Spring Break

As I was reading through the latest Mormon History Association newsletter that Mom sent to me, I was thinking, "Stanley Thayne will probably win the contest for the best graduate student paper again this year, and he'll probably be one of the presenters at the MHA conference in Sacramento this summer." So I was feeling kind of bad, imagining his picture plastered on the front of the next newsletter, but then I realized: there is no reason to feel bad. Because, Stanley Thayne doesn't get a spring break and I do!!!! Ha ha ha. I'm sorry if I'm being mean. It's just that he's my arch nemesis, and I am really excited to have a WEEK-LONG spring break! I love whoever planned the EIU calendar. I'm so excited to go home tomorrow!

Urbaign-Champana

I've been meaning to put this picture up on the blog--this was the scene on Tuesday morning during the freezing rain storm. You can't see out of my apartment window because there is a sheet of ice on it! Luckily the sun came out yesterday and melted things just a little bit. Today is Spring Break Eve! I am sooooooo excited to come home tomorrow and see everybody. Aly left today, so I took her over to the train station this morning. Now I'm just trying to do laundry and things before Relief Society Enrichment Night tonight. I am giving a presentation about the pioneers in celebration of the Relief Society's 166th birthday this month. Hopefully it won't be too boring! Greg is kind enough to come offer me some moral support this evening :-) I practiced the presentation on Aly last night, and she thought it was very interesting. She now loves pioneer women. Patty Sessions, who delivered 3,977 babies, was her favorite.

Yesterday was a long but super fun day. For our Collections Care class, we went up to the University of Illinois to visit the Spurlock Museum. The U of I is located in two cities--Urbana and Champaign, so they call it the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That's quite a mouthful for a school! We've decided that they should combine the two cities into one and call it Urbaign-Champana just to confuse everybody. The Spurlock Museum was very cool, and the director there showed us some behind-the-scenes collections management stuff. We got to see some pretty interesting and random things. My favorite item we saw was a pair of Inuit shorts made out of fur. :-) After the museum, we went to dinner at this really delicious restaurant called Seven Saints. The food there was delicious, and we all enjoyed being in a "big city" again. I don't know which city I like better--Urbana or Champaign, because you never know which of the two you're in. :-) My favorite part of dinner was the "Black and Bleu" salad I had topped with bleu cheese and sliced ribeye steak. It was divine. We didn't get back until kind of late, but luckily I was able to catch the premiere of the latest "Ghost Hunters" season! It was crazy--they totally found some ghosts at Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia! Well, I've got to go finish up some things and then head to school to work with Dr. Hardeman. I'm so excited to go home tomorrow!

ICE

Today I decided that it's official: I strongly, strongly dislike Illinois winters. Then spring and summer mean tornadoes, and summer is hot and muggy, so maybe fall is the only really good season in this state? I'll get to the weather in a minute, but first I wanted to say that I love Sidney's EIU shout-out! She looks great in her cool "I Love EIU" gear. I also loved all of the fairy princess pictures. Camden, Riley, and Sid are natural-born fairies. And, I loved seeing the little ghost at Magnolia Hill in South Carolina. I wish that Sarah, Joel, Eliza, and Greg could all come out to Utah for spring break! But I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to go home on Friday to see everybody!!! The little girls and I have a big sleepover planned for Friday night. They're my favorite sleepover buddies.

So, the weather. Last night it rained freezing rain all night, which makes it hard to sleep when it sounds like little pebbles are hitting your window, and it was extremely windy. I slept with every blanket I own on my bed, so I was nice and toasty warm, but it sounded so cold and nasty outside. When I woke up this morning, you couldn't really see out the windows of the apartment because there was a thick layer of ice on them. Dr. Small called us and canceled our architecture class due to weather concerns, but unfortunately I still had to head over to school to get things done before Mr. Riccio's class in the afternoon. You'd think that since they're married to each other, if one canceled class the other would follow, but they are very, very different. So I bundled up and went outside to clean Stryder off--and that was no easy job. It was like he had been vacuum sealed in a glass case. There was a solid sheet of ice that literally covered the whole car, and I had to hit the windows pretty hard to get the ice to crack. Once it cracked, it shattered like glass--it was so weird. Then at about 1:00 this afternoon it started to snow, and by the time I left school at about 7:00 p.m., there were probably close to five inches of snow on the ground--with a solid sheet of ice underneath. It took Aly and me a while to clean the car off again tonight when we left school, and then it was raining freezing rain again on the way home, so I couldn't really see out of the windshield because the water would instantly freeze.

Finally we made it home tonight, and I was able to enjoy some delicious chicken noodle soup that Sister Stowell made for me and brought over yesterday evening. She is so nice! We were supposed to have our weekly meeting tonight, but since we were all at school for class this afternoon, and people wanted to drive as little as possible, we had our meeting then. You can tell that things are getting kind of tense because Kristen and Catherine nearly had a smack-down at the meeting. Luckily we all worked things out, but I think everyone is a little grouchy--especially since Mr. Riccio and the Tarble Arts Center keep giving us different instructions about how they want the exhibit to look. I am really pooped tonight, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully it won't be so cold and nasty tomorrow!

WEATHER

Hmmmm, the winter weather seems to have arrived earlier than expected--which is even more funny than if it had arrived tomorrow, because as it is, the temperatures went from 68 degrees to 30 degrees in less than 24 hours! In fact, this morning the temperature seemed to drop about 20 degrees within about five minutes--it was really weird. It is super nasty, rainy, slushy, gray, cold, windy, and gross out there right now, but that is only the beginning. We now have a "Winter Storm Warning" and are supposed to get a half-inch of freezing rain tonight, followed by four inches of snow tomorrow. I just can't wrap my mind around going from 68 degrees to this so quickly! I guess it's good though, because now the children who were here for interviews today got to see what the weather is really like during the winter here. Yesterday was not an accurate representation.

I spent all day today giving tours of the campus and shuttling children from the graduate lab over to their interviews with the professors at the library. It was quite a hectic day, and the tours weren't very fun because it was so gross outside. My shoes are totally soaked, and my jeans are soaked clear up to just below my knee! The children still enjoyed the ghost stories though. And, they were giving away free Krispy Kreme doughnuts over at the student union today--in celebration of Krispy Kreme's 50th anniversary, so that made the children happy. Are they giving away doughnuts at all Krispy Kreme locations today? I had to give tours with Alisha, and I was about ready to pop her on the head--she totally drives me crazy :-) Well, I'm going to go read to Dr. Hardeman.

Pseudo Spring

"Weird" doesn't even begin to describe the weather here in Illinois. "Highly-irregular, abnormal, and subject to change frequently" is closer to the truth. It is 68 degrees outside right now!!!!!!! It is seriously 68 degrees outside. The sun is shining, a cool breeze is blowing, and it is the perfect spring day. HOWEVER, on Tuesday--the day after tomorrow--we are supposed to have a high of 30 degrees, low of 19 degrees, and a snow storm. Craziness. The prospective HA students who are coming into town today are going to get a false sense of what winter weather is like in Charleston. I think that the impression Mom and I got when we came to visit last February was more accurate. Oh well--we'll enjoy the warm weather here while it lasts. It's supposed to be pretty nice tomorrow too, which will be good because I have to give a bunch of campus tours to the prospective students, or the "children," as I call them. Some of the children are coming by our apartment today to check-out Campus Pointe, and then they are all going out to dinner. I'm opting for the dinner-less option, so I'll just head straight over to the Dudley House to help Dr. Small set up chairs and things before our "Interview Weekend Commencement Program" this evening.

Today I have suffered a severe bout of tiredness and overwhelmity (that's a new word I made up)--due, I believe, to yesterday's escapades. I didn't have a chance last night to go into great detail about the trip to Tuscola, but let's just say that venturing though the thorn forest and over the drainage ditch was slightly hazardous to my health. My left knee has numerous cuts and bruises on it, and I think I still have a few little thorns in my legs. Then, last night's birthday party was crazy--as I knew it would be. I had big plans of going into my room, closing my door, and going to bed early, but that is easier said than done with an apartment full of drunk girls :-) Not everyone got really drunk, but Aly was wasted. They were all talking nonsense, but luckily they decided to go home rather than stay overnight. It took until 1:45 a.m., however, to get them out the door.

Last night I learned far more about all of my classmates than I ever wanted to know. Alisha was rambling all evening--but she was drunk on Welch's sparkling grape juice instead of alcohol. She seriously gave us too much information about herself--except that she is still holding fast to her secret tie to the Mormons. :-) However, now almost everybody knows that she used to be a Mormon because I had to explain to them today why Alisha was so upset when Kristen left a copy of the Book of Mormon in our graduate lab at school. I had given Kristen a copy of the Book of Mormon, but then the missionaries left her a copy along with "The Restoration" DVD, and so after watching the DVD, she brought it and her extra copy of the Book of Mormon to the lab in case somebody else wanted to borrow them. Catherine took the DVD home to watch, but the Book of Mormon was still in the lab, and I guess that Alisha kind of freaked out about it yesterday. I was not there when this happened, but I heard that she was saying how it is inappropriate to have religious material at school. Then, rather than doing it herself, she insisted that Laurie put it in one of the cabinets so that the visiting students wouldn't see it today. Aly and I had to go over to school this afternoon to work on some things, and Catherine and Laurie were wondering what the deal was with Alisha, so I just explained it to them. There's always something to be dramatic about around here! :-) I think I know why I've been feeling so drained of energy lately--I need to have better nutrition. I didn't think it was possible to forget about eating, but lately I've been finding myself forgetting to eat during the day, and that is not good. I will do better--and will then probably feel better!