Hi again. I kind of forgot about this... sorry! Actually, in all honesty, it's been a combination of forgetting and me reformatting my computer because it had viruses. Again. Ugh.
Anyway, that's all over with and my baby's been running just fine.
I guess we should start at the beginning of my list, my internship.
I love it. Absolutely love it. I'm currently volunteering at the Winterthur Estate Museum and Gardens, and every day I'm there just flies by. I work with one other girl, also named Elizabeth, and we are surveying the condition of the lacquer coating on the some 4,000 silver pieces. A brief history: Winterthur was Henry Francis du Pont's home, he was an avid collector of Americana as well as an excellent gardener. The gardens at Winterthur are comparable to those of Longwood Gardens, in fact, some people prefer Winterthur's set up. Either way, he converted his country estate into a museum in 1951, and over the years, continued to donate furniture and objects to it. Winterthur is a museum that strives to educate the public about American decorative arts and is one of a few unique museums that is more or less entirely made up of period rooms. I personally think it is freaking fantastic. 9 floors, 175 rooms, all jammed with stuff.
What I am personally doing is going through each room, finding the silver objects off of a list, examining them, writing that information into Excel, finding any other information from the masses of files in the conservation office, and looking for trends, percentages, and types of damage so the museum can put together a grant to treat the silver. Silver is lacquered in museums because continual polishing actually removes a layer of silver and can, over time, wear down engravings, details, and, if it is a plated piece, can wear down to show the base metal. The original mass lacquering was in 1983-1987, and another set was done in 1998 when the lighting in the museum was redone. The majority of what we have seen were coated in that 1983-87 period, and it is amazing how well the lacquer has held up considering the amount of time it has been on. We ran into one that was coated in 1978, which is just mind boggling.
I have free access to the entire museum, as well as permission to pick up and look at any piece that I want. I have a badge that opens doors that aren't available to the public and we have the freedom to wander around wherever we want. It's awesome. The only thing that could make this any better is if they paid me. But I like it enough for it to not really be a problem just yet.
Backtracking a little bit, painting my room was a bitch and a half. We started at 7:45, painted the walls until 12:30, ate lunch, did the second coat, finished at 2:30, waited until 6:30 to start the trim, which I more or less finished up around 1:15 am. A few touchups the next day, and then I could move some furniture. However, I don't really like the set up I have right now, I think I'm going to have to switch a few things around if I'm going to be able to walk comfortably around. It's a little awkward to maneuver.
Lastly, I've gotten into the habit of writing letters, mostly because I know how much I hate it when everything in the mail is just bills and crappy coupons. I prefer to have something to look forward to, like a little surprise. I've written a few to Matt, and I'd like to expand that out to other people. Maybe tack on my grandparents, and roomates. And whoever really wants to have a letter.
That's all for now!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Painting : )
Went and picked out paint chips today, bought the cans of paint and accessories this afternoon, after dinner I'm pushing all my stuff into the middle of the room and taking down everything that's on the walls.
Tomorrow morning, the painting begins... BWAHAHAHAHAHA
I've decided to go sort of a light yellow tan, called "Soft Lemon" with a blue gray for the trim. It'll go a lot better with my current furniture, plus my room really screams little girl to me right now. I've got through so much in the past 4 years that moving back into this space makes me feel like I'm being pushed backwards not forwards. My solution, 2 gallons of paint and a lot of elbow grease. I'm just glad that not only are the parents letting me do it, but they also paid for it and offered to help. Sweeeeeeet : )
I'll post pictures when it's done.
Tomorrow morning, the painting begins... BWAHAHAHAHAHA
I've decided to go sort of a light yellow tan, called "Soft Lemon" with a blue gray for the trim. It'll go a lot better with my current furniture, plus my room really screams little girl to me right now. I've got through so much in the past 4 years that moving back into this space makes me feel like I'm being pushed backwards not forwards. My solution, 2 gallons of paint and a lot of elbow grease. I'm just glad that not only are the parents letting me do it, but they also paid for it and offered to help. Sweeeeeeet : )
I'll post pictures when it's done.
Monday, June 1, 2009
The great move home
To start, congrats to the class of 2009.
After graduation on Saturday, Matt and I headed back to my apartment to pack up a few more things before my mom was supposed to come the next day. Instead, we passed out to Kung-fu Panda, which is always excellent.
Sunday morning rolls around, it's about 11:30, and I decide we should go eat something before packing up. Mom's supposed to be here around 12:30, 1, so that's plenty of time to eat and start getting things together. At 1 I get a phone call, saying she'll leave in the next 15 minutes. At 2:30 I get another phone call saying she's going to take care of some stuff at home and then leave. At 3:45 I get a call saying she's on the Blue Route. Needless to say, I'm pretty cranky because everyone else in the world is packing up, and I need to make sure Matt gets out and past Dover before the race lets out. Thankfully Matt is a pretty patient person, otherwise I'm pretty sure moving day would have ended our relationship. I honestly think it brings out the worst in people.
Anyway, but about 2 we had everything packed up and in a pile in my room. We decided to start packing things up, which is not the thing I am best at. I can kind of visualize how things are going to work, but for some reason my brain decided it just didn't want to do that yesterday. We finally got all the crap into my car, all that was left was my bed, a dresser, and my desk sans drawers. I'm continually amazed at the amount of stuff that my car can hold, it's a constant reaffirmation of why I love it so much. We didn't need to get a Uhaul or a moving van, or any kind of anything. We took the company pick-up truck, put the bed, the desk, and the drawers in that, and we were done. Matt and Mom took off after everything was loaded, I stayed behind to finish up cleaning. Matt needed to get going to beat traffic, Mom needed to get going to beat the rain.
About an hour and a half later, I was finally finished. I scrubbed the walls, filled holes, cleaned toilets, showers, sinks, mirrors, vacuumed, and wiped out the kitchen counters and drawers. The last thing to do was just drop off my keys and call it a day.
I've been trying my best to make the transition from school apartment to my house as smooth as possible, but I severely underestimated the amount of crap that is still in my room. Over the past 8 or so years I've been in this room, I've accumulated an astounding amount of crap. There is even more stuff in the basement that I have to go through, my bathroom has hair product and makeup I haven't used since I was first introduced to it at age 12. It's a lot of just... stuff. It's ok though, I guess, I'm just throwing stuff away right and left. I've moved a bunch of things out of my room to make more space, I've consolidated the amount of clothing I have and severely cut back on shoes and purses. If I don't wear it, I don't need to keep it in my room.
As far as the room itself goes, I'm trying a slightly new layout for my stuff. What I'd love to do is paint so that the wall color and my bed color don't clash so horribly.
We'll see if that happens.
After graduation on Saturday, Matt and I headed back to my apartment to pack up a few more things before my mom was supposed to come the next day. Instead, we passed out to Kung-fu Panda, which is always excellent.
Sunday morning rolls around, it's about 11:30, and I decide we should go eat something before packing up. Mom's supposed to be here around 12:30, 1, so that's plenty of time to eat and start getting things together. At 1 I get a phone call, saying she'll leave in the next 15 minutes. At 2:30 I get another phone call saying she's going to take care of some stuff at home and then leave. At 3:45 I get a call saying she's on the Blue Route. Needless to say, I'm pretty cranky because everyone else in the world is packing up, and I need to make sure Matt gets out and past Dover before the race lets out. Thankfully Matt is a pretty patient person, otherwise I'm pretty sure moving day would have ended our relationship. I honestly think it brings out the worst in people.
Anyway, but about 2 we had everything packed up and in a pile in my room. We decided to start packing things up, which is not the thing I am best at. I can kind of visualize how things are going to work, but for some reason my brain decided it just didn't want to do that yesterday. We finally got all the crap into my car, all that was left was my bed, a dresser, and my desk sans drawers. I'm continually amazed at the amount of stuff that my car can hold, it's a constant reaffirmation of why I love it so much. We didn't need to get a Uhaul or a moving van, or any kind of anything. We took the company pick-up truck, put the bed, the desk, and the drawers in that, and we were done. Matt and Mom took off after everything was loaded, I stayed behind to finish up cleaning. Matt needed to get going to beat traffic, Mom needed to get going to beat the rain.
About an hour and a half later, I was finally finished. I scrubbed the walls, filled holes, cleaned toilets, showers, sinks, mirrors, vacuumed, and wiped out the kitchen counters and drawers. The last thing to do was just drop off my keys and call it a day.
I've been trying my best to make the transition from school apartment to my house as smooth as possible, but I severely underestimated the amount of crap that is still in my room. Over the past 8 or so years I've been in this room, I've accumulated an astounding amount of crap. There is even more stuff in the basement that I have to go through, my bathroom has hair product and makeup I haven't used since I was first introduced to it at age 12. It's a lot of just... stuff. It's ok though, I guess, I'm just throwing stuff away right and left. I've moved a bunch of things out of my room to make more space, I've consolidated the amount of clothing I have and severely cut back on shoes and purses. If I don't wear it, I don't need to keep it in my room.
As far as the room itself goes, I'm trying a slightly new layout for my stuff. What I'd love to do is paint so that the wall color and my bed color don't clash so horribly.
We'll see if that happens.
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