I had to write about my goals and all that bullshit. Also some stuff about my life. Here it is.
I find it hard to say exactly what my goals are when someone asks, because there are several of them sort of linked together and I can never remember all of them, but also because they all boil down to something too simple: I just want to learn what people do and how, by watching, listening, and doing. I want to know what working at a museum is like, or how to run a nonprofit organization, how to plant and harvest, how to treat artifacts, how to use public transportation, or what people do on the weekends. I just want to experience things. I’m not a complicated or demanding person in this respect.
Everyone at the museum is worried about making sure my experiences meet my goals and expectations, but really they’ve exceeded them already. I’ve been brought to meetings and gotten to hear what kind of issues conservationists and collection managers deal with other than the big move and preservation. Apparently the museum has a behind-the-scenes tour that gets the groups who don’t work in the public sphere extra money for conservation projects like desalination (getting salt out of artifacts that are from the Middle East so that when they interact with any kind of humidity they don’t start expanding and leaking salt water), but some school groups have already seen this and don’t tell them until ten minutes before hand, and the people giving the tour have to scramble to come up with changes in the tour so the children don’t get bored. There is contention about whether it’s feasible or necessary to make a second version of the behind-the-scenes tour. Another issue that might affect me is that there is tension between the specialized conservationists and the collections people who haven’t taken chemistry classes and whatnot but are practicing preventative conservation (putting things in trays so they don’t get jostled around and don’t have to be touched in order to move them) regarding lab space. I like hearing this part of museum work, partly because it’ll help me assess whether I think I can deal with this kind of thing and thus whether I want to work in a museum as a career later. I also like variety, so even though my work for Antonio doesn’t deal with artifacts directly, it’s another aspect of how archaeological work is done (now I know what happens to field notes!). And Chris, who is always frazzled anyway, seemed especially so this week because of things like fire drills and construction in one of the storage rooms but again this gave variety to who I was working with and what I was doing, which I think is great.
On the other hand I’m alright with doing the same thing for a while too. I like weeding a lot. I did not mind doing it all day (except for the last 20 min when I prepped tomato plant holes by digging and with eggshells) even though I was told I wouldn’t be. Something that has visible progress feels really good, as does dirt on hands and pulling things (I am the kid who always destroyed the grass around me while sitting in it by yanking at it. I still do this, really). And it’s really good for thinking. I thought of all kinds of things that day that I have mostly forgotten other than the ambulance thing. I know I thought about archaeology a lot, how weeding is one of the things that affirmed the revelation that archaeology would be a pretty great thing for me, how people have been weeding gardens for tens of thousands of years, and how it is a pretty good communal or solitary activity, especially when it is fairly regular. Last few times I’ve weeded have been horror stories of thistles three feet tall and ant nests and other things because gardens have been neglected for years. Also thought it was funny when people asked if I’ve got a lot of experience weeding. You don’t need a lot of experience, I think, but apparently some people (this I witnessed) are afraid to touch dandelions at first because they (or their fuzzy stuff on the stems?) look sharp, even though thistles are the only really prickly plants the city farm gets and they’re not so bad when they are small. As I was pulling weeds I thought about all the sirens I was hearing - how for every good (or even mediocre) moment I was having, it was someone else’s worst day ever. Someone somewhere near my in Chicago has an emergency going on at least once an hour. As Skot pointed out, there’s nothing like that for when people have great days. There is no car going around and around saying “WOO-HOOOOOOOOO!” super loud. In fact, someone might get arrested if they did that.
Living in the city has been pretty great. It is not hard to experience the city, and no one asks me whether I’m getting all I want out of exploring it. Took a lot of walks during the first few days, most of them downtown but one just kind of around to the west. It usually takes me about a half hour to feel like I’ve come far enough to turn around, which means about an hour at least. When I can’t find the subway after I’ve walked more than that and am sick of it, takes me longer. Found out that Erie street is pretty good for eating if you’ve got money, ended up by the horribly huge McDonald’s way too many times, and walked along the river for a bit before sitting on a playground. There is a Farmer’s Market by Washington and some other street every Thursday, but I didn’t hang around that day and won’t have a Thursday free for a good long time. Luckily, I will be working at such an event soon so it doesn’t matter. I saw a lady working out in a building on a machine during one of my walks and wondered why anyone living in this city needs to pretend to walk when there’s plenty of opportunity right outside, but I guess people have families and such and can’t waste their time doing that. Or something.
I was able to put my wandering AND the extra space in our apartment to use almost immediately. The day before we moved in, one of next year’s roommates Marie and her friend Theresa called because they needed somewhere to stay in Chicago Thursday. By Tuesday, we had an air mattress and a hairdryer and a way to put guests on a list so they don’t get thrown out of the building, so it sounded good. That day wasn’t really the best mostly because we weren’t sure when they were coming, what dinner was going to end up being for whom, and if we were going to make it to Eddie Izzard, although having tried out the route there the day before we knew it wouldn’t take too long. Our guests came around rush hour, which was pretty much a bad idea because traffic is already bad in Chicago, so they got shunted off 90 early then got back on then got off again because nothing was moving. Pretty much they were lost for a long time and we hadn’t been that far south yet and couldn’t help much until!!!!!! I remembered from my walks that navigating through the city works a lot better if you think about it using coordinates. We are at about 30 west and 1220 north, and they were somewhere extremely southwest of that. But with the advice about looking at block numbers via street signs, they were able to get here easily! It was magical. Timing worked out really well actually, because then they went to get dinner and Skot and I went to the theater. Later we bought cookies and cream ice cream for everyone, which we cleverly put into a Tupperware tin for later since the original container doesn’t fit in the tiny freezer, but it melted, and then we put in many brownies that were taking up too much ‘counterspace’ and refroze it; then it got too frozen, but it is still good because of the brownies. But that’s all after they left for…A-Con? Some anime convention that we rodes the blue line to that weekend and got to experience first-hand for a few hours. (Not very exciting as someone who’s not an invested fan for the genre.) On Saturday, Skot’s dad flew in to take the SUV (skot’s mom’s) back so we don’t have to pay outrageously for it to sit somewhere all summer, and none of us knew that the red line is closed in all underground stops on the weekend, so he was stranded also. We don’t have internet in our room because it’s too expensive - after this month of starbucks-tmoblie (still 40 dollars a month) we are totally switching to the free option that the library holds. I don’t need the internet much when I’m not at school anyway. Skot’s phone has some internet capabilities and can see maps, but not when he’s using it as a phone, so we couldn’t really help his dad out. But eventually, his dad made it and took us out to breakfast/lunch even though we were trying to do that to him. At least he ate some pie. And in the end, Skot now has some nice clothes for interviewing in and we don’t have to pay to park a car here all summer.
I mentioned pie! It is because we have done some nice cooking. There is a mysterious food van affiliated with the resource center that, I’m pretty sure, takes donations from various Whole Foods to a soup kitchen (or something) that stops at the City Farm about twice a day driven by a very cheerful person. The food isn’t even always expired! We get to take things that we will need for lunch or to take home. I made off with all kinds of stuff the first week, more that I will probably ever take again, because we had yet to build up our pantry and so fruit (mostly strawberries. more on that later), vegetables (mostly broccoli - so. much. broccoli.), eggs, butter (skot was complaining that even though margarine was cheap it was not good enough to justify not getting butter), and a few other things. It’s a fifteen-minute walk to the apartment though, at my normal (quick) pace, so I had to get my roommate to help me carry it, which is one of the reasons I’m not taking nearly as much ever again. Anyway, I was able to make two strawberry pies and two loaves of banana bread, and unrelated to the free food we recently made spaghetti sauce from scratch and many other fine meals. Marie made me laugh when she was on her way here because she asked how people in the city did their grocery shopping if they could only buy what they could carry. This is a question that has never occurred to me and whose answer is obvious once you’re in the city. Our fridge doesn’t hold much and it only takes about ten minutes to get to the store, so we’ve been doing tiny grocery errands every other day or so as we need things. Really I think gigantic grocery stores and fridges were invented because of the suburbs, since people in rural areas (at least at some point) were largely self-sufficient and people in cities have easy access to farmer’s markets and small food stores.
Nicole from the city farm told me about a place called the Garfield Park Conservatory that has a lot of great plants. It’s also where they get all their tomato plants (since young tomato and pepper plants need a lot of protection during the spring until they are strong enough for the open air, which is something I remember my grandpa telling me.) We went there on Sunday via the green line, and it was very nice. Many biomes were represented, and they even had small stone paths for those who wanted to walk among rather than around the plants. I like the fern room a lot. I will certainly go back there to look at Garfield park and the flower show at a later point. There was a volunteer there doing a badly-designed ‘sugar test’ trying to educate people about the ways sugar is made and transported or used (or something) but she didn’t know what she was talking about very well. She said that proteins are made of sugar, which is not true except in a very indirect sense (if that), and also seemed to believe that any plant material that we use in objects is sugar (also not true). She really thought she was educating people and spreading knowledge, which is good, but I wish she would have done some research first. I am not sure whether it’s better to have someone trying to educate at all, even if they don’t know their subject matter very well, or if it’s better to have less people spreading information but have it be accurate.
There is a mall by…Washington and Lake, I think, that was swarming with people the first two times I encountered it, but I never went in. Then the last few times I’ve tried to go there, it’s been closed. There were even people looking at some set of boards - maybe art - but it was still locked. What is going on? Can those businesses really afford to be closed for a week? Is the mall only open during business hours? It’s very strange. I don’t even want to shop there, just to go inside and look around. But one day I will find out what is up with that building!
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This week, we went to the museum of holography, and let me tell you, it is a creepy place. mostly 'cause of this old old corpse of a lady who tells you the same stuff over and over and has prominent skeleton teeth and apparently smells horrible and demands things of you before you enter and leave that do not make sense.
Also I didn't bring pants that were not ripped with me to chicago somehow, so the goodwill by the holography museum was really useful.
Internet access only happens at starbucks and work a little and later just at the library, so i'm not going to be heard from much. just so you know.
I still can't get to where I need to go at work. it is stupid. it is just so dumb. i spend an hour just trying to track down who i'm supposed to be doing stuff for and putting away my stuff because i can't go through many crucial doorways or use the elevator. and then i got my hair cut and some lady almost didn't let me in to room 38 where my stuff was because she didn't recognize me. speaking of which
also it is my birthday. i am two decades old. it makes my mom sad because it means she is pretty old. it was an okay day, mostly because yesterday sucked.
I apparently don't feel like writing very much more today. I blame data entry.
OOOO right I had this elaborate idea for how to write about scanning field forms like I am randy waterhouse, who is a character I don't really care for from the cryptonomicon, which i am finally almost only 100 pages away from finishing. it had something to do with an analogy about microwaves, mimicing how dumb it is that he compares romance to getting wisdom teeth dealt with for many pages.
also i dreamt about hippos in dryers (maybe because in real life someone took my shoes out of the dryer and threw them in the garbage yesterday?) giving me stuff and also bach's famous fugue and playing it via stepping stones shaped like stars and also making a dish out of starfish shaped grapefruit and some weird boys vs girls stuff and steel band back in time and all kinds of stuff last night. it is better than the 'oh know i have to inventory these artifacts and fight people at the same time!' dreams sympomatic of my addiciton to Devil May Cry and my new job, which is just too obvious a combination to be fun.
Whatever.