The Dreaded H1N1

Yup, that's right - swine flu.

It officially sucks. And has killed my productivity for the past week. I am only now starting to feel like a human being again. With an emphasis on starting. Grrr...

Work accomplished this past week and a half:

1) Finished my fellowship application.

2) Lots and lots of sleep.

XXX

No, XXX is not referring the movie. XXX is actually my Triple-Ex-Roommate Kim (as opposed to my Ex-Roommate Margaret and my Double-Ex Roommate Eleanor - have I mentioned I move around a lot?)

XXX is awesome. She lets me crash in her spare bedroom and play with her puppy every time I visit Charlottesville. She also occasionally even lets me get a math-fix by helping her write logic tests and quizzes.

If you are a dwarf, then you are an Old Narnian.

If you are an Old Narnian, then you are a dwarf.

Converse, inverse or contrapositive? Anyone?

Work accomplished today:

1) Began debating modifications to my dissertation chapter outline. Not like it's due in two days or anything...

Pillows and Packing

This is a special 3-day edition of my blog! (Yesterday, today and tomorrow).

A few weeks ago, I was talking with one of the other fellows here at the Cassatt house and mentioned I'd brought my own pillow with me to PA.

She allowed as how it was lucky I drove, so I could bring a pillow.

I laughed and said the pillow fits into my suitcase. Not only has this pillow been to Philly, it's also spent 3 months in California, 1 month in Illinois and 6 months in the UK. It's been further away from home than a lot of US citizens! Before you think I'm crazy (yes, I know, too late) let me add that this is a foam pillow and, once you've become a foam pillow convert, you'd rather sleep without one than use one of those hard lumps or soft fluffy allergen-filled things everyone else seems to think is a pillow.

Pillow snobbery over.

The point is, when you pack, no matter how long you're going for or how much junk you just have to bring with you, you can make it all fit. And keep it under the weight limit. (50.0 and 49.5 lbs flying out of LAX, and I could still carry my backpack and computer case - though it was close, seeing as how my combined luggage weighed more than I did).

Power to the packers!

Work accomplished yesterday:

1) Wrote some of my dissertation chapter.

Organization In 21st Century America

So I was reading a book on Benjamin Franklin's book collection yesterday, and his attempts to organize it. This made me realize 1) my book collection is completely uncataloged (and, since it is currently in boxes, very unorganized) and 2) I really ought to consider making up a finding aide for my dissertation research notes.

In other news, my friends at the APS let me go up into the rare book vault and browse the shelves that have all the books I've been requesting, in case I missed something in the catalogue. It makes me realize how much, when I'm in open stacks, I like to do shelf browsing around the books I request. The difference between the online organization and the physical organization is pretty incredible. And I find it much easier to scan a shelf of books than to scan a list of books by shelf number. Of course, I also find it easier to scan/read a book in its original than flip electronic pages. Does this make me the electronic-age version of a dinosaur?

Research accomplished yesterday and today:

1) Read a bunch of political pamphlets.

2) Read through a couple of algebra and Latin arithmetic textbooks

3) Discovered the London Gazette online (thnx Taylor!)

Now I'm taking off researching early to go dissertate. A week to the ACLS deadline and counting!

This Union Doesn't Want Your Vote

So today, one of the SEPTA - the Philadelphia public transport system - unions went on strike.

Today is also Election Day.

Now, I'm not going to go over the top and declare that this particular union has orchestrated a massive conspiracy to deny hard-working Americans their right to vote. That would be just crazy. But for anyone dependent upon public transportation, this union's poor judgment has made exercising their Constitutional rights that much more difficult.

I have zero sympathy for this kind of a shenanigan. Luckily for them, I don't get a vote.

Probability, Fortifications and Some Moving Math

So this weekend I was proud to field a phone call from my baby brother (I have to add the baby part because he's like six feet tall so I can't call him my little brother anymore, and he looks older than me, so I want to make sure no one's in any doubt that I am the big sister here). He had some questions about probability.

Now, it's been probably eight years since I had much to do with probability, and it was never my favorite subject. In fact, I seem to remember calling a certain course "Probability and Sadistics." Nevertheless, I actually knew what he was talking about! And sorta helped him out! I'm so glad to know that I can still legitimately call myself a mathematician.

On another note, yesterday I was also randomly looking up something re: the US Navy on wikipedia and followed a few links to discover some guy called Vauban, who I'd never heard of before but was a French fortifications expert in the 17th century. Cool.

Then I went into the APS today, pulled the first of my manuscript sources, and discovered it was on Vauban. Creepy, bizarre, coincidence?

At work today, I got to talking with another fellow today about moving. A few quick calculations lead to some very frightening results. I think I need a job. And to not move for a few years. Because here's my current track record:

In the past 18 months I have lived in 8 different cities. Not counting all the moves of the past 18 months, I have still moved 14 times and had 13 different roommates in the past 10 years. (So that all took place in a 8.5 year time frame, for those who are counting.)

Research accomplished this weekend and today:

1) Wrote up more stuff for my current fellowship application.

2) Outlined a chapter of my dissertation.

3) Read a couple of manuscript sources.

4) FINISHED the almanacs at the APS.

Whew!

Mummy!

So this morning I took the day off from APS and went to the Library Company of Philadelphia to do research. It was a strange commute. I've spent three hours on a train and walked for forty-five minutes to get to libraries. I've biked for half an hour to get to libraries. I've walked five minutes down the road (2 minutes spent at stoplights) to get to libraries. I've even had days where I just walked into the other room and got books from my own personal library.

Somehow, talking the exactly 12 steps (yes, I counted) from the Cassatt House to the Library Company of Philadelphia was far stranger than any of these. I felt like I was going somewhere. But I wasn't.

To make the day even more surreal, the lady who was also working at the same table as me requested - and was brought - the hand of an Egyptian mummy. By a librarian who (for Halloween) had red plastic devil horns on her headband.

I took the afternoon off to finish my proposal statement for the fellowship I'm applying for. One paragraph left. Only the hardest one, of course.

Research accomplished today:

1) Pulled copy-specific information out of 7 arithmetic textbooks.

2) Found all sorts of cool provenance information about the LCP.

3) Had a fun discussion with one of the librarians about whether or not a dog's claws could have caused the damage on one of my arithmetic books. Isn't history great??

Phillies

Apparently, even B.F. is a fan of baseball...

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock

If you've ever watched the Big Bang Theory, you know exactly what the title of this post refers to. If you haven't, check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iapcKVn7DdY

You can take the girl out of the math department, but you can't take the dork out of the girl!

Research accomplished today:

1) Read a lot of almanacs, including several that exist nowhere else in the world and one that ESTC doesn't believe exists!

2) Promised my advisor both a revised dissertation proposal and a chapter of said dissertation.

Um, I think I might be blogging a bit less in the upcoming weeks!

Creature of Habit?

So when I went into the Wawa this morning to grab lunch on my way to the library, the lady behind the sandwich counter just left my sandwich for me to grab when I was done going through the line. Considering that every other time I've been in the Wawa, they've held my sandwiches hostage until I turned over the little slip, I have a sneaking suspicion they've come to recognize my ordering habits. At least no one's offered to let me be president of their fan club, or started lecturing me on how to manipulate the Icee machine to cancel the defrost cycles, but still...

Deciding that perhaps I've been too much of a creature of habit lately, I went to Olive Garden for dinner instead of Potbelly's. (I know, the extravagance!) This led to the unfortunate discover of a Border's, a mere 2.5 blocks from my house. No good deed goes unpunished!!

Research accomplished today:

1) Read through the last of the 1682 almanacs.

2) Started reading the 1697 almanacs. 28 of them! In one book! For comparison, most of these compilations have no more than 15-20 in one book, and at 20 they're already becoming too unwieldy to read easily. So imagine 28... holy cow...

Filthy Lucre

So I realized today that I've got a little over two weeks to write a chapter of my dissertation in time to submit for a dissertation-writing fellowship. Maybe I should spend a little more time dissertating and a little less time blogging if I want to bring home the filthy lucre....

In other news, my newest house-mate is also working at the APS with me. Yea - I'm no longer the only one!

Research accomplished today:

1) Read another half dozen almanacks.

2) Got started on my Folger homework assignment: figure out some primary source of mine that might me useful for my assigned partner's own dissertation. Hmm... anyone want to read some fun account books??

Duck Tales (Oooh, oooh)

So today I decided to play tourist in Philly by taking a duck tour. It was a blast! Captain Fred quacked (err, cracked) me up - "If we need to evacuate, I'll go first to make sure it's safe. Yeah, a captain goes down with his ship, but this is a duck! And have you ever heard a captain goes down with his duck? I didn't think so." Either he was really that funny, or I was so sleep-deprived he seemed far more amusing than he really was - I leave you to ponder.

The duck criss-crossed the historic square mile, going past a lot of sights I've walked past but not paid a lot of attention to, as well as taking me to parts of town I hadn't gotten around to visiting yet. Note to self: South Street contains a lot more than the Trader Joe's....

To round off the evening, I'm watching the Angels-Yankees game. Not because I particularly care about the World Series, but I'd kind of like to know who the Phillies fans are going to be burning in effigy outside my house come Halloween. And I wouldn't want to accidentally wear the wrong colors to work next week...!

Tipping It Down

It's tipping it down outside! Or, to use a more American euphemism, it's raining cats and dogs.

So I carried around my umbrella and rain coat all during my trip to D.C. because they were forecasting rain. Nothing. Zip, zilch, and maybe even zanada (I was inside part of the time, so maybe it rained when I wasn't looking). I was starting to wonder if I'd brought it all for nothing, when I hopped the train back to Philadelphia.

I get to the door of the train station, open it, and am immediately grateful for the overhang because it is POURING rain. I head back inside and ask the security guards if I really HAVE to go outside to get to the trolleys. After all, there are "SEPTA" signs all over the inside of the station and I knew the trains stop there. The guards (and their gorgeous German Shepherd) assure me it's really the only way.

So out I venture into the rain! I've made it about two steps before I have to hold onto the edge of my umbrella to keep it from flipping inside out. I make it maybe two steps more before I start having to slog through puddles. Puddles that go up to my ankles. And remember folks, I'm in two inch heels!

Finally I make it to the station, which is only across the street, but I have to wait at a stoplight. I'm soaked from the bottom of my jacket down, despite the umbrella (which, to be fair to it, was keeping my laptop dry - we were in agreement on the priorities there).

Having lived in good ol' Colonial Williamsburg for many a year, I knew just exactly what to do. Off go the heels and on go the shower shoes (flip-flops). In true William & Mary fashion, I then take the trolley to my stop and proceed to wade through all the puddles without concern. As soon as I'm home, off go the shoes and on go the warm slippers. There really is nothing that says "Hurricane Season" better than a classroom full of college kids in their fuzzy slippers...

Research accomplished yesterday and today:

1) Read an almanack which was annotated by a husband-and-wife team, with extensive discussion of how the wife and daughter(-in-law?) managed the family finances. Sweet!

Surviving Public Transportation (In Heels!)

So today's the day of my monthly Folger seminar in D.C. I was up at 5 A.M. determined to make it to D.C. without missing a single connection.

I only had to ask for directions 5 times. Bleh, but I hate walking around cities before the sun is even up! The SEPTA trolley was bizarre – it's a trolley, all right, and it kinda looks like a bus (single compartment, driver up front, bus doors, even the little pull cord to let the bus know you want a stop) only... it's underground! What's with that?? And let me tell you, the labels on the station were awful. Signs, people. Please!

The 30th Street Amtrak Station was all pretty with high ceilings and column out front – the kind of place that would look right at home in downtown D.C. – with the natural side effect that it was so echoy you couldn't hear a word of the announcements. Brilliant planning. I miss Paddington station! Especially since "watch the gap" just isn't nearly as catchy as "mind the gap." Sorry. :-)

With all of that, I expected the train to also falter in comparison with my (perhaps now rosy) memory of British trains. THERE I was wrong. Nice clean interior. Not much leg room, and certainly no tables for people to work on – have to go for the snack car for that – BUT it did have power strips for my poor laptop so I was guaranteed power my entire trip. On the whole, I think that stacks up favorably.

We had a beautiful sunrise on the train. Red in the morning, sailors take warning.... If I'd been driving, I would have pulled over to get pix. Alas, one can't just ask the train's conductor to stop for a moment, to satisfy a photographic urge. And my poor camera just can't focus at 90 mph (or however fast we were going to keep up with the traffic on I-95).

To make sure that I haven't come down too harshly on Philly, let me assure you I got completely lost in D.C., too. I came out of Union Station, foolishly went to the sign that said "First Street" and ended up on the WRONG "First Street." Me and numbered streets apparently just don't get along. After walking 15 minutes (in heels!) I figured it out and went back to the station to pick up the right First Street. And finally limped into the Folger 15 minutes later.

Lessons learned:

It doesn't matter how formal an occasion you're going to that evening. Just wear your hiking boots and tell anyone who looks at you funny to deal with it! :-)

First the G20, Now Baseball

So I kinda knew there was a baseball game going on in town last night. But so what? I mean, yeah, big crowds, getting out late, overloaded public transport system, but that wasn't affecting ME - I was walking home from work and going to bed early 'cause I've got to be up at 5 A.M. tomorrow and I wanted a bit of extra sleep.

The screaming started around 11 P.M.

I tried to ignore it.

Then people started honking car horns.

Still trying to ignore it.

Next came the fireworks.

Rolling over in bed and burying my head under the pillow.

Then someone starts throwing freakin' metal trashcans at my house. Yes, that's right. Bang, crash, like lightning hitting the tree right outside your bedroom window.

That's when I got up and started to watch the riot - err, sorry, celebration - from the windows at the front of the house (but from the safety of the 3rd floor). I have since learned that the only thing worse than winning a game such as this, is LOSING it. Then they break into local stores and set them on fire. And throw cars. And pull down stop lights - oh, wait, they did that last night, too.

At midnight, one of my housemates finally got home, having been detailed and prevented from coming down our street, despite the fact she lives there, because the police are trying to keep people from rioting.

About 1 A.M. there were apparently still 1000 people crowd-surfing a block from my house.

Circa 1:30 A.M. at least the trash-can throwing died down enough that I could try to sleep.

First I'm there for the G20 riots in London, now this! Oh, and apparently the whole World Series thing doesn't have the good taste to happen on a weekend, either. (Laugh at me at your own peril, baseball fans! I have a cell phone and I'm not afraid to use it... at 2 A.M... on a weekday.)

Dear UVA undergrads, who I might or might not have laughed at for thinking that weekends start on Thursday and for getting a little rowdy after a football game... I have been properly put in my place. Charlottesville is not Bagdad - I mean, Philadelpha.

Research accomplished today:

1) Read a half dozen almanacs.

Short & Sweet

I'm keeping today's post short & sweet:

Happy American Archives Month!

(Brought to you by the Society of American Archivists.)

Research accomplished today:

1) Read another dozen almanacs.

2) Spent far too much time reading over an account of all the earthquakes in 1692. :-)

Bloggers of the 17th Century?

So I'm reminded that blogging when you're tired is probably a bad idea. Like last night, when I ascribed an almanac marginalia to an arithmetic textbook. Oops. So what do I do today? I once again wait until it's really late to write my blog.

As I read all these almanacks, I've come to the conclusion that almanack writers are kinda like the industry bloggers of the 17th century. They publish, on a regular basis (once a year), what amounts to half-informative, half-personal running commentary on whatever strikes their fancy. E.g. the validity of the Copernican hypothesis, surviving their midlife crisis, random frauds they encountered in the streets the other day, that sort of thing.

And then, between long bouts of philosophy and even longer justification of their existence as almanack-writers, they sometimes stick their foot in their mouth. Okay, the time frame is a little off (no instant responses here) but they still end up having to frantically backpedal and declare that of COURSE they believe in witchcraft and weren't implying anything at all heretical and yes, they didn't really mean to criticize the monarch, and yes they're quite loyal citizens....

Have I ever mentioned I love my job?

Research accomplished today:

1) Read a dozen or more almanacks - I lost count and at this hour am too lazy to go check my notes.

Reading Room Ghosts

So I always wonder... what kind of ghost would haunt a library reading room? Some long-dead author whose books and manuscripts are held there? Ex-staffers who vanished mysteriously in the stacks? Or maybe graduate students who spent one Saturday too many in there....

Our reading room lights flickered randomly on and off today, right around lunchtime. I think said ghost must have been reminding me to take my lunch break. The ghosts at the Huntington Library always used to flicker the lights right around 4 P.M., especially on Saturdays - a reminder that it would be time to go home soon?

Of course, the fact that the reading room was almost warm today - none of those subarctic temperatures we had all last week - kinda blows my ghost theory out of the water. According to Hollywood, ghosts always seem to make a place colder, not warmer....

Research accomplished today:

1) Read many, many almanacks.

2) Read the APS's copy of Welspring of Sciences, and wondered why the owner of said book was so determined to figure out (literally) when Richard II's reign ended and Henry IV's began...?

A Bit Of Fun

For your viewing entertainment, here's a word cloud of my recent blog entries. Who says grad students don't know how to party on a Friday night?

Now back to our regularly scheduled productivity...

TGIF!

I swear, there's nothing longer than a 4-day work week. 6-day weeks fly by, but the ones that are FOUR days long just take forever!

So to celebrate TGIF, here are some other things I was thankful for today:

1) The sweater and scarf Patty gave me. Brrr, it was cold today!

2) My mom convincing me to bring the waterproof jacket to Philly, since it's been raining for two days.

3) Waterproof boots that let me truck right on through the puddles everyone else has to walk around.

4) Fingerless gloves that let you work your iPod, but still convert into mittens when you get too cold.

5) Sidewalks that are wide enough you can walk on the far side and not get splashed by the cars driving by.

6) Tea in the fellows' common room at the APS.

7) Driving rain which drives 99% of the smokers off the sidewalks - I swear, Philly has more smokers than all of the countries of Europe combined!

8) Not having to ride my bike in the rain, because I'm close enough to walk.

Research accomplished today:

1) Read two almanacs

2) Read through the W&M Quarterly.

3) The internet was down today at APS. Lacking internet (and thus the ability to order new books) I decided to read through the card catalogue. Don't worry - it was just the section with the 1500-1700 books!

It's Raining, It's Pouring, At Least Work's Not Boring

So it was a drizzly, windy and cold day in Philly. And it wasn't much better inside the reading room, either! I had to buy myself chili for dinner on the way home, it was one of those days.

On the bright side, the staff at the APS is awesome and keeps coming up with new and interesting things for me to look out. Really, what more could a freezing graduate student ask for?

Research accomplished today:

1) Read some cool secondary source publications of the APS

2) Read more almanacs, including some that aren't available on EEBO. Take that, electronic age!

3) Have a list a quarter mile long of all the places I need to look to see if there are any cool sources hiding away and just waiting for me to discover them...

Go Home Scared

So this morning, as I was walking by the building contracters who are picketing a construction site, I discovered a new twist on the age-old picket-line. Today, they had a nine-foot tall inflatable rat which repeatedly told me (and every other commuter on Walnut St) to go home scared! Yeah, I was scared :-) But I was still going in to work.

This afternoon, they had a talk at the Cassatt House. It was very strange, having my home "invaded." On the bright side, they brought free food and shared it all around. On the amusing side, I ran into another grad student from UVA who's actually a fellow here in the area and is sharing one of the offices in the Cassatt House... two doors down from my room!

Research accomplished today

1) Read some almanacs

2) Read some secondary stuff on measurement systems

The American Philosophical Society

So I got up bright and early yesterday morning for my first day at the APS... and got lost walking to the library. I turned north on 5th street instead of south. Oops.

Eventually I did make it in. Everyone at the APS is very nice. The building is right across from Independence Hall (now I will always be orientated!), which reminds me of being in good ol' Colonial Williamsburg. They recently remodeled the inside of the building and there's a brand spanking new fellows room which a chalkboard, whiteboard, fridge, microwave, and lockers - you know, all the comforts of home AKA what a gal needs to make tea.

It's fascinating being surrounded by people who mostly do American history. They've introduced me to some cool new resources I didn't know about before. Most of it's American-related, but you know America WAS a British colony for a little while!

Research accomplished yesterday:

1) Looked at a bunch of secondary sources.

2) Realized I probably need to just sit down and read the entire Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London pre-1700.

They Didn't Have Graduate School In The Middle Ages

In the timeless words of Philip Daileader:

"They didn't have graduate school in the middle ages, but they had monasticism, which is as close as you can get."

Another Suitcase, Another Hall

My blog lives!

One might infer from the silence in this blog that the past couple of weeks have not been incredibly productive with respect to the dissertation. One might be more-or-less correct. But that's all over with now, as I have started up a new research fellowship in Philadelphia!

Today was move-in day. The only people who own cars and live in down town Philly are clearly 1) Rich 2) Insane or 3) Both. So my parents dropped me off at the Cassatt House, which is a townhouse for the fellows of the Library Company of Philadelphia (which happens to be next door.)

I, however, am a fellow of the American Philosophical Society, which is a mile away. Um. Yeah. But the rent's cheap and public transportation seems to be everywhere! Besides, a mile's practically nothing when you've spent hours slaving away conditioning your beloved old hiking boots so that there's the distinct possibility they'll actually last the whole month you're in Philly.

Research accomplished today:

I found the local Wawa, that count?

Welcome To The Folger

So I spent all yesterday reading my homework (ack! at my age... err, stage in my dissertation). Today I went into the Folger Shakespeare Library (which is conveniently located next to the Library of Congress, which I hadn't realized) for the first of my Dissertation Writing Seminar meetings.

The library's nice, though I'm mildly puzzled by a library which serves British historians Orange Pekoe tea. Not that I have anything against Orange Pekoe but....

Met some cool people from English departments all over the East Coast/Midwest and one other historian who together with me forms the History department contingent of our seminar. One of these days, we too will emerge from our cocoons of ignorance to flutter about in the light of Literary Analysis, but until then we must be content to worry about concrete facts like dates and historical causality (e.g. if A happens before B, then B cannot have caused A) because I don't think I was quite following everything else they talked about.... Must brush up on my lit jargon for next month.

Seriously though, this is going to be a lot of fun. And I've already read two of the books that have been assigned for our next meeting - sweet!

Research accomplished:

None for my dissertation, but I read more seventeenth-century poetry than I'd ever read before in my life (that I remember), so that was at least different...

All Good Mini-Vacations Must Come To An End

So I spent yesterday and today catching up with friends, singing with the Oratorio Society of Virginia, and playing with Kim's puppy. In other news, Kim has diabolically introduced me to the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory and there is a distinct possibility that I won't have to drive anywhere tomorrow! Yes, that makes me ridiculously happy.

Work accomplished today:

I started to read a poem - homework for my class at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Friday. Didn't get very far, but that will change tomorrow!

Now, I'm going to sit back, watch the season premiere of NCIS, and enjoy the end of my mini-vacation.

Carry Me Back To Old Virginia...

Well, the sixteen hours of driving wasn't fun, and I really think there is something disturbing about having to gas up your car four (or maybe five, I lost track) times in one day, but I am back in Virginia! Yippee!

Research accomplished today:

Um, none. Ask again on Monday.

Research Library Etiquette

On my last day in the library here at Illinois, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect upon the proper archive/research library behavior. I've seen some absolutely mind-boggling mistakes that make me wonder if that person has any common sense whatsoever - let's drink bottled orange juice and hold a highlighter in our hand while we read the 500-year-old books! (Such actions invariably set off the Attack Librarians, which can be very entertaining.)

Other parts of library/archival behavior code aren't quite so self-evident. Now some places are stricter than others so you should always check each archive/library's website (I've actually seen one that will let you bring your purse into the reading room, as long as it isn't too big) but for the most part here are the rules:

1) Pencils only. No pens, highlighters, crayons, or anything else that might leave a permanent mark on the document.

2) You can bring in your own paper – sometimes – but be prepared to have your pile of papers and/or notebook searched on your way out. It's not that they don't trust you, they just don't trust you with their priceless, irreplaceable and very portable manuscripts!

3) You can bring in your laptop and computer cord, but the computer bag must be left in a locker outside the reading room. Some reading rooms will have laptop-free zones, so be careful where you sit. Also, some places will require you to open up your laptop on the way out to make sure you haven't hidden anything between the screen and the keyboard.

4) Rarely, you will be allowed to bring in a camera to take pictures, but the flash MUST be turned off and don't even think about bringing in your camera bag.

5) In case it isn't already obvious – no bags. Nothing that you can hide stuff in. A few archives actually will hand out clear plastic tote-sized bags for you to pile your junk into, so you can carry it, but even then you will often have to pull everything out of the bag for inspection.

6) Jackets, hooded sweatshirts with big pockets, and other all-concealing clothing is also a no-no. Layers are good (for preservation purposes, the ideal temperature to store books – and hence the ideal temperature for a reading room – is something like 64 degrees!) but make sure they're not big bulky ones. Rule of thumb: if it's what you wear to smuggle your own food into the movie theatres, don't wear it to the archive.

And that's it. Simple!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go drive for sixteen hours. And reflect upon how much cooler H.G. Wells' The Time Machine would have been if he'd kept the hippo scene....

Last Night In Illinois

So it's my last night in Illinois. Eek! Where has all the time gone? (Oh, wait, I can look at my string of previous blog posts and know exactly where that time went.)

I picked up Mom at the airport this evening, and now we're puttering around the hotel. I'm supposed to be packing but somehow I ended up blogging instead.... Tomorrow is my last day in the library and then I'm OFF to Charlottesville, Virginia (for a few days, at least).

Research accomplished today:

1) Read an Italian account book.

2) Read through some interesting manuscripts.

3) Spent all morning trying to figure out what in the world was going on with my credit card bills and pondering whether or not my early modern research subjects ever had similar problems. Ahh, the joys of a debt-based economy!

Name That Englishman

One of the things I love the most about reading early modern stuff is all the names. I mean, sure, you've got the boring ones like John Lee or John Harris. And then you've got the uninspired names like William Williams (hello, imagination anyone?) or a slew of "The Elder"s and "The Younger"s kind of like our Senior and Junior nowadays. And then you've got the names that you just can't read (the handwriting's that bad).

But sometimes you come up with a winner. Like Nathaniel Clutterbuck. Jacob Tinkersone. John Nash (remember, the guy I decided was haunting the 20th c. John Nash). Hiblye, Stibbs, Asheyes, and the now-familiar Snape also pop up.

Then there are the awesome phonetic spellings, because nothing's standardized yet. Browne's not too bad, and Martyne's still recognizable. Jenckins, Symounds, and ffletcher are a little more out there.

Okay, I cheated on that last one. For those of you who don't know "ff" is the same thing as "F" in early modern English.

At any rate, early modern names are fun! Shakespeare, anyone?

Research accomplished today:

1) Finished one very annotated almanack and started reading through another.

2) "Read" a few Latin arithmetics.

3) Picked up a bunch of auction catalogues and had a fun discussion with Alvan about how a Rare Books & Manuscripts library acquires its collections.

Two Days And Counting!

Home Stretch

So today begins my last week in Illinois! I got to the library right on time this morning (okay, I do that most every morning) and stayed almost to closing (you can't stay all the way to closing because that's rude - the staff wants to leave at closing, too, but they've got to put away all your books first).

After all that hard work, I headed over to Panera, where the internet is much faster than my hotel and tried to email pictures into the Saint Mary's College of Maryland 2009 Governor's Cup Photography Competition. Phew, that's a mouthful! But I have some beautiful pictures... if only they weren't such huge files!

Research accomplished today:

1) Read some more almanacs, including one that had a list of "corrupt jurors" in it. THAT's a helluva way to go down into history!

2) Read some books about mathematical games and how to cheat at cards.

3) Read an Italian arithmetic book. Well, read is perhaps too strong a word, considering I don't read Italian. Although Italian is basically Latin. Which I barely read. But Latin, I mean, it might as well be Spanish. Now THAT I can read...!

P.S. I'm apparently really into my exclamation points today. Must be because I read about this:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/09/victoria-strauss-vdm-verlag-dr-mueller.html

and am still in !?!?!?

Why Units Matter

So I was reading through an arithmetic textbook at the library yesterday, and found a section where some reader had crossed out the word "weeks" several times and replaced it with "days."

Here's why units matter in a math problem.

Suppose 12 men can mow 480 acres in 56 weeks. Note: there are only 52 weeks in a year.

If you do the math, that means 1 man can do 40 acres in 56 weeks, or 1 acre in 1.4 weeks. That means he's doing about 1/10 of an acre a day. What is he mowing with - his wife's sewing scissors??

Now suppose 12 men can mow 480 acres in 56 days. 56 days is 8 weeks, but we'll only work 6 out of 7 days a week (Sundays, gang, can't work on a Sunday) which means really we're only working 48 of those 56 days. So 1 man can do 40 acres in 48 days, which is starting to look like about an acre a day.

Doesn't that look a lot better? Especially since the acre used to be defined as how much a man could plow (which, yes, is a little different from mowing) in a day!

Units matter. And that's my math geekiness for the day.

Research accomplished Friday:

1) Read a bunch of arithmetic books

2) Read a bunch of almanacs

3) Discovered that "Beware the Cat" was an early modern book about talking cats.

4) Decided to call it quits early when I started putting almanacs into the wrong folders and writing about "bencil parks" in my manuscripts.

Have a great weekend!

German Heroin

So I've been feeling tired all day today, and couldn't figure out why until a few minutes ago. Then I realized I didn't take my meds this morning. Oops. I'm one of those people who can read down a list of side-effects on my drugs and say, "Yup, yup, yup, double yup." One of the side-effects of Sudafed (the real stuff, you know, that they've outlawed and hidden behind the pharmacy counters) is it makes me hyper. Like, when they put me on the 24-hour Sudafed I didn't sleep for a couple of days. And when I forget to take my 12-hour Sudafed first thing in the morning, I feel tired. (Now you know the secret source of my superpower - use that knowledge wisely.)

Random archival weirdness: today, I saw someone vacuuming the cover of a 300-year-old book. I also read a book advertisement for a story starring a "German Heroin." Got to love early modern spelling!

And since Germany also makes me think of Norway (don't ask) I thought I'd share this other little historical entertainment with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Research accomplished today:

1) Read through a half dozen copies of Wingate's Arithmetic.

What, that not enough??

A Bit Belated

So I spent last night hanging out with the gang from Rare Books & Manuscripts which means this is a few hours late. Close enough for government work.

Yesterday was 9/9/09. Flip it upside down and you get 666. I'm sure this is somehow significant.

Also, when I was reading through this old book, I found a printed marginal note (not something a reader later added, but actually printed into the book) that read "Beware the Cat."

The strangeness of this was further compounded by 1) there being no reference to cats in the text and 2) Chatham (the guy whose house we were at) has a slightly nippy cat.

Research accomplished yesterday:

1) Got to see, firsthand, the effects of ink eating away paper

2) Started in on Stowe's Survey of London, just because UIUC has six trillion copies of it.

It's Alive!

So I replaced the battery in my watch today. I'd forgotten how... readable... it used to be. Of course, the jewelry shop guy helpfully tried to reprogram it with date and time and gave up about the time he realized he'd turned on the alarm and couldn't get it turned off. Luckily, I have the instructions safely scanned into a jpeg that resides in my good ol' harddrive.

On a totally different note, I think by the end of my tenure I will have stumbled onto just about every single cataloguing problem in UIUC's collection. It's kinda crazy.

Research accomplished today:

1) Learned how to use trigonometry to find the location of a bee's nest.

2) Read several mss account books.

3) Got distracted looking at pretty pictures from British History Online

(a wonderful website - http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ )

4) Helped my co-Velde scholar get set up to take pictures and download them to his Mac

Errr, okay, so that last one wasn't research. Maybe those last two...

It's Raining, It's Pouring, At Least There's No Snoring

So I have one of those tea pitchers where you can both brew your tea and then pour it using a little spigot at the bottom. Today, as I'm leaving the room, I pour myself a glass of tea.

The spigot gets stuck into the open position.

There is a half gallon of tea in my pitcher. Needless to say, my glass is not that big.

So I frantically try to unstick the spigot. Failing that, I pull the pitcher out of the fridge and stuff it in the sink so I'm not pouring tea all over the fridge and floor. Still can't get the spigot unstuck. I turn the pitcher on its side, so the liquid can't reach the spigot, and it starts leaking out the top.

I just can't win with this thing.

Finally I get the spigot unstuck and then thank my foresight in buying a LOT of paper towels as I mop up the mess.

Flash forward about five hours to a strange popping noise in the back of my car. I go to check on it and discover that one of the bottles in the six-pack of Coke I bought at the Meier's has popped its little seal and is now leaking all over my floor mats. At least it was only on the rubber one, not the cloth one, but c'mon, seriously? Both in one day?

In other news, it's Labor Day Weekend so I spent the day hiking in Meadowbrook Park. It has the awesomemest kids' play area (any Dogwood Elementary School alums out there may visualize the old Creative Playground) and acres of tallgrass praerie nature reserve. Way cool.

My Precious...

So for anyone who hasn't seen my car, it's a big gold-and-silver SUV. I love my car, but have mixed feelings about a very useful and multifunctional gas-guzzling SUV being my only mode of vehicular transportation. That combined with the fact that the Lord of the Rings movies were still coming out when I got it lead to the natural nickname of "My Precious."

Know the country music song "Think Before He Cheats" ? It's all about a girl who destroys her boyfriend's car because he cheated on her. I like the song, but anyone who did that to MY car would get socked with 1) a lawsuit 2) a restraining order and 3) my brother, all in short order.

With all this in mind... I come down from my room this morning and find a rose sitting on the hood of my car. Very deliberately placed there, as you had to tromp through a planter and stand on a bush to get to the hood of my car. I was - and still am - thoroughly creeped out by this, as basically no one in Illinois knows me. Whoever my secret admirer is... I don't have the faintest idea who THEY are. And given the distinctiveness of my car (did I mention it currently has a bike rack sticking out of its trailer hitch?) I'm pretty sure they didn't mistake my car for someone else's.

Insult to injury - a spider decided to create a web between my tailgate and my bike last night. I knocked it off the bike and am hoping it will remove itself from my Precious of its own free will while I'm at work. More likely, it'll lurk around under the handle of my driver's side door and bite me when I try to go grocery shopping this evening. But hey, if a rejected and irate stalker/serial killer blows up my car the instant I open the door, I'll never have to die of the spider's poison.

Paranoid? Not me...

Research accomplished today:

1) Finished my latin arithmetic book

2) Searched through several manuscript finding aides and one small manuscript collection. Haven't transcribed any of the cool documents yet, just found them so I know where to start on Monday... err... Tuesday... because apparently Monday's Labor Day.

All I can say is... TGIF!

Is This Seat Taken?

So I went off for my normal tea break today, and came back to find this guy sitting in my chair.

Now, admittedly, I hadn't left any books at my spot. Or my computer. Those are the big things that even the absolutely clueless can't miss. But you still have to be pretty out of it to not see all my papers, my pencil, and my laptop cord.

I went and carefully extricated my stuff (he'd set his laptop on my papers, his books on my pencil, and was SITTING on my computer cord).

He never once acted embarrassed or apologized.

(Insert judgmental term of choice here.)

Research accomplished today:

1) Read some commonplace books.

2) Plowed my way through a bit of a latin arithmetic textbook. Definitely need to brush up on my latin.

Palaeography Day

Today I got into reading some manuscripts. In a bizarre coincidence, the two manuscripts I wanted out of the entire UIUC were Post-1650 MS 0159 and Pre-1650 MS 0159. The poor staff at the issue desk were completely convinced I'd asked for the same thing twice, for at least about an hour (while I had run off to lunch so they couldn't double-check with me).

So in honor of the continued ruination of my eyesight, I hereby declare today:

PALAEOGRAPHY DAY.

What does that mean? I'm going to give you links to some palaeography websites so you can see exactly what I'm trying to read. And understand that, when I complain about having to use palaeography techniques to read a student's handwriting, said student has really bad handwriting.

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/index.html

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/

And, because it can't all be in English:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latinpalaeography/

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

I live on the wrong side of the tracks. I'm not sure what the right side of the tracks is - or if it even exists - but going over railroad tracks five times on your two mile bike ride is five times too many!

In library news, the UIUC Rare Books & Manuscripts department has acquired a collection of mini... mini books. These aren't your ordinary mini books (Baker's Wellspring of Sciences is always pretty small, for example). No, these are almost dollhouse sized books! Itsy bitsy and have to be read with a magnifying class. Or maybe a high-powered scientific microscope....

On a related note, apparently Sir Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes story for one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren's dollhouses. Book size: mini mini. Print run: 1.

Research accomplished today:

I read a couple of Baker's books (hence the reason they were on my mind) and did research on what fellowships I ought to be applying for, so I can have funding for next year.

Just Another Manic Monday

So you know it's another Monday when you get up, get ready for work, head down to your bike... and you have a flat tire. Like Illinois cornfield flat.

I do a bit of research, find a local bike shop that opens in an hour, and truck on down to get my little GT taken care of. Simple flat tire, how hard can it be?

"Oh, yes, we can fix this. No problem. It'll be ready in about three days."

?!?!?!?!?!?! I breathe in deeply. "Is there any way to get it done faster?"

"Sure, we'll expedite it for twice the labor charge. It'll be ready this evening."

Gritting my teeth, I say, "Okay."

I do have my bike back with a brand new inner tube. It seems fixed. We'll know for sure tomorrow....

Research accomplished for today:

1) Met the other Velde scholar.

2) Read a few new arithmetic textbooks.

3) Still working on one of the almanacs... the third day in a row.

If You Hit The Corn Fields, You've Gone Too Far

So I went out to experience some of the local Urbana-Champaign culture this weekend. First I hit up the 34th Annual Urbana Sweet Corn Festival, then I headed a bit south of Champaign to the Curtis Orchards for some apple picking.

Sweet corn eaten: 0.

Apples picked: 0.

Pictures taken: 113.

Um. Yeah. Who's not really surprised?

TGIF

So we had the mother of all thunderstorms - complete with hail that I could have sworn was going to break the glass in my hotel room windows - last night. No sleep for this little researcher...

Today was one of those days where nothing goes terribly wrong, but nothing goes terribly right either. I won't go on about this, but I'll give one example: I lost my pencil this morning, which ought to be no big deal except they don't make mechanical pencils like this anymore and I'm rather attached to it because it fits my hand better than most pencils. Then eight hours later, as I was leaving the library, I found it again. So it's really no big deal, except I did stress over it.

In other news, a bizarre cosmic coincidence has made me wonder if mathematician John Nash from A Beautiful Mind only went crazy because he was the reincarnation of a seventeenth-century mathematician named John Nash. From an almanac dated 1666:

All Mathematical instruments, Maps, Globes, Sea-charts, all sorts of Dyals for any Latitude, Steel Letters, Figures, Signes, Planets, &c. and Mathematical Paper at reasonable rates, sold by John Nash, at the Globe in Exchange-Alley against the Conduit in Cornhil.

Research accomplished today:

Read some more almanacs. And a few arithmetic textbooks. Found some interesting looking manuscripts I'm looking forward to reading, next week.

CQ, CQ

Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is trying to tell you something?

I got into the library today and my book had been misplaced. They kept trying to bring me out the book I had returned (you know, the one I needlessly took pictures of yesterday).

Then, when I did my next set of requests, they only brought me 3 of my 4 books. They'd forgotten to get one.

Then, when I did my NEXT set of requests, they couldn't find any of the books - they brought me something that wasn't even in English - and that set off a whole sequence of "Is this it?" "No." "Is this it?" "No." "I checked the catalogue, is this it?"

::Sighs.::

So instead of reading what I really should have been reading, I let myself get sidetracked reading about chronograms and all sorts of people who thought Rome was going to fall in 1666. London. Rome. Close enough!

What Do Academics Talk About?

So for anyone who's ever wondered what a bunch of academics talk about when they go to dinner, here's your answer:

Everything!

Seriously. I went out to dinner with the folks from Rare Books, as a going away party for one of their number, and conversation ranged from interior decorating to Alaskan serial killers.

Now you know.

Other randomness:

1) My knee was all out of whack this morning and I had to wear a brace into work. Now, this isn't my bad knee, noooo, that would be too logical. It's my good (left) knee!

2) Apparently there's a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon here at UIUC. The Mormons visit all the time to get their picture taken with it. Jane suggested I have my picture taken with the Book of Mormon and I countered with the Principia Mathematica. If it happens, you'll know why!

Research accomplished today:

I read through a few more almanacs and took a ton of pictures of one which was heavily annotated. But then, of course, I find out Alvan already has pictures/transcriptions of it... oops. I'm not an idiot graduate student or anything. No, not me!

In Case You Were Wondering What It Looked Like

Will Everyone Please Exeunt The Building?

I saw some restaurant giving out free breakfasts on my bike ride in this morning. Alas, I had already made myself scrambled eggs and wanted to be on time to the library. Otherwise I'd've been all about the free food.

Once again I beat most of the staff in (oops) and took up my now-usual seat in the glassed in display case that is the reading room part of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library. I feel like a fish in a bowl. Or maybe an ant in an ant colony, because I am a most productive little worker bug: I read through at least a dozen almanacs today.

Entertaining randomness:

1) The light sheet I mentioned yesterday is actually called a "transluminator." Yikes, that's a mouthful.

2) One of the other readers had to climb up onto the table to take a picture with her camera and tripod. I'm so glad other people do that besides me! There are days when I seriously wish I had a booster seat....

3) Said reader used up the battery on her camera, so Alvan came in and took pictures on his camera which he's going to email her. How awesome is that? Have I mentioned I love this place??

4) Last, but not least, I finally noticed the exit sign today. You know, that glowing thing above the doors out that usually reads "Exit"? Well, at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)'s Rare Books & Manuscript Library, that sign actually reads:

"Exeunt."

I laughed out loud. I mean, a Latin exit sign? That's on par with Phil Brontosaurus and the Papers of Manson Nevermore!

It Must Be Monday. And The First Day of Classes.

You can always tell when it's Monday because EVERYTHING has to happen all at once. Three days worth of stuff (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) gets crammed down into one day, and it's bang-bang-bang like an action-adventure movie. Add to that the fact that UIUC classes start today and you get... a really long blog post.

Today's post-ant adventures started with the bike ride into work. I was biking along, happy as a clam (are clams really happy or did I just make that up?) when one of the traffic lights turned yellow. I decided there was no way I'd make the light so I stopped, thus enabling the bus driver across the street from me to complete his left turn before the light turned red. And awesomeness of awesomeness... I got The Wave.

Yes, The Wave. You know that wave - the one bus drivers reserve for their other bus driver friends, especially when said friend has done something incredibly helpful like stopped traffic to allow them to make a particularly difficult left-hand-turn. And I got one! Yippee!

Then I got to Campustown (yes, there's a sign, declaring that you've now entered "Campustown" as opposed to the rest of town) where there are these cool dedicated bike lanes - nice, wide, and up off of street level so you're definitely not in with the cars.

There are pedestrians crawling all over my bike lanes. Never mind the perfectly good sidewalks about two feet to their right (which, BTW, are also perfectly empty of pedestrians). Never mind that I was far from the only frustrated cyclist trying to get through in said bike lanes. Nope. Idiot pedestrians are walking all over the very clearly labelled bike lanes and then look surprised when they get crazy swerved around by cyclists trying to get by.

Despite the best attempts of said pedestrians, I made it to the library ten minutes early and cooled my heels waiting for the Rare Books & Manuscript room to open. Well, to be closer to open. Technically the door is unlocked and I can walk right in to the office area, but I hate to besiege the poor staff when I'm not really supposed to be in there yet. Especially when I am uber-caffeinated and hyped from my bike ride (this phase, alas, does not last me through the whole day.)

I started off with the same old, same old: finishing up the last of the library's copies of Robert Recorde's Grounde of Artes. While I was doing this, Alvan comes in with a book in his hands.

"I thought you'd like to look at this before I put it away," he says, handing me the book.

"What is it?" I ask, carefully taking the book from him and trying to open it without setting it down (for which I'd need a bunch of book rests and other stuff I didn't have.)

No reply. I continue to fumble through the flyleafs, ultra-conscious of the fact that this is a Very Old Book with a Very Old Cover and that the Curator of Rare Books is standing there looking over my shoulder.

"What is it?" I ask again.

"Look at it," he says.

So I keep flipping through blank pages until I find the title page.

Warning: For those of you who haven't studied the history of science, this might not seem like such a huge deal for you. But trust me. This is a Big Deal.

I am holding in my hands a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.

A moment of reverential (electronic) silence please.

Of course, then I had to give the book back to him. I didn't really need to read it - it's available on EEBO - and that's not the kind of artifact you play around with. But still. I held it in my hand for at least a minute. Beautiful.

In the interests of not going on forever and ever, I will endeavor to cut the rest of my adventures short. They include:

1) Getting to see a British guy using a light sheet (it's basically a clipboard-shaped object attached to a power cord that glows; very cool) to look at watermarks in his eighteenth-century musical scores.

2) Feeling all intelligent because I took my lunch break at 11:30 and hence was just finishing eating when all the students mobbed the Subway at noon.

3) Laughing my head off at three idiotic squirrel hunters during my afternoon tea break.

Um, okay, that last one might need some explanation. These two squirrels had fallen down into a courtyard in the middle of the library building, and couldn't get back out. So these three guys with gloves on were trying to get the squirrels into a squirrel trap. Poor little squirrels were freaked out and kept running into the walls (literally - they bounced off the glass walls that lead inside, scared the crap out of m

Meanwhile, we're all sitting in the cafe saying, "Um, dude, haven't you ever trapped a squirrel before?" The key is not scaring the little critters half to death. It's food. I'll say it again F-O-O-D, food. Nevertheless, they did eventually succeed in rescuing and releasing the squirrels outside where presumably they ran off to have little panic attacks. Or give interviews to Oprah about their harrowing experience. One or the other.

Back to the list:

4) Coming up with a short version of my 401 (or whatever UVA's renumbered them to) seminar title. I finally decided that if I shortened "Popular Science" to "PopSci" I could get all the important parts in. But the sight of "PopSci" still makes me cringe.

5) And lastly, ruining my eyesight trying to read mid-sixteenth-century manuscript annotations in an almanack. But my eyesight is so worth ruining, when I come up with little gems like the following comment one frustrated almanack-reader made in 1554:

Iff any man dedist dilegently take hede to the Contents in this boke, he myght safely haue perceyued that neuer any Astronomyer before tyme dyde wryte & sett forth thynges soe ferre frome the Trowth (As the man haith done) concernyng the nature and dyspocicione of the yere.

Translation: this almanack sucks. Hehehehe.

Note To Self

So I forgot to take out my trash last night, just pulled it out of the trash can and left it on the floor of the kitchen.

I woke up this morning and my kitchen is SWARMING with ants.

The nice people at the front desk are going to send someone up to spray the room while I'm out at work.

But note to self: always take out the trash.

One Afternoon At Panera's

I confess: I went to Barnes and Noble. I know better. I did it anyway.

There went both my Saturday and a nice little chunk of $$ spent renewing my B&N membership. After such an inauspicious start, I decided to grab dinner at Panera's and read one of the books I bought.

So I'm sitting there, listening to my iPod, when these two boys - about nine and twelve - come and sit down at my table. I give them the Look that says go away, because there are plenty of free tables and it's not like they're eating or even waiting for food. Then the older boy asks me what I'm listening to and I'm too polite not to answer him. "Linkin Park."

"Really??? What songs?"

I list a few, which sets him off and he tells me all the bands I should listen to instead: "Metallica is better."

Note: while this is going on, the baby brother keeps asking him questions like, "What's Linkin Park" ("a band, stupid") and "Whatcha eating?" ("a bread bowl - that has soup in it").

Then I get, "How old are you? Like 18?"

"Try 28."

"Really? Can you drive?"

"Yes."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a university professor." Only a slight exaggeration - I'm going to teach in the spring.

A conversation then ensues in which I'm informed how cool it is to be a "hot" teacher. Now, I've had high school boys tell me this, too. No college students have yet gotten up the nerve to say it to my face, but I'm pretty sure some of them have thought it. To all the guys of the world: this is not what a young, female teacher wants to hear. And if you have a teacher like one my dear friends, ceaseless mocking will ensue until you're pretty sure your teacher is an actual Authority Figure.

Then we get around to: "Do you make a lot of money? Like more than if you worked at a restaurant? What kind of car do you drive?"

At this point I start answering with shrugs to kill the conversation and make them go away. Hello - is this 20 questions? Are you planning on mugging me? If so, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Or maybe not. My iPod does have Linkin Park on it.

Welcome to Urbana-Champaign

So I'm playing catch-up a bit here, because I actually arrived in Champaign on Wednesday afternoon after a 5-hour car drive from Dayton, Ohio. (That drive was preceeded by a 9-hour car drive from Virginia.)

I'm staying in an Extended Stay Hotel about 2 miles north of the University. It's a typical motel-style hotel, complete with funky smell from the ventilation system that doesn't keep the smoking and non-smoking rooms hermetically sealed. My asthma loves it already. But the price is right and the people there are uber-friendly and helpful, so I'm not complaining (too much).

The biggest problem I foresee right now is my location. My motel is in the middle of EVERYTHING. Seriously. From Radio Shack to David's Bridal. And don't forget the bizillion places to eat (all within walking distance) - Lonestar Grill, Outback Steakhouse, Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King... To get to campus I have to bike past: Panera, McDonald's, Olive Garden, Barnes & Noble, and ToysRUs. And that's just the first quarter mile.

On to the work stuff. UIUC's rare books & manuscripts library is fantastic, and so are the people in it. Alvan took my down into the sacred vault - the stacks where all the books are stored - shelf after shelf of ancient folios, quartos, and octavos! It was like heaven in an air-conditioned warehouse.

A massive storm rolled in when I first arrived on Wednesday, which would have made the perfect setting for a murder mystery. I can see it now:

It was a dark and rainy afternoon at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). The staff of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library huddled around a battery-operated radio, listening to the weather report: hail, tornados, and severe thunderstorms. One of the interns had just gone down to the stacks and brought a flashlight, just in case the power failed. Because of course, on a day like this, the power inevitably would fail at some point...

Other random items of note:

1) The coffee shop (located in the underground tunnel with connects the various libraries, because we wouldn't want to overshadow the cool agricultural experiments going on next-door) only serves loose-leaf tea and calls Earl Grey "China Grey." Must be a copyright thing. I decided to bring my own Twinings tea bags from now own because, well, it's Twinings!

2) I asked Valerie about a staining pattern on one of my books today... and she sniffed it. Oh yeah.

Research accomplished so far:

I've read a bunch of copies of Recorde's Grounde of Artes. So far nothing too exciting, but I'm going to shift over to almanacs next week and then am expecting to find gold! This is based on what Alvan's told me about his own research - but more on that later. I think this is enough blogging for a Friday night!

Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into The Present Day

Alright, I'm officially caving. This is a blog. And I'm writing it. Eek!

For anyone who's somehow randomly stumbled onto this site, a little about me. I'm starting my second full year of ABDdom (all-but-dissertation) and it's getting to the point where I'm actually going to have to write the dissertation I've spent the past year researching. This blog is going to be my productivity record and/or way of holding myself accountable for getting work done, now that no one except my advisor is peering over my shoulder.

Note: my advisor is a wonderful motivator, but we haven't been in the same time zone for over a year now. Even with email, that makes it hard for him to do a lot of over-the-shoulder peering.

So, I suppose self-congratulations are in order. I have dragged myself into the modern world! Now back to the 400-year-old texts...