Alright, time for another update from me. Last night was certainly interesting. By far the most frustrating element of the night for me was the difficulty we had finding each other. My GPS apparently has a very inaccurate sense of how addresses are numbered around there. So I kept putting in the address of my destination, or a place near my destination, and it would take me to... trees. Just the middle of nowhere! (Not that I can usually find places once I arrive in the area... I suck at that.) So I pulled into a shopping center and waited for a while to see if my date would call me, since I'd forgotten to copy her number into my phone. I finally did realize that, because of a text she had sent me previously, I did have her number, so I called her and let her know where I was. It took her ages to actually find the area, and that only because I eventually let her know about the restaurant next door to the shopping center. Of course, after she pulled in, neither of us knew where the other was. I even walked around the parking lot and literally spent a while standing behind her truck staring at it, but she didn't take notice, figured I wasn't really around there, and eventually pulled out. When I confirmed via text that it had been her, she returned. It was about 1.5 hours after we'd intended to meet. Oy, what an evening! We both had quite the set of irksome misadventures. Over the rest of the details of the evening I must pass over in silence, but I can say that I look forward to the opportunity to see her again.
So, moving on to today! Not having gotten much sleep, and falling considerably behind on work (or, at least, that's how it feels to me; in reality I may be just on par with everyone else, which feels behind for me), I had difficulty with my morning class. (Doesn't help that the lectures proceed at such a slow pace and meander so much that I literally feel uncomfortable as a result and anxious to move on to the next part.) During the small group time, I did briefly exert some influence to make sure we were all up to speed on one aspect of our group project, and I directed us to a few specific questions in the workbook to keep discussion moving along. So I figure I did my part enough there to compensate for my relative lack of attention in class (or for the fact that I did the past week's worth of workbook answers during the first few minutes of the class!)
After class, a brief nap until noon; I really needed to recuperate. It was disturbed somewhat by my neighbor, who popped into my room to leave a note informing me that he'd mopped our bathroom floor. Then came lunch - not as good as usual, but enough to keep me going - and then my subsequent class. I'd be lying if I said that my attention during class were primarily on, well, class. I cannot force myself to care about literary structure that much, let alone providing reasons for construing these passages as a distinct pericope from those passages. I have yet to see a significant return on that level of structural treatment in terms of grasping the content of the text - which, alas, we spent relatively little time on, and that only after our mid-class break and not before it.
I confess, it was at the beginning of class that I discovered that Ancestry.com's free-access collection of the day is the 1920 United States Census. And that is one that I actually find truly useful, unlike the ones they've freed up over the past few days. So during class, in addition to taking sufficient notes on the class discussion (hey, I still do make at least a halfhearted effort, even when I'd rather not), I went through the appendix to my Ahnentafel and found all the 1920 census pages that I'd cited without having the original document image at hand for the full details, and I searched for and downloaded all of those. That took a while, and then I went on a little hunt for a few ancestors whom I hadn't found in the 1920 census. I've been searching for Jacob Mountz, who died in 1926 in Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pennsylvania, and who in 1910 lived in Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania. No luck. Can't find him anywhere. Rats!
By the end of class, I was so exhausted and drained that I could barely stay awake. I spent the last few minutes using some notes in my notebook to study for a test I have in another class tomorrow morning. Immediately after class, I returned to my room and went to sleep. Woke up again at 5:30 PM. Apparently my sleep was deep enough, because I have vague recollections of a dream. A dream in which I was doing genealogical research, and ended up getting into a discussion with an elderly Mormon woman. Apparently neither of my research interests (genealogy and Mormonism) is willing to leave me alone while I sleep...
Got up and went to supper. Most of my friends had to leave right after I got there, so I just ate with my neighbor and asked him some questions about his grandparents and great-grandparents. Got some very long stories in return. Never knew he was a quarter Swedish, great-grandson of a pair of Swedish immigrants. We walked back to the dorm together as he regaled me with a story about a massive chicken roast on his uncle's farm when he was a kid. Then on Google Earth, I looked up his hometown and got a variety of stories, including about his Yugoslavian next-door neighbors (who apparently are quite comfortable with urination on lawns) and about the adjacent Methodist church that was sold to a New Age group for a while before they (the New Agers) packed up and left and an Apostolic Holiness church moved in. (When they found out about all the seances and pagan worship that had occurred there under the previous tenants, the pastor's face apparently went white, and they promptly performed plenty of exorcisms, blessings, and a prayer walk.) During the New Age phase, apparently some days a group of middle-aged women would set up lawnchairs in the church backyard (adjacent to my friend's backyard), get nude, and hold ceremonies while 'moonclad'. Sounds like an eventful neighborhood!
After my neighbor introduced me to some streaming comedy radio on iTunes, he departed and I resumed some genealogical projects. I've been reading through the entire 1920 census of certain relevant towns and finding some potentially useful pages here and there (though mostly not so much). Right now I'm working on the extensive census records for my hometown. I've also been on Skype with a number of friends this evening.
I suppose that about catches things up! Before bed, I should definitely make certain to review the PowerPoint slides from the lectures for my Tuesday-and-Thursday class. Must be prepared for tomorrow's test! (Though, given the format, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge... I hope.)
So, moving on to today! Not having gotten much sleep, and falling considerably behind on work (or, at least, that's how it feels to me; in reality I may be just on par with everyone else, which feels behind for me), I had difficulty with my morning class. (Doesn't help that the lectures proceed at such a slow pace and meander so much that I literally feel uncomfortable as a result and anxious to move on to the next part.) During the small group time, I did briefly exert some influence to make sure we were all up to speed on one aspect of our group project, and I directed us to a few specific questions in the workbook to keep discussion moving along. So I figure I did my part enough there to compensate for my relative lack of attention in class (or for the fact that I did the past week's worth of workbook answers during the first few minutes of the class!)
After class, a brief nap until noon; I really needed to recuperate. It was disturbed somewhat by my neighbor, who popped into my room to leave a note informing me that he'd mopped our bathroom floor. Then came lunch - not as good as usual, but enough to keep me going - and then my subsequent class. I'd be lying if I said that my attention during class were primarily on, well, class. I cannot force myself to care about literary structure that much, let alone providing reasons for construing these passages as a distinct pericope from those passages. I have yet to see a significant return on that level of structural treatment in terms of grasping the content of the text - which, alas, we spent relatively little time on, and that only after our mid-class break and not before it.
I confess, it was at the beginning of class that I discovered that Ancestry.com's free-access collection of the day is the 1920 United States Census. And that is one that I actually find truly useful, unlike the ones they've freed up over the past few days. So during class, in addition to taking sufficient notes on the class discussion (hey, I still do make at least a halfhearted effort, even when I'd rather not), I went through the appendix to my Ahnentafel and found all the 1920 census pages that I'd cited without having the original document image at hand for the full details, and I searched for and downloaded all of those. That took a while, and then I went on a little hunt for a few ancestors whom I hadn't found in the 1920 census. I've been searching for Jacob Mountz, who died in 1926 in Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pennsylvania, and who in 1910 lived in Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania. No luck. Can't find him anywhere. Rats!
By the end of class, I was so exhausted and drained that I could barely stay awake. I spent the last few minutes using some notes in my notebook to study for a test I have in another class tomorrow morning. Immediately after class, I returned to my room and went to sleep. Woke up again at 5:30 PM. Apparently my sleep was deep enough, because I have vague recollections of a dream. A dream in which I was doing genealogical research, and ended up getting into a discussion with an elderly Mormon woman. Apparently neither of my research interests (genealogy and Mormonism) is willing to leave me alone while I sleep...
Got up and went to supper. Most of my friends had to leave right after I got there, so I just ate with my neighbor and asked him some questions about his grandparents and great-grandparents. Got some very long stories in return. Never knew he was a quarter Swedish, great-grandson of a pair of Swedish immigrants. We walked back to the dorm together as he regaled me with a story about a massive chicken roast on his uncle's farm when he was a kid. Then on Google Earth, I looked up his hometown and got a variety of stories, including about his Yugoslavian next-door neighbors (who apparently are quite comfortable with urination on lawns) and about the adjacent Methodist church that was sold to a New Age group for a while before they (the New Agers) packed up and left and an Apostolic Holiness church moved in. (When they found out about all the seances and pagan worship that had occurred there under the previous tenants, the pastor's face apparently went white, and they promptly performed plenty of exorcisms, blessings, and a prayer walk.) During the New Age phase, apparently some days a group of middle-aged women would set up lawnchairs in the church backyard (adjacent to my friend's backyard), get nude, and hold ceremonies while 'moonclad'. Sounds like an eventful neighborhood!
After my neighbor introduced me to some streaming comedy radio on iTunes, he departed and I resumed some genealogical projects. I've been reading through the entire 1920 census of certain relevant towns and finding some potentially useful pages here and there (though mostly not so much). Right now I'm working on the extensive census records for my hometown. I've also been on Skype with a number of friends this evening.
I suppose that about catches things up! Before bed, I should definitely make certain to review the PowerPoint slides from the lectures for my Tuesday-and-Thursday class. Must be prepared for tomorrow's test! (Though, given the format, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge... I hope.)
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