The Second Getaway

Another long, exhausting week. Another getaway to look forward to. This weekend I'm going to the coast with some other returners-from-abroad. I don't know what it is about this third year at Willamette, but by the time Friday comes all I want to do is get away from campus and Salem. It's not that I hate Willamette or anything like that. I think it's that I've just learned that I really need changes and breaks.

Not much happened in the Cave this week. I had a few small projects to keep me from the monotony of the Wallulah and the binder of slides. All of it is interesting, but like I said, I like changes and breaks.

I really like the conversation going on about bringing back some traditions at Willamette. I don't know what I want to do about it yet, but I have been thinking about it a lot.

The Mystery

The facts: The upper right quadrant of pages 123 and 124 of the 1938 Wallulah are not complete.

What I think happened: Someone cut out that part of the page. I don't know when.

What I did: Went upstairs and got a better version of the 1938 Wallulah and used that to scan.

As of publication of this blog post, the case of the missing part of the page is still unsolved.

The Getaway

I'm busting out of the Willamette Bubble this weekend. In just a few hours, my best friend from grade school and I are spending the weekend at her family's cabin in Black Butte, where we will do nothing but play in the snow and read books that aren't for school and eat cookies and watch bad movies. It will be glorious. Sometimes, even two weeks into a new semester, you need to get away.

Before that happens though, there is another full day, beginning with the archives. I started the morning by finishing up the slides I left scanning yesterday. Then I rescanned some Packwood memos for Mary. And then I scanned some articles in some old, old Collegians. Like pre-WWII old. Which I thought was pretty cool. And that was about it.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! See you on Monday.

The Coffee Morning

I feel very accomplished today, which obviously has nothing to do with the absurd amount of coffee I've ingested since 8am.

The Glee slides are chugging along and the 1938 Wallulah scanning has begun.

I have to leave a little early. I'm thinking I'll make up for some lost time by coming in on Friday.

The Quiet Monday Morning

It was great to see Sara again! I guess now it's actually official to be back in the archives.

I checked the 1934 Wallulah and everything looks good so that should be good to go.

Not much else to report. Still working on the Glee slides. And at this rate, it feels as though I will be working on the Glee slides until the end of time.

The Love Story

This morning I was treated with one of the most wonderful love stories I've heard, seen, or read. Rosemarie came down to The Cave and told me the story of her and Gerry. I'm sure most of you, dear readers, have heard it, too. The only word I can think of to summarize the story is wonderful. I am so happy that she shared it with me. It will be on my mind for quite some time, I'm sure.

In other less wonderful news, I'm still working on the Glee slides. Right now the 1994 slides are being scanned and edited. My favorite picture I found was of a group of students in front of The Ram, with an old logo on the awning. It made me think of Cheers, and how badly I wish I were 21 so I could hang out with the rest of my friends who have already reached the golden age and can spend their Thursday nights at the Ram's pint night. Only six more months to go.

For now, I will be spending my Thursday night reading articles and books for my classes because my apartment still does not have internet, which is also the reason I am leaving early today, to try to figure the situation out. I'll be in tomorrow sometime after 10:30am or 11am to catch up on the hours.

Such is real life.

I'll also be spending a lot of time thinking about Rosemarie's story, because it is truly amazing that real life can work out in such a wonderful, beautiful way sometimes.

The Lost Traditions

I had no idea that so many people read the blog posts. I'll try to keep them as interesting as possible, although I feel like most of the time I say the same thing.

I'll probably be writing this for awhile:

Worked on the Glee slides today. Still more to do tomorrow.

At least there is that tradition to look forward to with each blog post for the next week or so, unlike the tradition of Glee. Does anyone know what happened to that? It looks like a lot of fun, and I'm wondering why we don't have Glee anymore.

It makes me worry about other traditions that I look forward to every year will die out at Willamette. And what other traditions have I missed out on?

The Revelation

It's the first day of the semester and I am very happy to be back in classes and Willamette after spending a semester abroad. It's been, and will continue to be, a strange transition back. Spending my mornings in the archives though does make it a little easier. As monotonous as scanning the same yearbook all day can be, the repetition is calming. When I think of my time at Willamette now, my job in the archives is an inevitable part of it. Working here has put me back in the mindset of being a Willamette student.

Moving on from the thoughts that were occupying my mind this morning. 

I finished scanning and editing the 1934 Wallulah. I think I'll recheck everything in a week or so. My mind needs a break from it.

I moved to scanning the Glee slides, which made me a little lost. I had to reread everything about scanning slides and then when I finally felt ready to scan the slides, there was a problem with the Epson scanner on the other computer. But that is fixed and now the slides are being scanned and I forgot how slow the Epson scanner is.

The Frustration

It began this morning when I checked the blog and found that my last post was never actually posted.

I wrote a pretty long blog post about my work yesterday, my feelings about coming back to Willamette, and how much I value my time in the archives. More than a job, working in the archives brings me some tranquility in the mornings. I appreciate it a lot, and seeing my blog post gone made me really upset.

It continued with Epson scanning the Glee slides at a glacial pace.

With the way the Epson scanner is working (and I can't remember if it was always that slow, or if the Feynman is just exponentially faster, or if it's the computer is the problem), the Glee slides will take awhile to get through. I'm thinking at least a week, maybe two.

It peaked at my complete inability to figure out some edits for the Glee slides on Photoshop.

Some of the slides have rounded corners, and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to keep the rounded corners in my edits. A significant amount of my time today was spent trying to fix this problem. I've started doing what I can on the slides and then when I do more reading and research I'll go back and fix the rest of it.

That is the frustration that is today. It's also Tuesday, which means the week can only get better?

The First Week

It was a quiet Friday morning here in the archives. Not much to report.

I finished scanning the 1934 Wallulah today, and will edit the final pages on Monday (which is also my first day back in classes!).

After that I will start working on the Glee slides and any other projects that come my way.

Have a good weekend!

The Common Cold

I spent the first part of my day rescanning some pages in the Wallulah. The 1934 doesn't completely fit on Feynman so for some pages part of it is cut off. I finally found a way to fix that problem. I have a few more pages to rescan and edit before continuing with the book. I definitely will have it done by next week.

I also helped Mary with a scanning project. The pages have a watermark though, and I'm having trouble getting it to look OK. For now, I left Mary with some options to look at and can tell me which ones she likes the best. I might have to rescan all of the pages, but that's really not a problem.

The Swing of Things

I kept scanning and editing the 1934 Wallulah today and will most likely finish by the end of the week. Feynman is seriously amazing and speeds up the process immensely, but the computer it is connected to is not as fast as the computer that the Epson scanner is connected to. Bill and I talked about switching the scanners once Sara gets back. I think it makes the most sense to put Feynman with the faster computer and use that for the majority of the scanning I'll be doing.

I've been spending time getting to know Photoshop CS3 Extended better. Since I started in the archives, there have always been some things I wanted to fix in the editing process but never knew how. I'm taking some time to learn those fixes now, and hopefully the edits will keep looking better and more like the originals.

The Return

I am officially back as the digitization assistant for the archives and I'm really happy to be here. It took a little bit to get back in the swing of things, but I'm getting the hang of it all again.

Yesterday, I spent some time reading the blog posts from Sean and Katie who were here in the summer and fall semester. I really like the new scanner (Feynman?). It's made the Wallulah scanning project so much faster.

So for now, I'll be working with the Wallulahs and getting a good chunk of those done. As always, I'm here for any odd projects and jobs.