charleeorchuck

Our corps was done with our project, no thanks to me, so we all packed ourselves up and headed back to our points of departure.  Unfortunately for my van, I opened my mouth about a short cut, and then could barely stay awake to give decent directions.  Also, I had to stay horizontal, or else risk another belligerent headache, so I couldn’t see out the windows to see where we were or where we should turn.  Oops.  But we made it back! Eventually.

That night, I stayed with my friend, and couldn’t get a wink of sleep.  I put every ice pack in the house on my back, but I was just in too much pain.  In the morning, we asked around and got directions to the hospital in Poughkeepsie, there, we waited in the ER for about 5 to 10 minutes.  I was admitted, saw a doctor, and was released in about half an hour.  He told me that I should double my antibiotics, and he prescribed me some pain killers that would actually address the pain I was in from the spinal tap.  Thanks for nothing, Staten Island.

After a few days, my mom came down to relieve my friend of playing nurse for me.  My friend went off to New Hampshire to take care of her dear horse who was probably feeling worse than me.  My mom carted me around to some specialists and various doctors to make sure we were doing everything right.  After a few weeks, I was mostly upright, and determined to get back to hiking and doing everything I used to do.  It took me another month or more, but I got back on my feet and here I am today.  I’ve lost 20-30 lbs for all my trouble, but I’ll get back in shape soon enough. Everything I read says that the Lyme will come back to haunt me, but for now, I simply will have a positive blood test, and that’s enough to bother with for now.

In the morning, I was told that I would be taken off the IV antibiotic and given oral ones.  I asked how much longer that they would keep me in there, since they had been saying 2 weeks with the IV.  I felt like Moses begging to let his people go, why the hell were they keeping me so long?  Back where I was living, every other person has an encounter with Lyme, and there isn’t this much drama.  I had a small headache, I figured it was from being in the A/C and dehydration.  Nothing new to me.

Sometime in the early afternoon, I was released, with a little piece of paper about how to take my medications.  I got in the car, and we headed to our corps work site.  We thought it would be nice to see everyone.

Boy, were we wrong.

We got to the site, and I thought I was a night creature.  The sun hurt every inch of me, and I could barely stand up straight.  After about 5 minutes and two photos, I asked if we could head back to camp because I felt so tired.  My boss said it was probably a good idea, since I looked a bit pale.  We got into the car and I asked for the nearest bag.  I threw up like something had exploded inside of me.  And to top it off, it felt like someone had driven a hot spike through my head.  I was in more agony than I had ever been before, and it wasn’t stopping.

We made it back to camp, and I laid down, and felt a little relief.  My friend went to fill my prescriptions, and I passed out.  At some point, they came back, I took some of the drugs.  I had been prescribed oral antibiotics and predizone.  I got a call from my case worker, and couldn’t even answer any of her questions, I was just too exhausted.

Later in the afternoon, word reached me that a group of my corps members had gone to the beach, and two had their feet sliced open by glass.  They were sitting in the emergency room, and since I was not getting better, they drove me back to the emergency room.  There was no where to lie down, so my friend tried to get me as horizontal as possible.  She was simply the best person ever.  Every time I moved, tears just poured down my face.  They did the same rigmarole as before.  Get up, sign stuff.  Get up, get a new bracelet.  Get up, see the prescreening nurse.  I didn’t care anymore, I couldn’t see, it hurt too much to open my eyes, I couldn’t stand up straight, and I just wanted to fall on the floor and turn into a vegetable.

Six hours passed.  My body was cramped up from trying to lie on a three and a half foot bench that was vacated part way through.  All the leaders from my corps were there, since we had two others getting stitches from the cuts in their feet.

Six hours, and finally someone saw me.  This is how it went:

“Oh, you’ve had a spinal tap.”

“Yes.”

“Well what you’re having is a common side effect from it.” (Resisting urge to kick him in the nuts) “I’ll give you some pain killers, and prescribe some more for when you leave.”

So I was put on a stretcher and given something that had more of a kick than morphine.  My friend stayed with me the whole night.  I would be loony for five minutes, then pass out, then wake up and chat non-stop, then pass out again.  She thought I was going crazy. Even though I got some rest, I couldn’t say the same for her.  Poor thing, little did she know that this was going to be the first night in a few weeks of caring for me and her horse.

So early in the morning on Friday, I was released again, with some pain killers and nausea pills that were supposed to take the edge off of the spinal tap side effects.

Night must have turned into morning, I woke up with a dry mouth and in my daze, there was lots of Hogan’s Heroes and old westerns.  The tube that had been used to put my IV in was all mangled and bloody, and the nurse had fun trying to find a new vein and make it all pretty again.  A nurse came in with a heavy accent of something asian to give me stuff my stomach that wasn’t upset, and I got some water and a ‘hearty’ breakfast.  I ate it all in two seconds and promptly went back to sleep.  My nurse came back, shocked that I had eaten everything so quick, and told me that I’d be moved soon.  Since I thought I felt fine, I asked why I couldn’t be released.  She didn’t know and scooted off.

My boss came back and was relieved to see that I had some color in my face and was coherent.  The visits from random doctors didn’t stop, and I was still in the same set of clothes that I had put on three days ago.  I don’t know how they could stand to be in the same space as me and go over my case. 

Sometime in the afternoon, they took my scary sticker off my door and I managed to persuade my barely decipherable nurse that I could get up and sneak in a phone call.  I had to go out to a stairwell, because, heaven forbid, a hospital have cell reception. I tried to get through to my mom, but no one was home.  Then I tried to think of the person who was closest and could make me laugh.  I called my ex.

He showed up and was the perfect bit of human contact in that cement cell.  But then visiting hours were over, and I was put in a wheelchair to be moved out of the emergency room.  For some reason, people aren’t allowed to walk themselves around.  I was put in a room with another person, who stayed behind the curtain and constantly complained and demanded attention.  Even though visiting hours were over, a few members of my corps snuck in with a Lady Liberty crown and an amazing “I Love NY” t-shirt that they all had signed.  To this day, it’s my favorite t-shirt of all time.  But they soon had to leave, and I went to sleep.  You had to pay for TV here, so it was awesome that my corps buddies had brought all my stuff.  Clean clothes never felt so good, and a book to read was just incredible.

At 3am, the woman I was sharing the room with started yelling for help.  The nurse came in and asked her what was wrong…apparently there was something insignificant because the nurse reamed her out for being so inconsiderate for the other person in the room (me). 

And thus, night two passed.

I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink.  My blood and urine samples were whisked away.  All the while, a HUGE needle was sitting on a small table near my bed.  My boss had looked at it, and her eyes were as large as plates.  I didn’t want to see it.  The two doctors came in, and asked my boss to leave, to…keep the place clean, I suppose.  I personally hadn’t showered in several days because there was supposed to be a shower at our campsite, but that turned out to be false…but back to my spinal tap.

They rolled me over to my side, and swabbed my back and started to numb me up.  Then the second doctor started talking to my doctor:

“Remember to keep the needle parallel to the ground, like how I explained and its pretty easy—“ I froze up.  She hadn’t done this before?  I’m the guinea pig?  I’m not ashamed, I was scared.

It wasn’t painful, at first.  It was just the most uncomfortable sensation as first the longest needle in the world began its numbing journey from the base of my back, to what felt like my butt bone.  There were so many times where I thought they couldn’t go further—I took anatomy class and there’s no way they can go any deeper.  Oh, there they go.  When they reached the depths of my spine, I began to hope they were done, but no, they then had to extract the damn fluid.  Of course, no one is talking to me at this point, its all on the woman with the needle in my back, and her cohort talking her through it.

Through the nightmare, at some point, the second doctor took over.  She asked me to adjust slightly to let her get in.  I moved, even though my brain screamed not to.  Then it hurt.  She explained that she had to go lower than where they numbed it, and that’s why it hurt, but they had gotten what they needed and the needle was going to come out. 

It came out and I breathed a sigh of relief.  But it was all for naught.

They said to roll over to my back.  Being slightly too tall of hospital beds, I sat up to try and move up the bed a bit.  Immediately I was racked with the worst headache of my life.  My eyes flooded over, and I bit my hand.  The doctor asked if my back hurt at all, and I said no.  She patted my shoulder and said that they’d be bringing in morphine.  As a side note, she said not to move for 20-30 minutes.

My nurse came in and was great at introducing me to the scariness of morphine.  I was also put on IV antibiotics and god knows what else was hanging above my head.  He told me that I would feel, well, weird.  The back of my throat got hot, and I knew I was loopy.  My boss helped me flip the TV to “I Love Lucy.”  I drifted in and out of sleep.  Sometimes my boss was there, sometimes she was on the phone. 

At some point later, I had to use the bathroom.  I walked out into the hallway, carrying my empty IV bags with me, and after doing my business, walked back.  As I tried to get back into bed without snagging all my IV cords, a nurse poked his head in and reminded me to wear a mask whenever I was going to be within 3 feet of other people.  I then realized there was a GIANT orange sticker on my door declaring me contagious.

As the day got later, I got more morphine, and begged a nurse for a cracker or something. Don’t ever eat at this hospital, Scrubs lies.  There’s no delicious pudding.

Since I was holed up in the room, I had no idea what time it was.  My boss left for the night, and nurses came and went.  Some giving my IV stuff, others handing me pills and water to wash it down.  I didn’t turn off the TV because people were yelling for help in the hallway all night long.  I didn’t understand why no one helped them. Isn’t this a hospital?

I didn’t’ go straight into the ER proper.  I was tucked away in a small examination room, that felt more like a storage closet.  As I sat on the noisy white paper, nurses and doctors and med students went in and out, pulling things out of the cabinets.  Cardboard boxes stacked high to my right and left.

My doctor was pleasant enough.  She went examined my range of motion, did all sorts of doctory things, when all I wanted to do was take a nap.  At one point, I mentioned that my shoulder had been hurting me, and that there were some lumps there—but I thought it was just a sports injury, since I had been doing some heavy lifting.

“Lift up your shirt and let me look.”

I obliged, and will never forget the reaction.

“Have you been itching it? Its all red.”

“No…”

My boss got up to look, “You’ve got a bull’s eye.”

Well ain’t that just peachy.  I’ve joined the 9 other people in my corps who got bit by ticks this summer.  Just they all had bull’s eye rashes and didn’t have the other symptoms that I did.  Ugh.  We took a few pictures, as I had other rashes on my chest and back too.  My doctor left, and came back with another doctor.

“Could I take a look at your rash?”

This would become the norm.  Sometimes a doctor or intern or two, sometimes a whole gaggle of them, but they all had not seen a rash like mine yet.  This is when I shoulda ran.  This is when I should have worried.  I should have ran back to Duchess County where it seems like everyone I ran into has had Lyme’s at some point in their life and the doctors know how to handle it.

But I just sat there; absolutely terrified of the list of tests they wanted to do on me.  Not only was I at risk for Lyme’s, but ticks carried all sorts of other lovely diseases with them.  Also, they were worried that I had a form of meningitis.  If it was bacterial, I could be dead in 24 hours, and that everyone I had been in contact with (aka meaning my entire volunteer corps) could be at risk.

They were going to get a sample of my spinal fluid to check.

As my doctor explained to me the procedure, I got into my head that she made it sound easy, painless and that she had done it a million times before.

I was so wrong.

I all honesty, I didn’t write during my ordeal with Lyme’s Disease and other nonsense in my life.  But at this point, I want it down on paper, before everything becomes misconstrued completely.

While the order of events may seem odd to you, it makes sense for me to start where I realized I was in trouble—

When I got my own room in the Staten Island University Hospital ER.

Chapter 1: Tuesday Morning: Something is wrong here.

I sat for probably half an hour in the hallway of the ER of the hospital with a mask over my face.  My boss (the actual relationship is a smidge more complicated than that, but we’ll leave it there for now) sat next to me, commenting on how nice everyone was.  The ER was packed, people were scurrying around everywhere, even more people lay on beds in the hallways, and construction was evident at all points.  I couldn’t move my neck, my mouth was not much better, I was on my third day of running a fever, and I was exhausted. 

To be fair, we had driven for hours already this morning, despite the fact that we were camping on Staten Island and a short drive from this hospital.  At first, we had directions to a clinic that wouldn’t open for ages, then we got directions to a hospital that wasn’t a hospital, and finally we ended up here, within spitting distance of the fine beaches of New York.

I was ushered into a room, sat down on the bed, and wondered how soon I could get back outside and pick up trash with the rest of my corps.  I hated hospitals.  Then again, I don’t know many people who really enjoy them. 

Once we reached the hospital, I gave my name and symptoms to the ER triage and waited.  There were about 4 other people sitting in the ER waiting room, watching the obscenely loud TV, so I figured the wait couldn’t be long.  After half an hour, I was ushered into a small room to have my vitals taken.  I described how I felt as best I could.  The nurse took my temperature and asked me how long I had had a fever for. 

“I haven’t had one since Friday.”

“Your temperature is 100.5°.”

Oops.  That would explain why I thought that weather was so hot.  So she let me sit back out in the waiting room for another half an hour or more.  I was called to the registration desk and had to fill out paperwork to which I had no answers.  A primary care physician? I don’t go to doctors.  Insurance? We have worker’s comp.  Current Employment? I’m a volunteer.  Somehow everything got filled out the secretary’s satisfaction and I was asked to go back to the waiting room until I was called into the actual ER.

Another hour dragged out, I watched as new people trickled in, and finally my turn came.  I entered the ER and thought: “Oh no, something’s wrong here. I’m on Scrubs.”

location: New York

mood: crazy

Hello all from the wonderfun world of insane drivers, even more insane gas prices, and work that is...well...I'll get to that later.

I'm in the midst of my second week at Bear Mountain State Park, and I think I've figured out my title as intern. Ready? Here we go:

Charlee Eaton, Student Conservation Association Archaeology Steward Intern of the Hudson Valley Americorps Corps at Bear Mountain and Harriman State Parks of the Palisades Interstate Parks Commission, in conjunction with the Highland Environmental Research Institute of Rutgers University at Sterling Forest State Park.

Yeah, that's just my title.  But don't let it fool you; I still hardly have an idea of what I'm doing.  I talked to last year’s intern and this was her advice: "Make up stuff to do, or else you'll be bored.  Oh, and don't get too stressed about your volunteers.  They'll make you pull your hair out, but they're doing great stuff for the Park."

My main task is to organize the 40 or so volunteers that we have from last year and make sure that they visit site within the parks, to try and prevent looting.  The theory is that by checking up on sites that are easily accessible, or have been excavated and reported in the paper; we can dissuade people from treasure hunting.  The past few years have been very successful.  Unfortunately, we're not monitoring all the sites.

Am I going to go in with guns blazing and change everything for the better?  I'm just an intern, fresh from college!  I'm the least worldly on subjects such as heritage protection.  My best friend is going to grad school to study such methods!

But I'm here, and I've already got ideas up both sleeves from working at a National Park over the summer.  So we shall see what happens!

Oh, and my boyfriend came back from the wilderness of Montana.  YAY!

location: Indiana

mood: shocked

Out in the midwest now, where the hills are long and low, and the face of the earth is covered with the stubble of corn stalks.  We've been lucky with the weather so far. No inches of ice for us, just sun and high 50s.  With Christmas music on the radio all the time, its hard to feel the holiday cheer without massive amounts of snow.

But the digging has become a little more varied...meaning either there's a lot of slow digging or lots of walking and looking at the ground.  But there's lots of stuff to find.  Consider this: in a 93 mile stretch of land, we've already found 500 sites, with projections of finding 700 over the whole project.  To be fair--they aren't all buildings or features or anything.  A site can just be a concentration of flakes and debitage. 

But enough on the lesson, back to real life?  Which apparently I am not playing by the rules.  I'm currently 18 or so hours from home, and do not intend to come out this far again.  But, with the option of moving to Philadelphia, perhaps it won't be so bad.  However, because I'm going to the AIA conference for some intense networking, no one can promise me a spot on a dig until that week. I think my boyfriend is stressing more about me about all this, saying that I'm ridiculous for taking time off so soon.  The way I see it, and smack me if I'm wrong, is that some things only happen every now and again in life, and you should do them.  I have the rest of my life to work, and its not like I'll have a hard time finding something to do with myself.  Yes, I may be out of the field for a little while, but I'll still work.  

I can't wait to get home.  Yet again, for good and bad reasons, but I'll glad to play in the snow with my mates again!

So I finally got a job in Cultural Resource Management (CRM).  Unfortunately , I can't say who I'm working for, what I'm digging, and yadda yadda.  So I'll be pretty general except for the snippets of hilarity I feel necessary to relay to you.\

Animal Husbandry?
So we were leaving the field in our monster van, and a little red car swerves and blocks the road in front of us.  We slam on the brakes, thinking of lots of phrases to tell this little red car as soon as the driver steps out.  A woman in sweats runs up and hysterically speaks to the driver: "Can you help me??  There's a deer up the road that I passed by earlier.  She's lying down in the field and she had her head up earlier, but I don't know how she's doing.  Can you go look?"   

We all look at each other blankly.  The driver, being the gentleman he is (and also having no choice but to turn around since her car was still across the road) said "Sure, we'll go look."

So we turn around and look out into the endless cornfields for a deer laying down.  We eventually see it, slow down, and manage to spot the doe flick her tail.  We pull over and the boss says, "Well what does she want us to do now?"

The hysterical lady was rapping on the window.  "Will you come with me and look at it?"

Boss again: "I don't think that's a good idea--"

H.L.: "Well why?"

Boss: "Well, if its been hit by a car, it probably has internal injuries and isn't very happy.  It'll either get more hurt from trying to run away from us, or it'll get spooked and try to hurt us."

H.L.: "Well, aren't you guys going to do something?"

Boss: "We're not from around here--"

H.L.: "So you're from (nearby city)?"

Boss: "No, we're not from anywhere around here--"

H.L.: "Well I don't have a cell phone, so can you make the call?"

Boss: "Who should we call?"

H.L.: "The Humane Society."

Boss: "Well we can look up  the number when we get back to our hotel, but its going to be awhile."

For some reason that seemed to suffice the crazy lady.  But as we drove off to our hotel, somehow we knew that she'd probably fetch it water and crackers, only to be nipped as she was doing so, and would probably make the 6 o'clock news with: "Woman bit by Hunter's not-so dead kill".  

So remember all that rain that we got while camping in Spider Rock?  (Movies galore were made of the flash floods and crossings).  Well, all that rain blew out the one public trail that our park had.  We closed it down, at first, just to get all our recording done.  White House Trail was not just any trail, but most of it was built in the 1930’s by the CCC, thus making it a historic feature.  Also, as with most of the canyon, there are prehistoric hand and toe hold trails running up and down the walls there.  So, as with the most random parts of the canyon, this trail had never been documented. (Hint to donate to the park, and not Mesa Verde, who has a crew of 20 archaeologists, we have 2, they’re park has 50 sites tops, we have over 1300 and are finding more every day).  We spent the week, documenting the trail, every SINGLE railroad tie, check dam, and retaining wall. The Superintendent got emergency funding for the trail, and soon the Grand Canyon Trail crew was due to come in and fix it up.  But I would not get to see such an event.  (You do not want to know how long the Superindent had been trying to work with Region to get a yearly maintenance crew that would be shared between the 3 parks to prevent something like this from happening…he couldn’t even get money unless it was emergency funds from higher up).  On Friday, the 17^th, I packed up my boxes, made my boyfriend put them in the car, said my goodbyes, got an AWESOME Navajo rug from my bosses, and headed out on our adventure.  We passed through Shiprock, my jaw was dropped the entire time.  We drove up north to Colorado, and took FOREVER to make it up and over the Continental divide through Wolf Pass.  After more gritting of teeth as my car made it over huge mountains at slower and slower speeds, we finally quit at an old steel mill town that was reviving itself with mass amounts of hotels.  Which all happened to be booked because of some convention.  But we found something, and looked forward to meeting with old friends in Denver.

Well let me start this off with an apology for those who read this.  These past few weeks have gotten so busy that I find myself coming home, scarfing something down, and then falling asleep on the couch.  It’s a good thing that I take so many pictures, because I can hardly remember what happened when.

I’ll tell the events backwards, since this past weekend was the most exciting.  The roommates and I drive to Flagstaff on Friday afternoon.  We had to fist drop off some mangy puppies at the humane society (ticks and fleas were found scurrying all over my car afterwards), then I managed to find my way to my aunt and uncle’s house.  The last time I had been there was the middle of the night, after driving in from Vegas, during high school.  So I was very happy to find it without much trouble.  I was also happy to see familiar faces, and hear all the news that hadn’t made its way out to me on the Rez.  My roomies had been talking about pizza and beer all day, so we made our way into town and had the best pizza and beer ever (I think the fact that we hadn’t had real food all week made it better) and then went to see the new Harry Potter film.  Finally, at 1 am Rez time, we made it back home to crash.  We were up early, however, because my uncle had offered to fly us over the area and Grand Canyon.  He didn’t feel to well, so we got to sleep in a bit.  My aunt babied us to no end, and we decided to hit Sunset Crater, Wupatki, and some lava tubes nearby.  My whole Volcanolgy course came back to me during that day, and I got to see some pretty awesome ruins.  The next day, my uncle took us up around the cinder cones, Lake Powell, and the Grand Canyon.  I even got to steer for a bit.  My pictures do not do the flight justice, for Arizona looks impossibly more dynamic from the air.

During the week before, I finally found a find worth taking out of the field.  Let me explain that we never take anything out, unless we think that its of special significance to the canyon, or we think that someone will take it.  We were up at an already massive site, and I found an intact and complete axe head.  You never find complete ones in the canyon, and I think there are two that have been found here so far.  For having over 1600 sites, and that few axe heads is quite a statistic.  So that made my day, and there are far too many pictures of me holding it.

We also did a bit more hiking that week up the canyon walls to the alcoves.  This, of course, is where the cool stuff is.  But one trail, the Baby Pee Trail (I’m working on getting the story behind that name), nearly did my boss and I did.  Of course, we’re a bit reckless with our footing at times, but as you’ll see in the pictures, the trail is vertical, with nice hand and toe holds.  But bump your backpack or rear, and you’ll watch the world swing beneath you.  So, I’ve decided that perhaps I’ll be a little more careful from now on.  Even though it’s much more fun to play mountain goat.

A regional SCA person came to visit and watch us work.  A kitten was abandoned with us for an hour and was trying to suck all our necks when we held it.  We went into one of the major ruins while tours drove by and had us in all their pictures.  We had a Friday the 13^th party the night before going to the Hopi Mesas.  The next day was full of scorching sun, sitting on roofs next to golden eagles, watching Kachina dances, and looking at vendor wares. 

Whoosh, I’m brain dead now.  I’m sure I’ll think of more interesting anecdotes…but for now, this will tell you all that I’m alive, and well, and jealous that my roomie has gotten the new Harry Potter book…anywho, toodles!

Well, Friday evening started the weekend off with a bang!  Or whatever sound rockfall makes.  My roommates and I decided to take a Full Moon hike into Canyon de Chelly.  We went down a side canyon trail during the sunset and the sides of the canyon glowed bright red.  Finally, it was dark and we meandered around waiting for the moon to rise.  All the while, locals were throwing rocks into the canyon from the overlook, making loud crashing noises. When it finally did, it was fast and brighter than any full moon on a winter's night.  The sand in the canyon wash was bright white and the canyon walls glowed blue.  It was a wicked difficult hike, since there hasn't been any water in the wash since I arrived here.  The sand was so loose that walking out of the canyon took ages. 

The next day we got up early and drove down to Petrified Forest National Park.  It was hot...hot...and well...hot.  I got another magnificent burn on my back, but saw more petrified wood than I ever want to see again.  We also saw the Painted Desert, petroglyphs (though we decided the ones at Canyon de Chelly were much cooler), a pueblo, and dinosaur remains.  We also hiked around Blue Mesa...at 1 in the afternoon.  So we were in the hottest spot, hiking around, at the hottest time of the day.  We're smart kids, honestly.

So after much browsing of the gift store, we went north to Holbrook to grab some food.  Along the way, one of my roomies got in touch with a friend from college.  So we ended up driving all the way to Gallup (i was asleep the whole time the decision-making process was occuring) to meet up with her.  It was really fun, but we ended up leaving Gallup as it was getting dark.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Rez....basically you DO NOT ever drive at night.  Especially on the weekend, especially at the end of the month.  Because this is when everyone gets their checks, and people have fewer qualms about driving drunk.  Suffice it to say, that we nearly got into an accident only three times--once was a fire truck swerving into our lane, another was a pick-up passing without realizing we were right where he intended to go, and the third was just a tractor trailer loosing his tire.  But we made it home safe and sound.

Work is still work.  Our boss is getting slower and slower about getting out to the field and getting work done.  My roomies are completely annoyed because they were here last year and used to getting a lot more done.  To be fair, political problems seem to be cropping up a lot more this year, and its hard to get this project rolling.  

As a last note, I wanted to thank everyone for the letters, notes, and syrup!!  I've gotten more mail than my roomies combined!  I have some more cool postcards that I'm going to send out, because they're sooo much better than any pictures I could take.