Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." -Andy Warhol

Day two. The copier is bleating angrily and flashing red lights. I have been alternately mumbling obscenities and begging for the past half hour, as it proceeds to jam four times on a 75-page document. We have not been on very good terms since the first day, where I accidentally broke into the dean's office instead of the copier room and then, upon finding aforementioned copier, pressed a lot of incorrect buttons and spent an inordinate amount of time just trying to copy a receipt.

So now it hates me.

Despite having anxious tête-à-tête time with office equipment, it's been a pretty successful day:

"Grab a pair of those white gloves over there and bring this painting down to the storage room."

This may not sound exciting. But "those white gloves over there" are cloth conservation gloves for handling artwork. And "the storage room" has a huge table for examining said artwork. And there's a lot of artwork. And I get to examine it.

This still doesn't sound exciting, does it?

"Jean, I have to admit something really geeky. I'm very happy about these gloves."
"Oh, me too. I carry a pair in my backpack."

I spend the next three hours measuring prints, trying to decipher tiny signature scrawls, and geeking out over my gloves and signing my name in the "Examiner" section of the file for each work. Clearly I am where I'm supposed to be.