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...