'm off to do some reading. I love fall!

The Boston Tea Party

It bears a scary resemblance to the real thing, doesn't it? My sister Lindy introduced me to www.simpsonizeme.com, and I couldn't resist Simpsonizing myself. Ha ha, that's funny--I think I like the cartoon version better! Speaking of funny, today was a funny day. I had class this morning, then this afternoon I helped Dr. Hardeman grade tests and papers. We were grading some tests from his Constitution class, and some of the answers that the students put were soooooooooo funny, but the sad thing is that they weren't trying to be funny. My favorite was the girl who wrote about how the British increased taxes on tea, and then when they shipped it to America, they (the British) dumped the tea in the harbor, and afterwords everyone had the Boston Tea Party. :-) Dr. Hardeman and I were both rollin' after that one. I think it was that same person who, when asked who James I was, said, "A bi-sexual king." Needless to say, they didn't get the best grade in the world. Dr. Hardeman was pretty sleepy again this afternoon. I was reading a paper to him, and he fell asleep after the first paragraph. But I kept reading, and then he woke up after I finished and said, "That wasn't a very good paper! Let's read it again." So I read it to him again, but he fell asleep again, and when I reached the end he woke up again and said, "It didn't get any better." Maybe he is listening subconsciously in his sleep?

After work this afternoon, I hit the road for Monticello. The weather was perfect today--still a little warm, but quite a bit cooler than it's been. Tomorrow should be even cooler and more fall-ish. It was a beautiful day for a drive up through the cornfields (that are no more) to Monticello--much better than the last time I drove up there in the middle of the tornado. The people on the Piatt County Museum board are so nice and appreciative of my efforts to write a grant for them. We'll be applying for a grant through the Illinois Humanities Council, and hopefully we can get them a consultant to help them develop exhibit plans and fundraising ideas. They really are very kind people, and we had a good time chatting for a while tonight. After meeting with the museum board, I couldn't resist going to my new favorite place, introduced to me by Mrs. Finet (one of the museum board members), the Brown Bag. It's a funny name for a restaurant, but their food is divine. I had a yummy Hawaiian croissant with ham, pineapple, and cream cheese, and the best part was the dessert. I had PRALINE PUMPKIN PIE!!! Can you think of anything more delicious, or can you even fathom a more perfect fall treat? It was divine. They have a lady who makes all of their pies each day, so it was nice and fresh. It had a light caramelized brown sugar and pecan topping, which was the perfect compliment to the pumpkin pie filling. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. It was sooooooo good! I think I'll be heading back up to Monticello this weekend for the Historic Barn Tour which is the museum's biggest event all year. I think I'll need to grab some lunch at the Brown Bag while I'm there! It takes about 50 minutes to get to Monticello from Charleston, but it's not too bad of a drive--if it's not dumping rain.

After getting back from Monticello, I had to go to our weekly HA meeting. I think everyone is getting really annoyed of everyone else, and to show you how serious everyone is about school, I, quiet Tiffany, have become the class clown! I provide the only comic relief anyone experiences anymore. Luckily there's usually something funny and random to say to keep everyone at least a little happy. Everyone is just stressed out. The way I see it, we all just need to chill down and relax about everything. If you don't have time to read every word of every book, then skim what you can, and move on. Everyone's obsessiveness about our assignments is kind of getting on my nerves, but I'll try to be nice. At least Kristen and Dan still laugh about stuff--they seem the most sane out of everybody. Well, I'm off to take my nightly nap, and then it's another wild and crazy day tomorrow. Dan wants to make pasta for me after our class tomorrow afternoon since I helped him and the rest of the exhibit team with their Photoshop trauma over the weekend, so that will be fun. Even though Wednesday is a two-class day, I don't mind because my afternoon class, Material Culture, is my favorite of all classes, so it will be a good day!

Digital Applications Vacation

Yay--we can now take a vacation from our Digital Applications class until next semester! Hooray! Since it is just a one credit course, it only lasted for half of the semester. We will have the second half of the course next semester, but it will be good to have those extra three hours on Mondays to do other work. The test that we had in class today wasn't too bad.

This morning in our Museum Exhibits class, we ended up having a mutiny of silence. :-) Class had already gone over about 15 minutes, and we were getting very restless. You'd think that two-and-a-half hours would be sufficient time to cover everything, but Mr. Riccio was still talking away. Then he said, "Before we go I want to discuss our other readings about museum exhibit labels." We couldn't believe it--that would surely launch us into another half hour of analyzation, and then it would be time for our afternoon class. Seven hours of class without a break doesn't sit well with people. When he asked us a question about the readings, we all just kind of gave him blank stares. Finally he said, "Okay, we'll talk about it next time." Whew! We made it out of class. I guess Mr. Riccio made up for it though because he let us out of Digital Applications early this afternoon. So I had a couple of extra hours to work with, but I think my body is still trying to get back to 100% health, and I was wearing down, so I crashed at home and took a nap. When I woke up, Alyson was watching the movie "United 93" on TV, so I watched the last part of it with her. It was sooooooo sad!!!! We had to break out a box of tissues for ourselves.

This evening I had LDS Institute class. Institute is a program for college-age students all over the world where they can study gospel-related topics in a classroom setting. The University was kind enough to give us a room on campus on Monday nights so we can have class there. Tonight it was just our teacher, Jerry Cloward, myself, and one other girl, Alisa, but I guess that usually the missionaries come too. We had a good chat tonight. I used to work at the Orem Institute of Religion where we had about 5,000 students, so this is quite different, but it's cool to see the Institute program in action even in areas where there aren't very many Mormons.

After Institute, surprise, surprise--we HA students had another meeting. I've never seen people who liked meetings so much! Tonight we had to discuss research for the exhibit we're putting on next spring about transportation methods in the rural Midwest. I have been assigned the topic of researching early travel routes through Illinois to the West--that's right up my lane! Luckily we put a time cap of one hour on the meeting tonight, which is especially good since tomorrow we're having our usual weekly meeting. Tomorrow will be a crazy day--I have class in the morning, work in the afternoon, and then I need to head up to Monticello to meet with the Piatt County Museum Board about the grant application. Then I have to cruise back down here to C-town for the weekly meeting, but I'm not going to worry if I'm late to that because there will surely be plenty of discussion left for me to sit in on when I get back--no matter what time it is. So tomorrow will consist of a lot of driving and a lot of sitting--whether in class or in meetings. But, I'm glad to be here, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this program. Well, I'm off to bed!