Since yesterday was International Women's Day I decided to do some proper women's work. No, I don't mean cleaning or cooking or taking care of children. I mean---you guessed it---secretarial-type work. Yes, that's right: I've been stapling pages together for many hours the past two days. I did this for more than 5 hours yesterday, and I've been at it for a few more today.
Why, you ask? Well, a large box of photocopies from one of my archives arrived earlier this week. In in were a few thousand pages of documents, accompanied by the order slips I used to request the copies. The slips also indicate what folders, boxes, and collections the material is from. So I've been stapling the slips to the documents. (I'm more than half done---yay!) If I didn't do this there'd be no way of knowing where the pages came from. And that would be a disaster. But I don't really mind stapling. It's like a break for my brain. (Not that my brain's been particular active over the past few months.)Last night, tired of collating, I went to a prof's house for Indian food and a talk by a visiting scholar. The talk wasn't about her research, but about her life as a historian. I've been to a few such events, and they are always very interesting and fun. I chatted with fellow grad students and a couple undergrads who were there, and actually took home some good advice about how I should go about starting my research. (By "research" I mean what will happen after I've collected and organized everything, but before I can really start writing.) So that was good.
This morning JDS and I went to visit lovely SF and her baby, K. The baby was quite happy the whole time, and found us rather entertaining. Good morning; yummy Russian pancakes too. Afterwards JDS and I did some quick shopping and browsing, and did the usual grumbling about various things. Awesome. In a bit I have to leave the house again and go to Massey for dinner. I do lead a pretty active life, in between the stapling!
AAARGH! I hate "the stapling."
ReplyDelete