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??