Stacks and stacks and stacks

I started work this week at the university library and am really enjoying it so far. The librarian that I'm working with, Merinda Hensley, is in charge of library instruction, so I'm helping her with several teaching projects this summer and working about 20 hours per week. On my first day of work I discovered that Merinda and I are kindred spirits. How could I tell? We are reading the same book at the same time! Merinda took me out to lunch, we started talking about food, and I mentioned that I'm almost finished with Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/) and Merinda said, "Me too!" So we had an instant bond.

My current work project is an annotated bibliography of books on writing to help doctoral students who are stalled on their dissertations. Yesterday I went searching in the stacks to find the books on the list. The stacks are a very scary place: ten decks of books, low ceilings, very little lighting, half-floors, and tricky compact shelving. I've heard that some librarians take sticky notes into the stacks with them in order to find their way back out -- kind of like a bread crumb trail. I didn't get lost and I found most of the books I was looking for, so I would call my first experience in the stacks supremely successful. :)

The university library is a really interesting place. The building was completed in 1926 and has been added onto about a half dozen times, and it is NOT one cohesive whole. In fact, it's sort of a mess of half-floors and dead-ends and staircases that lead nowhere. You may think I'm joking, but I'm not. The main stacks hold approximately 10 million volumes. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/administration/collections/collections/libhistory.htm) Housed inside the main library are a whole bunch of departmental libraries, including an English Library, Education Library, Newspaper and History Library, and many more. Unlike most academic libraries (75% of academic libraries in the U.S. use Library of Congress cataloging), the UIUC library uses the Dewey Decimal system, which I read about today in the Library and Information Science Library. (It was quite a fascinating read.) The interesting thing about using the Dewey Decimal system in a library as big as UIUC's is that numbers get extremely long. For example: 808.0420711N176I. OK, maybe "interesting" is a stretch. But I'm going to be a librarian! I love this stuff!

The (underground) undergraduate library, from the courtyard

I work at the main library, where undergraduates are not allowed to go into the stacks. They have their own little library and the two libraries are connected by an underground tunnel. The undergraduate library was built completely underground so that it would not block sunlight to this test field that grows on the quad and has been growing there since 1876.

The campus is huge. I decided to go find the Library and Information Science building, where most of my classes will be held in the fall. It's a huge brick building a couple of blocks away from the main library.

Isn't it gorgeous? I think I'll learn really well in such a lovely building. :)

Setting up housekeeping

As you can see, we're slowly setting up housekeeping and the place is starting to feel like we belong there. (An update on the stinky carpet: it gets replaced tomorrow!) But we still have a long way to go before we have everything unpacked. We're currently living in about half the house: bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

We've already visited the very lovely farmer's market where we procured this delicious peach salsa:

Also the Urbana Free Library, where we can now get library cards because we're registered Illinois voters! (And Illinois is one of the "early primary" states, so come February we get to exercise our democratic rights. We hardly ever got to vote in primary elections in Utah ;)

And here's the very cool Caffe Paradiso where we spent lots of time before we got an internet connection at home. (We find that we can live without many things -- television, two cars, etc. -- but we cannot live without the internet.)

Caffe Paradiso is just one of the many cool cafes in town. But it's my personal favorite because they play eclectic alternative music, have mismatched tables and chairs, and have very cool art in the ladies' restroom. All the walls are painted different shades of purple and each wall has a different artistic scheme. One wall has dinner plates with plastic fruit stuck all over the wall, one wall has hair and beauty accoutrements such as combs, curlers, brushes, etc. Another wall has gold spray-painted flowers. Maybe someday I'll get brave enough to take my camera into the bathroom, but I'm not quite ready for that just yet.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll

Drugs, nakedness, and loud music characterized this past weekend. We were at Bonnaroo, the premiere music festival in the U.S. I began to know what we were in for when we had to wait in a 16-mile line of cars to get into the festival camping grounds. As we were waiting on the shoulder of the freeway, hippies began to pour out of their cars and vans to take a wizz on the side of the road. And that was just the beginning.

We may have felt a bit out of place among the festival-goers, but the music was worth the hot and dry Tennessee weather, the crowded campsite, and the erratic behavior of our peers. On Thursday we saw The Black Angels and Sam Roberts Band (we really liked SRB).

Friday: Uncle Earl (folk quintet), Alexa Ray Joel (daughter of Billy Joel - she kinda sucks), Kings of Leon, Michael Franti, Lily Allen and The Black Keys. Friday night was one of the highlights of the festival -- the SuperJam, with Ben Harper (Mike's favorite) jamming with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and ?uestlove of The Roots. It was amazing.

Saturday: Hot Tuna, Regina Spektor, Ziggy Marley, Damien Rice, and BEN HARPER again. His show was amazing; his music has so much positive energy. Ben had special guests John Paul Jones and Ziggy Marley play with him and his band, The Innocent Criminals. My favorite song that they played was the closer, "Better Way." It was positively inspirational. As if Saturday's lineup wasn't cool enough, we also saw THE POLICE. Yep, Sting and company, reunited. They were great.

Sunday: John Butler Trio (a new discovery for us -- someone we want to listen to A LOT more), T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, The Decemberists (weird but interesting), Wilco (AWESOME), The White Stripes, and Widespread Panic.

We had planned to camp Sunday night and leave Monday morning, but I couldn't really take any more sleeping in the tent, so we drove all night on Sunday and got home at about 5:30 on Monday morning.

If you want to see more pictures of Bonnaroo or check out the artists, go to http://www.bonnaroo.com/.

More later on my first day at work, the maze of the University library, and more. . .

Getting settled in Urbana, IL

Michael and I have now been in Urbana, IL for one full week. Here's a quick rundown of our adventure so far:

We crossed the Mississippi and left the West behind physically, but our hearts are still there. :) Illinois is beautiful, though. It's very green and has lots of trees. We really like Urbana, especially historic Urbana. It has lots of lovely tree-lined streets and a really cute downtown area. Last night we celebrated the one-month anniversary of our wedding at the Courier Cafe, a little place downtown that dates back to the early 1900s.


This is our little house in Urbana. Actually it's a duplex and it's just north of Urbana proper. It's pretty comfortable, but it has the stinkiest, funkiest carpet on the planet. (Three dogs used to live here.) Luckily, our landlord is coming this weekend to rip out the carpet. We've steam cleaned it twice and it still smells like dogs and smelly feet. All of our stuff arrived on Monday and we unloaded with the help of Brother Pierce from our branch and the missionaries -- Elder Bulfin from Australia and Elder Cook from Washington. Almost everything arrived intact, with just a few casualties.

This is the field behind our house -- and I don't think it's corn. Most of the fields around here are full of corn that's about two feet high and growing every day. But I'm not sure what this is. Dad? Can you tell?

Here's Michael working to make our home habitable . . . we arrived on Wednesday, June 6th and our stuff didn't arrive until Monday, June 11th. So we had plenty of time to just clean and clean and clean some more. :)

Poor Simone was completely freaked out by the move and stayed in this cupboard above the fridge for our entire first day here. Poor baby! She's sort of adjusted now -- and also has new hiding places since all of our things arrived. (Her favorite place is under the day bed on top of Michael's suitcase.)

Dobler seems completely unfazed by the relocation. He's hangin' out, spending time outside, and acting like he's still in Logan. This weekend the kitties are staying in a "Pet Hotel" while Michael and I travel to Bonnaroo in Tennessee. It's a four-day music festival -- our wedding gift to each other. So we'll post another update when we get back next week!