Introduction

August 2000
September 2000
October 2000
November 2000
December 2000
January 2001
February 2001
March 2001
April 2001
May 2001
June 2001
July 2001
August 2001

March 2001

1 March 2001

5 March 2001

13 March 2001

16 March 2001

24 March 2001

29 March 2001

1 March 2001
Thursday

Not much is going on. I've come to visit Kevin; oddly enough, I'm already very bored. I've brought books with me (and gods know Kevin has enough books that he could lend me!), but I have no desire to read. I did also bring my photos and album with me, since I haven't touched the thing since October at least, but I've already finished working on that; it took surprisingly little time last night to stick the pictures inside.

The next project on that front is to scan the pictures in and insert them into my journal, but I can't do that here - or rather I could, but I'd just end up rescanning the pictures in Hamburg, because for some reason Kevin's scanning software won't allow sizing or other adjustments before the scanning itself, so the quality is worse than it would be otherwise. I don't know, but I'm hoping that Gabi's setup is better. Anyway, look for pictures in a few weeks' time.

Yup, that's really about all that's going on in my life. I can play with my web page all I want while I'm here, but I rather miss the convenience of the Smith Center, of being able to get online whenever I want and check things on the web or upload or whatever. But I'll survive. It's only for a little while, anyway. It just means that I have to play with things offline.

5 March 2001
Monday

In the past half-week my page hasn't undergone as much obvious renovation as in the weeks before; though I've done a good bit (see Updates for details), a lot of it has been more subtle. Hmm, perhaps I shouldn't use the word "subtle" too much in reference to my web page. I was looking through The Internet for Dummies the other day, and on page 161 (Chapter 10: "My First Home Page") it says, "Tiled background images can be cool if they're subtle but make text utterly illegible as often as not." Heh. So much for that.

I have been geeking quite a bit; I've especially been fiddling with JavaScript. That's my new toy, I suppose. I've also been skimming a UNIX book, rejoicing when I occasionally know what it's talking about, and wishing that I hadn't forgotten all the C++ I ever knew.

13 March 2001
Tuesday

I actually haven't been geeking quite as much this week, because I've had other things to do. Yes, I've been working on the computer, but I wasn't geeking my web page all the time.

We even made an excursion to Cambridge on Saturday. For two years I've been e-corresponding with a guy named Gareth, but we'd never met, so he and I managed to converge last weekend in that university town. It was quite fun; nothing exciting really, but it was neat to meet him in person. I've been writing and chatting to him for so long that I know him pretty well, but it's still very different to meet someone in person. I had an odd sensation of double vision, of perceiving the same person(ality) in two different ways. It just takes a bit of time for that feeling to wear off, though, and I feel like I know him a lot better now.

I took a whole roll of film; I had left my last roll of film in England to be developed, because I want to break my bad habit of sending film through X-ray machines 12 times. A free roll of 200-speed film came from that, so I used it that afternoon in Cambridge. I'm quite impressed with myself, actually, because I am horrible about taking pictures. That's why the problem with X-ray machines comes up; I carry my camera around with me, but I forget to actually take pictures, and I'm too cheap to develop a roll before it's finished. I really should get in the habit of buying rolls of only 12 rather than 24. But anyway, I'm going to pick up those pictures this afternoon, and I left another roll in Hamburg to be developed, so there should be pictures coming pretty soon.

In Cambridge, across from King's College and just north of Great St. Mary's, there's the Cambridge University Press Bookstore. Of course I couldn't resist going in there! I saw so many books that I would love to give my parents. Unfortunately I had forgotten my credit card at home, but that was probably for the best.

Back in January (about the time I wrote my journal entry about the AFParty movement) the maintainer of the AFP meets pages posted to the AFParty list asking for volunteers to take over the maintenance of those pages. After considering for a little bit, I emailed her saying I'd do it, so now three of us are going to be maintaining those pages, which are going to be moved onto L-Space. They're not there quite yet, because things like CVS access for me and one of the other maintainers has to be sorted out first, but it's getting there. There are big plans for these pages; we're going to archive announcements and reports for past meets as well as for present and future ones. To that end I have sorted a 4MB text file (yes, plain ASCII text!) of five years of posts on AFP. That was about a four-day job, but it's done now, yay!

Soon I'll be back in Hamburg, and life will start churning again. I'm going to have a heck of a lot to do when I get back. It'll be fun.

16 March 2001
Friday

Back in Hamburg. The trip home was nearly as uneventful as usual, but there were a couple of high points. As usual, in the airport Kevin and I had a little bit of time to loiter before I progressed on to the gate [1], so we waddled along to a bookstore to buy a book that I'd seen several times and always intended to get. It's a biography of Elizabeth I by David Starkey, entitled simply Elizabeth I think. I ended up also finding another book I wanted to buy, Bound Feet and Western Dress, so I got that too and read a few chapters on the airplane. I'm glad I got it; it's fascinating and at the same time an easy read. I really needed some vacation reading, because I've been reading such heavy thinking for so long that I need to let my analytical skills take a break. [2]

On the way through passport control in the Lübeck airport I waited in line politely, leaving a bit of space between me and the person currently at the window - and a blond Swiss woman coolly slid past me and stood in line in front of me! I was rather affronted; after all, it was quite clear that I was in line (what else could I be doing there?), and the line on the floor was clear as well, I thought. (No one in the EU line was paying attention to it, but that's their problem.) Very rude. But I didn't make a fuss, because after all, I was going to have to wait for my baggage anyway, so it didn't make much difference where I waited. I was just a bit shocked. Oh, and then the passport control guy stamped my passport! I was quite surprised; it had never been stamped before, because I had a visa.

Last night I had a fit of nervousness about getting back into my life and doing all the things I have to get done; however, it turns out that even though I didn't get up this morning until 11:00, I've gotten a lot done this morning. They were little things, ones that I could easily have skipped if I needed to, but I had spent so much brain energy on remembering them that it has been a relief to finally do them. I've been to three stores, a bank, and a post office. I've got just one more errand to do today, one which I can just as easily do later, so I may end up just putting that off. I intend to head home soon, eat dinner (nothing special, just a cheapo frozen pizza, but it'll be hot food in my own home), organize my room, work on my photo album, and read. I may even do laundry, though most probably I'll put that off until later.

I told you I got a domain name... That's a bit of a story. I had been thinking about getting one for a while, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted but "laurabelle," but laurabelle.com, laurabelle.org, and laurabelle.net are all registered (by the same person I think). So my friend Adrian suggested that I get laurabelle-is-a-nice-person.com, referring to an incident last spring. I was explaining to him that I didn't think I was very nice, at least innately, and he attempted to convince me otherwise. He even made a small image file for my computer wallpaper, green with "Laurabelle is a nice person" in yellow. I like it very much; it reminds me that I have friends who are willing to defend me against myself. That's why I registered the name niceperson.org; it will perform the same function of reminding.

I say "will perform," because it is of no use as yet. If you ask for http://niceperson.org (note: no www) you'll be redirected to my MHC site. However, I will eventually do something with it, definitely after I graduate from MHC but possibly before then. One of my reasons for getting a domain name was to have somewhere to put my web page when I graduate, but maybe I'll decide that I want to do something with it before then. We'll see.

Other things that are going on... My brother is getting married in June, and preparations for that are proceeding. I'm currently trying to get flights sorted out. I've also got my internship as well as my classes for the next semester to arrange. And that's my life, pretty much. At least I'm not short of company; lots of people from the program are still in Hamburg. Funny thing is, I haven't seen Shannon yet. The Smith Center doesn't feel the same without her.

24 March 2001
Saturday

Warning: This is going to be a very long entry. I have a ton to say about this week!

The major thing that has happened this week was that I started my internship at the Museum der Arbeit. I had an appointment with Dieter Lindemann Monday morning; I had no idea exactly who he was, but he had called me up at the end of February, and we'd made this appointment. He'd actually forgotten the appointment, but that was okay, because I hadn't. Dieter is the MdA's archivist, and I'll spend most of my time in the archives, but he's trying to send me around to other people too, so that I get to see more of what makes up a museum. For example, on Monday morning I'm going to the photography workroom.

The week has been slightly difficult, but I think I just have to get used to the way things run. I've had to learn about the cataloging system (there are at least three numbers assigned to every item - an inventory number, an internal catalog number, and a SHIC number [3]) and Faust, the database the Museum uses for its collections. (Dieter is responsible only for two-dimensional things, documents and photographs mostly; someone else takes care of the three-dimensional stuff.)

The first couple of days I mostly hung around doing whatever people found for me to do, but yesterday Malte [4] thoroughly explained how to use Faust, and then I helped him to do a couple of entries. These database entries are very thorough; with documents and things, the complete text has to be typed in. Poor Malte is now in the middle of transcribing a letter written in the old German cursive style; the letters are completely different. I find it very hard to read, because the letters aren't what I want them to be. A lower-case 'h' looks like an 'f' to me, and 'a' looks sort of like 'r'. It's crazy. However, it's also very interesting; the whole Konvolut [5] he's working on is a collection of reports from two Wanderlust groups at the beginning of the century (1910-1914). There was a group of men and one of women, and they'd make excursions out of the city, sometimes separately and sometimes together. One participant would be assigned to write the report (somewhat like AFPmeet reports), and it would be copied and distributed. That's what Malte has to type up painstakingly.

I've actually got my own project now; Dieter has lots of signs printed in the United States which he wants me to catalog. They're all about safety, mostly industrial but some driving, fire, etc. Nearly all of them are in English, which is why Dieter wants me to do them. I sorted them yesterday (Friday), and next week I'm going to start doing some research about the organizations which had them printed. Eventually I'll enter them into the database.

It's really hard to get up at the same time every morning and go to work. I guess I've just been on vacation too long, or maybe the German university system has spoiled me. For some reason this feels like Real Work, more than college or even Merriwood did. It's not that I don't work hard for my classes or get up early for class, but I don't go to the same place every day. In the summer I got up early every morning to go to work at Merriwood, but somehow that was different; I guess I just thought of it as a summer job, separate from things that people actually do for a living. Otoh, getting up and going to the office is what nearly every adult I know does every morning; it's what my father does, and it's what I'll be doing for the rest of my life (once I get out of college and off my bum and find a job).

Actually, I could imagine myself working permanently at a museum. I don't think I'd be an exhibit person, but I could definitely imagine myself as an archivist. There's a lot I don't know right now, but I can learn, and I'd love being in contact with documents - as real a connection with history as one can get.

Friday I was feeling pretty bad, but I went to work anyway, because I hated to just call up and say I wasn't going. I stayed a couple of hours, and then I told Dieter that I was really feeling bad. He asked me if I wanted to go home, which of course I did. I went to sleep about 13:00 and slept until 17:00! Yup, four hours. I usually don't sleep that long, but I felt so much better afterwards.

On Monday I had a doctor's appointment at 13:10; because I'm always paranoid about being late, I was there about thirty minutes early. I expected to wait for a long time, but to my surprise, I was called pretty directly. I guess it's just German efficiency or something, because I was walking out of the office by 13:06. I've never been out of a doctor's office so fast in my life; I've given up on going to my orthodontist appointments on time, because I always get seen 15 minutes late.

This weekend I'm trying to decide on classes for next semester, because I need to tell Dieter when I'm going to be available during the semester. I suppose it doesn't have to be hard and fast, but it would be nice to have a general idea. It's always hard to decide on courses; I've had (and thrown away) so many ideas already! The one course I'm sure of is Rainer's history course, the followup to last semester's. That was 1871-1945; this will be 1945-2001. We're not going to meet on Friday any more, though; it's going to be Tuesday 18:00-20:00, which will be problematic for different reasons. Rainer complained last semester that we fell asleep in front of videos; I think he may complain that we fall asleep in class. :-( Hopefully it won't be too bad, though.

Other than that, I'm really not sure. Generally, I think I might take a German, an English, a French... Specifically, I have almost no idea. One class that I think sounds very interesting is a linguistics seminar on „rechtschreibreform”, which is a controversial subject at the moment. German Rechtschreibung (which literally means "right-writing") encompasses spelling, punctuation, etc. The rules have recently been changed to make them more logical and reduce inconsistencies; naturally, everyone has an opinion about the changes. I started learning German the last year MHC taught the old Rechtschreibung; I only found out at the end of the year that there was to be the new, and I decided to start using it. I'd eventually have to, so it was better to get into the habit earlier rather than later. The Smith program doesn't require us to use one system or the other; we just have to pick one and stick to it. Anyway, I think it would be interesting to take a class about this issue. The only thing against it is that it meets on Fridays, for three hours.

By the way, the title of the class is written exactly as I did above, i.e. with quotation marks and uncapitalized. It was under discussion that German nouns might not be capitalized any more, but that change didn't go through. I'm glad; it makes it a lot easier to pick out the nouns in a sentence.

In spite of its being on Friday, I think I'll take that class. With my internship, I doubt I'd have a long weekend anyway. That leaves me two other classes. I'll probably do an English and a French, but I'm not sure yet. I might end up taking the Vorlesung by Haas again (he was the professor I wrote about Orlando for); next semester it's going to be on medieval literature, which is always interesting. Shannon and Mara are going to do that class for Chaucer credit, which might be either good or bad for me. I don't know, it depends on where I find interesting classes.

Yeah, I think I've written enough about this week. See ya later.

29 March 2001
Thursday

Oh where to start, where to start... I have even more to say than last week; I've been keeping a list of things I want to write in here. It's slightly scary, actually. I'm so obsessed with this thing. I really don't know how to make this any sort of logical progression, so I guess I'll just start at the beginning of my list and work downwards.

I saw my floormate Bianka in the kitchen on Monday, and we were talking when Younès (the Moroccan) came in; after he left, I said to Bianka that I really didn't like him, and she replied that she didn't either. She said he was very shallow, and that the reason he picks on me is that I understand and can speak German better than he can. He's not really interested in learning German (he's studying Computer Science apparently, which is mostly English anyway), and he doesn't understand why I am, and why I'm good at it. It bugs him, so he bugs me. I guess it makes sense; one time I went into the kitchen when he was there, as well as someone I didn't know, and he introduced us, saying that I didn't speak German very well! And he's always asking me if I understand. I can deal with his nonsense if I know what's behind it.

Unfortunately, Bianka moved out today. She applied to another university for this semester, so she had to move out of the dorm. She was my favorite person in the dorm, and she's gone! Ah well, at least I got her address (both land and email), so I've not totally lost contact with her. I don't want to let nice people go so easily. She was always so friendly and welcoming to me.

Some weird things happened to me lately. For one, I bought some yoghurt (of a brand I'd never had before) that said it was cherry flavor, and then when I opened it yesterday, it was cream-colored rather than pink. It was peach flavor, which was fine with me because I actually had looked for peach (or any other flavor that I hadn't had a million times in the last week) but settled for cherry since I couldn't find anything else I liked. Not a problem at all, but strange.

And then I got my phone bill from Deutsche Telekom, on the 28th of March. The bill was supposed to be for the whole of March. 'Scuse me?! Though perhaps it does make sense, because a week or so ago I "upgraded" my account; I'm paying nearly DM10 more per month (making it a total of DM35), but I'll get 9 Pf per minute to Great Britain and the United States (as opposed to 24 Pf which I've paid in the past), which makes it a very good deal indeed. So perhaps they just cut off my month early and will charge the rest with the new month, or something like that. I guess it makes sense, but it's still weird. But what is strange and in explicable is the numbering of the sheets of paper they sent me. The first one is numbered "1 von 2," the second "1 von 3," and the third "3 von 3." What's up with that?

Oh, and I've started to buy bottled water. Yes, it is true... I'd considered it before, because I'm getting sick of drinking Hamburg water, but my neighborhood grocery store doesn't have anything other than carbonated mineral water, and I don't drink that stuff. I need something I can drink rather than sip, iyswim. But then the other day I was in MiniMAL, and I saw the cases of Vittel, and I grabbed a bottle and ran. I was hooked. I left the bottle on the floor next to my bed and drank from it whenever I was thirsty, and then when it ran out I bought another one. Tuesday I actually bought a whole case, six bottles. It was heavy but not impossible, and it actually works out cheaper that way, because I get more back for the bottles if I bring back a whole case. Yeah, I get money back for the bottles, even though they're plastic, not glass. It's actually a considerable amount, 50 Pf per individual bottle (I paid DM2 for it). That's a good incentive to help the environment, eh?

On a slightly sadder subject, my beloved rose plant has developed mites. I think it must have got them when I left it with someone else over Christmas; there were a ton of plants wintering in her room, and the air was hot and humid. They didn't get really bad until recently, though, but when I came back from England a couple of weeks the spider mites and their webs were all over my poor plant. Finally I remembered to call my mother, and she gave me some advice. Shannon did too, so I followed a mixture of their counsel. I put the plant sideways under the kitchen tap and rinsed off the mites, and then I wiped off the leaves with water with a very little bit of dish soap in it. Shannon said the slightly basic soap would keep the mites from coming back; I hope she's right. I'll do it all over again in a few days, but I hope it does work. My poor plant has not been doing well since I left in December; it needs a vacation.

And on a slightly more serious note, I got back my papers from last semester. (I still haven't gotten my grade for linguistics, but that's natural because I only turned in my transcription last week.) I got an A- in Jutta's class; I got an A on the paper, 2 A-'s on other things, and B+ in oral participation. I think that last is a bit harsh; admittedly I wasn't the most talkative, but really, who can be expected to get in a word in edgewise next to Emily? She's nice and normally has interesting things to say, but she does talk a lot. But oh well, my average would have come out the same even if she'd given me a higher grade, so I guess it doesn't really matter. It just stings slightly to get a lower-than-usual grade in oral participation, in which I usually do well.

Rainer gave me an A- for the semester, too; I'm not sure, however, what the grade on my paper was. He said on the Schein exactly what I thought of the paper, i.e. that it simply didn't actually argue anything. He said it a bit nicer, that the next step was to work on analysis etc., but the gist was the same.

I also got my Haas paper back [6], though I wasn't expecting that until much later, according to what I'd heard about him. He gave me an A- too, which I really feel was unjustified. That was a B paper at best; I don't see how he could give me a good grade for something that was mere description. It could have been a much better paper if I'd just focused and tuned and honed it more, cut out the verbose description and actually argued something. I just didn't leave myself enough time; I wrote it in such a short time that I lost track of where I was going. I'm very disappointed in myself. It could have been a really great paper, and I cheated myself. I wish I had a reason to rework it, to invest the time and effort necessary to fulfill its potential.

With the ending of the last semester, another is beginning. I had a meeting with Gabi yesterday about my courses, and I seem to be set, unless I go to my classes and find out that I hate them. I had a slight scare that my „rechtschreibreform” class wasn't going to be offered, because I couldn't find it anywhere, but I did find it, so I'm okay. I've also found two other courses, an Amerikanistik and a Romanistik (French), so I'm all set.

You're probably wondering what the "s.t." thing is about in the time of the first course. It stands for sine tempore and its opposite is cum tempore. There's this weird tradition in German course times that classes begin 15 minutes after the stated time and end 15 minutes early; this is called the akademische Viertel, the "academic quarter." If nothing's next to the stated time, it means it starts later; putting "s.t." means that it starts on time. Don't ask me why they don't just always put the correct time...

I linked to the online course descriptions (where available), but unfortunately they're all in German, even the course with the English title. Eh well. Basically they all seem interesting. For the Montesquieu course I have to read Lettres persanes by Thursday a week from today, but that's not too hard, because I can read nearly 40 pages in an hour, so if I read a little more than an hour a day, I'll get it done in time. No problem. Getting ahold of the book in time was a bit of a problem, libraries and bookstores being the inconvenient things that they are, but I finally checked out a copy and ordered another one from Amazon.fr; it should be here soon.

But yeah, those are my hypothetical courses. You may notice that even though I have class for three hours on Friday (ick!), I do have Monday and Wednesday free, which is fun. I have committed Wednesday to Dieter, but Monday is still my own, which means that I can have nice long weekends if I so desire.

Speaking of Dieter, he's still very nice. He has the disconcerting habit of saying "du Scheiße" when things don't go the way he wants them to, and that sounds to me like "you piece of ****" - but I think that's just a cultural wossname, and he doesn't mean that the way it sounds. He hasn't been there much this week, for various reasons, but today I started entering posters into Faust. It's quite boring after the first couple, just cutting and pasting. I'm going to do more tomorrow, when Dieter's not going to be there, but that means that I can leave whenever I get tired of it. Stephanie, an extremely nice student worker, said that everybody goes home early on Friday anyway. :-)

I can imagine myself working in an archive, which makes me think of my dad's advice to get a one-year Master's in information management. It's sounding more logical. I don't quite know where to start, though; I've barely thought about such things. I need to take GREs in the fall (since I neglected to do them last summer) and figure out where to go... In addition, I need to figure out what kind of information management I want, because it seems that a lot of what I've found in my short search seems to be health- or e-business-oriented, which is definitely not what I'm looking for. Dad, if you're reading this, guidance is definitely welcome; I'll get around to asking for it directly as soon as I get my head on straight...

I like ending on a happy note, so here it is - I got my last Christmas presents today! It's a fair step towards making Christmas last all year long. <g>

And now I must end this, because I've written far too much already. And I do have to go to work tomorrow!

April 2001

[1] I hate European airports. You have to part at the security check on the way to the gate, rather than being able to wait for boarding together and then watch the plane depart. I wonder if they let guardians of children flying alone accompany the child to the gate, or do they just not let children fly alone?
[2] I brought Ulysses along to England in the hope that I might finish it; I read about forty pages. I left the book with Kevin when I came home.
[3] SHIC stands for Social History and Industrial Classification. It's a subject classification for museums and was developed so that there would be a standard classification system, and not just individual museum-specific ones. The MdA has its own page about SHIC, but it's only in German, unfortunately. I have been learning the system a little bit this week, and I understand the basics, but I think it'll take practice to learn how to use it effectively.
[4] He's a student who works for Dieter in the archives. He's extremely nice, but the thing I wanted to remark on here was that he looks like my ex-roommate Rachel's long-lost twin. He's got the same eyes, the same glasses, the same curly dark hair, the same face shape. It's really freaky.
[5] I'm not sure how to translate this; it's something like "donation" or "collection," I think. Basically, all the things given to the museum by one person are in one Konvolut, which then bears the name of that person. In Faust, it's possible to reference entries for items in a Konvolut to the entry for the Konvolut itself, automatically creating a cross-reference in the Konvolut. It's quite spiffy, actually.
[6] Without its Schnellheft, the presentation folder papers have to be in. For some reason, professors often keep the folders. I have no idea why. What do they do with them?

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