So my time in Natchez is almost over – in fact this is my last full week.  Next week my mom’s coming in on Wednesday so I”m taking a 1/2 day off to pick her up from the Jackson airport (and I’m driving the highway by myself… bet you guys never thought you’d hear me say that!  Wish me luck!).  Thursday I’m taking the whole day off so we can go to St. Francisville – I want her to see The Myrtles Plantation, see if she can sense anything there cause it’s supposedly one of the most haunted places in America, but my friend Mary down here said it’s not that good… we’ll see.  There’s also apparently a great gift shop there as well as some other cool houses so I thought that’d be a perfect day trip.  I also want her to meet my friends so I may take her to The Vue on Thursday so she can meet Darian and everybody.  Friday I’ll be working in the morning but taking the afternoon off to show her Natchez.  And we head back Saturday.  It’s funny, for weeks I was like “get me out of here!’ and now that I’ve kinda gotten used ot it I’m like “aww do I really have to leave?”  Although still not to the point that I want to be here permanently.

So looking over my past posts I realized I never wrote about Vicksburg.  That was SUCH a cool trip – we saw the U.S.S. Cairo and the Vicksburg National Military Park.  I’m not normally a military person but this was really well done and I loved it.  I also loved Vicksburg – it’s bigger than Natchez, about 50,000 versus the MAYBE 20,000 in Natchez.  Doesn’t sound like much but that’s JUST big enough to feel the difference and I just really prefer the size of Vicksburg.  But I like the look of natchez better.  Go figure.

This weekend Christina and I went to New Orleans.  Now THERE’S a city I could easily live in – I absolutely love New Orleans, especially the French Quarter.  It’s funny, I remember falling in love iwth it when we went down for the Katrina mission trip, then I went to Paris and it was my favorite city in Europe… connection??  Maybe! 

Anyway here’s the story on New Orleans.  Chris and I left at about 10, went through Baton Rouge (which I did not like that route, it’s crazy and confusing) and then took the Great River Road so we could see plantations.  We ate at The Cabin, which is a restaurant in a bunch of old slave cabins and the oldest black school in Louisiana.  the food was really good.  Then we drove past a bunch of plantations – I got pics of St. Joseph and Oak Alley, and we went into Laura, which was a Creole plantation that has actually mainly been run by women.  I LOVED that place, it was the coolest story!!  I won’t go into it here cause it takes a while but a cool connection is after the last woman Laura (her dad renamed the plantation after her to guilt her into running the plantation and the sugar and wine businesses) moved to St. Louis and lived in the Central West End.  Cool!

So we finally get to New Orleans at about 4:30 (LA backroad highways are not well marked at all) and we try to go straight to our hotel… we finally get to our hotel room at about 6 cause we got off on the wrong exit cause it was super confusing, AND our hotel was not well marked at all.  It’s a small 6 inch plaque with black lettering on a building underneath an auning… we kept driving around and around and around looking for it!  Finally we found a place to park, walked, and I called the hotel to find out where they are.  After that we walked around the French Quarter which is BEAUTIFUL!  We also went to Bourbon Street, went to a blues club, had a drink, I got a horny gator (it’s a drink on Bourbon street – I figured Katherine Heugatter HAD to get a Horny gator 🙂 ), and then headed home.  Neither of us are big partiers and looking at Bourbon Street I realized that if I had gone there my senior year of college or with a bunch of my more party-type friends it’d be one thing, but where I am at the moment it’s just not my scene…

So we get back to the hotel, I’m pretty much out immediately.  Sleeping peacefully till I hear yelling in the hall… at 5 A.M.  Laughing and talking and “Charlie!!”.  Then I hear a siren… it’s a fire alarm… at 5 AM.  Lovely.  We finally get back, I’m trying to sleep, and some more drunk people come in, laughing, talking loud, yelling, etc.  A girl across the hall comes out and starts yelling at them.  Needless to say I’m just thinking “SHUT UP!” in my head.  But I finally get back to sleep.   That was a fun experience…

The next morning Chris and I got up, went to a place around the corner for breakfast (our hotel was fine for a night but def not the place to stay for a while – not well marked, small room, couldn’t get the showerhead to work so we both took baths, 5 AM fire alarm wake up calls, and no continental breakfast), then went to the National World War II museum.  That was REALLY well done!  My favorite part was the 1/2 hour video they showed – it was a documentary, but there was no narration, just all vetrans with maybe 1 historian telling their stories.  I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house, I know I teared up.

After that it started to rain so we stopped in at a cafe, had lunch (which took 15 minutes to make my only OK panini… rediculous!), then did a walking tour of the French Quarter.  Finally we went to the Cabildo and then headed home.  Overall lots of fun.

OH and while in the French Quarter on my first night I went to a psychic in front of Jackson Square – I figured I was only in New Orleans once, hey why not.  I personally felt she hit the nail on the head on a lot of stuff… but then she told me to go home and have sex… I laughed a LOT at that.

K gotta go, lunch time!

Alright so a lot has happened since my last post but I’ll do my best to keep this short and sweet.

First off, Scott, Christina and I went to Baton Rouge not yesterday but last Sunday.  It was fun! Amy Russo took us around, it was great to catch up with her after 2 years.  We went to the old state capitol and the new state capitol, where we got to see the bullet holes from Huey Long’s assasination, Amy took us to the archives, we went to the USS Kidd, and drove by LSU.  But here’s the big news… I DROVE THERE!  That’s right!  I drove an hour and a half each way on a highway and in a big city that I was unfamiliar with WITHOUT ANY FREAK OUTS!  That’s AMAZING for me!  Overall I like Baton Rouge, but I wasn’t drawn to it/didn’t fall in love with it immediately like i do some cities – ie Philadelphia, Paris, or Mobile, Alabama (explanation to come).  I could live there if necessary but it wasn’t like “Oh my god I love this city!”

This week we worked on the bottles all week and I did data entry.  But there was some big news for us… the Natchez Democrat did an article on me and the other 3 interns… and it made the FRONT PAGE.  That’s right, 3 out of staters, 1 local, and a bunch of bottles at Melrose is BIG news in Natchez, MS.  Normally I would be really excited… except the article was HORRIBLE!  I sound like a ditz cause he totally took my story/quote out of context… AND HE SPELLED MY NAME WRONG!  I gave the guy my license so that he could get the correct spelling, and he STILL spelled it wrong!  Who does that!  But at least I don’t sound as bad as Scott.  Actually the only one who sounds good is Kaitlyn.  And Darian, the pastor at Grace UMC, saw it and said I sounded “smart”… I think she was being nice… Oh well not a big deal.  I’m posting the link here.

Saturday we had planned to go to Gulfport, MS… and we did… but the trip ended up with us crossing 3 states.  See we drove through Louisiana to get to Gulfport, then we got to Gulfport, saw the beach, and went “Let’s go check out Biloxi”.  So we went to Biloxi, saw the lighthouse, saw the casinos (where I gambled for the first time… only a dollar on the penny slots but still a first), drove by Jeff Davis’ house Beauvoir… and then we said “Hey let’s keep driving!”  So that took us to Pascagoula, at which point we were only a few miles from Mobile, Alabama, and Scott wanted to find the leprechaun tree in Mobile which is apparently on youtube… I dunno… so we drove to Mobile.  We never found the tree, but Mobile’s downtown skyline is  COOL!  I’m not a big fan of skyscrapers but I really liked it.  Interestingly enough, THAT was a city that really called to me, even though I only saw a few minutes of it.  The downside was we didn’t get home till 2 but it was fun anyway!

Well my library session is about to end so I’ve gotta go.  Enjoy the article!

http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/jul/23/nps-interns-labor-over-antique-bottles/

So this is the first time I’ve gotten on the internet since Saturday.  INSANE!  Here’s the latest update of my first week of work with the National Park Service –

We’ve been working on the bottles all week.  Filling out worksheets on them, cleaning them, rehousing them.  There’s been some interesting finds but overall it’s been repetitious and semi boring.  I am learning though and I know it’ll look good on my resume so that’s what I”m counting on.  I’ve LOVED having my ipod though, it really keeps me on task – today it died cause i need to charge it, and I had SO much trouble getting through the last few hours, it really does make the time go faster.

Last night I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  It was AH-MAZING!  SUCH a great job!  I haven’t read the book in a while but from what I remember they really stayed true to it (SPOILER ALERT!!

 

Minus one of my favorite parts, Harry and GInny OFFICIALLY getting together rather than just hinting at it).
But overall it was great.  I went with Kaitlyn and some of her friends.  Chris and Scott were invited but Scott’s not really into HP, and Chris wanted to get some sleep since we’ve been going in at 8.  I probalby should have done the same, it was the 10 o’clock show, but come on… it’s HARRY POTTER!  How could I NOT go see it?!

Tomorrow we’re going to Vicksburg.  That should be fun. Then Sunday Chris, Scott and I are going to Baton Rouge and meeting up with AMy Russo – I haven’t seen her since England, I think that’ll be fun!

Last Saturday Christina and I made an impromptu trip along the natchez trace.  There’s some cool stuff… nothing really important to write about…

Overall it’s been a good week.  Gotta go, I need ot head home and eat something before I meet up with Darian and some of her friends at THe View for ladies night.  OH and get this – I went to visit Grace UMC 2x, and apparently when someone visits twice they bake something for htem.  I figured a couple cookies or something… today at work I get 6 bran muffins and a pie!  I coudln’t believe it, all that food!  It was sweet, I appreciated it.

That’s my life.  Gotta go.  Hope you enjoyed.  And go see Harry Potter cause it’s GREAT!

Love you all,

Katherine

For any one that read the post I had put on here previously (assuming anyone actually reads this blog), ignore it.  I was frustrated, but it turned out to be unnecessary frustration.  Cheryl called – my background check came through!!!!  The government now knows that I am not a terrorist or a felon and I am going to take my IT training tomorrow and I’m starting work at Melrose and William Johnson house after that!  WOOHOO!!!!!

Plus last night was a lot of fun.  I went out with Darian, the pastor from Grace UMC, and some of her friends.  It was GREAT to get out among young people – granted some were older but it was no different than hanging with my cohort and I loved it!!  They go out to The View (it’s a bar in Natchez, not what you’re thinking) apparently every Thursday normally cause it’s ladies night and you get your first drink free and every one after that 1/2 off if you’re a girl, but Darian had a meeting today so they moved it to Wednesday.  I’ll definitely be going back.  Oh and apparently because I visited Grace UMC twice, I get free cookies or homemade bread – how sweet is that, they’re gonna feed me!  I told Mom and she thought it was cause they saw I was skinny, but actually they do it to anyone that comes twice  -incentive to get them to come back :-).  Hey it works, I’ll go to a church that’s friendly (though not outrageously/uncomfortably friendly  ala Church of Christ, “I just met you, go get baptized!” that I went to the week before) AND feeds me!

So it’s been a good two days.  I’ll be coming back to the foundation sometime next week to finish up the Stewart collection – I’m confused on how the volunteer Hope did her inventory so I gotta talk to her about that and finish that, but otherwise I’m gonna be working at the park, FINALLY!

WOOHOO!

Love you,
Katherine

Well there’s good news and bad, or not really bad so much as not so good news –

Bad/not so good news –

Kaitlyn’s background check came through.  That’s great for her.  But it means that I’m alone at the foundation.  And I”m the only one whose background check is still being worked on.

Good news –

Daddy and Cassie got the questionnaires about me from the FBI or wherever, so they are checking on my check.  And neither Dad nor Cassie divulged my evil plot to take over the world, one little town of old people at a time… just kidding.  The other good thing is, Kaitlyn’s check was sent just a day before mine, 2 days tops.  SO if hers went though, mine SHOULD be through by Thursday or Friday!

KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!

Alright ya’ll, here’s the dealio.  I don’t know why I just said that but I felt like it.

THe past week has been pretty good. Relatively uneventful but good.  I was pretty much by myself at the Foundation, since Kaitlyn was on vacation last week, so I was SO thankful for my Ipod.  It kept me on track, and I finished my volume of the Stratton diary on Friday!  SO we just have to finish the volume Kaitlyn was working on and we’re done with that project.  We also have to finish inventorying the Stewart collecton, 3 boxes of stuff that they threw at me on Thursday, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

I got a day and a half off work!  Apparently Friday was the federal holiday since the 4th of July fell on a Saturday, but none of us knew that so we all went in to work in the morning, so we were supposed to get the rest of Friday and 1/2 of today off.  But today Kaitlyn and I went to work, only to be told by the director’s husband that she said the interns could take the day off.  Not ones to argue about it, we said “Ok!” and took the day off.  So I spent today catching up on my soap operas.  It was GLORIOUS.  I think tonight I”ll make Lo Mein.  Yum.  Although only after I watch Bones, which is quickly becoming my new favorite show – I’m addicted.  Welcome to my life in Natchez folks.

I had a pretty good 4th of July weekend.  Natchez mainly celebrated on Friday, cause even though the 4th was on Saturday, I guess they do “First Fridays” every month so they just combined the celebrations.  Anyway, Scott, Christina, and I met up with some of the people from the park and hung out – went to Fat Mama’s Tamales for drinks, walked around, went to an antique store, went to Breaud’s for some drinks and some food (a sweet tea, delicious calamari, and a watermelon “Jolly Rancher” mixed drink for me – the Jolly Rancher tasted so much like a Jolly Rancher that it wasn’t good at all, but the rest was), then onto the fireworks.  Fireworks were pretty good – granted, not ST. Louis quality, but I was very impressed by Natchez’ fireworks considering it’s Natchez.  Plus it was really cool cause we were RIGHT there, and I don’t remember the last time I was THAT close to fireworks, even though I did miss sitting on Mom and Dad’s 3rd floor with a smoothie and my parents… After that the rest of the park staff kinda split, but Scott, Chris and I went and watched Footloose, which they showed on the street in front of the Foundation.  Minus the mosquitos that ate me alive that was fun.  But I have to say that as I watched that movie it hit me… I am basically IN the town from Footloose for the summer!  Except that instead of dancing being outlawed, there’s just no place to do it.  And there’s no Kevin Bacon…  It was funny though, as we walked back from Footloose, Chris and I were talking and I said that watching that movie reminded me of the episode of WIll and Grace where Jack is stalkign Kevin Bacon and Will ends up dancing with him.  We get back… and lo and behold that episode of Will and Grace is on!  Weird huh.  Wow that’s the big event of my 4th of July… welcome to my life in Natchez haha.

Saturday I did nothing.  Well that’s not true.  I lougned around, watched TV, laughed and gawked a little at the Underworld Trilogy with my roommates, txted people about the 4th… some 4th of July huh.  But don’t get me wrong I enjoyed it.  Just not the 4th of July most people have.

Yesterday I went to church – Grace United Methodist again.  Smaller congregation, probably cause everyone was out of town, and those that  there were older, probably cause those were the ones that DIDN’T go out of town.  But the pastor, Darian’s really nice and she’s in her 20’s (a big plus), and this sweet old woman told me I looked like a model.  :-).

Today as I said I went to work, ready to work a 1/2 day, and got the whole day off.  SO I have watched the Today show, What not to wear, caught up on my soap operas (for those that watch GH, I’m SO excited about Maxie and Spinelli) and now am at the coffee shop using the internet (with a waitress looking over my shoulder cause I type fast… nice but kinda weird too…) before I head home to watch Bones and make some Lo Mein.  This week my background check SHOULD be OKayed and I can start working at Melrose, which is good cause CHris and Scott really need my help with the inventory.  I’ll be sad to leave the foundation cause they’ve been nice and they were going to send me on a field trip to Brandon Hall, a house they’re trying to sell on the Natchez Trace, for some pics, but if I’m going to legitimatelly put NPS on myr esume, I need more than a few weeks there to do it.  KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!

This week I”ve had 2 epiphanies.  One is that once we got through that awful McGehee collection and I started inventorying and working with things that are actually historic and even slightly significant, I have really enjoyed my work at HNF.  I’ve been thinking about my time there and at Old NOrth St. Louis Restoration Group, both places I generally enjoyed working and where I really believe in their mission and which will keep me intouch with the Historic Preservation roots that got me into museums in the first place, and I”ve realized that I should think about applying to places like that after I graduate, maybe as a historian.  The other thing I’ve realized is this – I love Natchez, and eventually I could very easily live in a place like this, but for where I am right now and where/who I’ll be in the next year as I apply for jobs, I really need to look for a place with more excitement or at least more young people.  It’s really not that it’s a small town.  I think I could live in a small town if it was something like a COLLEGE town, i.e. Columbia.  But Natchez is too much like Kirksville, only with restuarants that are never open and old people instead of college bars and students.  I need a place with young people, where I can get out.  I think it’d be different if I had someone to settle down with… but right now I don’t, and if I didn’t have my roommates this summer, I think I would’ve been very VERY lonely.  So I just need a place with more people my age.  Eventually Natchez or a place like it will work, but not right now.

Oh one more plus – as I was typing this I ran into Darian, the pastor from Grace, and she invited me out tomorrow with some friends, most of whom are younger.  I know one guy and he’s in his 40s or so but there’s another girl who just moved here who’s 22 and Darian’s probably about my sister’s age… young people, thank god!  Plus it’s just nice to be included like that, I really appreciate it.

Well I should go before I miss Bones.  Yeah I’m lame.  I know.  But what can you do in a certified retirement community??

I hope you all enjoyed the holiday weekend!  Keep in touch and KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED ON THE BACKGROUND CHECK!

Love you,

Katherine

K there’s really not much new stuff to say so this one actually will be short and sweet.

I bought an Ipod on Friday.  And I’m really glad I did cause Kaitlyn is in Gulfport all this week so it’s just me at the Foundation and it would be really quiet without my ipod.  Plus it surprisingly enough keeps me focused.

Christina and I made a very spontaneous trip to Jackson on Saturday.  I ran into her at the coffeeshop here, and we were talking bout it and were like “you know what, let’s go to Jackson!” So we did.  Jumped in the car, found a map in her glove compartment, and made the 1.5 hour drive to Jackson.  We went to the Mississippi Museum of Art, which is really small but has a good exhibit, and then went to some different places and got pics.  I’ll upload them as soon as I can.

Scott’s friends came in town on Friday and he went down to New Orleans with them on Saturday, but we all went out to Bowie’s on Friday night.  It was actually a lot of fun, the guys were nice, and it was fun to hang out with Kaitlyn and Joseph again, especially since I won’t see her all week.

I think I found a church here in Natchez, or at least one that I want to go back to the next week.  It’s Grace United Methodist Church. The overall congregation is still closer to Mom and Dad’s age than mine, but it’s younger than what I”ve found, a place where while still diverse I can easily fit into, the pastor is younger and very nice, people said hi to me, and I liked the service.  I wouldn’t say that it’s a permanent church home but I really SHOULDN”T find a permanent church home here anyway cause I leave at the end of August, and Grace is the first church out of 4 I’ve been to where I’ve thought “Well I can at least go back next week and feel relatively good there”.  So that’s a plus.

STill working on the Stratton diary at the foundaiton, though they might break it up by having me spraypaint some stuff.  Me, spray paint, an art project, and very few old clothes down here… oh joy… but the Ipod helps in the monotony of retyping a transcription.

That’s it.  Gotta go before the library closes.

Love you all,

Katherine

WOOHOO!!!!  My background check got approved by Tupelo and was sent to “OPM” in Jackson, where they can actually investigate it and prove that I am not a terrorist or a felon and can approve me to work at Melrose!  YES!

Sorry bout the title -once I heard it got sent on, the Johnny Cash/June Carter song “Jackson” popped into my head.

In other news, I’m not going to Baton Rouge this weekend.  I want to go when everyone’s excited about the trip, and when we have more time to figure out what we want to do there.

The past 2 days have been stressful cause i”ve been trying to deal with the fact that I haven’t gotten my debit card from the local bank just yet and have no money in my Bank of America account cause i had to take it out to open my local bank account and have to pay bills in ST. Louis.  Paying bills in 2 states is confusing, stressful, and a pain in the butt… I don’t recommend it.

Finally, did everyone hear about Michael Jackson’s death?  What a shock!  While I was never a HUGE fan of his, I did like Thriller and Billie Jean, not to mention the Jackson 5 music.  The sad thing is when I first heard it, what came to my mind was how my dad used to make fun of him 🙂

Farrah Fawcett also died.  What really made me sad about that was not the fact that she passed but that in her fight with cancer she lost her hair.  That was her signature thing, the Farrah Fawcett hair :-(.

Well that’s it.  The background check should be cleared in 2 weeks or less!  YES!

So that’s going to be my motto for the rest of this internship I think.  Accentuate and focus on the positive.  Cause the more I get into it the more I realize it’s not exactly the job I thought it would be.  But it’s still a good job, I”m enjoying it, so I’m accentuating the positive, just like Schoolhouse Rock taught me.

So my background check was sent to Tupelo.  I talked to the woman who looks at the forms there before they’re sent to Jackson, and she hadn’t looked at it yet but will sometime today.  She said that if it’s wrong again she’ll send it to Cheryl, my boss, down here rather than back to St. Louis which’ll save some time thank god.  Hopefully she wont’ need to do that though, cause hopefully it’ll finally be good enough to send to the actual government!

The good thing is things are picking up at the Foundation.  I spent most of the morning moving boxes of blueprints into acid free boxes with cerrated edges that hurt my hands, but they didn’t have enough so we could only get through just under 2 boxes of about 6.  We’ve still got about 100 more to do but till they actually get the supplies that project is stalled.  Right now I”m transcribing a diary of a Presbyterian minister from the 1800s, which is cool.  Most of it is very impersonal “preached from x, conducted weekly meeting” etc, but there have been some entries that have kinda hit me, mainly if it’s like “conducted funeral of x, a member of my church” or when it’s a young person or a baby that died. 

Then I found out that last summer they had interns that were working on a huge project with indexing court cases, somewhat similar to what I did at the archives for Campbell House my 3rd summer, but they hadn’t finished and some aren’t done right, so we might get to work on that.  I think that’ll be cool.  Hopefully it will.

Scott’s background check cleared, so he and CHristina are working for the park service now.  They’re going to inventory Melrose.  Part of me is jealous.  But then part of me is like “wait, it’s not like they’re researching these objects, it’s just writing down what it si and what condition it’s in.”  So I don’t know how much more fun that would be than what I’m doing with the STratton diary and hopefully with the court cases soon.  Plus Kaitlyn’s still here with me, her check got delayed too – still ahead of mine, but at least I”m not the only one left at the moment.  And there’s always the Anchor Line pictures!!!

I don’t know, I’m realizing just what the park service meant when they advertised this position as museum technician, and realizing that I don’t want to be a museum technician when I get out of grad school.  See, there’s curators, which get to work with the collections as well as designing exhibits and researching the collection, etc.  That could be fun, although I also love the education side of museum work as well.  Technician’s really are the grunts of the museum world – you work with the collection, but it’s to make sure it’s stored properly, it’s labeled properly, it’s inventoried, sometimes a lot of manual labor, etc.  No research really into the family or things that I find a lot fun.  So I’ve realized that “museum technician” is TOTALLY different from “curatorial assistant” and DEFINIELY from “assistant curator” which are also two different positions.  So even though I haven’t gotten to work at Melrose like I was hoping, I’ve learned something in this job.

I’ve also realized that I really am not that interested in collections unless they have a story.  That may not make much sense to some of you.  Here’s the deal – I’ve worked some with collections at Campbell House, and at Field House I did similar things to what we’ve been doing at the Foundation (going through archives, figuring out what everything is, organizing it, deciding what needs to be kept, though that was only at Field House).  The difference is at Field House, I found pictures of Eugene Field, letters that he had written, books from his library and the library of his family, objects that helped tell me the story of this man and his family.  With the McGehee collection, I may now know that the woman was incredibly involved with tours in Natchez, the Antiques Forum, and really interested in history, but most of what we went through was useless crap.  It didn’t have a story.  It didn’t even have a point.  Granted, I saw stuff like that in Field House’s archives too.  But with Field House, there were some treasures as well.  I can probably count on 1 hand the number of “treasures” I found in the 1.5 weeks we spent on the McGehee collection.  So I’ve realized that to me, unless the collection has a story to tell, or I’m able to research the story of that collection, I’m not that interested in inventorying it or doing a condition report on it.  Make sense?  I guess the past few weeks have just emphasized the fact that what I want is a small historic house museum. 

Oh and FYI the Baton Rouge trip has been postponed.  Chris and I want more time to research Baton Rouge and ST. Francisville and stuff on the way.  We’re gonna go sometime this summer, just not sure when.  SO no plans for the weekend.

That’s it.  Lunch break is over.   Back to work.

Keep your fingers crossed that the check gets sent to Jackson!
Love you,

Katherine

The government hates me.  This is what I’m concluding from my experience with this background check for the national park service.  Apparently my form STILL wasn’t right.  I had to fill out a new one.  I asked my boss if she had heard any problems before they were going to fed ex the new one at 1 today.  She said no.  Part of me says “No news is good news”.  Part of me says “That’s what you thought 2 weeks ago and you were completely wrong”.

Here’s the real kicker.  The reason the background check I TYPED wasn’t good enough wasn’t even my fault.  See they make you list your employment history for the past 5 years, including periods of unemployment (example – I would leave Campbell House in mid-August to go back to school.  I would not be employed for about 2-3 weeks, as I had spirit week and recruitment and Phoneathon usually started up mid September.  I had to list that I was unemployed between August and September each summer, because I had a gap of about 2 weeks.  SO what would happen if I had quit on August 31 and started a new job on September 1?  Would I be unemployed for 1 DAY?  According to them, that would be a gap!) 

Anyway on the form there is a place where if you have worked somewhere multiple times (ex – I worked 3 summers at Campbell house and 3 years at PHoneathon, though not all the way through cause Phoneathon was in school and CHM was summer) you can put the times under there.  The second day I was working here, when this whole ‘you’re still wrong” mess started, I SPECIFICALLY asked the IT guy that looks over the forms before they’re sent to Tupelo if I should list those seperately as well.  He said no, the directions said I could just put it underneath the most recent.  When the form was sent back to St. Louis I asked my roommate Christina, who’s check went through, if she had listed TJ Maxx each time she worked there seperately.  She said no, and her check cleared.  Thus I followed what the people that should know and the person who is an example of what to do told me to do, as well as the government form’s directions, and just listed those summers and years under the most recent.

Today I get a call from Cheryl, my boss.  Apparently, because I did not list each summer and year seperately, it looked like there were gaps.  In truth, the government officials were just too lazy to really LOOK at my forms and see that in fact I had accounted for those times.  But it was good enough to cause me to have to fill out another form.  So it took me the huge packet as well as 3 extension forms to very clearly account for not only every place I lived, but every time I came home for the summer seperately for the past 5 years, as well as every tiime I worked at Campbell House or at phoneathon.  I triple checked it, I had them look it over it, and according to my boss she hasn’t heard any problems.  I guess it got sent to Tupelo.  PLEASE GOD LET IT GO TO JACKSON AND NOT COME BACK TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The good thing is I’m thankful for the Foundation cause they’ve given me such a gift I’m not in a bad mood because of the stupid form.  See, they have copies and slides of pictures that are in the Presbyterian Church’s Gandy collection.  These pictures include Anchor Line boat pictures, which is the steamboat line that HOrace Bixby, who built my parents house in St. Louis, owned and worked on.  Well not only can I buy some already blown up pics from them, THEY’RE WILLING TO SCAN THE SLIDES ONTO A CD THAT ME AND MY PARENTS CAN USE FOR OUR OWN PERSONAL USE!  HOW COOL IS THAT!

Well gotta go, on break at work.

KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!