This Side of Lost

The Internet is a bizarre and wonderful thing. As I was chatting with Samantha this morning, I did something I frequently do: quoted homestarrunner.com. As I did so, however, I couldn't remember precisely which cartoon on the site it came from. I thought to myself (in typical library science major fashion), "I wonder if there's some sort of index or abstract for the site." After thinking this thought, I said, "Naw. The Brothers Chaps are too lazy for that sort of thing." But I typed the word (grumblecakes) into Google to see what it would find anyway.

What it found was a Homestar Runner Wiki. (For those of you unfamiliar with wikis, they are web sites that allow any user to make additions to or to edit any page on the site. Check out the Wikipedia, for example.) Of course the Brothers Chaps wouldn't, but there's an awful lot of people out there who have far too much free time and love Homestar Runner.

It's just so strange to have a thought about something, and then be able to call up some extremely detailed implementation of your idea -- as if it were somehow created in this infinite detail just as you thought it.

March is a crazy month. In Minnesota, it's usually still snowing for much of it. Here, it snows for the first day or two, and then gives us beautiful weekend weather. Samantha and I got out to toss a frisbee around on Friday (she's really good -- best girl I've ever played frisbee with), and it was in the 60's yesterday. And apparently now it's going to be cold again. Darn it all. And I left the house without a jacket today, because it felt warm. I'm losing my Minnesotan-bred instincts...

Well, it was a busy week, as I had guessed. But I actually got everything done and in on time -- which is not normally how busy weeks ended up in my undergrad life. Maybe I'm growing up? Or maybe I can just whip off assignments that look good much faster... And I even got a good start on this week's stuff. Dang. For those of you who wonder what it is that I do as a library science major, here's a sample. This is what I accomplished last week and got a start on for this week:

• Collection development paper about the St. Olaf Science Library.
• Built multiple forms and tables for an Access database.
• Profiled my client for Info Retrieval.
• Did multiple substructure searches and citation retrievals in the Chemical Abstracts databases.
• Typed up a database narrative and sketched an entity relationship diagram.
• Practiced my DIALOG searching skills by doing word and phrase searches, sorting and ranking results and comparing with web-based databases.

A lot of stuff, but it's worth it to get it done early, because I take off on Friday for Boston and all points east. Yes, it's Spring Break, and time for Andrew's 3rd Annual Traipse About the Country. (The first two were to Seattle/Portland in Feb 2003 and Toronto in March 2004.) This time, I will be accompanied by the peerless traveller and fellow road warrior Samantha Humphrey. *applause* More details on this soon...

In other news:

• Finally made Samantha watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I love that movie... I should really own it. She enjoyed it, and we've had some interesting conversation about erasing memories.
• Played wiffleball yesterday! Yeah! My team won, 11-8, with yours truly striking out Clark Wheeler looking with a wicked slider for the third out. A big shout-out to Andrew Estel for organizing. Also a big shout-out to Zack, the random kid at the park who played with us.
• Also had a choir concert yesterday. Yes, you're right, I didn't warn anyone about this, but honestly, I never think they're going to be any good until we get to the dress rehearsal and I suddenly think, "Hey, maybe this won't suck." Well, I guess it didn't. Paul Betty and his girlfriend even came out.
• Got my hair trimmed on Saturday. It doesn't look a whole lot different, but it needed to have the ends cleaned up (I guess? This is what Samantha tells me). It's getting really long. I'm hoping to get it long enough to pull it back without looking like a dork.
• Saw a exhibition of print-making art on Friday. Am really only mentioning this because 1) it was an excellent Freegan event (free pizza!) and 2) Jen's roommate is a printmaker, yes?
• I made some CDs purchases recently... most notable is Guster On Ice -- a live CD and DVD. It is tons of fun. Recommended for all, and heavily recommended for the Guster fan.

It's noon already, choir is cancelled and so is Samantha's class. Shaping up to be a wonderful Monday. Hope yours is the same -- peace!

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in this 1992 film, about a grizzled old gunslinger-turned-pig farmer who is lured into one last bounty chase. Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and Richard Harris co-star.

I went into this movie gushing about the other two Eastwood movies I've seen (Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby), low-key but emotionally charged dramas where the characters are real people dealing with larger-than-life issues. I kind of expected Unforgiven to be similar. It was not. We still had a couple of real characters (Eastwood and Freeman, in particular), but I found myself looking at stereotypes with others. Also, I found myself not really caring about the characters -- something that was difficult to do for the previous films.

I felt mostly confused by the film. I wasn't sure who to root for. Eastwood's character is mostly likeable as the reformed outlaw -- until the end. Maybe that was the point. I don't know.

The movie is credited with being the ultimate western -- a commentary on the senseless violence, with a gripping cinematographic command of the western landscapes and locations, etc. etc. I guess I can see that. And I can understand and appreciate the ambiguity of the character's morals. But I don't have to like it.

I am in the basement of Harvard's Divinity School, where Ramy has graciously taken us for some free and fast Internet access. So I must post.

We have made a whirlwind ten state journey in the last three days. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland were behind us on Friday, on our way to Baltimore to meet and stay with Samantha's mother. Baltimore was nice -- a variably classy and dumpy metropolis on Chesapeake Bay. We ate crab and tootled around the harbor. Sunday saw Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts roll past our windows on our way to Boston. A brief stop in Hartford to connect with Carlynn Savot and Jeremy Glen, and we found ourselves not far from Cambridge, home of Hahvahd (as the Bostonians say).

Today has been spent sleeping in (aahh, sweet sleep...), eating at an awesome breakfast joint called The Breakfast Club (cue sweet 80's mix and posters of John Hughes movies -- I had The Criminal), poking around Boston's North End, where the thick Italian accents and stereotypes live on.

Must go -- ribs and wings to eat.

Writing from Antonia's computer in South Yarmouth (Cape Cod), Massachusetts now. Have had an exhausting but exciting three days...

We ended up getting awesome burgers instead of ribs and wings on Monday night. If you're ever in Cambridge/Somerville and hankerin' for a burger, head up to O'Sullivan's. They have, like, 25 different kinds.

Tuesday saw us visiting another crazy good eating joint (burritos at Anna's Taquierito or something like that), racing around Harvard seeing libraries and other cool buildings, and then heading out to Boston's Back Bay area and seeing the Boston Public Library. I've never seen a public library quite like this. It is an honest-to-goodness research institution. The rare books room was magnificent to behold. There were murals on the third floor that have the somewhat dubious honor of being the first pieces of visual art that have evoked in me a emotional reaction that previously have been limited to music and dance. Cool.

Tuesday night we met up with Sarah Nagell and went to the Union Oyster House, another historic landmark and a fantastic seafood restaurant. Samantha and I had lobster for the first time. A challenge to eat, to say the least, but well worth it.

Yesterday we bugged out of Boston (after checking out the Emerson College campus on behalf of my sister) and headed out to the Cape, where Samantha's friend Antonia lives. Here, we've been taking it easier -- we mostly just chilled out last night and had an unremarkable dinner at a local place. We're going to go out sightseeing after I finish up here.

Such is life on the road. I am struck by a number of things as we travel...

• There are lots of little things that distinguish areas of the country from one another (names of grocery stores and gas stations, types of terrain, styles of road signs). You get used to them very quickly and begin to wonder why this is so different from where you live.
• Friends are friends, no matter where they are, how you met them, or how long it's been since you've seen them. I am loathe to lose touch with people, and I'm being reminded why.
• Samantha remains a great travelling companion. She fears that I'll tire of her -- she worries in vain. :)

Off to see the coast. Peace for now.

Well, we're back. Let's see what else I can tell you about the trip...

We puttered around Cape Cod on Thursday, seeing (surprise, surprise) two more libraries. Antonia works at a little public library in a town called Marstons Mills, where I bought a READ t-shirt (something every librarian should own, I think) and started reading Harry Potter 5. Bad idea -- now I want to read it instead of doing homework. We had some delicious salmon (made by 'Tone and JC, her beau) and had a very pleasant, relaxing evening.

Friday and Saturday were our travel days back home, which were mostly uneventful. We holed up in Williamsport, PA for our halfway stop. Samantha attempted to drive my car (a manual transmission, which she hasn't tried for years) with varying levels of success. I forget how difficult it is to drive a stick shift... We finally pulled back into Bloomington at 6 pm on Saturday. This was excellent planning on our part, as it was a godsend to have Sunday to get our lives back in order around here. We even had the opportunity to go see The Corporation, which is a fantastic and scathing documentary about corporations that was showing at The Cinemat. Please, please see this movie, y'all.

So, in the spirit of Harper's Index, I present:

Andrew's Spring Break Index
11: States visited (Rhode Island made eleven, on the way back)
9: Rides on the Boston subway
7: Libraries visited
5: Seafood themed meals
5: Desserts had
4: St. Olaf friends seen
4: College campuses visited
3: Sites visited that are the oldest _______ in continuous service in the US (Episcopal church, restaurant, library)
2: T-shirts purchased (one mentioned above and a "Yankee Hater" shirt with logo from Boston)
1: Rank of the World Trade Center in Baltimore in the list of tallest pentagonally shaped buildings, and also in pentagonally shaped buildings I've been to the top of
1: Fantastic friend who shared it all

So Spring Break is over -- boo hoo. I don't think I'd be so displeased about this if I hadn't picked up a cold somewhere along the way. And here I thought I'd be able to escape the winter without getting sick.

Thanks to all who hosted us and entertained us on the way. I can only offer the same in return if you ever find yourself in southern Indiana.

Next entry is this classic Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn film from 1939, a screwball comedy about a paleontologist who gets mixed up with a flighty, beautiful girl with a pet leopard. Naturally, hilarious hijinx ensue.

Boy, I wasn't sold on this one right away. Davin pumped it up as one of his favorites, and I was expecting classic performances from the two leads. But instead I found Grant being nerdy and stiff and Hepburn being idiotic and inconsiderate. As it turns out, that's just the characters, and it's the characters that make this film great. The way Grant and Hepburn play off of one another for the entire movie is sometimes just too much to watch -- she's so nutty and won't leave him alone for a second, and he's just trying to get some money and a dinosaur bone for his museum... I think Grant's character reminded me of me, which may explain why the film was so painful at first.

But I grew into it. Once I realized that the breakneck pace and hijinx weren't going to quit, I settled in to just enjoy the ride. Once I got past the at-first-jarring characters, I could listen to the dialogue, which is snappy and inspired. And Grant's character became okay after an extended argument he had with an older woman while he was wearing a negligee, which ended in him jumping up in the air and yelling "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!" Hee hee. And the film is obviously very well done and meticulously directed. What fun.

The film is so fast and silly and brusque, and I wasn't expecting that. But if/when I see it again, I'll know what's coming, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it more.

Clearly I'm not doing very well on my schoolwork. Alas. Here's a really long meme.

This effectively sums up a number of things: 1) The weather this morning. Rainy and cold. This doesn't look like Easter. 2) Samantha's attitude towards the world this morning. 3) My attitude towards the world this morning. 4) My attitude towards all things school related last week. And I don't really have the energy to address any of these in any semblence of a sensible order. You have been warned.

Clearly I'm ready for spring/summer. This cold and rainy was getting old in December -- it's far past getting old now. Summer also means I won't be taking four classes at once. I really appreciate SLIS footing the bill for 30 credits of my tuition, but they could have spread it over two years instead of one. So I can spend my time rollerblading and playing frisbee and reading for pleasure instead of destroying my eyesight staring at a computer for 10 hours a day. Thankfully, this blissful time will be upon me in a month or so -- the spring semester is over the first week of May. It couldn't come soon enough.

In between now and then, I need to do four final projects. Guh. Whatever happened to final tests? They were much easier to deal with. If anyone out there wants to 1) build an Access database 2) research speech recognition using advanced information retrieval skills and reflect on it 3) write a paper about proteomics databases or 4) whatever the hell my Coll Dev professor is going to throw at us, please let me know.

I mostly ignored my schoolwork this past week. I fear I will do the same this week. I'm going to try and counteract that this morning -- be sure to check in and see how I do. In other news:

• School stuff. Blah. Frustrated by Access and intrigued by Entrez.
• Easter was yesterday, for those of you who aren't familiar with a little-known religious sect called Christianity. This means Lent is over, and I am free to have spontaneous desserts again. I'm sure my waistline will thank me.
• Had a wonderful bout with dizziness on Saturday while doing my taxes. Unrelated? I doubt it. Actually, it probably had more to do with what I had eaten that day (a bowl of cereal early, two pepperoni breadsticks at the mall food court at 1 pm. This happened about 3:30 pm).
• But I did get my taxes done. I had to file in Minnesota and Indiana. That was no fun, let me tell you. But I think they're even accepted already. Come to me, sweet tax refund...
• I watched a very long but rather interesting TV miniseries called The 10th Kingdom over the weekend. A kind of modern fairy tale starring Kimberly Williams (from Father of the Bride) and John Laroquette. I couldn't get Laroquette's character from Night Court out of my head for a while. But it was really entertaining and lots of fun. And made me want to read Fables again. Ooh, Monroe Public has volumes 1-3... hee...
• Baseball is just around the corner! Whee! The Twins are whittling down their team for the Opening Day roster... exciting stuff. On a sad note -- Bob Casey died over the weekend. He was the announcer for Twins baseball for 40 years -- at old Met Stadium and then at the Metrodome. Truly a sad day for Minnesota baseball fans.

Bah! Enough tomfoolery. Off to keep my nose to the grindstone, as my dad would say. Peace!

Some higher power obviously took heed of my pleas. It is sunny and in the 60's now. And will be sunny and in the high 60's/low 70's tomorrow -- wiffleball at 4 pm at Bryan Park is looking like an excellent possibility. Back me up here, Estel.