Greatest night ever.

Tonight in celebration of finishing all of my papers and projects (except for grading exams tomorrow and defending my thesis next Friday) I went to hear my favorite guy ever play a concert in Chapel Hill. Who is my favorite? you ask.

Josh Ritter. I love him. I saw him play once in Seattle my senior year of college, and I have three of his albums. The last time I flew on a plane I tried to do work while listening to my iPod, but my iPod was playing a recording of a Josh Ritter concert I got off of All Songs Considered and it was so wonderful and distracting that I couldn't get any work done and instead just sat there in my seat with the silliest grin on my face because, as I said, Josh Ritter is my favorite.

So the fact that he was playing near me on the exact day I would finish school work was pretty excellent.

He had his band with him and they were great, too. You could tell they were all having a good time. It was also nice to be among a large crowd of people who also love Josh Ritter and know the words to his songs, because usually people have no clue who he is when I tell them he's my favorite.

So hooray for a really great Josh Ritter concert and an extra big hurray for the semester being over!

last-weekend-o-homework-for-a-while review

Friday: Met with advisor to talk about his final edits on my thesis, went to the library school at Chapel Hill to find out what I'm supposed to be doing to get ready for next semester, did a little research at the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, drove back to Raleigh and went to the grocery store, then came home to work on my documentary editing project.

Saturday: Worked more on documentary editing project, edited my thesis, went for a run, planned out my early republic paper and consulted with my Oregon Trail map maker.

Sunday: Slept in, more map consultation, and worked on early republic paper on and off all day.

shortcuts

I just inadvertently discovered how to insert a footnote using shortcuts and my keyboard alone without having to mess with the mouse. That is exactly the kind of thing I wish I'd discovered, oh I don't know, say four years ago? Or at least before grad school. Sigh.

Just ignore the talon marks.

Once way back when (Maybe 1841? I don't have my notes with me...) this guy was traveling to California. Somewhere around the Sierra Nevada he ran out of food and was pretty hungry. Maybe even starving. But lo and behold, a hawk flew overhead! And he thought "hey, hawks probably taste like chicken, right?"* So he shot it.

Only he missed.

But all was not lost because "Look! What is that falling from the sky? Not a hawk, but..."*

...the hawk's lunch! The shot startled the bird and he dropped a squirrel! Like manna from heaven. And the hungry man cooked up that squirrel for supper.


*I totally made these quotes up, even though this is based on a true story. A pretty awesome story if you ask me.

Home stretch.

This is the last week of classes. Unless I one day get a PhD- which is not a plan right now but hey, the future is wide open- unless that happens this is my last week of history classes ever. Am I excited about a summer break? Definitely. Am I excited about graduating and being done with (history) school? Not at all.

But right now I don't have too much time to think about that. Today I scheduled my thesis defense for May 9. If you're wondering, that is exactly one day before graduation. I need to have the thesis finished to turn into my committee by Monday. I'm tired of working on the darned thing. Next week I also have a 15-page historiography paper due, as well as my big documentary editing project. Sigh.

So if you're asking yourself, "Hey, what exciting stuff is Andi up to down there in North Carolina?" the disappointing truth is that I'm holed up in my apartment slaving away. Or kicking myself in the shins for procrastinating and not slaving away enough.

weekend review

Friday: Worked on my thesis all day, went for a run, and went to a show downtown with the video store gang.

Saturday: Enjoyed coffee and a walk with Allison in Durham, bought groceries, and returned home to work on my thesis.

Sunday: Worked on the thesis, went for a run, went to church, made a disappointing dinner, and worked on thesis more.

Wait, you don't want this whole wheat bread?

Today I went to the grocery store and bought a lot of food. While shopping I briefly parked my cart next to a wine display and went to pick out my sandwich bread. When I returned and reached down to put the bread in my cart the other things in there didn't look familiar. After adopting a puzzled look I realized my mistake and looked up, only to see a woman staring wide-eyed at me.

"Whoops!" I said with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. "Not my cart! Sorry about that. Haha...uh...this is awkward."

And I quickly found my own cart and walked away.

It's always weird when this happens.

Last semester in my Environmental History class we read Mike Davis's Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. He has a whole chapter on fires in Southern California, and a week after we discussed the Malibu mansions that stubbornly keep reappearing, fires went raging through the region. But I guess that's sort of a yearly occurrence.

Yesterday in my Early American Republic class we talked about the New Madrid earthquake of 1812. It shook about half the continent. And my professor mentioned something about how no one ever talks about the New Madrid fault line in the Midwest, but that surely it will move again. And what happened early this morning? There was an earthquake.

I would like to make a complaint.

My new loud neighbor has a puppy she never puts on a leash and she's leaving its poo all over the ground right in front of my apartment. I've never been one to complain about other people in official ways, but I feel like I might need to say something. Not to her, of course, because I tend to avoid confrontation like the plague, but maybe to the office. Because it's getting warm, and who wants a bunch of cooking poo right outside the window? Not me.

I turned 25!

This past weekend was my birthday weekend. It was pretty great.

As you may recall from last year, Tess and I share the exact same birthday. So this year, in honor of turning 25, we threw a birthday party! It was a fancy birthday party, which basically means we made everyone dress up. And they did!

















While everyone sang us "Happy Birthday" we held mini cupcakes with improvised candles (also called matches).














There was eating and chatting and drinking and dancing and an overall good birthday celebratin' time.

That was Saturday night. Sunday, my actual birthday, the fun only continued. Josh and I went to Historic Yates Mill, which includes a nature preserve so we walked around a marsh and mill pond and checked out nature. We couldn't go in the actual mill, but we still walked around it. This was a fun combination of history and being outside on a beautiful day.















While driving away from Yates Mill we just happened to pass a Putt-Putt place, so we obviously stopped. I beat Josh pretty badly, because I have some mini-golf skillz. We also played some sweet arcade games, including one I'd never seen before that is like whack-a-mole only you stomp on spiders with your feet and here the squish sound. A game with stomping on spiders is right up my alley.


















And we finished off the day with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (thanks Uncle Richard!), where I had birthday cheesecake for dessert!

Another RVA summer, coming at me!

Today I learned it's official- starting in June I'll be back at the same internship I did last summer. I wonder if it will be like a time warp. Like I was never even gone...

Now that's a lot of pages.

I just finished reading an 850 page book for class. It's probably one of the longest books I've ever read, not counting the Bible. Anywho, if you're interested in American history from say, post-War of 1812 until 1840s, I highly recommend Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007). Yes it's long, but it's also very readable and a lot of important and interesting stuff happened during that period.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get busy writing a paper on the book...

***Update: Yesterday I said I liked the book and last night it won the Pulitzer Prize in U.S. history!

these weekends keep coming and going so quickly

This weekend I:

Ran, read, worked on my thesis, drove through the country, watched most of Superbad, practiced being a pool shark, played Ms. Packman, saw a cool site-specific art thing at an old barn, got rained on, napped, and did more work!

Also, a week from today I turn 25. Heads up.

He went to bed and bumped his head and couldn't get up in the morning!

[As a preliminary aside, does that song secretly refer to something else? The way London Bridges is about the plague or whatever, is the rain song really about more than rain?!]

So, it rained all weekend long. And according to the forecast, it will rain all week except for Wednesday. Now what is that all about? Did I move back to Tacoma or what?! I mean, I know we're in a drought and we need all the rain we can get, but couldn't the rain and general gloominess spread out a little? Because I'm pretty sure my African violet is supposed to get sunlight every once in a while. And I wouldn't mind some myself.

Weekend Review

Friday: Read, ran, worked on thesis, went out with the video store gang.

Saturday: Slept in, worked on thesis some, played Scrabble.

Sunday: Read, worked on thesis, went to church, and now ready to read and work on thesis more. Including all day tomorrow.

I am such a nerd.

I just heard someone on the radio (NPR) mention an upcoming story about "music about modes of transportation" and I got super excited.

Misc.

I've been making a ton of smoothies. This morning I made one with a banana, strawberries, pina colada yogurt, and orange juice. So good.

I have a new neighbor (or multiple neighbors?) who shows up around 11 every night and is obnoxiously loud while out in the breezeway. I wonder to myself, is she obnoxiously loud on purpose, or does she not realize we can all hear everything she says? Says and yells.

Yesterday I went for a walk from school over to Pullen Park. They have a carousel and little train and water with paddle boats in the summer and it was a beautiful day, so I'm glad I made that walking decision and checked it all out.

I'm coming down to the wire on this whole thesis thing. Ugh.

Um, we have a wildlife situation...

The other night in Richmond I was headed out of the house around 9pm when I heard a noise by my car. Without getting too scared about serial killers lurking over the fence I quickly realized there was a little bird rat-tatting at the window from inside the detached garage. I went back inside to inform Grandpa about the bird situation, since they really seem to like living in there. Grandpa simply told me to go open the garage doors and let him out, but when my aunt saw the look of horror on my face ("Me? go out there alone? and deal with a wild bird?") she told my ten-year-old cousin Sunni to go out and help me (aka hold my hand). So we went to the garage, Sunni leading the way and me creeping slowly behind. There was the little bird, still rat-tatting at the window. I opened the garage doors and it started to fly around, but it didn't fly out. It sat on the bike hanging from the ceiling, it rested by the window, it flew into the mirror and pecked at its reflection, but it wouldn't leave! Sunni picked up a stick and headed toward it, but the bird just kept flying around. I hid outside the door and peaked in through the fingers over my eyes. I happened to be holding a newspaper in my other hand, so I told Sunni to replace her stick with a broom, and together maybe we could wave at it enough to make it leave. But the bird kept flying around and I kept running back outside to hide. Eventually my fear rubbed off a little on Sunni, and we both hid outside, but she bucked up quickly.

"Okay," she told me sternly, "we just have to get up our courage and go in there and DO THIS."

"Okay," I nodded in agreement.

We took a collective deep breath and went back inside armed with the paper and broom. We waved waved waved and yelled "shoo! go outside! keep flying! that way that way!" And finally it flew outside, but just barely. As soon as it was gone I yelled "hurry! Close the door! Turn out the light! Let's get outta here before it comes back in this side door!" So we hurried and shut the doors and ran back inside the house.

Wildlife situation: under control.

Easter Weekend Review

Friday: Read, ran, cleaned, packed, drove to Richmond, snacked, went to see Diary of the Dead.

Saturday: Slept in, went to Edo's Squid for lunch, went to see Horton Hears a Who, went to aunt's house for mac n' cheese and hangin out.

Sunday: Up early for church with Grandma, home to make my mom's rolls with Sunni, dyed eggs, ate huge meal, hunted for eggs, napped, more hanging out and watched I am Legend.

a pleasant coincidence

I just sat down in my comfy chair with a cup of coffee and my warm blanket to begin reading Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic for class. This book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History. I get most of my books used on Amazon or Half.com, so the first thing I noticed was the little price tag that says $17.95 placed over the original price of $17.00. Er, I hope I didn't actually pay $17.95. Anyway, I read the back cover of the book, then I looked for a bibliography but ended up reading the acknowledgements at the back of the book. (I like to see historians thank all the librarians and archivists at different institutions and imagine that some day historians will be thanking me in their books...) Next I opened the front cover and read the short blurb about Alan Taylor himself.

And then...then I turned the page and there was a handwritten note in blue ink reading: "For Andrea, with my best wishes & best of luck for your research, Alan Taylor, 5-8-97 Albany."

Why, thank you very much Professor Taylor!