....maybe I should start calling this blog the “Stairmaster cronicles” =)

SAASC update: Part of the things we do with the Society of American Archivists Student Chapter is to take tours of various archival repositories around the area.  Yesterday, I took a group of our members to tour Stanford Universities Special Collection’s department.  We had a great guide, Sean Quimby who is the Assistant Manuscripts Processing Librarian with their Special Collections.  He did the “wow” tour first, including letting us see, touch and hold items like an original page from the Gutenburg bible, an original Shakespeare folio from 1685, a signed copy of a first-edition James Joyce “Ulysses”, a first edition Huck Finn which was first published in England, a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the religious “Book of Days” from the 14^th Century and my personal favorite, an original and complete Samuel Johnson Dictionary!  We were also able to go ‘behind-the-scenes” and see the manuscript processing department and ask all the technical questions regarding the physical process, as well development policies.  I really look forward to many more tours like this!

Other activities going on with the SAASC – I will be attending the “Western Round-up” (horrible name) for the annual meeting of Western archival associations, including the California Archival Association, of which I am a member as well.  The meeting is in Las Vegas, April 14-16.  It will be a quick and very busy trip with little time to “do” the town, but a great way to make some industry connections.

One more paper is done with only the Bibliography (my least favorite part) to write, along with corrections from my proof-reader.

Now just two mid-terms and a quiz till we leave on vacation next Friday – eek!

It has been a very crazy semester and with spending anywhere between 6-9 hours a day at my studies, the energy to blog is usuall lost by my 'free' time.  However, now that I discovered my laptop sits nicely on top of the stairmaster, it gives me a bit of ‘free’ time to do things like surf the web and type this! 

So, to recap a bit of my school thus far….

Currently, I just finished Sunday at 10 PM a paper for my History of Books and Libraries class – it was a 10 page study on a printed book (published pre-1900) of choice – really interesting paper as I learned a bunch about the origins, publisher, printer and method of  a book I had purchased in 2001 when Reeves and I visited the “town of books” of Hay-on-Wye in Wales.  The previous paper for this class was a 10 page study as well on an original manuscript, pre-1501.  This paper gave me an opportunity to use Stanford’s archives and spend an afternoon among the books. I picked an English land deed from (supposedly)1405 which was in Latin. I actually able to translate, through my limited skills as a palaeologist, that the archivist had actually dated it wrong! That was a fun and gratifying discovery.

Now I am working on a paper for Collection Development that involves the history of archival studies in a chosen under-served population – mine being American local studies in English Local history.  Now, for all you out there saying that topic doesn’t seem like an underserved population, the study of Anglo-American origins on the West coast IS an underserved population, especially when it come to English local history collections.  Even my own personal library has more books on the formalized topic than our San Jose State/King Public Library!!

I also have a mid-term in my history of books class next Monday which I am freaking out about!  Why you ask?  It has probably been, even with all the school I have had, about 10 years since I had to take an in-class, no notes, need-to-remember-everything test!!  Let’s see if this aging brain can still do this!!!!

My third class, I am now officially miffed at what I thought was a cool professor!  The class is Classification and Cataloging. (Ever wonder how they assigned those little Dewey and Library of Congress numbers to books, well I am learning, and it is not fun!!) Anyway, just last Friday the prof. announced we would have a concurrent quiz and mid-term next week that would be due the Monday of Spring break. What sort of nonsense is that!! I know this program is the equivalent of a corporate flex-policy for hours, but come on, some of us do have lives and plan vacations (heaven forbid on vacation dates!) well in advance of the date.  Needless to say I am trying to figure out how to accomplish this without having to take my laptop to St. Thomas with us!

Speaking of vacation, we leave for our annual ‘Little’ spring break trip a week from Friday to St. Thomas in the USVI.  I am really looking forward to some downtime this year and it looks like it should be a fabulous vacation.  Here is the place we are staying.  We have stayed in some very lovely places in the past, but from the looks of this place, it will be the nicest yet – with plenty of room for 14 people!

Well, back to the studying….5 days now and I haven’t left the house….I think I need to have some actual human contact soon or I am going to drive poor Reeves nuts!!

After a month of organization I feel like I can jump into a busy semester, and busy year to come, with less ‘stuff’ (literally) on my mind!  Reeves and I decided to reorganize our two additional bedrooms and pretty much switch all the contents so we could utilize the space more efficiently.  I have also plowed through about a dozen projects including photo albums, file purging, closet reorganization, memorabilia consolidation and a few decoration projects.  It feels great to have had the time to get some of these things done!

BUT, school started last week and there goes all my free time! I have a strict study schedule (with small breaks for things like blogging) – in fact I spent 7 straight hours yesterday reading and doing research.  It really is going to be a busy semester! This semester I have 3 classes again including:

1)       The History of Books and Libraries (of which I am very excited – I know, I know, I am a geek)

2)       Collection Management

3)       Cataloging and Classification (very bizarre class – all about how one transcribes the bibliographic information you find on the verso side of the title page of a book – we learn were to put every space, comma and colon!!  There is more to the class than just this, but after flipping through our new cataloging ‘bible’ which is the 3 inch-think binder of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules [used by the Library of Congress], I think my brain hurts already!]

I have also taken on the responsibility of being the Chair of SJSU’s Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists.  The title is much more impressive than what I have seen of the position so far, but I am going to try and change this….in fact I have already been meeting with people to try and get our chapter more active both locally and nationally – we will see how it goes!

As excited as I am about a new semester again, it is tempered with a bit of a black cloud from the quality of the program and my feeling like a solitary student. I have one class that is totally online, one class that met for 2 days last week and now is all online and a third that attendance at the lecture-only class is optional (all the lectures are digitally archived on the web and can be accessed at any time) - I am starting to really crave some in-person interaction.  I have taken the attitude that you get out of the program what you put in, but the more I talk with other students and discover on my own, the more frustrated I become with SJSU and specifically with the SLIS.   Now the million dollar question….. how long do I push through this program to just get done, or find a program that is higher quality and has a director that actually care about the future success of their students! 

Well, enough distraction for today, the books are calling me back…..

It is now January and with the craziness of the holidays over, I can now turn my attention to organization – one of my favorite hobbies. As much as I like organization, I do have a tendency towards pack-rattery (but much less than my husband thankfully!) so I have adopted a new mantra (borrowed a bit from my friend Amy) – “If I don’t love it, it goes”.  The only caveat to that is that it needs to be eminently useful – in other words, not something that I will save for 5 years that ‘might’ be useful in that time.  So far I have divested my closet of almost 2/3 of the contents, the linen closet, parts of my office and I am about to tackle the kitchen….(who really needs 6 sets of salt and pepper shakers!!) 

I don’t start school again till January 26^th so I have a bit of time to get some things accomplished besides the daily maintenance of laundry, dishes, etc.   While in Colorado over Christmas I went through some of my old stuff at my Dad’s house and brought back with me the majority of pictures from growing up.  I so far have put about 600 pictures in albums and still have about 2/3 to go.  I have been putting them in new albums so that they will be preserved a bit better than the crumbling ones from which they originated.  I haven’t seen some of these pictures in 20 years and it has been very fun to take a memory stroll and share with Reeves some of my childhood.  I hope to start posting some select treasures - all the good, bad and ugly here, for all to share in the comedy. Stay tuned…..

Today, while out at Santana Row to get my glasses adjusted, I decided to get a Wahoo’s fish taco for lunch. While walking by the small grassed area in front of Wahoo’s, I noticed a strange flakey white substance in the air. Much to my shock it was snowing!!  If you live in the Bay area you know that today it was a beautiful sunny day which reached about 65 degrees.  You ask then, how could it be snowing???  Well, thanks to modern ‘technology’ (and according to a friend, the scientists at Disney) there were 3 snow making machines ejecting a constant stream of a substance much like soapsuds, but very fine, and from a distance, a dead ringer for snow.  Only in California would a mall spend that much money to produce a substance the colder parts of the nation spend millions trying to avoid and remove!!

After what seemed like a blink in time, my first semester of grad school is over and I have three classes done!  (although, the past couple weeks did seem to take an eternity with 3 papers and a group project due….)  I am still waking up in the morning trying to dispel the nagging presence of “what do I need to turn in today” feeling. I think by next week I should feel officially on break. 

And to answer the question my husband posed in his blog…what does one do when they have finished their first semester of school??…they go to DISNEYLAND!!!!  And we did!!!!!!   It was a very fun trip with many people who are even bigger Disney geeks than we are….in fact, we had a walking encyclopedia of Disney knowledge along – you name it, Andy knew it – we even stumped a few employees with questions to which he already knew the answers!!  (the reason you ask why we were asking employees questions?..... Andy created this amazing trivia/scavenger hunt for us to tackle for the two days we were visiting – what a tour guide!)  The park was magical and dressed to the nines for Christmas – definitely not the place to be if you are a bah-humbugger about Christmas carols, Christmas decorations, Christmas everything!  I am sure we will be back again the share the holiday season with ‘the mouse’.

Now I can turn my attention our upcoming trip to Colorado in only 11 days!  Eeek – too many packages to wrap, ship and pray get there in time!  I can’t also believe it has been a year and a half since I visited ‘home’. It is strange I don’t miss it more than I do, but I do have to say I am very excited about seeing Boulder, and spending some time with old friends and family.  Christmas at the Little’s (my in-laws that is) is always quite an event.  There is more food than we can all possibly eat and more bodies in one house than you think can survive in-tact for a whole week together – but we do, and still like each other after we part ways!

….you remember that song you sang in grade school ? – it always reminds me of Thanksgiving and to be thankful for what I have, including…..

My husband – every day I am reminded of how lucky I am to have someone who is a never ending source of strength, laughter and love.

My puppy….of 13 years….as always she is a reminder of what true unconditional love can be.

My friends – this past weekend at our 2^nd annual Raclette fest of 2004 confirmed how important my friends are to me.  Their shared laughter and company is as important to me as breathing.

My mind – although I will never claim to be the smartest person in a room I am grateful to have been given an inquisitive nature and the ability to understand the great gift that is knowledge.

My possessions – yes, it is not the PC thing to say, but I am fortunate to share in a warm home and more pretty things than any one person really needs.

My health – other than a few minor ‘growing’ pains I have been thankful to have had a pretty easy run of it so far…..

My husband – am I aloud to have him on my list twice? Well, to me I am that thankful for him and secondly, this is MY list!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!