If you guessed the Stairmaster, you are right!  Since I have been working out almost everyday I have come to crave the exercise and feel like a slug if I don’t.  Now, I just don’t want to lose my momentum.

I have also found this is a good way to manage stress.  I use my 45-60 minutes for ‘me’ time to just let my mind relax and wander.  Especiallly since t-minus 4 hours till my mid-term!  (side-note, I think it is appropriate that there is a severe storm/wind warning that starts in the bay area at the same time my mid-term is supposed to begin! =)

This weekend I worked very hard so I could go out and play with my friends, and it was well worth it.  We had cocktails at our SF friend’s place near the Castro and then had great conversation and cuisine at Cote Sud, a French Bistro near their house.  The evening was capped off by a rousing game of Cranium and we found out which of us were the kids in school who ate the paste anyway when they were told not to!!

So, after today’s exam, only a quiz and mid-term left till a week of relaxing – yeah!!

....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!!