Last week, I spent a couple of days writing the text for the cover flaps of the last five of the Civil War books, which was neat. An exercise in condensing information and following a pattern! Then spent a couple of days writing captions for an issue on Thomas Edison. We started by sorting through the pictures - we were able to get loads from the National Edison Historic Site, and unusual surplus, apparently! There was even one group shot that - to our surprise - included a young and dapper-looking FDR! Turned out to be the Navy Consulting Board, which Edison headed for a while during WWI - which explain’s Roosevelt’s presence as he was Secretary of the Navy at the time. I’m now writing more captions - this time for an issue on Techno Theater, which has some neat stuff in it on CG-characters like Gollum and Yoda (in the 2 most recent movies) as well as 3-D movies and holography and good movies (debatable) that use baaaad science. The more science-minded of you might enjoy checking out some Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics

I didn’t wander too far away this weekend - Anne was gone for the weekend, leaving me to sit for the dogs, which was fine. Frieda spent Saturday acting like a child for whom the babysitter is really not good enough, but was more friendly on Sunday. Silly little yappy dog. She’s sweet, though. The bigger dogs are much calmer, though Bronson tends to be a bit unsteady on his legs in his old age.

I did go into town Saturday afternoon, though, with thoughts of going further and maybe hiking a bit, but it was so hot that the thought was not very appealing. Instead, I discovered the local library (not a word from the peanut gallery, thank YOU!) and spent a couple of hours enjoying the cool. I also discovered a fairly extensive natural food store which to my glee does carry my ice cream! (My convenient grocery store seems not to, though it does have soy milk.)

Sunday morning found me back in town - there is a Unitarian church and while there are a whole row of churches around the corner, THE big church on Main Street, the one that chimes the hour so the whole town can hear…is the Unitarian church. I get a great kick out of this. So I thought I was going to church, but as it turns out, they only hold services from Labor Day through Father’s Day (last week! Ooops!). During the summer, they host a lecture series on art, politics, or whatever, supported by the church, but the speakers are not necessarily affiliated with it. So I turned out to be at the first of these, but that was neat anyway. The speaker is the CEO of Stoneyfield, which makes organic yoghurt and is located up in this part of the country. He had a lot to say about his personal success story with Stoneyfield (it is apparently the #3 yoghurt manufacturer in the nation and is rapidly gaining on #2, Yoplait), linking it directly to their good environmental practices, which are apparently quite economic. Gist was that big buisness will see how evective this is, will adopt these practices, and this will make everyone healthier, improve the environment, and save the world. Very optimistic - as he acknowledged - but interesting. From what I’ve seen and heard in general, this is a very liberal, and very green area! Except for the persistence of “Vote for Kerry” stickers here and there, I like that.

Categories: internships
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Last week found me fully moved into my home-away-from-home and it is delightful! The basement apartment gets enough light from one end to be bright but is enough underground to be cool, even when it’s beastly outside (and it does get beastly - I was jokingly accused of bringing the hot weather with me, this was a recent development). The kitchen is reasonably well stocked and I’m enjoying the freedom of having my own space. I will take pictures, of course, though won’t be able to send or post them anytime soon I fear. I tried to find an internet cafe this weekend, but it eluded me.

Last week also brought rain and cooler weather to southern NH - cool enough for long sleeves and hot tea! Crazy weather, but this is why I wanted to come north at this time of year, so I’m not complaining. Jachyra, you’ve got it all backwards - New York in the cooler months and Texas in the summer? Yipes. Speaking of New York, however, my boss here is an alum of your university, Jachyra - thought you might be interested.

I’ve been doing more gardening, so had a check to take to the bank, the nearest branch of which is in a small-ish city, 20 miles west of here. I spent Saturday there, which has a very nice downtown area - supposedly it is the widest main street in America. It is quite wide, so we’ll give them that. An odd claim! Is also pretty and tree-lined with a number of nice little shops, though I stuck to window-shopping this time.

Also this weekend I finished Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn (a favorite author of mine), which is a sci-fi retelling of Jane Eyre, which I also finished reading (well, re-reading, though it’s been maybe eight years). Say what you like about Gothic romance, I enjoyed them both. I’m nearly through Mostly Harmless, too, a completely different sort of enjoyment!

Saw something on my way home from work the other day that I didn’t expect to see here. As I’m huffing and puffing my way up a hill, a big pick-up truck roars up from behind and passes me on it’s big over-sized wheels - a redneck’s truck if ever you saw one. And sure enough, what does he have one his rear windshield but a confederate flag sticker! The liscence plate was NH, but maybe he’s a transplant. Or just a rebel! I laughed for miles about it, that was something I thought I left behind in, oh Virginia or somewhere! Some things you just can’t leave behind, I guess.

Categories: internships
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I got settleed in at the B&B Monday afternoon after driving back from Manchester - not a bad drive at all. Anne, who runs the B&B is very nice and the house is small, old, cozy, and thoroughly country. Adorable. I’m sitting in the screen porch to type this (as of Tues pm), the evening is cool, and I have a lovely view of all Anne’s blooming flowerbeds. I think I hear frogs out behind the house somewehre.

The house is actually very small for a B&B - especially compared to Stratford last fall where the house was clearly split into guest rooms and family rooms and were were served at meals, which was hard for a bunch of self-sufficient American kids to get used to. Here there’s only one room upstairs (mine this week) and the basement apartment (mine after this week) and Anne, so I have the run of the kitchen if I want it, etc. etc. The people downstairs this week are a mother and her 8 year old son (middle of her three boys - “so this is what it’s like to have one child,” she says in her Boston accent, “this is easy!”) who are here for a workshop for homeschoolers. She’s very friendly and the boy adores Anne’s dogs. There are three and I’ve found that sitting in the living room too long (it’s the doggiest room in the house) gives me this sniffles, but otherwise they don’t bother me. They’re all fairly old, Bronson especially, but Kayla and Frieda are also mature enough to be fairly mellow. They were perturbed with me when I was up before Anne Tuesday morning and getting my breakfast but not feeding them! - but generally they seem not to mind me either.

I had the first opportunity to make back a bit of my rent Monday afternoon after moving in. Anne had hip-replacement surgery not long ago and isn’t able to kneel in the garden, so she asked me to do some planting - just flowers that needed to get into the ground. At least I don’t seem to have killed anything yet. Much more pleasant to be in the yard here than in Florida, let me tell you, though there are still plenty of bugs. Nasty little black flies.

Tuesday morning I drove into town and actually managed to park in the right place - most of the lots say “for residents of xxx only” or “3 hour parking” but there’s a place that’s kosher. Supposedly, my FL tag makes me more or less immune to tickets, but best not to test that.

The company is working on a few books at the moment as well as the usual slate of magazines. Tuesday morning, I was proofreading a book about to go to the printer (as in was due yesterday, so this was very much an almost-the-last-chance-to-catch-mistakes). And I did find a few typos, so I felt like a Very Useful Engine or something like that. It’s the first in a series of books about the Civil War geared to - oh, probably late elementary or middle schoolers. Apparently it’s something new they’re trying - collecting bits and pieces previously published in their various magazines and putting it together in a new format. There’s also another series of books in the works, collections of animal stories for younger children. I have the first pass of three of these on my desk to go through as well.

(Aside: Yes, I have a desk - a cubicle for that matter. Fairly secluded and private (good working conditions for me) - though I share the space with filing cabinets, so once in a while someone wanders in - and the whole office is generally pretty quiet. As you’ve figured out by now, there is a computer at this desk, highly reminiscent of the old “glorified typewriter” I used in high school. Runs windows NT 4.0, internet hexplorer 5.5, has no USB ports, etc. Keyboard was extremely clatterly - painfully so until I switched it out Wednesday afternoon. Ha! Much better - can stand to type on it now. This one’s more like what I had in high school - the other was much worse. End aside.)

Tuesday I went and found lunch at the little café inside the bookshop Dad and I explored, a place called The Toadstool - a very friendly girl at the counter helped with allergy issues. That afternoon, I worked with the editor of the one science magazine published here in NH (the other six are various flavors of social studies). She’s just starting a Dec. issue on “Survival!” - playing off the tv shows, of course, but going in a more science-y direction - how adrenaline works and endurance for marathoners, etc. Apparently when she starts to plan an issue, she sends out the topic to writers who send back “queries” saying “I would write an article on such-and-so” and include an outline. So she had me sorting through those. One was actually about food allergies and started with an anecdote about the author’s husband who wanted to “build an immunity” to shellfish, so ate some and went off hiking in the woods! Didn’t know whether to laugh at the fool or gape in horror! Picked the latter, as it’s quieter.

Since Tuesday, I’ve been sitting in on design meetings, where they go through the issue article by article discussing what pictures to use or what artists to hire. Fascinating to listen to thought processes, etc. I’ve also been doing a fair amount of proofreading of this and that.

So I had a most interesting first week and have high hopes for the summer!

Categories: internships
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And in less than a week! Holy cow!

First order of business: Yes, I drive a box! The amusing part is that, despite the fact that it was made with my generation in mind, it was my grandfather who bought it for himself last year! Since then, the decision has been made that he really shouldn’t be driving any more, so through a marvelous stroke of good luck on my end, the Scion came to me! Mother drove it here from Las Cruces last weekend. Whee!

Next: I found a place to live in New Hampshire! Again!! The first place fell through due to uncontrollable circumstances, nobody’s fault - a mother-in-law needed to come live with her kids, so there wasn’t room for me after all. I found this out when I got home last weekend. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!! Extremely frustrating, but after MUCH ado, a phone call I made this afternoon paid off - I will be living at a different B&B, but this time (after the first week, at least) I will have my own suite/apartment type area - private entrance, small kitchen, etc. I will be paying rent, and whatever I end up doing around the place will be taken out of that, which works. I leave Friday. Tomorrow is packing day.

Other: All final exams, presentations, and that darn monster paper are finally over. I managed to give two presentations - and hardly tripped over my tongue at all! I just checked grades online and two of the three are actually in already and are thoroughly satisfactory. The third one was the aformentioned monstrosity of a paper, we’ll see how that goes. I’m not worried. Or I don’t care - hard to tell which tonight.

Aaaaand Vader. I finally got to join the rest of the world (my family doesn’t count; we are cinema-challenged and that’s okay) who have seen Episode III. Pug and I went this afternoon. I recommend the nitpicking of Carmen & Co.. Enjoyable for what it was, though you have to go into it knowing that Lucas is not physically capable of writing romance besides “I love you.” “I know.” (This is not to disparage the Han & Leia style of romance - far from it. This is to slam silly-sounding romance scenes with lines like “I’m haunted by the kiss you should never have given me.” GAH.) I was also less that satisfied with the big climactic battle over the lava pit (or rather, lava planet. Definately no volcano.) - Pug hit the nail on the head when he called it forced. Honestly, if anything, it really made me want to watch the old trilogy. Sadly, no time for that before leaving for points north. So somebody go watch it for me!

Categories: college, home, internships
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