Thanksgiving/Saint Catherine's Day/Shopping Reminder Day/Turkey Trot (Illinois)/Pirates In Paradise Festival (Florida)
2004-11-25 @ 10:52 p.m.

Whoa! Today was even more fun than yesterday. We toured the conservation unit, where they repair and restore original paper records. The stuff they do looks damn cool! Part-time workers get paid $5.68 per hour, which isn't too bad, considering the work they're doing. Maybe I'll go do some part-time work there one of these days. It's better than going to work at MacDonald's, and helping to poison people and put them on the road to obesity. The process is really interesting. First, they put the books in this chamber and pump it full of nitrogen gas. It's called anoxic treatment, because the nitrogen drives out oxygen. Then they have to pick out all the silverfish, booklice, etc. that were knocked out by the anoxic treatment, so that they don't come alive again in a warm and damp environment. Then they deacidify the paper using magnesium bicarbonate. After that, they fill in the holes in the paper, by filling it with fibers. There's this vacuum that draws the pulp down onto the paper, so that it can only pass through those sections with holes. Then they do leafcasting for further protection of the paper, before binding it in special treated leather. They use alkali-buffered paper too, to absorb acids and protect the paper in storage. The whole thing's just amazing!

An Immaculate Misconception was okay. It's not a bad play per se, just a very forgettable one. I thought Beatrice Chia's acting in this one was very weak compared to her performance in Dead Certain. The ending was way too predictable, and the understudy's mediocre delivery didn't help. The play strays into social questions like parenthood, the sort of thing you find in Mr Purvis's GP lessons. Does biology a parent make? That sort of thing. It doesn't deal with them very in-depth though, just touches lightly. Nowhere near as didactic as The Physicists, that's for sure. Still, I'd expected more from what was advertised as "the most exciting play of the year". It is, in all probability, the weakest play script-wise that I've seen this year. The set, on the other hand, was amazing! They had this bed which moved in and out of a side panel, and there were these steps that curved from the stage to the top of the set. They even had a set of blinds that they projected videos onto, including a chat conversation on MSN Messenger, and this hilarious cartoon of Chia's character at a sperm bank. For $42 though, it just wasn't worth it.