Proof That I Really Should Be Graduating

My first semester at UVA, way back in 2003, saw the Dreaded Hurricane Isabel. (Yes, I did just link to Wikipedia. As I tell my students: it does have its uses, but paper citations is not one of them.) UVA closed, though not until the hurricane was already upon us. I vividly remember biking home through the hurricane - not an experience I'd care to repeat. My apartment was full of hurricane refugees from my undergrad institution of William and Mary, which lay close to the coast and got walloped - it was closed for over a week.

UVA hasn't closed since then... until today. The picture above comes from last week, when a "mere" 10" of snow fell (more than we usually get in any given year). As I type, a predicted 24-30" of snow is pouring down outside. After I finish typing, I'm off to dig out my car (again) in the vain hope that when the snow stops (predicted circa 10 P.M. tomorrow night) and they plow my complex, I might actually be able to get it out.

It would have been so cool to start and end my graduate career with UVA's rare closings.

Alas, that is not to be. And after I finish shoveling out my car, it's back to work on writing chapter 2 of said dissertation. Fingers crossed I don't lose power, but at least my laptop has a good 4 hour battery life. Maybe I should figure out where my flashlights ran off to....

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.

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!