The winters in the north are much more wintery than I'm used to. It's beautiful on clear days, freezing, but beautiful. It's only really light for 9-10 hours now, but it feels like the England I imagined as a kid. All sooty stone and brick buildings, black church spires above the rest, and leaves blowing everywhere. It's a kind of romantic starkness that I really like. Then there's the rainy days, which never seem light at all, and make everything in the world look monotone. They can be lovely if you're inside with a hot cup of tea and a blanket and no responsibilities, but not so great on workdays. But whether clear or rainy, the days are super short! It was almost dark by 430 today! It is positively strange! It feels like I've stayed up til 2 in the morning because it's been dark for just ages!
Although, despite the freezing temperatures, I am kind of looking forward to the first snow. I'll be a wreck, all freezing and slipping around, but I can't help getting excited for snow, at least at first.
And! (Dad) I got that squishy insulation tape for doorways for our back door, which has huge gaps all the way around it, and it made a big difference! We don't have much insulation and we have a fan that is just cut directly into the wall to the outside, which we'll have to cover also, but it is already noticeably better in our kitchen. It's warmer than the inside of our fridge, which is our goal for the time being.
I never seem to have enough time to say what I want to here. I'll tell y'all about my awesome time repackaging objects with conservation last Friday. It was so much fun! I learned how to package objects by carving the right size shapes into the plastic foam with a box cutter and setting the peices in them, and guess what I learned with. Yeah, learned. They just gave me the plastic and a box cutter and set me lose on ROMAN VESSELS. Tiny ones, even like, a paper-thin glass one that was already partly broken and I was terrified I'd break it. It was SO COOL! The whole time I was like, I'm literally just sitting on the floor, surrounded by intact vases more than 1000 years old, and then all around me in the rest of the room was roman stone carvings, just absolutely everywhere. And I'm just sitting on the floor carving up this thick plastic foam, like a kid in art class, with bits flying everywhere. It was surreal, but totally AWESOME! I cannot emphasize enough. Like, the conservation team laughed when I said that it had been really good fun and that I'd love to work with them some more on that store, but it really was wonderful fun, I was sweaty and dirty with masses of dust and dirt and bits of disintegrating cardboard and bits of plastic foam, and that in itself- a day working with my hands with objects, would be awesome by itself. But I love looking at new objects (Axes and vases and glass slides oh my!) and learning how to safely pack everything and talking to the conservation staff. It was great! I could do that every day forever (as long as I got a mask. I sneezed uncontrollably for a whole day after that).
Ok. It's after 10 now, I'd better get ready for bed.
Love you all! <3 XOXOXO
