Adventures of the Amateur Archivist, Episode 3

Jake is off somewhere in Connecticut for the day, doing an insane bike ride. To pass the time during Lucy's nap, I'm here scanning stuff from the archive and filling up the recycling bin with the detritus of my kindergarden through eighth grade years.

I am about to trash in its entirety my "eighth grade journal." This is NOT the eighth grade journal full of dark poetry; rather, this is the journal that my 8th grade teacher required that we keep and actually read. So I think "journal" isn't quite the right word for it. It's filled with entries about what I was reading and what was going on at school and such. What I find amazing about this is that my teacher responded to EVERY entry in there. No matter how stupid it was. I cannot imagine the time it took for her to read all of this -- and not just mine, but everyone in my class! As I read it now, I am mostly embarrassed; I am seriously obsessively focused on every quiz, test, and report, and constantly worried about my grades. There's also an entry revealing my excitement about the haunted house I'm constructing in the attic of our house, and my excitement that I got a gift certificate to the local office supply store (woo hoo! markers!). Other than that, I worry about band (yes, I was in the marching band), talk about my science fair project. On the latter, I am upset because I did well enough in the first one to go on to the next level and "it's going to be a lot of work to collect more rain." Priceless. (the project was on acid rain.)

Anyway, the only page that was really worth scanning was the drawing my Japanese friend, Kimiko made, shown here:

Check out our over-sized 80s shirts. And hair. Nice. I haven't seen most of these people in many years; I wonder where they are now and what they would think if they stumbled upon this.

I know you're all wondering how I can stand the excitement of spending my Saturday sifting through my archives. The real excitement is tomorrow: we're going to see They Might Be Giants! I'm very excited. This will be Lucy's second time....wait, actually, this will be everyone's second time seeing them. As I type this, I am also listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (fairly typical Saturday activity) and the guests are....the guys from TMBG. They are doing the "Not My Job" quiz, which involves them answering questions about something outside their area of expertise. So since they are "They Might Be Giants," they are being asked questions about Andre the Giant. Brilliant.

So that's today's update. We'll try to get pix of Lucy at the show, but it will be hard to beat this one from the last time.