This is what it sounded like yesterday when I stepped out of Coleman Hall at EIU. In the midst of my joy at having passed my oral exams, I began to "Woooo-Hoooo!" But I quickly gasped and began to cough as the frozen air filled my lungs. It was -4 outside and the wind was blowing. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr! It has been really, really super cold here. I drove down to Charleston on Wednesday afternoon (Happy 60th Birthday that day, Dad!), and it was a little tricky because Tuesday night's snow was blowing all over the place. It was kind of hard to see the road, but I just drove slowly. I stayed with the Stowells that evening, and we had a wonderful time having dinner and playing games. They even had an electric blanket on the bed they let me sleep in! When I emerged from my cozy cocoon on Thursday morning, it was a shock to learn that it was -8 degrees outside with a windchill of -30!!!! It was so cold that the Stowell kids' schools were cancelled for the day. EIU wasn't cancelled though--I guess they figure that college students are expendable :-)
Despite the cold, I made my way over to campus for my oral exam. I quickly warmed up as Dr. Small, Mr. Riccio, and Dr. Reid placed me in the "hot seat" at the front of a long table in our good-old classroom. After about 2 hours and 15 minutes, I emerged from the room victorious--I passed!! It was no walk in the park, however. They asked me some questions that I had a hard time answering. They wanted me to talk about the interpretive models I had used while working at Camp Floyd--but I didn't use any interpretive models that I knew of :-) They were kind enough to help me figure out what models I had used. We mostly just talked about what I had learned from my internships, and we spent a while going over the paper I submitted for my culminating project. After all of the questioning and talking, they had me leave the room for about five minutes while they decided whether or not to pass me. Luckily they decided to! It is a great relief to have the exams out of the way, and the only thing I have left to do is apply for graduation--then I will officially be a Master of Historical Administration :-)
Missy Stowell was nice enough to buy me some Thai food for lunch to celebrate. I had so much fun with them! When I left Charleston in the afternoon, I stopped at a gas station to try to clean off my windshield (it had become rather salty during the drive down and I was out of windshield wiper fluid). The windshield cleaning stuff was a little slushy but un-frozen enough that I could clean the windshield. Unfortunately as I drove out of town, a few streaks on the windshield froze right in my line of vision. So I pulled off at another gas station, but their windshield cleaner was frozen solid. They did, however, have paper towels. I remembered later that I have some Windex in my trunk, but at the time the only thing I could think of to do was spit on my windshield :-) It did the trick though.
Poor Greg had been stuck at home all day with frozen pipes and no running water. We had to go to the funeral home to use the bathroom since our toilet wouldn't flush. This morning it had warmed up to -2 outside, so the plumber was able to come take a look at our pipes. He had his blowtorch and was trying to heat up the pipes under our kitchen sink, then he went down into the crawl space under the house to warm the pipes there. Soon the water started running in the kitchen sink, then the hot water came back to the bathroom, but he couldn't get the cold water line to thaw out, and the crawl space was too low underneath the bathroom to get his torch in there. So we had running water in the house, but still no toilet--and the drainage pipe in our bathtub was frozen, so the tub wouldn't drain.
A little later this afternoon the cold water came back to the bathroom so we were finally able to flush out toilet! Now our only remaining problem was getting the bathtub to drain. Our landlord came over this evening and went down into the crawl space to shine a big light on the tub drain pipe, but it wasn't doing the trick. So, Greg ventured out this evening to find some liquid heat at a gas station (I didn't even know there was such a thing). He poured the liquid heat down the drain, and it melted the ice! Now we can turn on the sinks, flush the toilet, and shower--hooray!!!! Tomorrow it is supposed to warm up to the 30's, so that will be nice.
When Greg asked me what I wanted to do in celebration of passing my oral exams, I said, "Go to the Lincoln Museum!" So today we had a fun field trip to Springfield. I made quite a splash at the museum with my "Would I lie to you?" t-shirt featuring Abraham Lincoln. Everyone wanted one. Even the lady in the gift shop wondered where I had gotten it, so I told her that I ordered it online. It's my new favorite shirt. In our family portrait with the Lincolns, I was accidentally standing in front of Robert, but that's okay because he wasn't very nice to his mom. Greg had never been to the museum before, and he loved it. We especially enjoyed my favorite presentation: "Ghosts at the Museum." The gift shop at the museum is amazing, but we were a little disappointed to see that there is now an Obama section of the gift shop where they sell magnets and these little "Yes We Can!" candy bars. Oh well, at least 97% of the merchandise is still Lincoln-related. But they didn't have anything as cool as my t-shirt :-)
