Better Late Than Never!

Wow, this is embarrassing.  It has been two weeks since my last report! I hope this never happens again.  I was going to write after the weekend since nothing happened last week and I knew that the weekend would be the fun, blog-worthy part.  But then, things ran away with me.  Oh well, this just means a longer entry!

So, last week was pretty much a dud week.  The weekend of the 16-17th, I did manage to make my first pilgrimage to IKEA, which for those who don't know, is the biggest furniture store I've been to in my life.  I really, really should never go back without someone being in control of my wallet.  I did purchase two pieces of new furniture for the apartment; a small side table, which gives me more room to put books on, and a drop-leaf table for when my family visits me for Thanksgiving.  After lugging those up to my place, I turned around and got right back in the car to drive back to basically the same place to see 'The Social Network', which has the distinction of being the first movie I've seen since moving out here.  I'm sure I'm the last person in the world to see it, but if I'm wrong and one of you hasn't seen it, go! You can't go wrong with Aaron Sorkin/West Wing fast-paced dialogue.   After Saturday, nothing news-worthy happened for another week.  Oh, I got homemade cookies sent to me from across the country.  That was awesome. :D

The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM) annual conference was being held in Philadelphia this year and one of my professors strongly encouraged us to go.  So for the past few weeks, my friends Stephanie, Emily and Jesse and I had been planning on how to go to the conference. There was work and classes to work around, so it took some doing.  Finally, we all agreed that we would go to Philly on Sunday, sight-see that day, and then do the conference on Monday and drive back so that Emily and Stephanie could get to their Monday night class.  So on Sunday I met up with the girls at SHU and we drove in Emily's car to Philly.

I had booked us a room at the Hyatt Regency at Penn's Landing, where the conference was being held.  The room was gorgeous and very swank.  We got in around 1:30, checked in, dropped out bags in the room and then headed out to find some lunch.  We ended up eating at the City Tavern, which is the the Liberty Tree Tavern at DisneyWorld, only real.  I had the extremely delicious Lobster Pie (a pot pie with lobster).  After lunch (which we had decided would be our big meal of the day), we walked along the historic district.  We saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the Revolutionary War, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and Betsy Ross' house.  Guess who ended up with '1776' songs stuck in her head for the rest of the day??

After a lot of walking, we decided to retire to the room to rest up before hitting the town and possibly a few bars later.  We hit a bit of a snag in those plans when Stephanie got sick.  So Jesse, Emily and I went to the hotel grill and bar to have a light dinner and some drinks/dessert.  We sat there chatting and, before long, Stephanie was feeling better and joined us.  We shut the place down and then went back upstairs and ended up talking til almost 1:00 am.  It was a lot of fun, but maybe not the best idea when we had to be up by 9:00 the next morning.

Somehow, Monday morning saw all of us clean and dressed to impress.  We partook of the continental breakfast the conference provided and then went to the only breakout session we managed that day.  It was called 'Things that Go Bump in the Night: When Collections Bite Back'.  It was about all of the things in a museum's collection that could be potentially harmful to the staff.  It was really interesting, plus one of the panelists was the curator from the Mutter Museum!  Once the session ended, the girls and I went to see what free stuff could be grabbed from the vendors' booths.  By the time we were done looking at archival boxes and chatting with the head of the Registrars' Committee, we had already missed the next set of sessions.  So, the rest of the group decided that the Mutter had seemed like an interesting place and that we should go there.  Well, I'm not one to say no to going back to an awesome museum, so off we went.  The other girls didn't seem to like the Mutter as much as I did, but that didn't surprise me.  :D  Before heading out of town, we stopped by a Chipotle to get some lunch.  Fun fact: New Jersey has three Chipotles in the entire state.  What is up with that?????

So now, here I am, home again.  Besides the normal school and work stuff, nothing much has happened since the conference.  I did manage to write my first grad school paper, so that was a nice little accomplishment.  This weekend I am headed off to a covert, top-secret meeting that will attempt to restore sanity to the nation.  But, alas, my friends, that will have to wait until next week.

To be continued . . .

XOXO,
K