Then Comes Baby...

We're having a baby girl in April!

Then Comes Marriage...

First Comes Love...

Picking up where I left off...

You may have noticed a brief absence...

But I promised several people I'd start updating this blog again, and today, November 18, is the one year anniversary of the day Bret proposed, which I think is just a couple of posts down on the main page. I didn't intend to disappear, life just got in the way!

SO what I have been up to?
There was a big High Church Episcopal wedding, complete with blue shoes, red velvet cake, and an Elvis impersonator. There was a honeymoon to Toronto and Niagara Falls that also introduced us to Canadian pharmacies, since I got really sick and Bret ventured out each day to try to find something to make me feel better.

There was also the BIG SURPRISE of me getting pregnant just 6 short weeks after the wedding...yup, baby girl no-name-yet will be arriving in April, 11 months after our May 2008 wedding. A lot of people are going to furrow their brows and count to nine when she's born, I'm sure.

So now that brings us to now! I'll be putting up pictures in the next few days...wedding shots, ultrasound pics, etc. We're putting up a fence in the backyard and I'm getting a dog for Christmas, hopefully one adopted from the Golden Retriever Rescue in Memphis. I'm expecting a niece any day now; she'll be here by the time we go home for Thanksgiving.

Glad to be back!

2007 in Review

1. What did you do in 2007 that you've never done before?
Got engaged!

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Last year I resolved to try to say something over in my head before i let it come out of my mouth. I also resolved to try to get rid of some of the clutter in my life. They are both ongoing. for 2008, I resolved to run a 5K by March, and to accomplish this whole wedding event without anyone going crazy.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No.

5. What places did you visit? Orlando, Chicago, Annapolis, Detroit, New Orleans.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? a Master's in Library Science. a husband! Financial security.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Nov. 18, the day Bret proposed. Dec 19, the day I turned 30 and left my 20's behind.

8. What were your biggest achievements of the year? writing my thesis. Getting an actual job as an archivist.

9. What were your biggest failures? Failing to finish my degree in the original time frame i set for myself.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Um, ongoing repurcussions of my May 2005 car accident, and a saggy brain.

11. What was the best thing you bought? my Superhero necklace.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Bret's dogged pursuit of the ability to make people call him, "Dr."

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? George W. Bush

14. Where did most of your money go? everyday stuff.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? getting engaged!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007? Robert Randolph, "Ain't Nothing Wrong with That."

17. What do you wish you'd done more of? seen my friends more.

18. What do you wish you'd done less of? spent less time having attacks of anxiety about my future.

19. How did you spend Christmas last year? you mean, in 2007? drove to jackson Dec. 21, round trip to H'burg on Dec 24, southaven Dec 25, Jackson Dec 29, H'burg Dec 31. Managed to see both families.

20. Did you fall in love in 2007? everyday I discover something new to love about him.

21. How many one-night stands? none

22. What was your favorite TV program? The Office.

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2007? Went to Disney World.

24. What was the best book you read? The Book Thief, the last Harry Potter, the Kathleen Koen books, Jan Karon's new book- "several other I can't remember right now.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Robert Randolph

27. What did you want and get? an engagement ring!

28. What did you want and not get? a settlement of my auto hit-and-run case.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? "Dan in Real Life" was good.

30. Did you make some new friends this year? Lyerly! and some of the people i work with. new people from Vocare.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? more financial security. And a working shift-key on my computer at work-I know this seems trivial but I curse it every day.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? can I wear this to work?

33. What kept you sane? Faith, friends, family.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? as always, Matt Damon.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? the war.

36. Who did you miss? my dog-still in foster care with my parents. John.

37. Who was the best new person you met? Claire-Bear!

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

This was a pretty eventful year. I spent most of it anticipating a proposal, and then it came when I least expected it--which also happened to be exactly the right time. I think I learned a lesson from that--and now that I said it I'm sure Bret will not let me forget it. ;)

I said yes!!

Bret and I got engaged on Sunday night while visiting the Gulf Coast for his birthday!

Build a better mousetrap

I think I've mentioned it before, but Bret has a cat. Her name is Priscilla. She was a stray that came around about a year ago, and now rules the house. I never thought she liked me very much, just tolerated me--then again, I'm used to a dog that occasionaly spends her time just gazing at me with adoration.

But tonight I have been proven wrong. She brought me my very own mouse. Into the house. STILL ALIVE. I shrieked when it got loose, and have spent the last hour alternating between perching on various pieces of furniture and calling people to come help me.

I finally gave up. I think it has crawled into the recliner. The living room is in shambles. I tipped over the couches to keep it from going under there and there are kitchen chairs in strategic places to leap onto in case the mouse begins to desire my toes.

I had to lock the cat in the bathroom because she wouldn't leave the recliner alone and I don't want her to catch it and then kill it on the carpet, but then she figured out how to open the door (not kidding).

Bret is getting here soon and then HE can deal with it. I bet he shrieks when it skitters across the floor. ha.

Archivists: The New Macho Heroes

I’m attending a conference in a suburb of Detroit at the moment. The events themselves are happening at this place, a GORGEOUS learning community where ever the lampposts are works of sculpture.

The symposium covers the collection and care of scrapbooks, and though I don’t fall into the geographical region of this archivists’ group, I came anyway because the topic is so closely related to my thesis topic. (As of this posting, 5 days left. Pray for me).

One of the presenters was talking about how we first started seeing a surge in casual photography in the 60’s and 70’s, particularly photography by and of middle-class people in their homes and doing everyday things. This happened because the equipment and processing materials became available, both in cost and equipment. Prior to this time, photography equipment was really only affordable to the rich…and instead of dropping a roll of film at the drugstore, whole cameras had to be sent away for expensive processing. Very wealthy families and the upper classes had photography as a hobby for quite some time.

In much the same way, wealthy families also created personal museums and archives to chronicle their family’s history. This was, understandably, an expensive undertaking.

Exploring one’s family history has had a huge resurgence in the past 10-20 years, and with the popularity of knowing whether or not your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was, say, the Duke of some small piece of Scotland, the practice had become less cost-prohibitive, just like photography. One doesn’t have to hire a genealogist or historian when the internet and an LDS Genealogy Center are available. Researchers can amass huge quantities of paperwork and photos about their ancestors. Wealthy families would have established archives for the storage of these materials, and now that has started to catch on with more of the middle-class.

After that entire introduction, I finally come to the point of that post, and an impromptu survey. You may have already figured it out. I’ve toyed with the idea of (one day) forming a small business as a personal archivist. (Bret thinks I should be called “The Mercenary Archivist.” I think he already has the URL reserved. Archiving For Hire ™!) A person (or family) would, ideally, hire me to organize their personal papers or collections, or write a family history, or do historical or genealogical research on their behalf. So, if you are reading this (and I know there aren’t many, but please play along) what do you think? Could this be a niche I could fill? To be sure, it is extremely specialized, this business of coming into someone’s home, making sense of their family history, putting them into some sort of order, and performing preservation and basic conservation in an attempt to make them last longer.

Feasible small business model OR asking for trouble and many hours spent listening to old ladies tell me about the time their great-grandmother left her husband to go to the big city and be a hand model. Discuss.

To change the subject, Michigan is beautiful, and it is actually fall here and I am wearing a LONG-SLEEVED SHIRT and a SWEATER. In Mississippi I wouldn’t need this combination until late November. Also I have a rental car with GPS, which I have used on every trip, even to the CVS I could see from my hotel window. The unit has a husky male voice and talks me soothingly through every u-turn and lane change. And tonight that GPS will be delivering me (I really do think of it this way, as though he’s the one in charge and I’m just the lowly servant) to Marshall, Michigan, where I will get to have dinner with MICHAEL LAWSON, rock star. I’m very excited because I haven’t gotten to see him since I left Wilmore.

(Addendum: I’m actually posting this two weeks after I wrote this, so I must add that Michael and I also used the GPS to get ourselves to Turkeyville. Unfortunately, all the turkeys had gone to bed. Which may have been a good thing.)

Grill out today in the name of St. Lawrence

Today is the feast of St. Lawrence, who happens to be the patron saint of archivists and librarians. He was a deacon of the early church of Rome, and his primary task was to preside over the financial records of the church. In 258 the Emperor Valerian confiscated all church property and executed the pope (Sixtus II) and seven deacons who were distributing food and funds to the poor, mostly widows and orphans. The emperor demanded that Lawrence hand over the records of how much money had been distributed and an accounting of the current financial state of the church. As any good archivist would do, Lawrence informed the emperor that such a massive request would take three days to process. Lawrence arranged to quickly spend the money remaining in the accounts (a common event to archivists--being told they have a limited amount of time to spend any remaining budget--example: me, three months ago, spending four large figures in less than two weeks). When the emperor demanded to see the wealth of the church, Lawrence showed him the widows, orphans, and the poor, and told him that these were the treasures. The Emperor was incensed and ordered that Lawrence be roasted alive over a fire on a gridiron. Lawrence is reputed to have said, at one point, "You may turn me over, I am well done on this side."