Happy Anniversary!

As of tomorrow (June 18th), Jake and I will have been married for seven years!

Happy Anniversary!  I tried to upload the video from our wedding, but I've hit a tech stumbling block; I'll try to add it later if possible. 

For our (sort of) anniversary dinner, we went to Udupi Bhavan for fabulous Indian food, followed by a walk on the Vandenberg Esplanade, and then a quick trip to Target to pick up this:

Yup!  We finally have a little patio set, so as to enjoy the lovely outdoor weather we've been having.  Hooray!  This is what happens when you are married for seven years.

So the reason I'm writing this now is because I'm not even in Lowell.  I'm in fabulous Worcester, staying in a dorm at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) while I spend a week here at the American Antiquarian Society.  College dorm life has changed tremendously since I was an undergrad; I'm staying in East Hall, which is some sort of fancy all-suites living, with all kinds of green building and high-tech stuff.  It's really quite lovely.  I'm writing from the counter of the kitchen in the common space, which I'm sharing with two other women attending the seminar this week.

But let's get onto the more important part: I'm hanging out this week at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), which you may recall I've mentioned in previous posts such as this and this.  I'm participating in the CHAViC seminar -- the Center for Historic American Visual Culture.  So far (which means, since 4pm today) it has been awesome.  We had a couple of hours at Antiquarian Hall, in the absolutely beautiful reading room, followed by a behind-the-scenes tour.  I got to go into all the RESTRICTED areas of the library, and it was amazing.  AAS, like most libraries of its sort, is closed-stacks: you request what you want, and the librarians bring it to you.  None of that mucking about in the shelves looking for what you want.  So it was thrilling to check out the incredible facility behind the scenes (movable stacks!!!  crazy glass floors!!!) with absolutely unbelievable holdings.

The AAS is mostly about print -- books, ephemera, lithographs, etc.  But they have a select few items in their holdings that are truly spectacular.  All of the furniture is all kinds of gorgeous, and the paintings and other images on the walls are phenomenal.  There's a room that is lined, floor to ceiling with glassed-in shelves that are stuffed full of Staffordshire pottery made in the early- and mid-nineteenth century, illustrating important buildings and locations.  But perhaps most awe-inducing was Cotton Mather's high chair.  As in, the wooden chair that a baby Cotton Mather sat in and slobbered all over.  It even featured a rattle/toy sort of thing on the top rung.  I'm probably not supposed to say this, but we were even told "go ahead and touch it!"  It was crazy amazing -- Baby Mather probably slobbered all over that thing!  Talk about wonders of the invisible world!

After the session, we had a lovely dinner at the Goddard-Daniels House, including drinks on the porch (beautiful!).  I'm so geekily excited about what the coming week holds -- sessions on print-making, visual culture, quilting, textiles, political cartoons....the list goes on, but all focused on the visual culture of the American Civil War.  Ken Burns, eat your heart out.

But right now, what I am supposed to be doing is reading.  There are, roughly, a million pages of reading that I should have done by now.  But now, I am staying in a dorm room.  And think perhaps the previous residents left a bit of their wishful thinking/procrastinating spirits behind, and I have no interest in doing my reading (even though I am excited about the prospect of a week of working on all of this).  Sigh.

So here I am, blogging. 

Happy Anniversary, Jake!