ane | Entries tagged with archaeology

Work is busy and only going to get worse in the near future.

The last couple days I developed archaeological probability zones for 50 mile long project corridor for a proposal. The project is in an area of Florida that I don't have any experience in and I don't think the company has actually done a project there either. So that was interesting.

But then mid-afternoon we got RFPs for two other corridors, both about 50 miles long, that are due by end of Tuesday. And if that wasn't horrifying enough, at the end of the day they asked for another one just as long, also by end of Tuesday. I'll get something done although to do it I won't be looking at as many variables as I usually do.

Plus I already had three other proposals that I need to develop zones for on my list that I think are due end of next week. We need probability zones that determine how many tests we do and how long it will take, which factors into the budget.

I like developing probability zones because I find it a challenge, but this is ridiculous. I guess you could say I have job security.

And this doesn't even include the report that's due the end of the month, artifact analysis that I need to finish, and the other things that aren't urgent but need to get done sooner rather than later.

On a related note, I've asked for a raise. We'll see what happens with that.

So we get to dig units at an interesting little site on the other side of the bay. At this point it's limited to two weeks of digging and very unlikely to be any more. Project starts Monday. My vacation starts next Friday. In other words, I only get to be out there 4 of the 10 days.

Of course this is also the project area that apparently tried to kill me. Maybe not being out there very much is actually a good thing.

So this week was weird. I was working on a project at the northern end of the county so I was at home all week. It is hot out. Except for Monday we started at 7am every day. It's bearable outside until about 11 or 1130am right now so the more we can get done in the morning the better. It's definitely a change from 2 years of mostly digging units to going back to shovel tests. Although I haven't lost shovel test fitness. It's not difficult digging a meter deep hole like I remember it being when I started the job and hadn't dug shovel tests in many, many years, it's just being generally exhausted by the end of the week. On the plus side, exercise. There is the working 5 days instead of 4; I don't like it. Although I did get 1.5 hours of over time this week. Yay!

There's still drama going on about the usual project so I don't know how long we're going to be off of it. I'm not even sure what I'm doing this week. I may be doing local projects again or may be in mouseland for a project over there.

The conference last weekend was good. Some good papers, some bad. Talked to people I only get to see at conferences these days. Didn't buy any books. There doesn't seem to be any new ones out in my areas of interest.

Yesterday went out to Weedon Island and learned how to make fishing nets. It's an important skill for the zombie apocalypse. I realized I have a ball of twine so I'm going to make a larger section of net to practice and I may have an idea for a costume for Necronomicon making use of my new skill.

On fannish front: saw Ironman 2 last Sunday. Loved it. Thought the Supernatural season finale was lame and didn't like it. Had to keep telling

gothphyle to hit play because we had to finish the episode.

We watched the first two episodes of X/1999. The first episode is very expository and rather odd. Second episode, I could see why it sucks you in. It intrigues you enough that you want to continue.

I also started watching Gakuen Heaven. I didn't realize it was a subtitled series which I'm not fond of. I mostly chose it as the next series to watch because there's only 4 discs.

I finished Saiyuki Reload Gunlock a couple weeks ago. I finally watched Saiyuki Requiem movie last night. Good voice actors how I missed you.

I have 3 syfy channel movies on my dvr so I need to watch one or two this afternoon because I'm getting low on space.

Current Location: home

You'd think that when you've been a member of a professional society for over 20 years that somewhere in your possession you'd have the id card that has your member id and web password on it. But no. Well, I found one from 2002 but needless to say the id on that one didn't work; I think it was for a previous version of the website.

Current Location: home

Today I had a board meeting teleconference at 10am. Since my cell reception inside is bad I always have to talk outside on the patio. It was fairly chilly this morning so I spent 2.5 hours all bundled up in sweatshirt, sweatpants, and blanket.

The Florida-Florida St game is extremely unstressful. Can't wait for next week and the Florida-Alabama game.

I didn't post that I bought a washer and dryer a couple weeks ago. I've been doing a lot of laundry the last two weeks to break them in. The washer is an energy star machine and the dryer has a dryness sensor in it so they're both energy efficient. I don't have to choose a load size for the washer since one of the energy saving things is that it detects the load size to use the least amount of water. I like not having to make that decision. The dryer seems to do a good job at stopping when things are just dry.

I can't believe my 5 day weekend is almost over. Don't want to go back to work on Monday.

Current Location: home

I have a cold. Or weird allergies that include a sore throat, but probably a cold. Sore throat appeared Tues night and it's not as sore as it was but I've been congested and sniffly and now my eyes are watery. Not amused at all.

This weekend is also Metrocon and I plan to go on Saturday. I'll probably still be miserable but I'm going on Saturday unless I'm non-functioning.

There haven't been any return of reptiles which I'm continually thankful for. All the rains were in the evening this week so we didn't get wet. We should finish the large unit block that we've been working on since January on Monday. We then have to draw and photo profiles but there will be a sense of accomplishment. We won't be done at the site since there's still two areas that we have to test but at least something's finally been completed. Of course I probably just jinxed it.

Current Location: home

In town on a local project this week. Way less perdiem and we have to work Mon-Fri. We are going to start work at 7am so we'll be done by 3 since we don't take an official lunch. New office situation sucks as I expected it to.

FAS was great. There were 3 concurrent sessions and they scheduled things well so that there was only one 20 minute period where there wasn't a paper that sounded interesting. Went to the bookroom then.

Drove straight home after the sessions were over. Took little over 7 hours so I got home 1:30-2am-ish. Slept until almost noon yesterday and then ran errands and did laundry and other weekend errands.

Still have to go see Star Trek. I'm going to try to go some evening this week.

Haven't got caught up on all the tv that I'm behind on. I'm finally watching last week's Supernatural right now.

Current Location: home

I got to Pensacola way early because I forgot about the time change. I could have slept an hour more. Luckily, the hotel let me check in early (10:30am). It really pays to be an elite member of the hotel group priority club. They also upgraded my room. I'm on the 14th floor in a corner room overlooking Pensacola Bay. Very nice.

After I picked up my registration bag I drove to Subway and got a sandwich to bring back to the room. So I'm eating my sub, pretzels, and soda and admiring the view while playing online for a while.

This afternoon is a board meeting and general membership meeting. I'll go down about 15 minutes before the meeting to see who else is around early. It's unlikely that there's many people here early unless they have to be at the board meetings. Then tonight is a reception at a nearby museum. Free food. There will be trolleys running so don't have to drive.

It took just over 7 hours of driving time to get here so I may do the trip all at once tomorrow night unless I get really tired and just can't make it.

Current Location: Pensacola

I'm leaving in about an hour for Pensacola. This weekend is the Florida Anthropological Society annual meeting. I have a board meeting at 1pm tomorrow so I have to be over there by about noon.

I'm doing the Tampa to Tallahassee stretch today and then to Pensacola tomorrow morning. I'm only actually staying in Pensacola on Friday night. I'm going to head back after the sessions on Saturday but I'm not sure whether I'll be awake enough to just do the whole trip at once or whether I'll stop in Tallahassee. Will be back sometime on Sunday just don't know when.

I'll be in town next week. We're getting pulled from the 'glades to help do a local project to get that done. So definitely home next week, maybe even the week after. Oh, and our office is moving buildings this weekend so next Monday all my office stuff will be in a different place. No clue what the new office set up is going to be like. I'm expecting the worst and will probably get it.

Current Location: home

So it was suggested that CGCAS (Central Gulf Coast Archaeological Society) have a facebook page. Since I'm the web person, I'm the person who gets looked at when these things come up. So I said I'd do it. What did I ever do to deserve this punishment?

I don't know if the business/organization accounts are different from the personal ones, since I really don't want a personal one, but the interface for the account sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks.

And only people with accounts can actually see pages? Totally weird.

The end of the Miami saga is vaguely in sight. They've started the last area so we should be done in 10 days or so. We're hoping less. Our wish is that we'll get done the end of next week. Hopefully by next Friday since that's when our hotel reservations end and I don't want to have to go through the rigamarole of getting them extended again.

Today was incredibly boring. There wasn't much spoil coming out so I was mostly sitting up on the platform reading the newspaper.

I have an audio book on my iPod which I'm half way through but whenever I go to start it again it jumps back to the beginning. It's very annoying. Since I haven't been able to finish the audiobook, and I don't want to start another one until that one is finished, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts. I even looked around iTunes recently and found a couple new ones. The podcasts I'm subscribed to are

Audio News from Archaeologica
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Make-It-Green Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for an Earth Friendly Life
Material World
Money Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life
My History Can Beat Up Your Politics
NPR: Science Friday Podcast
The Nutrition Diva's Quick and Dirty Tips for Eating Well and Feeling Fabulous
Science Talk: The Podcast of Scientific American
Stone Pages Archaeo News
60-Second Science

The My History can beat up your Politics and the Nutrition Diva ones are the new ones. My History explains the history behind recent things in the news. For example, the most recent one explained the history of and what exactly Fannie Mae is. I like the Quick and Dirty podcasts because they're rarely more than 5 minutes long. NPR Science Friday is my favorite. I always listen to those first. Audio News from Archaeologica is good but it seems to have some weird audio problems a lot recently. It's also fairly short, usually around 10 minutes long. Stone Pages Archaeo News is from England so there's a lot of British stuff but it also has news from around the world. It's longer, usually around 30 minutes, and sometimes feels a little too long.

Wasting time before Supernatural. 20 minutes to go.

Current Location: Miami

So have I mentioned that south Florida is definitely having a rainy season this year (at least so far). It's been raining almost every afternoon. Last week it started raining at 1pm-ish which is way too early and screws up our work schedule. Today the rains came at about 4 which is when it should be.

Meanwhile because of all the rain the project area is soggy, soggy, soggy. Of course it's the Everglades so it's suppose to be wet. The only real dry places are on our sites, which should be dry since that's why people camped/lived there. To get out to the site we're working on right now we have to wade through water that's mid-calf high. Wet feet all day, so much fun.

Last week we had a pygmy rattlesnake visit us. It came right up to where we were working. Freaky, usually they avoid us but they're looking for dry land like we are. A photo for those who require proof.

Just a public service announcement. A calendar of events throughout the state can be found at the FAM website.

There's stuff going on at Weedon Island today but I just remembered about an hour ago and it's really windy and a bit chilly so I'm skipping. If I would have remembered this morning I probably would have gone for a little while.

Also archaeology related, issues of The Florida Anthropologist journal from 1948-2005 are now available online at http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?s=flant&b=UF00027829

For the Tampa area people there is a short segment on archaeology in Inside Pinellas This Week. It's streaming video and it's Inside Pinellas This Week not the Inside Pinellas Today video.

We only had the two wheel drive vehicle today because the 4wd was appropriated for another project for the day. The pasture that we had to drive through to get near the site we were testing was wet-- shallow standing water wet. We barely made it in and out. The site we're doing additional testing at is small so it wouldn't usually take that long. However the soil is very wet and we're fine screening so we ended up needing to get water from the creek and wet screen again.

Two of the crew stayed in sick today. After being wet all day yesterday I'm not surprised.

According to the radar there's a large yellow and red blob heading toward the project area. The company needs to buy us an air boat and scuba gear. Or a nice swamp buggy.

Yesterday vehicle got stuck. Boots got covered in mud & cow shit solution.

Today only way out to unit that we had to finish is half under water. Did get out there and the unit is finished (not as well as it should be but it's done) and backfilled. Had wet boots and feet all day. Vehicle got stuck on way out. Got covered in muddy water and then just mud. Took clothes off while showering so could get most of mud off. Currently have hairdryer propped up and drying boots.

Conclusions? October is sucking.

Lake Okeechobee is at a historic low right now because of the drought. They've started some demucking projects in the lake to get rid of some of the 3 feet thick muck that is on the lake bottom. A big archaeological site has been exposed on the southeastern side of the lake - article in Palm Beach Post. It has human remains, canoes, pottery, shell artifacts. It's apparently pretty amazing. We're monitoring where they're demucking about 5 miles from the site. Apparently it was a media circus out there today. There's a side bar on the article page that mentions the sloth we extracted last year. When I was reading the article I had a slight pause after I read the sloth blurb before I realized that that was our sloth.

The best part of the article is the guy in the comments, who included his full name, who tells people that he's looted the site and when the best time to go do it is. Umm... disturbing archaeological sites on state land is illegal and disturbing human remains is an even bigger felony. Don't you love idiots.

There's a rumor that there's a 50% chance of rain this weekend. Go rain! Go rain! I'm really amazed that the whole state isn't on fire it's so insanely dry.

Friday I was off to exciting Avon Park for FAS with a board meeting and general membership meeting in the afternoon. It was really smokey in Tampa Friday morning but it cleared up south of the bay. Sometime between home and Avon Park my cell phone froze. It didn't work and wouldn't turn off. I removed the battery and then put it back in and it was okay. I'm glad that fixed it because there was no Cingular store anywhere near Avon Park.

There was a reception Friday night which means standing around talking, drinking beer, and getting a few appetizers. The appetizers were okay but not the best we've ever had. There was the usual fruit, vege and cheese platters and then they had alligator, catfish, frog legs and shrimp.

As far as I know I was the only person from the conference who stayed in the Holiday Inn Express. The only reason I was there was because I used points for the room so it was free.

There were quite a few good papers on Saturday although two tied for really, really bad. I drove home yesterday and got home at about 7:30. My truck was sounding really bad so I didn't want to stop anywhere between there and home because I wanted to make sure I *got* home.

The truck still sounds bad but not as bad at it sounded yesterday. I have a safety meeting in St Pete tomorrow morning so I don't think I'll drop the truck off at the station to be looked at tomorrow but I'll probably drop it off Tuesday.

This morning I slept in until 10:30. It's the latest I've slept in ages, I guess I really needed to catch up on my sleep. I ran a few errands in early afternoon. I'm finally a member of the microwave age. There was one on sale that sounded okay and the rent.com gift card I've been meaning to use to buy one expires sometime in June so it was time to quit procrastinating and just buy one. I need to figure out the best place to put it because where I wanted to put it, it sticks out a lot because of bad outlet placement.

I also bought a light kit for a ceiling fan. I'll have to see if it will fit one of my ceiling fans and then I get to see if I can manage to install it. The guy near the ceiling fan area at Lowe's knew nothing about ceiling fans and had to call a guy in plumbing to find out whether light kits would work on fans other than the specific brand of the kit. Supposedly as long as the light fixture area is a certain diameter it's suppose to work. These people do not inspire confidence.

I also went to the Stone Hill SF Assoc meeting this afternoon. I almost blew it off because I need a day to myself after being in meetings and around a lot of people for two days straight but I didn't. I really need to meet people in Tampa who I don't work with or who aren't archaeologists and this is one of the only ways I can think of since there just aren't that many ways to meet people. I hate going places where everyone knows each other and you don't know anyone but it wasn't too bad.

Eek. Still have packing to do tonight. Got my key to new apartment. Took a look around and took a bunch of photos of it empty. They didn't paint. I'm annoyed. It isn't scuffed bad but I'm not happy. I did call the leasing consultant on my way home and talked to her. She's going to look at it tomorrow morning and I think they're going to paint it. Of course my stuff will be in there tomorrow afternoon so unless they do it right away in the morning we're going to have to put all my stuff in the center of rooms so they can paint.

We're starting the truck loading at 9am tomorrow when it is suppose to be 39 degrees according to weather.com. It's going to be 31 when I walk over to get the U-Haul. Luckily I put the coat and jackets in an old duffle bag instead of in a box so I can easily pull it out if I decide it's needed.

Today was suppose to be the last day on this project. We found a site this morning. So sorry. *hides* All my fault. Thought it looked like a good place to dig. And it ended up being also a good place to live.

I was viciously attacked by a branch this morning and got poked in the eye, so now my left eye is red and irritated. Vision's okay though and wearing contacts doesn't seem to irritate it.

Must start packing the kitchen now.

We found a site right away this morning. Always fun to actually find something. Although sometimes it's a logistical pain when we're in trees like we are now. It's so much easier delineating sites that are in pastures. :-) We also got a little damp from a rain shower in the afternoon.

Yesterday I got an email returned saying that the person's isp blocked my message. Today I got another one from someone who I know I emailed this weekend. I'm wondering if it has something to do with being in the hotel but that doesn't really make sense since my outgoing mail goes through my domain webhost. It's very odd though.

I got the GACA update done. I decided to just spend the time tonight and get it finished. It didn't take as long as it sometimes does so it wasn't so bad.

I really should spend a hour or so writing before bed but I think I'm going to rewatch Torchwood 112 instead.

Ane's Journal

Work probability

1.414

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

misery

In town

nice view

FAS

FAS

kill me now

Miami and podcasts

Soggy

March is Florida Archaeology month

October still sucks

This week so far...

Exposed archaeological site on Lake Okeechobee

Weekend adventures

tomorrow's moving day

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August 2023

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