MELODY AND PIPPIN

Another year, another cat. I still have my cute Melody. She's 7 now. In October we added Pippin a male brown tabby. Yes, he is named for Pippin from the Lord of the Rings. He is 1. If you have a cat and want a second, I recommend that second be the same age as the first, they will get along better. Melody has always been an only cat and had a hard adjustment to Pippin, who is full of kitten energy. They mostly get along, except when Pippin wants to play and Melody wants to nap. They're both adorable.

ME, Q and Cat

It's been a long time... when did I post last? Before I got married. My husband is perfect for me... When we aren't arguing about food. We like to eat the opposite things. We still like each other just the same, but isn't there something we both like? Fish! We both like fish. Too bad we don't live near the ocean or a fishing lake.

My husband likes to spoil me. Case in point: I want a cat. He lets me have one, even though he has never had a pet before in his life! Our first cat was a black and orange tortoiseshell named Kit. She was a little wild thing that adored us both. She hid from everyone else. She died shortly after we moved into our house. I don't know why. My wonderful niece brought me a cat that her friend was unable to keep. Her name is Melody. She, too, is a black and orange tortoiseshell. She is a little lover. She will sit in your lap and purr, no matter who you are. She likes to have her face in my face. Ahh... Kitty... I want another one. He said I could. Spoiled.

Q (my husband) has been helping me with story development and characters. I struggle with getting my characters to show who they are. They often get lost in the story. I'm a world writer. How the world works is what drives the story. The trouble is, character stories are what's popular right now. It's all about the character and their struggles and choices and how they grow and change because of it. It's hard writing something different and selling it. No one wants a world story. The Lord of the Rings is a world story. The Little House on the Prairie series are world stories. My worlds are fascinating. They pull you in and present the imagination with innumerable possibilities. that's the whole point of world stories. I'm sticking to my guns, but I still need my characters to shine though, like Sam in The Lord of the Rings.

Time to stop writing. Melody is getting jealous of the laptop. It's in my lap instead of her. Cute Kitty.

ANTHROPOLOGY BA

ok so i finally graduated. phew. what a relief. what am i doing now? well i'll tell you. no good. that's what. anyway i'm still doing my dishwashing job. i refuse to quit without another one. and it's fine. it's enough to pay the bills. so, what about the anthropology? yeah well the previous post explained that i am old and broken. the arthritis is a serious pain in my hands and feet. so that has put archaeology on hold for a while. i should be hunting down museum jobs, but i'm too distracted by more interesting and lucrative things. like screenwriting! how i love telling stories! i have a gajillion of them floating around in my head. and they're brilliant! only an idiot would turn away this stuff. i could easily sell multiple scripts every year. a script sells for far more than my current yearly salary. they're so exciting! anyway i'm having fun. so on to the writing! my current project is Fairy Tale. it's almost ready for submission.

OLD AND BROKEN

so the last five months have been absolute torture for me. i have gone beyond miserable and out the other side. physically. my body has decided that it is its own worst enemy. otherwise i'm my usual cheery self other than the fact that i'm tired all the time.

it started in january. i work part time as a dishwasher in a cafeteria. it's a much better job that you think, so put that nose back down. anyway around the holidays the cafeteria was closed several days and i did not work. this caused a cold to hit me. the dishroom at work is like a sauna and keeps cold germs at bay. this caused lack of sleep because i could not breathe. then the weather warmed up when it was not supposed to. this released pollens early, namely sagebrush, my one and only allergy and it is severe. so more lack of sleep due to my inability to breathe.

during this time my knees started aching worse than usual. which was weird because they always feel better in the winter than in the summer. and there was a strange intense numbing pain in my thigh. then my shoulders started to ache. then my feet. then in march i fell off the train. and everything went downhill from there.

i was taking allergy medicine by this time so breathing was not a problem. but now i get no sleep because of the pain. everywhere. in every joint and muscle. it never goes away. i went to the doctor. i have hashimoto's thyroiditis and rheumatoid arthritis. i have some medications but the healing process is a very slow one. mostly my body has adapted and the pain doesn't register in my brain as much any more.

thinking things over and looking back on my life this has always been there. hiding in the background. the body renews itself when it is young and when it stops it ages. and it seems to me that this renewal is what kept all these pains at bay. my body is done regenerating and is now ready to age. systems have slowed down their responsiveness and the diseases are working full tilt until i can get everything treated.

old age has claimed me and my body is broken.

GOODBYE VIRGINIA CITY

my archaeological chronicles have come to an end. i am in utah now. but i woke up to a beautiful rainstorm this morning. it's very nice.

ok last day of class i spent 6 hours screening backdirt. as the other students finished their stuff (stratigraphy profiles and paperwork) they joined me. we did not finish it all. there was also filling in the units and trenches. first 2009 quarters, then plastic, then large rocks, then screened dirt. the supervisors had set up a total station on their datum to map in the site. using a gps a point can be anywhere within 3-7 meters. not useful for units only a meter wide. so the total station stays in one place and another person moves around with a pole that has a reflector. the lazer from the total station shoots out and reflects back and it catalogs the distance. so even though the total station uses gps for its location, the whole site moves around in that 3-7 meters instead of every point within it moving like they would with just a gps. the total station is one of those tripod things that the guys use on the road for surveying and such. anyway i got to help a bit with that. yesterday was a day of questions. i asked questions all day long. i was screening dirt and bored. so i entertained myself with questions. we stayed late trying to finish everything but we didn't make it. there was still a trench to fill, backdirt to screen, a unit to profile, and my unit that was waiting to be excavated. the wood and metal were still sitting there, waiting. the supervisors went back again yesterday to finish up. i hope they managed it. it was just the 3 of them, and maybe the 2 supervisors from Barbary.

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sorry for lack of post yesterday. i had no internet connection. anyway yesterday my partner and i finished level 6 (10 cm down from level 5). the goal with these 10 cm levels is to get the measurements all the same. so we started level 7 at 75 cm in all corners and center. we did not find much. wood, metal, nails, bottle glass. but we uncovered something very interesting. on the E side from the N we found many large pieces of wood. i think we found this 2 days ago? i mentioned the B72 stuff we brushed on to harden it. anyway yesterday revealed more wood. much more. my partner was sent to help with another unit while i continued excavation by myself.

today i worked alone. i began with excavating the wood and metal but was told to stop and excavate the rest of the unit. this is because we are fast running out of time and the wood and metal need time. so i worked on the rest of it for the morning. after lunch i filled out whatever paperwork i had for the level as well as Feature 15 which we never really finished 'til then. i then spent the rest of the day screening. the supervisors will finish the unit on friday after we are all gone. anyway before we arrived the supervisors had dug 2 trenches with a backhoe to get a good look at the stratigraphy and maybe find some foundation. so all the dirt from that was piled up as been slowly screened throughout the course of the fieldschool by volunteers mostly as well as the supervisors and some students. one trench has been done but the other is only half done and needs to be done by the time we finish tomorrow. so that was what i was screening. and will be screening tomorrow.

i finished the day by filling in one of the units. first we put a 2009 quarter in a ziploc bag in the bottom of the unit. (this is the first unit i worked on by the way) the 2009 quarter dates the excavation in case anyone digs it up. then we put black plasic in followed by a large number of large rocks. this is an indicator to future archaeologists that this is where we stopped digging. then we filled the unit with screened dirt so if someone digs there again they will find no artifacts.

after class we took a tour of the cemetaries. there are several within one. most of miners had come from the british isles and the eastern u.s. and they spent over $3000 on irrigating the cemetaries in the 1800s. today i think she said it would cost more than $3 million. so the cemetaries were lush and green. grass, flowers, trees, etc. all this stuff that the comstockers were used to. the cemetary was actively used until about 10 years ago. i saw a headstone that was dated 1990. anyway the place isn't irrigated anymore so it looks like the rest of nevada. a desert. the graves were set apart in boxes. they had either rock or wood walls around the individual sites. many of them were even fenced in and had little gats on them. one grave was a 3 year old boy whose father had built an aviary around his grave. in the 1960s (well throughout time but mostly the 60s) it became popular to sell headstones as souvenirs. so many of the comstockers stole the headstones and other bits of the graveyard. like small statues and gates and fences and such. well the lady who gave the tour got possession of the cemetaries as a historical landmark and put a big iron fence around them all. which is about 30 acres of land. she said the robberies reduced by 87% by putting in that fence. way in the back of the site is the catholic cemetary and it is the most intact with the majority of it's headstones and stuff because thieves are lazy. near the catholic cemetary used to be where the gravekeeper lived with his family. the house is gone now but it is a site ripe for the archaeological picking. i'm very tempted.

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today we went to town on level 6. ok ok ok so first off we excavated Feature 15. that metal hoop. it was not easy because the metal was very fragile. i got it out with small tools. an icepick and a small trowel. i dared not use the regular sized trowels. the hoop broke in many pieces as i excavated it, but i was able to several good sized ones and one big one. underneath the dirt in the middle were several bits of wood. the metal and the wood were taken directly to the lab so they would not be destroyed further. i took the dirt within the circle of the hoop down 10 cm and stopped there for now. we will later take it down further to make sure there isn't anything else associated with it. ok so my partner took the south end down 10 cm to see how many artifacts to expect in level 6. he did not find much. but we took down most of the rest of the level and found lots and lots of milled wood, a big ol' bone (cow elbow), and a large flat piece of metal with wood underneath (attached?) we left most of the wood and the metal thing because it was the end of the day and painted on with a small paintbrush some B-72 liquid stuff (i do not know exactly what it is) this stuff helps strengthen the wood and metal so it will not fall apart so much when we excavate it. we are working faster than what is ideal because we are running out of time. we only have tomorrow left to excavate.

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today i finished level 5 dirt. after three days of it, it is finally down 10 cm from level 4. we are now about 65 cm down from our datum (NW corner nail). we found very very little today. we found some milled wood and a couple of nails and bits of glass and a big ol' bone (cow). we left our feature 15 metal hoop as we were excavating the dirt around it to get to the level it was in. we will likely take it and the bottle botom sitting in it tomorrow. it's hard dirty work and i thoroughly enjoy it. we had a lot of tourists today. one young girl (10 yrs old?) decided to help us out and did some screening and lab work. she seemed to really like it. her mother liked it well enough but felt really dirty. one of the sub-supervisors told me of a really cool trick for teaching kids how to excavate. i wanna try it some time. it involves pudding. lots and lots of pudding. mmmm...

we went up to the Barbary Coast today to see the progress being made there. the unit i was working on is mush deeper and they pulled 16 bells and there was at least one more in the wall. further down they found a child's shoe. they extended the unit another 25 cm to the north of the foundation i had found, to see how wide it was. it looks as though it was just what i had exposed, but they are not deep enough to be certain. the other unit has found a wooden floor! it looks really cool! the wood is very fragile so they have decided to leave it and close the unit. there is a debate as to whether is is the barber shop floor (1890 property map) or from a later building (stable). as far as we know no other building has been there...

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today was cloudy, windy, rainy and cold. we continued our excavation of level 5. we found some porcelain, nails, and bottle bottoms. and a lot of rocks. i finished cleaning up my walls today so they are looking beautiful now. my partner said they looked like they could have been cut by a lazer. anyway the soil is really hard and tough to excavate. so the slow process continues to be slow. our unit is deep enough that we were given permission to climb in it to excavate. that has made things a thousand times easier. and it was warmer in the hole because it was out of the wind. the attorney general of nevada came to volunteer today. she did some screening and lab work. she plans to come back tomorrow too. we found Feature 15 this afternoon. it consists of a metal hoop (from barrel? or bucket?) and everything inside it. it looks pretty cool.

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today i was switched back to Maguire's Opera House. i am excavating the same unit that i was working on before moving up to Barbary Coast. So we finished paperwork and such for level 4 and began level 5. the dirt here is tough and hard packed. it took us 5 hours of excavation to go down 5 cm. of course this was partially due to the fact that the side wall were an absolute mess and most of my concentration and muscle was concentrated on that. we found a whole bottle today. it was pretty cool. we also found several bottle fragments. tomorrow we will attempt to finish level 5.

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today we finished paperwork for level 2 and began excavation of level 3. we found the usual glass, brick, wood, nails, other metal etc. but here's the cool thing we found today. we found sleigh bells! they were with a leather strap which is having a hard time staying together. the bells are green from being in the dirt all these years. the stable was there about 1920. we just keep finding more and more bells. some fell out loose so we wrapped them up in tissue paper and put them in a ziplock bag. and guess what else?! one of the bells still jingles!! i was stoked. this is the most exciting thing i've found this summer. never mind the fact i'm looking for the older barber shop and not the stable.

after lunch i had to do lab work. sorting and labeling artifacts. it's part of the education. it was tedious work. i much prefer digging in the dirt. i really wanted to get all the bells out but i was in the boring lab. feh. at least i got to excavate for the last half hour.

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we went to town on our unit today. in the 1st 15 mins we had excavated 2 or 3 buckets of dirt. ok ok ok so it was mostly hay and roots and stuff. but the dirt was nice and loose and ready to come out. under the hay layer in the NE corner we found feature 4. 6 bricks laid N-S and 4 bricks across laid E-W. together they measure about 70 cm along the N wall and 40 cm along the E wall. we came up with several possibilities. hearth, step, foundation, etc. beyond and below the bricks in the NW corner there are several large rocks packed in. this has possibilities. we also found a layer of dirt that was peppered with coal. this lay at the level at the bottom of the bricks. because there was so much coal we collected the biggest pieces (but only so many of them or that would be too much) as a representative sample. the rest we tossed aside. (except those i kept (and yes i got permission to do so) for a certain nephew of mine who is always asking for coal). we also found an old safty pin and a couple of bottons. the cool thing we collected today was a part of what we believe to be a horse harness. leather and all. cool, eh? we finished level 1 (10 cm below surface) and all but paperwork for level 2 (20cm below surface). i can't wait to get back tomorrow and find more stuff. my only complaint is i can't seem to get away from rocks. they make excavating difficult. and there are quite a few rocks and bricks that had been tossed there that no one cared about where they landed. the site we are now excavating is where a barbershop and a saloon sat right next to each other in 1890. in 1920 the owner of the land had a stable there. hence the hay and harness.

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today we spent an hour going over our weekly readings boring. then we spent the next two hours doing the stratigraphy profile of our shovel test pit. i can't believe it took that long. my partner is very finicky about paperwork and getting everything just so, but she is terrible at stratigraphic profiling. she's frankly lazy about it. anyway after lunch we set up a new unit. in the middle of hay. which was fun because it was different. so we set-up our 1 meter square on the site grid with nails (these nails are about a cm thick and a foot long). we then lined up nails on the outside of the unit to tie the string around so we would not have to worry about corner nails coming loose. this took up a suprising amount of time too. then we took a photo of our surface layer of trampled hay, and filled out all the paperwork. surface done. then we got out level 1 paperwork and claered and screened the hay. we found a brick, and lots of plastic, and some peanut shells. nothing really exciting. we then quit for the day because it was looking like rain. tomorrow we go to work on the hay roots. at Barbary Coast i will be excavating in 10 cm layers. so natural layers will be ignored during our excavation. my one complaint about the site is the fact that it is in the midst of thorny trees. ouch. they poke.

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today i was switched up to Barbary Coast. they want every student to work both sites and they left one girl up there (up there i mean 2 streets up a very steep hill) for reasons unknown but brought her down today and sent me up. i have another partner and supervisor and sub-supervisor. my partner and i finished the unit they had been working on. the only thing left was stratigraphy and paperwork. the unit revealed the foundation wall of what was once a butcher shop. that was half the unit. the other half went down quite far. i was permitted to climb in to get the stratigraphic measurements and the hole was up to my ribcage! afterwards we pulled up the nails and string that marked the perimeter and covered it with a tarp.

our next task was to dig a Shovel Test Pit. the hole is about shovel size. these are done to determine whether an area is worth excavating. if very little artifacts show up they don't put a unit there. if they find lots of stuff they put in a unit. we took a picture, started paperwork, and stuck in our shovel. unfortunately for us our shovel only worked for the first 15 cm. then we hit bricks. just thrown in bricks not placed. we found nothing except bricks for about 50 cm. then we found a lot of milled wood. then at about 60 cm we found a cool metal thing. it looked like a stove lid or something. it was mostly flat with a rounded end that might have been a hinge to open and close it. on the bottom of the flat end was a handle. and between the the handle and the round end was embossed PATENTED 1885. it was cool. i was excited. after that we were done with our hole (we did 10 cm levels through the hole, testing soil color, filling out paper work, screening dirt, etc) we finished our paperwork and took another picture.

we took a tour of Maguire's after lunch. very little has changed with my last unit except they found more concrete. my first unit is almost ready to close. they never found the foundation we were looking for.

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today we finished up with photos, depth measurements and soil color and texture info for the paperwork for level 3 dirt. we began level 4 excavation. we plowed through quite a bit of it. by plow through i mean we went down about 3 or 4 cm. we found 3 squashed cans today, some porcelain, a lot of metal (from cans and nails and such), more string, more concrete. about 1:30 or 2 it began to rain. we have tent shades to block the sun from cooking us while we work, but today they were used to block the rain. it didn't rain long, less than 1/2 hour. we were given the option of packing up and working in the lab or staying outside to work. we chose to stay. i was very happy. i love rain. it even hailed! it was very exciting. that was pretty much all we did. i acidently lost some dirt i was supposed to screen. i was screening by myself and i couldn't get the screen up and some dirt fell out. oops. one of the sub-supervisors saw it and said no worries, so i didn't.