| | | | | | Monday, September 24, 2007 |
| | Why can't I sit down and write a paper before the very last minute? Well, this isn't the -very- last minute, the paper isn't due until five pm, but I have stuff I have to do tomorrow, and I could really have used the sleep. But oh well.
Also, the paper doesn't totally suck. It might only half suck. Whoo!
In other news. Well, again not a lot of other news. My weekends have really been blowing lately, I mean, except for last Saturday when I went out to that thing at Brittany's. I haven't seen Sterling in two weeks, I haven't gone out on a date in... a long while. Last saw a movie on Labor Day, last went dancing... um that last time with Sterling. Been nothing but work, study, school and internship. Oh, and panic, which keeps me up at night meaning I get crap sleep to go and -do- all of those things. I keep trying to put myself on a normal schedule like a normal person, so I sleep deprive myself for a few days, then go to bed at a decent time one night, and then bam! I'm back to it being three am and I'm lying in bed not sleeping. It really really sucks.
Hey, Ed's coming though! That's super exciting! Of course, I haven't found a place to live yet. That's my Wednesday plan, go look at houses. Because I'll have to give notice to my landladies soon, and I'd like to have a new place to live all ironed out before I tell them I'm going.
Oh man, it's after three am... I should go to bed.
posted by Amber at 3:02 AM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Monday, September 17, 2007 |
| | I was scanning the chapter books when out of the corner of my eye I see feet. I look up, and it's the Kid. The kid from last week, he came back. He said "do you remember me?" And we talked again, and it was good (he said he was glad I was working, and how he doesn't have anyone who is interested in the things he is interested in. Really he was adorable). In fact it was the highlight of my night. I've made a friend, now if only I knew his name.
Uh, that was it, really.
posted by Amber at 1:20 AM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Sunday, September 16, 2007 |
I went to a -party-
| | And I did. I went to a party after work, hosted by Brittany, a lady I know from my European Historiography class last semester. I met her friends from Circuit city (although I think I could only cough up their names if I thought about it -really- hard). It was fun, the booze was plentiful and I learned how to play Jackson Five... also known as Jacks and Fives (which makes the game make a whole hell of a lot more sense). I thought a won a game, but the internet implies that I lost (there was some quarrelsome debate as to what the value of a Jack or a five is... apparently they are worth zero. If they were worth one, I would have won, but as zero, I lost by three... damn). Mostly it was just good times. My host is a very nice lady who managed to get -very- smashed, and then tried to set me up with one of her guests (a guy I sort of know, as in I played pool with him about a week ago). I probably would have been insulted in that her whole rationale that we were perfect for one another boiled down to "he's into history and you're into history, and he's single and you're single." But again, she was drunk and it was sort of cute... also I haven't been on a date in a while (almost a month), so beggars and choosers and all that. Anyway, I had a good time. Probably too good of a time, by the time I left (three and a half mike's and a vokda and coke really means that Amber shouldn't drive), but I made it home safe and sound. What does it say that the only song I could remember the lyrics to wasn't in English? Probably not much.
Okay totally going to bed now.
posted by Amber at 1:39 AM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Wednesday, September 12, 2007 |
Intern Extraordinaire
| | So, I did my first shift in the Roseville Library. I spent four hours pouring over the microfilm for the Roseville Register. I filled over one hundred index cards. I made it three and a half pages into the first issue.
You see, the thing about old local papers is that they use teensy tiny font have no pictures and also have no NEWS. I read four articles in four pages. I have an index card for each of them. I also recorded a whole bunch of advertisements (mostly for barbershops, doctor's offices and saloons). I have an index card for each of them. I also have something like sixty plus index cards of Local Notes. Also known as the Society Pages, but for Roseville. So, it's Mrs So and So had a party, it was well patronized. Mr So and So is here to visit his aunt. Each time EACH person is mentioned, they get an index card. A HAND WRITTEN index card (because apparently the RHS lives fifty years in the past). I've written Roseville Register December 7th, 1907 over a hundred times today. Also old newspapers are funny, sometimes people get first names but often they only get two initials. In fact only the convicted criminals, government officials and unmarried ladies get first names. Which is a weird group, I mean what else do they have in common? I think this is all the machinations of C.W. Anderson (the owner of the paper), because they have the society pages from OTHER newspapers (yeah that's how strapped for news they are), and people get first names there. Microfilm is unfun, especially the one I was using. It will go forward for a little bit, then only go backwards... meaning every time I'm done with a page I have to reload the whole damn thing. The forward motion and back motion make you queasy. By the two and a half hour mark my head hurt from trying to read the damn tiny font (which is faded out in places) and my stomach hurt from battling the nausea. I feel like going back in time, and telling Mr. C.W. Anderson "Lacking in news, you say? There is this great invention that the kids now a days use. It's called 12 pt font, my friend! USE IT"
So after my first day as a preservationist/archivist/public historian, my mental state can be summed up thusly:
Burn this mother down, say I!
PS I'm sure things will get better. They have to, right? RIGHT?
posted by Amber at 7:40 PM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Sunday, September 09, 2007 |
sigh
| | Did you ever feel an -instant- connection with someone? As in once you started talking you both found tissue thin excuses to -keep- talking. Where everything just -clicks-. I had that experience today. As in, I saw this guy holding onto a book I like, and I asked him if he had seen
the movie. And he had, and we smiled. And he asked me for help in finding good books. I came up with four or five (we had very similar taste in reading material), and he picked one. Which -should- have been the end of it. Except he came back later, to ask another question. And after that, he came back -again-. And then... time number four, I saw him in line at information and I cut Nita off to help him. And I spent waaay too much time going through transportation books seeing if he could find information on the mechanics of how a plane works (he's hoping to get his license). There was a lot of smiles, and you could feel that we wanted to impress one another. I would have asked for his number... except for one thing.
He was 10.
That's a very big one thing. Now, I'm not saying that I felt a strong desire to jump a 10 year old's bones, because... ew, wow, totally not what I felt. I'm saying I felt the strongest urge to be a part of this kid's life. He was probably the most interesting person I've met in a while (four months of concentrated dating bested by one 10 year old).Who even -reads- Bruce Coville anymore (seriously, most of his books are out of print)? What ten year old has a burning desire to know the mechanics of how a plane works? I felt like the guy in Beautiful Girls (go on and
check out the plot to Beautiful Girls, I'll wait). I wonder if I met him in 10 years if that connection would still be there. Of course I'll never know.
posted by Amber at 2:21 PM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Thursday, September 06, 2007 |
News (maybe)!
| | Have you ever had an idea hit you like a freaking LIGHTNING BOLT?
I am a planner, I totally plan. It is what I do. For any one given plan I have like four or five half thought out contingency plans up my sleeve (I have to admit that one of them is always "and there's always seppuku", but that's neither here nor there). Sometimes I feel like my life has been planned out since I was five.
HOWEVER, the last time I had an idea like this, an idea that felt so -right- like this one, it was for me to get into the Public History Program at Sac State. And seriously, that was like my best idea of the last five years (the other good idea was 'major in history' which I sort of stumbled into). I'm really excited about this idea. That I do not want to tell you, Internet, about yet. Not until a few things are checked out and pulses taken.
EEEEEEEE!
posted by Amber at 12:36 AM
|
0 comments
| | | | | | Sunday, September 02, 2007 |
oooooo no baby please don't go!
| | Oh man, my mother was a huge Chicago fan. Not the city (which I do not think she's ever been to except as a layover), the band. I remember that she had this tape that she would play over and over again. Them and the Doobie Brothers. I saw A Lot Like Love and suddenly I -remembered-. I realized I remembered because I broke into song at the same time Amanda Peet did. I spent a lot of time in my mom's old Hyundai hatchback listening to those guys. It's like the last music I can recall my mother getting into (vague memories of the Lovin' Spoonful and the Travelling Wilburies, but that could have been my dad). My dad blasts music all the time, and he's always into new music (not like the top forty, but my dad owns a Cake album is what I'm getting at), but my mom stopped somewhere in the early to mid 90s.
It's odd because my childhood car memories are always with my dad. He works for himself ('if you ever get annoyed look at me I'm self employed...takin' care of business, every day"), and consequently would pick me up from school every day and ferry me about while he did his errands. I mean, if I had to pick one afternoon image of childhood, it would be me sitting in the passenger seat of my dad's '89 black T-bird, with the windows down (using my little hand to surf the air currents in that way that never ceases to amuse children). In my mind it's always summer and the Giants are -always- playing (which was a bad thing, because it meant I had to be quiet, although the radio is the only format in which I can actually pay attention to baseball. Going to a game in person is mind numbing...don't tell my dad I said that).
But that can't be all. My mother drove me around, and sometime before she became interested in talk radio (kill me please), she liked the Doobie Brothers and Chicago, apparently. It's part of that thing I was talking to Austin about, how parents become fully fleshed human beings (not omniscient overlords. Which I believed for far too long [try 17. At 17 I was sure my mother knew everything and was just -waiting- for the right moment to use the incriminating information against me... okay that makes her sound evil. My mother is not and has never been anywhere -close- to evil, just subtle. I grew up paranoid]). Of course while he (Austin, in case you lost track in the parenthetical snarl up above) fought and screamed with his parents before realizing that they weren't The Man (or agents thereof), but just people, I didn't have any such teenage catharsis. They went from omniscient overlords, to people I thwarted passively by moving away and purposefully ducking calls (that'll show 'em... for helping pay for my college experience... those jerks), to people I'm getting to know. I call my mother voluntarily a couple times a week (no idea when this started, it snuck up on me), and we talk. True I speak in historical metaphor and still crack jokes all the time, but that's part of who I -am- with my family (Man, if I wasn't telling jokes that illustrate how silly the world we live in is, I'd be pulling out my hair. And I like my hair).
Adulthood is sneaking up on me. I'm getting more respectable by the day. I mean, I'm in my mid twenties. Pretty soon when I talk about being Grown Up it will be in the context of my children (as in "one of us has to be the Grownup"), instead of in relation to the other Adults.
-shudder-.
PS. Is the past tense of "to sneak" for the third person singular "snuck" or "sneaked"? I think both are okay, but the more I look at "snuck up on me" the more wrong it looks. Seriously, look at it for a while. Snuck. Okay, maybe I need sleep
posted by Amber at 10:59 PM
|
0 comments
"What the hell were we talking about?" The Amber Story
| | I'm sick, goddamnit. I had a wonderful week off and then I had to go and get ill. I can't afford to be ill! Damnit!
I feel better today than I did yesterday (two days ago, whatever), but that is mostly due to the fact that today I barely did anything. I exuded all signs of being alive, I moved (a little bit, but more than say... a tree does, and it's totally alive), I respired (glucose and oxygen totally turned into energy, CO2 and water), I was sensitive (it was 107 outside today, I broke a sweat), I can't confirm that I grew you'll have to trust that I can. I know I'm -capable- of reproducing, I could offer proof of that, but it's indelicate. I ate food and I peed. It is official, I am alive.
Whew, that's a load off.
What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah, I didn't do much today. I talked with Ed for a while (haven't had a prolonged chat with him in an age it feels like). I saw John Belushi's special from SNL. Another example of how my father is a fount of pop culture from thirty years ago. Belushi's gravestone read "He made us laugh, and now he can make us think." However his grave had to be moved (too popular... crazy, eh?), so the marker now reads "He could have given us a lot more laughs, but NOOOOOOO!" I like that, it's right up there with "I told you I was Ill." Still, if anyone's keeping track I'd like mine to say "Apropos of Nothing" if you think that's too snobby, I'll -settle- for "Little Lady Big Laugh" but I really want the first.
Okay I'm exhausted, to bed I crawl!
posted by Amber at 1:48 AM
|
0 comments
| |
