Something exciting

I had something exciting planned for today, but I'm not really feeling it right now.

Instead, enjoy this picture of a sunset in Antarctica that I found on Google.

Antarctica on street view!

Last week I discovered that Antarctica is now available on google street view. It makes me speechless with joy.  It doesn't actually work on google maps quite like I thought it would, but the google website (below) is pretty neat.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18868354

http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/worldwonders/scotts-hut/#ql=1

Documentaries

Every once in a while, when people ask me what kinds of movies I like or something I've watched recently, I get a little embarrassed and admit that I just watched this awesome documentary (or something else equally nerdy). I never would have pegged myself as someone who watches documentaries. They're really not anywhere near as boring as they sound. In fact usually, when just talking about the kinds of movies I like I'd have to go with foreign films, or Brit-coms, or something. Though I suppose that those are also rather nerdy genres to like.

So I was catching up on my google reader. Why is it that I'm always catching up on it? I really do try to read every day... But anyways, I was reading a post from a preservation blog that I sort of follow and the gal who writes it was talking about an art exhibit she went to recently, and about an installation by Werner Herzog that she particularly liked.The name Werner Herzog was familiar to me so I clicked on the link the gal provided and looked through the list of his films to see which ones I'd seen. Encounters at the End of the World sounded familiar so I looked at it. It's definitely a documentary about Antarctica. That I've seen. And that I feel like was pretty good. And then further down in the list was Nosferatu, which I definitely remember playing one week at the IC, but I don't actually think I ever saw it. Maybe someday I will (or maybe not...).

On a rather different note. You probably recall the last documentary that I posted about 1900 House. Well this week, I've been working on watching Antarctic Mission. It is a delightful documentary about one of my favorite topics: Antarctica. (Who knew there were so many documentaries about Antarctica?) It's been a good one. It focused mostly on the affects of climate change on the the ecosystems in the Southern Ocean and also the effects that the Southern Ocean have on the rest of the world. It is amazing how much on an impact global warming has on remote places like Antarctica. And I think that it is a topic that deserves more research and attention paid to it. I would hate for us to lose such an important part of our world, or such a beautiful one.

Mt. Herschel, Antarctica (from wikimedia commons)

Adventure: Boston

Seeing as I've been totally remiss in posting in the last year, it is entirely possible that you have no idea that I ever left Provo. Well, I did. I graduated, got a job, and moved to DC all at the beginning of 2011 (end of 2010). That said, I have since left my job, and am about to move to Boston. I have nothing against all those millions of people world-wide who got degrees and got jobs and started being real grown-up people. In fact, I admire them for it.  Nevertheless, I'm not ready to be a real adult yet, so I'm going back to school.

I'm going to be attending Simmons College. It's a small private women's university near Fenway Park (where oddly enough my program is co-ed).  I've been accepted to their Graduate School of Library and Information Science and I will spend the next two years working on my masters. More specifically, I'll be working on my MLIS with a specialty in Archival Management. In other words, I get to play with books everyday, OLD BOOKS. I can't think of anything better than to spend my life with books. I do love books. In fact, I love books so much that I want to tell you about the awesome purchase that I made a couple days ago.

I had taken some old books (read: out of date GRE manual and 6th edition MLA style guide) to a used bookstore to see if they might buy them. They didn't. They don't want them for the same reason I don't. They're out of date. But as if to try and appease me the man behind the counter invited me to browse the store and maybe purchase something instead (good salesman.) So I wandered around for a bit. It is a giant warehouse of a bookstore and the organization leaves your head spinning. There certainly was organization, but it wasn't intuitive, but it worked for the store because it put random books in your path you would never even think to look for. So I was wandering down some aisle looking for a book on book mending when I stumbled into the section with books on polar exploration (like I said, the organization made no sense).

Now, those of you who know me well, know that I have a soft spot in my heart for Antarctic explorers and that if I could have dinner with a famous person I'd eat with Sir Ernest Shackleton. So I was pretty excited about these polar books. Of course, I'd read several of them, and own a few, but I thought that the time was right to expand my knowledge base and so I picked up a book on Captain Scott's Last Expedition. And it was only $4. Yeah! And then, I spied something even better: The Crossing of Antarctica by Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary (the first man to summit Mount Everest). The part that made this book even cooler than it merely being about the first successful trans-antarctic crossing were the two little words penciled in next to the price "1st ed". Of course I checked the copyright page, it's true. It's a first edition, though admittedly a first American edition, which implies that it was published in England first--which would make sense. Still. And it has it's dust jacket!! Maybe one day it'll be worth more than the $8.50 that it was priced at, or the $4.25 that I paid for it. (I spent ages trying to decide which book to get, and after I had decided I had to have them both and didn't care that I really shouldn't get either, I was pleased to discover that the bookstore was having a 50% off sale and so I only ended up spending about $6 on both books. Which made me feel much better.) I love Antarctica, and one day I will go there.

I guess now that I have rambled on about how excited I am to read new books about Antarctic exploration I will leave you and go pack some boxes for my impending move. I'm leaving in about 36 hours and have packed exactly 2/3 of one suitcase.

Reading Room at Boston Public Library