The more items Gaia makes, the funnier I can make my avatar cosplay.
Ahh, so begins another year at college. It's currently the second week in and I just now got the time to type out a long-as-heck journal entry. Well, maybe it won't be too long, but long enough to tell the stories of the things that have been going on out here since my return. I'm in yet another new building, basement level this time and yet I still have windows. The grass along the side of the building is pretty much at eye level when I'm in the room, but my roommate and I have a nice view of the music center this year (which is great for her). For me, the library is directly across the street and I will be spending much of my time in there this year. This is my junior year, marking my descent into the horror known at this school as independent study (really my thesis, or proto-thesis in the case of junior year). These entries might become even less frequent, which I didn't think was possible until now. I just haven't felt the need to broadcast my life that often anymore, since I always tell the people who need to know these things individually.
Moving in was a snap this year. I was amazed at how quickly it went. I have my own closet this year, so it was easy as pie to unload my huge boxes of stored stuff into it. I even pulled out stuff from inside I'd forgotten I owned, it's been so long since I've seen their contents. It took the most time to raise up my bed this year to fit my dresser drawers and bookshelf under it for lack of wall space. I think this is the first year where just about everything somehow fits. I've got my alarm clock on top of the microwave, though.
So, I've had one very noteworthy happening so far this year (academically speaking, anyway, since every weekend is now a potentially noteworthy time. I'm spending more time at the coffee house my friends frequent). I went on my first real archaeological dig on Sunday. It wasn't too big an affair. Just an excavation 10cm down outside of a confirmed rockshelter several miles away from campus. It was also along the side of a hill, which made the digging and the setup awkward and slippery. Also rocky; we spent a good bit of our time pitching useless sandstones downhill when we found an abundance of them in our sifters.
We left campus relatively early in the morning for a Sunday, so I'd bought energy bars to eat for breakfast. I was first to show up, then a couple more people and finally the whole group trickled in. We had some new people come into the archaeology department this year and one of said new guys showed up for the dig dressed particularly...interestingly. I got a picture of him during the dig, but by then he'd taken his brown jacket off, so only half the effect is there (by the way, he's shooting mapping points in that picture. That telescope thing is called a transit).
This was my first dig, so I started off a bit lost. Thankfully I was surrounded by people who taught me what to do. I have a few more pictures of what went on during the dig, what things are and so on:
Some assembly required
The wide-but-short trenches
The actual digging part
Sift happens
Front of the rockshelter
Right side of the inside
Left side of the inside
Deepened trenches by the end
This is how our dig worked: We would take turns doing each of three things. We would dig out the trenches (but only up to 10cm down), sift out the material removed from said trenches and shoot points for mapping the site. I was even able to find some flint artifacts when I was on digging duty. All of these artifacts, dug out directly or found in the sifters, went into bags marked with the appropriate site portion and will be analyzed later in the campus arch lab. I also recorded some of the point distances and angles for mapping. During sifting we ended up finding the last thing in the world that we were supposed to find: a fossil. It's supposedly part of the stem of something. I was allowed to keep it since we didn't have anything else to do with it and the girl who found it didn't want it.
That about wraps it up for the dig. The other major happening so far was just yesterday. I'm in a geology class dealing in climate change, so we got to drive down to the OARDC arboretum during our lab period and we cored pine trees. If I had more upper body strength, tree coring would be a snap. Sadly I don't and can only get a boring drill into the tree trunk halfway before I need help. I also can't do it with a trick right collar bone. The thing kept popping out of place on the inside, which it often does when I overexert my arms or sleep on it funny. Popping it back in isn't usually that hard, but it's creepy and annoying.
With all of that said, that's my update for the time being. In other, more mundane news, homework must be done, my thesis must be worked on and my roommate is currently giving all the love she has to spare to the Roy Mustang plushy I gave her for her birthday, which was also Sunday. Until the next big thing, everybody!
