A Couple of Historians

Switching Web Sites

2008-01-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Check out this blog at its new location:

http://acoupleofhistorians.wordpress.com/

Lisa's back

2008-01-12T13:49:00.003-08:00

Lisa's back from her trip to Austin. While the guys have all gone back home, it's so great to have Lisa back here in Norman. She got back in late last night after spending the afternoon with my family. She and Tracy got the invitations done for the wedding and then met up with my parents for dinner. One of the better stories from dinner is that my dad apparently told Lisa about his new found love for podcasts. Lisa then admitted that she didn't have an iPod. My Dad noted how sad it was that he was ahead of Lisa on the technological curve. My Mom then noted that her mother, my 88 year old grand-mother has an iPod.

Apparently her work went well down in Austin. She found a good bit of information that shows that Caroline Herschel was more than the empty headed sister of a great astronomer as she has been portrayed. One of the odd things about the Harry Ransom Center though is that they don't make copies for you until after you're done. Thus, Lisa is going to have to wait up to a month for the copies she's requested. This seems to me a strange policy. I know I've had great access with the Western Histories Collections here at OU and ridiculous access to our HSCI collections. However, even the archives at the AIP allow you to make your own copies. It didn't end up being that big of a problem though, because she was able to type up notes early enough that she can get work done till the copies come in.

One of the people Lisa met while while in Austin was Elizabeth Green Musselman. Dr. Musselman apparently already knew about our blog because of the link to her blog, The Missing Blog. She's just posted a new podcast, so check it out.

New Hampshire

2008-01-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

I was really hoping Obama would win the New Hampshire primaries. With Clinton and McCain's victories though, I think the doors are swung wide open for an expensive, unproductive race that achieves little and delays the actual debate between the Republicans and Democrats. Clinton seems to me to be unelectable. Her negatives are historically high, she supports the war, and she's just generally unpopular. Her candidacy might be the democrats best chance at losing the general election. If she could achieve the health care packages she's proposed, her presidency wouldn't be all bad, but I don't think it will happen.

McCain's victory is more interesting, because I didn't see it coming at all. I haven't been following the races that closely, but it seems that the republicans have an extremely open race. My understanding is that Giuliani is building support in the upcoming states, and I think that it will remain a four or five main race for some time. The fact that Paul again got 10% of the vote shows that he has gained some support and that there are anti-war contingents within the main stream of republicans. However, with as much money as he has raised and spent, I would think that he should have been able to get higher totals.

The record turn outs in New Hampshire seem to me at least to be somewhat indicative of the widespread interest in the primaries and in national politics. This is the first time me or my friends have ever paid attention to primaries. After having drunken 5-8 beers a piece, we were playing Rock Star. Zach read off the results from New Hampshire and everyone was interested. This may seem a small thing, but for a group normally devoted to talking about video games, sports, and beer, the interest in politics was startling.

Missing John and Austin

2008-01-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

I'm in Austin doing some research on Caroline Herschel at the Harry Ransom Center. The people at the Center are super nice, and getting in to look at the manuscripts is a fairly simple process. There looks like there is going to be a lot of interesting stuff about Herschel, which is very exciting. I haven't actually thought about my thesis in a couple of weeks, which is a little distressing. But I think that being here I will be able to make a lot of progress on my thesis. My goal is to have a pretty solid outline of what I want to say in my thesis.

I miss John. It sucks being alone in a hotel room in a strange city, but I guess I'll get over it. I have plenty of CB work to do, there is work to be done on my thesis, and I brought the seventh Harry Potter book to reread. Hopefully I will be able to get a lot of work done and won't miss John too much. Well, the truth is I'll miss him no matter what, but in spite of that, I hope to get a lot of work done.

Missing Lisa

2008-01-07T05:34:00.001-08:00

Lisa left this morning for Austin to do some research at the Harry Ransom Center. They have a collection of the Herschel's (Caroline, William, and John's) papers, which is extraordinarily lucky for Lisa's work. While she's gone, I'm going to hang out with the guys and goof off. Still, I miss her every night that she's away.

Everyone's Here

2008-01-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

As Lisa said, everyone came back in town this weekend. Bobby, Andrea, Joe, and Ryan all came up for the weekend and everyone who still lives here in Norman is here. Last night everyone assembled for dinner and beer pong which went to like 3:30. This is somewhat normal for us, but Lisa and I had a meeting with a wedding photographer this morning and Greg was supposed to be in the city at 8:30. Still, a fun time was had by all (especially by those that passed out or nearly did (Red and Zach respectively)).

We've got 9 people hanging out at my apartment right now with the following activities: Settlers of Catan is going on the table. ESPN 2k8 is going on the main tv. The Redskins v. Seahawks game is showing on Zach's tv which we brought out to the living room. Bobby's playing poker on his laptop, and I'm screwing around on mine. Pretty freaking sweet.

I imagine that over the weekend we'll get more beer pong, poker, bowling, ESPN, and real basketball going in a weekend of completely unproductive debauchery. Bobby and Andrea leave Monday which will leave Ry and Joe to play ESPN until their thumbs bleed. Very exciting.

The Boys Are Back In Town

2008-01-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

Well, not all of them yet, but soon all of them will be. Joe, Ryan, Bobby, Andrea, yea that's it, but it's significant nonetheless. I am very excited, mostly because John is so happy that all of his buddies will be around again. Currently, Zach, Sam, Joe, John and I are sitting in the living room and they're playing NBA 2k8 and bickering about which players to take in their fantasy video game draft. It's just amazing how much energy goes into this. And they're all in grad school. It's great.

I got a haircut today. The girl who cut my hair was really nice, but when she was washing my hair she was finger-combing my hair and it felt like she was yanking my hair out. It really hurt. I never know what to say in those situations, mostly because I don't want to hurt her feelings. I think that's a bit strange on my part. Anyways, I only got about a quarter of an inch cut off, so no big change.

Next Monday I am going to Austin to do some research at the Harry Ransom Center. I'm not really sure what to expect, but I'm looking forward to it. I might stop by John's parent's house on the way back and stay the night so that me and Tracy can go print up some invitations. Who knows, though? I have no idea how I'll feel in two weeks, so I'm officially putting off the decision until a later date.

I worked my ass off the last four days of December for the CB and ended up with 150 records for the month, which is great. However, now I am almost completely burned out on the CB, which means that at the end of January I will make another mad dash to finish up. It's a vicious cycle, but I'm not really sure what to do about.

Library Studies

2007-12-30T13:51:00.001-08:00

I've just finished looking at a book called The Library of Benjamin Franklin by Wolf and Hayes. I'll admit this may sound a bit dry, and I was the first one to check it out from the OU Library. However, the book is a ridiculously well researched reconstruction of Ben Franklin's extensive personal library. The introduction is a quick and interesting look at how Franklin amassed such a huge library and how it was dispersed after his death. While useful in my upcoming work on Richard Kirwan's library, the book is interesting in its own right at looking at how Americans read at the end of the 18th century, how libraries developed in America, and the biblomania of the nation's founding fathers (Jefferson was apparently one of the few Americans of the time with a larger library than Franklin's). The book is also extremely well produced and seems to have been targeted at bibliophiles with its colophon and well crafted text and binding. Check it out if you get a chance.

Allergies

2007-12-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

I've done so much cleaning today. Lisa and I washed three loads of laundry, I cleaned my room, swept and swiffered my bathroom, washed dishes, and put away Christmas stuff. I spent at least 4 hours just cleaning today. Household maintenance is exhausting.

Lisa and I are both getting allergies and/or a cold right now. We both have sinus pressure in half our faces; the right side of my face feels swollen and full of snot and the left side of her face is doing the same (isn't that cute, we match). Anyway, I hope we don't get sick right as everyone gets in.

We are currently watching the Pats vs. Giants game, and it's at the half. Man I hope the Giants win. I hate the Pats like I hate USC. Their arrogant bastards, and their philosophy of 60 minutes is an asshole justification for running up the score. I hope Brady's leg gets broken and the bone shrapnel hits Belichick in the jugular.

I should do some work, but I'm just going to watch the game.

A Thought on John

2007-12-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a random thought I have about John:

While in some ways, it might seem as if John is very laid back and does not necessarily care about a lot of things, he actually puts quite a bit of effort into the things that he does care about.

This blog for instance. We are currently on our third counter, because John cannot settle on one that he likes. Some people (possibly most people) would have settled on one of them by now, but I have a feeling John will continue to change the counter until he finds the perfect one. I find this to be a very endearing quality of John's. I especially like this quality because it is not immediately obvious to most people.

So, there you go. I am also glad to be home, mostly for the Wii.

Back Home

2007-12-28T22:08:00.001-08:00

It's so nice to be back at my apartment. I really enjoyed seeing Jeff, Joe, and Sarah and appreciated eating my mom's cooking even more. However, there's nothing like the freedom of laying in your own bed, with all the random shit all over your own floor (oddly, cleaning was the only thing on my To Do list not scatched off today). Lisa and I went grocery shopping today, went by the mall, and framed a few mementos from the Indy trip (Lisa's Wicked poster is currently being worked on). I went to Wynan's and the department and actually got work done. Lisa was able to work from the couch and play some Wii. All in all, it was great to just be home.

While we were at my parent's place, we got our hopes up about a property that showed up online. One of the Edge condos (Normanites will know where I mean) came up for sale as a bank owned property, meaning it had been foreclosed on. The normal Edge condo sells for around 120-160k, but this one was up for 17k. We did plenty of research, decided to buy it as quickly as possible, and then found out it had been sold sometime in November. While the economic advantage of it would have been amazing, so much of the excitement was just in having our own place and moving in right away. I get along great with Zach and genuinely enjoy rooming with him. Still though, it would have been great to have owned a place of our own. We are still going to look around and will buy something by August, but to have moved in so soon would have been nice.

PodCasts

2007-12-28T21:58:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to find History of Science so as to further eradicate any notion of non-work related activity from my life. However, I've been fairly disappointed in this endeavor so far. Elizabeth Green Musselman hosts a fairly interesting monthly HSCI podcast:

missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com

I particularly like a new segment that she added in the fifth episode featuring a newly published HSCI book that would be accessible to the general public.

However, this has been my only successful find so far. If anyone knows of other related podcasts (History of Science, History of Astronomy, History of 18th century England and France, etc.) please let me know.

Pictures

2007-12-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from the trip. I'm too lazy to go back to each post and put in the appropriate pictures.

This is me, looking at my shoes. They were pretty hot.

John and I, pretending we just won the World Series, outside of Busch Stadium.

Our horrible hotel room in Indy. Please note the bathtub just sitting in the room, the vomit pink walls, and thin industrial carpeting.

Me: "John, get in the picture and look dismayed."
John: "I am dismayed."

Pacers game.

The Colts warming up before the game.

So, we asked a guy sitting behind us if he could take this picture of us, and when he did the woman behind him goes "Alright! Good picture." Colts fans are so nice, they'll cheer for anything.

And the long-awaited play kitchen.

Christmas time in Dallas

2007-12-26T22:15:00.000-08:00

Since getting back from the road trip I've gotten online twice, both times to check how my fantasy sports teams were doing. Kind of sad.

Lisa and I spent Christmas Eve with her parents; first we had lunch and went shopping with her mom (we got cookware, hurrahh!!! Seriously). Then we went to her Dad's and played with Kim and had a huge dinner. Santa brought Kim a play-kitchen and Bob and I put it together. I think there's a not insignificant amount you can learn about a relationship between two guys in how they put something together based on a few questions: 1) Is the mocking in good nature or ill? 2) Who makes the first screwdriver joke? 3) Are the instructions read and if so by whom? etc. (good, Bob, John). Between two friends, you see how strong the friendship is. Between the father-in-law and son-in-law we established that he wasn't going to kill me and I wasn't going to abandon Lisa and our 12 babies.

Christmas morning went well and after we let Kim out of her suspense (where's the play kitchen?), everyone relaxed and had a good time. Lisa and I came down to my parents after lunch, and opened presents here. I counted 12 pairs of socks moving in different directions along with 2 hotel robes, and 2 twice regifted sausage and cheese baskets. More happily books were also popular as were large checks (yay food and rent). After a wonderful dinner (best part of Christmas is always the turkey and canned cranberry sauce), Lisa and I met up with my highschool friends Jeff, Joe and Sarah. Joe is a unique character and lived up to his billing for Lisa. Jeff, as always, smoothed tensions with jokes, and Sarah reminded the engineers to avoid shop talk. In all it was great to see the old-timey folks and get somewhat caught up.

Today, we saw Sweeney Todd with Tracy and Zach. I didn't like it at all, but I think that was largely due to the horrible sound and film quality from my theater. I think that if I give it another shot I might like it more, but I thought the gore was unnecessary and actually took away from the enjoyability of the movie. I was expecting it to be a dark comedy along the lines of Edward Scissorhands, but it wasn't a comedy. Knowing that now, perhaps I would enjoy a second showing more.

After the movie, Lisa stumbled upon some black high-heels that she wanted on sale. The register guy couldn't find the price even after several tries at various register / UPC tricks. Finally he gives up, and to save the labor of research, declares the shoes to cost $9.99. Lisa is thrilled. Even more so when the register guy gives her the 20% discount advertised to make the shoes $8.65. The register guy declares himself a beast when the register allows him to make this sale, Lisa agrees and admits that she is now in love with the 16 year old ("he told me to say it, but he did have pretty green eyes"), and then volunteers "you are a beast....muah!" She didn't kiss him...just made a kissy sound. While somewhat jealous, I do recognize that you don't get a nice pair of black high-heels every day for $8.65 and will let it slide.

I can't wait to get back to Norman. I love my parents and sister and high school friends, but man, I love my own bed and the freedom of being in my own apartment. I'll get to do some work (much needed), play some video games, and take care of random chores that I've been avoiding. All of which are mundane but rewarding when completed. I think that's a sign of maturity.

In random, blog-related notes, Lisa notes that I'm negligent in my updating. This is a relative comparison. If she continues to update daily and I continue every-other day, that's still a very well-maintained blog. You'll also notice that I can't spell and have a terrible memory. To pretend otherwise would be false-advertising.

Dallas

2007-12-26T21:21:00.001-08:00

John and I are currently in Dallas for Christmas. We have been so busy lately, but it's been really fun to not think about work for a week or two.

Christmas Eve we went over to my Mom's house where we ate lunch and then exchanged presents. Mom really liked the presents that we got her (a book of cat pictures with funny captions and the whole Firefly series on DVD), which I was very happy about.

Then we went to my Dad's place, where we had Christmas dinner and then stayed the night so that we could open presents with Kim on Christmas morning. It was really kind of sad because she has wanted a play kitchen since October, which for a two year old is a very long time. So, every one in the family knew that she was going to get one, so they sent her all of these things that would be put in a play kitchen. Each time she opened one, someone would say "Oh Kim, wouldn't it be cool to put that in your play kitchen...too bad you don't have one." She finally started to look very unhappy about the fact that Santa had not brought her a play kitchen, so we finally let her go in her room, where (tada!) the play kitchen was set up. And, in Kim's own words, she was "very happy, because it was the only thing I ever wanted in the whole world." It was very cute.

Then we drove some more, this time to Dallas, to spend Christmas evening with John's family. So that's where we have been for the last day and a half. We've been hanging out mostly with John's friends from high school, which has been pretty fun. They're pretty crazy, all in their own unique ways.

By the way, Sweeney Todd really sucks.

Home

2007-12-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

We are back home after driving from Indy for almost 12 hours straight. Needless to say, we dropped like rocks onto the bed and fell asleep for a good 10 hours. In a few minutes, we will be headed to my mom's, my dad's, then Dallas to see his parents and high school friends. But first, a few highlights of the trip:

1. Seeing Wicked (it was so much better than I had imagined, and I had imagined it to be pretty good.)
2. Singing the entirety of Third Eye Blind's first album to stay awake
3. The Colts game
4. John telling me at 1:30 last night on the road that he was sleepy but that he wasn't going to go to sleep and then literally 5 minutes later leaning his seat back and starting to snore
5. Making John laugh and having him make me laugh in return
6. The god-awful hotel room in Indy
7. The bath that we took in the non-functioning Jacuzzi in the aforementioned god-awful hotel room
8. Taking pictures

That's all I can think of now. John is starting to get that impatient look that I normally wear so well.

Indianapolis

2007-12-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

Lisa and I are in Indy right now on our Winter Break road trip. Originally we were going to see three cities on our trip: St. Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis. On Friday we drove up to St. Louis to see Wicked at the Fox Theater and had a wonderful time. The play made Lisa happier than I've ever seen her (including when I proposed), and we had a good time wandering around the city. This morning we took a few pictures of the arch and Busch park and then hit the road. While we both would have liked to have seen Chicago, we would have had to drive an extra 300 miles to spend a few hours in the city. Lisa pointed out that it might be better to leave the Windy City for a later trip and spend more time in Indianapolis and I agreed.

On getting into the city, we first tried to find a hotel and stumbled upon a seedy but well placed Day's Inn. While the outside looked like the work of a drunk 70's architect (the hotel sits on stilts over the parking area), the lobby was ok and the rent was cheap. We got what I hope was the last room which turned out to be a "suite." In this case this meant that it used to be part of the work out room, but was converted into a gigantic studio with almost no furniture other than the jacuzzi in the back of the room. On the other side of a divider wall was the rest of the bathroom, which looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in a couple of weeks. The absurdly cheap, vomit pink wall paper is peeling from the walls in a few places, and there's some sort of trap door into the ceiling. The equally cheap carpet clashes with aforementioned wallpaper and doesn't fit all that well with the green tile around the jacuzzi. On the upside we have a door directly into the workout facilities in case we want to work out in the middle of the night. However, Lisa assured me that this would be a fun adventure type memory to share and promised that we wouldn't be murdered in the night by vagrants or the hotel staff. I eventually decided to take her word and agreed not to ask for a refund or just run screaming across the city.

After begrudgingly acclimating myself to our lodgings, I asked Lisa if we could go wander aimlessly around the city and suggested we check on getting tickets for the Pacers game. We were already going to the Colts game tomorrow, but we both like sports and decided to give it a try. Luckily the coliseum is only like a half mile from our luxurious abode, so we walked over and were able to get pretty good tickets for $25/per. I was surprised both by how nice the Conseco Field House is and how empty it was. Despite the empty seats (by my guess about 50% attendence), the people around us proved interesting. Lisa's favorite was the emo-kid sitting directly in front of me. She noticed him first when he was trying to straighten the curled ends of his unshorn hair, but it was his later text messaging that really make him noteworthy. Lisa noticed his attention on his phone at some point in the second quarter and was easily able to read, "I want our mouths to make love when you get back." He later followed with the breathtaking metaphor, "I want our tongues to dance like two lovers in the night." If only he could have been wearing a Fall Out Boy t-shirt, the image would have been complete. I was worried the kid was going to catch onto the fact that Lisa and I couldn't stop laughing at him. My favorite person of the game was the fan who walked out onto the court during the 3rd quarter. After meandering between a few confused players, he jumped to try to touch a rim, and then spent an impressively long time evading security before being tackled and restrained.

After the game, we rushed back to our hotel to try out the jacuzzi and were only marginally surprised to find the jets didn't work. C'est la vie. (Lisa shouts La vie!). Tomorrow, I'm hoping to get up early, check out, and go wander around the city. I'm thinking that if we check out by 7 we can minimize our hosts' time to attempt murder. The Colts game should be great and make up for our poor choice in hotels.

Indianapolis

2007-12-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Currently, John and I are in Indianapolis, the second city in our road trip. Tonight we went to the Pacers game, which they won by some score that I can't remember at the moment.

We didn't have reservations for a hotel for Indy, so we just kind of drove around until we found a place. It turned out to be the Days Inn, which is easily the worst hotel room I have ever been in. There is a big Jacuzzi bathtub in the room. Not in the bathroom, but the room. It's great! I laughed so hard. Poor John. He looked completely dismayed. I comforted him by saying that we could take a bath later, but not even that made him happy.

Anyways, we decided to go get some tickets for the Pacers game, and then to walk around downtown a little bit.

The game was ok. However, the best part was the two emo kids who sat down in front of us. First, they weren't kids, because they were both drinking beer. Second, the guy sitting in front of John was writing the most atrociously awful text messages to his girlfriend. (Yes, I read people's text messages over their shoulders and then make fun of their private thoughts and feelings. It's just who I am.) So, the first text message he sent said this: "I want our mouths to make love when you get back." She wrote something back that I couldn't read. And then he wrote this: "Our tongues will dance like..." and then he stopped to think for a while and then continued with this: "like two lovers in the night." Needless to say, I laughed like crazy and told John. It was great.

Tomorrow, we are going to go see the Colts and then it's back to Norman.

Welcome

2007-12-22T20:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to "A Couple of Historians." This blog represents the thoughts and feelings, of its two authors, John Stewart and Lisa Torres. We hope to post regularly to the blog over the course of 2008. This year, Lisa and I hope to earn our Master's Degrees from the University of Oklahoma, get married, attend my sister's high school graduation, and buy a condo to name only our biggest goals.

We hope that a blog will allow us to keep track of each other's goals and record the most noteworthy events. Hopefully it will show interesting differences in our opinions of the same events and be a record of a very important year.