I have to admit, I look forward everyday to the chink-scrape-thunk of the mail-person leaving their allotted daily assortment of correspondence, both wanted and un-wanted, in our mailbox.  (the specific sound comes from our flapped mail box, which when opened and pushed again the wall in the vigorous manner needed to toss at least 10 catalogs on average, the loud 'scrape and thunk’ is inevitable when the mail drops to the bottom)  Being a stay-at-home student/wife, I have few interactions (unless you count my morning tea with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer an interaction) so I eagerly look forward to seeing what wonderful things might appear in my mailbox each day around noon. 

Today however, reinforced my amazement of the magical quality of the mail.  I had just finished reading my friend Trina’s blog, which stated they had just sent out their wedding invitations that day, (Saturday) when I heard the familiar chink-scrape and thunk.  Rushing eagerly to the door, but not so quickly as to surprise our poor over-worked mail carrier, (remember the 10 catalogs a day???? It can go up to 50 during the holiday season!!!) I quickly discarded those annoying and completely useless random coupons for ‘one-day blinds’ and got to the good stuff - the beautifully emblazoned wedding invitation from Dick and Trina!  In less than 24 working hours, this piece of mail had been put in a box in SF, sent to a station, scanned, had that little bar code attached to it, sorting onto one truck, made the journey to the south bay, sorted again, placed on a truck and walked directly to my humble front door.  (and I am sure I don’t even begin to know all the various steps in between my invitation saw)  …..and all this for 32 cents!! (well, actually 60 since it was a typical wedding invite with multiple sheets, but you get my point). 

In this digital age, I stop occasionally to marvel at how an e-mail can show up in my in-box with just a couple clicks on my keyboard, but I think it is much more astounding to remember all the millions of pieces of physical mail, which arrive with astounding accuracy, that must be touched, cared for and delivered safely to their destination, regardless of the crappy weather the mail carrier must endure, every day, for the last couple hundred years!!

My hats off to those dedicated and over-looked civil servants at the post office!

After a severe hiatus, I am back to the blog!  I have to say that once my finals hit with spring semester, I didn’t little but sit in agony, starring in vain at my computer hoping my papers would type themselves – when all was done, I realized I had completed over 100 pagers of research in 4 papers (in addition to the 2 finals I took)….yay me I got out alive!

A day after I completed my finals, I was off to NYC to visit Amy again – we had a blast including 4 museums, a trip to our friend January’s new country house and plenty of shopping.

Home again with just enough time to finish laundry and organize the house before my summer school classes started. 

My class this summer is Records Management, which on the surface sounds incredibly boring, but in reality touches every business and organization and is an integral part of information technology.  I really am enjoying all the theoretical and conceptual research around the future of information management and how private industry is impacting the field.

The next event was dinner with Leslie’s new fiancé!! Jason was in town for our inspection, and I have to say he passed with flying colors!  We really look forward to getting to know him better and spending time with both of them before (and after!) their wedding next year.

It was then time for Amy to come visit us here in California! I picked her up from her Uncle and Aunt’s house in SF and we were off to Napa Valley.  En route we stopped at Domaine Caneros, one of my favorites for its sparkling wine and views of the Caneros valley.  We had a lovely afternoon snack on their balcony while enjoying the warm sun and beautiful weather.  We spent the afternoon walking around the cute boutiques at St. Helena.  Our hotel, the Rancho Caymus Inn was a very nice little place attached to the restaurant La Toque – a 4 star restaurant I hope to come back and eat some day. That evening we walked next door to another restaurant – a casual one called the Rutherford Grill – great for a laid-back evening and the corn bread is to die for!!

 Our second day was started by walking around Calistoga for the morning. We proceeded down the Silverado Trail to the Rombauer Winery which consistently has one of the best Zinfandels out there, including the case I purchased. J We then visited Clos du Val and were greeted by the swallows nesting in their rafters (you get a free wine tasting and wet-wipes if you get hit with bird poo!) and the resident Black Standard Poodle ready and willing to play fetch all day with anyone who would pay attention to him!  On the suggestion of one of the wine pourers, we decided we could treat ourselves to lunch at Auberge du Soleil. If you have never heard of it or stayed here, put it on your life to-do lists.  It was one of the best lunches I have ever had, set on the balcony overlook all of the Napa Valley – perfect! We then were off to Prager Port for a tasting – a little place which is a must visit if you are in the area.  This evening for dinner we went to the popular Mustard’s Grill – our calamari salad was excellent, but the sandwiches we had were just ok, nothing to write home about and they didn’t have on the menu the desert we had read about being a ‘signature’ item. 

The third day we headed back to San Jose, but our trip back was anything but ho-hum.  We drove across the Napa Valley via Sonoma and Santa Rosa to take a lovely jaunt through the Russian River Valley.  After 3 days in 90+ weather, the 58 degree costal climate was the perfect anecdote. Lunch was in Point Reyes as a fabulous little gourmet café.  We also found the Cowgirl Creamery which makes cheese on-site and exports them throughout the region – so yummy!

Without time to pause Reeves and I were off to Vegas a day after Amy left to celebrate Mike’s 40^th Birthday.  We had such a great time celebrating everything Mike! We stay at the great Venetian hotel, had a amazing dinner at the Delmonico Steakhouse and saw the slightly naughty Cirque du Soleil show called Zumanity.  Additionaly, we learned to play craps and I think I am hooked!  We shared the weekend with Dick and Trina as well as Omar and Lora.

Next is New Orleans in about a month for the annual meeting for the Society of American Archivists – should be quite the party!

I just realized that as of this week, I will have been living in California 10 years!  Wow, that is almost 1/3 of my life...and it feel like yesterday!

Time however feel like it has stood still for the past three weeks - too much homework, but it is all over today.  I take one final tonight and turn in my last paper/final tonight after I edit it a little.  Hallelujah!!!!

Then it is off to NYC to have some well-earned fun and relaxation.  Although, both Amy and I are quite the planners, so I have no doubt we will have an action-packed week! I am sure this week will go all too quickly....

Time is a bizarre thing

After the past year of being tied too many hours to my desk studying, with little physical activity, except walking from the computer to the living room, I decided about 5 months ago to do something about my sluggish lifestyle and expanding waist line.  While I have incorporated about 45-60 minutes of physical activity into my day, almost everyday,(and losing over 20 lbs so far) I have just begun (well, over the past 2-3 months) to truly change my eating habits.  In that process, today I went to the USDA’s website because I wanted to see what the “new pyramid” was all about.  I don’t think I have ever actually looked at the report before, but in spending about 45 minutes reading and skimming the 90 some pages, I realized all anyone needs is this one free report to be fit and healthy!  I used to dismiss the pyramid as something you saw on elementary school walls as an outdated and ignored poster, but the verbiage, for the most part, of the report is down-to-earth simple advice.  I strongly recommend reading or at least skimming all the “Key Recommendation” sections.  Your kidneys, colon and heart will thank you for it – so, too will your loved one’s when you lead a longer, healthier life!!

FYI – don’t give up that glass of wine, coffee or olive oil – they are all part of a daily lifestyle, but like everything, in moderation.

I have had a convertible for about the past 3 years and one of my favorite days of spring is the first day the top goes down…and that was today!!  It was a perfect 73 degrees out so I took my homework with me at went to my local Mexican food place and sat outside for about an hour eating my burrito and reading about the early history of American libraries.  I also ended up doing a couple errands that really didn’t need to be done today, but I felt too guilty ignoring my homework for just a spin around the city! J

Last evening was a wonderful excursion into the culinary delights of Hawaiian fusion at the restaurant Roy’s in San Francisco.  We were there to celebrate not one, but four birthdays including Trina, Shan, Rob and Sharon’s.  The choice of restaurants was Trina’s as this is one of her favorite spots.  Indeed the food was wonderful!  I had a tasty Mahi-Mahi in a lobster butter sauce and the bites I had of friend’s Butterfish were divine!  The chocolate soufflé for desert was a decadent oozing pool of warm sauce surrounded by creamy cake.  In addition to their wonderful food the bar menu was equally impressive.  Several of us had a creation called the Big Hawaiian which when poured is a layer of Blue Curacao and a top layer of orange juice which eventually mixes to form a lovely share of grass-green!  Capped off with a garnish of pineapple and maraschino cherry and you have you self quite the girly-drink! (although Mike enjoyed it just fine!)  

Good food and fine compay led to a fun eveing had by all!  

I was thinking of all the events going on this year and thought I would list all the benchmarks happening in 2005:

1) Trina’s 35^th birthday (which was yesterday and prompted me thinking of them all)

2) Lora’s 30^th Birthday

3) Mike’s 40^th Birthday

4) Reeves and my 10^th Wedding anniversary (holy cow!)

5) Dick and Trina’s Wedding

6) My father-in-law, Rob’s, 70^th Birthday

I am sure I am forgetting something….anyone?

Time flies when you don't have time to look at the clock! Only three weeks till the end of my first year of grad school!

Not much new here but homework, homework and more homework – in the next three weeks I need to (start and) complete a 20 paper on the history of a CA library (mine being the Palo Alto PL) a 10 page paper on the use of Community Analysis and Knowledge Management in the archival field, with specific applications in the local history field, 2 finals and a quiz – needless to say I am freaked out and in a bit of denial of how many hours I will put in studying and writing in the days to come. 

There is a very good motivation for me to finish on time however, (beyond not failing my classes!!) I am going to visit my friend Amy in NYC again the day after finals are over! For the past 4 years I have been to NYC between 2 and 5 times a year and I have to say the city does have a mysterious and exhilarating draw (not to mention the wonderful company of a great friend!)  We have a very busy 6 days planned with a trip upstate to visit our friend January’s new country house. (and of course, via the Woodbury Commons outlet mall, a.k.a. mecca as well as several antique stores)

While Amy is at work for a couple of the days I hope to visit the J. Pierpont Morgan Library as well as the NY-Historical Society’s library.  I have been to several exhibits at the NY-HS, but never officially visited the library.  Both have innumerable amounts of books from the past 500 years of printing as well as many incunabula pieces and irreplaceable manuscripts.  Books contained in these special collections rarely see their way to the West coast so as a student I am fortunate to be able to see them on the East coast.

But, until May 18^th , you will find me for about 12 hours a day with my nose in the quickly growing stacks of books obscuring my seemingly shrinking desk!

I have been pretty frantic this semester with school and my new Chair position with the SAASC, but sometimes it really does seem like I am on the right track, especially after weekends like the one from which I just returned.

I attended the Western regions Archival Associations meeting in Las Vegas.  As a member of the Society of California Archivists, this was a prime opportunity for me to meet many members and introduce myself to the new President of the SCA. (I was also able to get my book signed personally by the SAA president, Randall Jimerson – I’m such a geek!)  Association connections are important as they are the real life link to my future career possibilities, something that keeps me up at night!  With about 250 people at the conference from all the Western states from about Colorado, west, there were plenty of people to chat-up about how they got where they are now and where are they going. 

There were some great talks including the key note speaker, Wole Soyinka, who is the 1986 Nobel prize winner in literature.  He was an elegant speaker and his melodious voice was divine!  You can listen to him here.   

Other sessions addressed various subjects and challenges within the archival discipline including the issues of Archivists as Historians.  I am still wrestling with my desire to do research and how I can balance the two or incorporate the two into one career, which may mean a second masters in history. (poor Reeves, I don't know if he could handle me taking another few years to finish school, my stress may kill him! ;)

I went to the conference with a new friend, Sarah, who was the former Chair of SAASC and who now works at Stanford in a couple different archival positions.  We had a good time and did manage to get away from the conference long enough to walk around the strip and spend about $10 each at the slots!

This was just the first conference of my archival career (although I did quite a few with Gartner - very different A-type people at those however) - the next conference looks like I will be going to the SAA conference in New Orleans (in August, yuck!) – this is the ‘biggie’ conference of the year and our chapter (i.e. me) will be presenting a student chapter poster at the conference.  So much stuff, so little brain power!! :)