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as you may have noticed, the mass of stone tools hanging over my head is starting to get to me a little...
oh, the arbitrary dividing lines... the good news: Alex has set up my shiny new database for me :-D
the bad news: I can't get it to work, now that he's unplugged all of his stuff and he's not here... {angry} the other good news: I'm really happy these days :-D
the related bad news: this happiness has been tempered by the realisation of exactly how many bloody stone tools I still have to go through before I can start doing anything more meaningful than sorting :-( the archaeological good news: the accelerator mass spectrometer will be running next week, so that I can run my hair samples and get that done :-p
the isotopic bad news: my printer is working; the monitor is working; the speakers are working; the mouse is working; the keyboard is probably working, but it doesn't have lights so I can't tell; if my scanner wasn't already broken, it would probably be working ... the actual computer itself ... is not working. so I can't print my annotated bibliographies which are due on Monday... {eek}

otherwise, Steven is still here. of course, the fact that he's currently in Geelbek (or somewhere between UCT and Geelbek) is somewhat annoying 'cause I've had enough of stone tools for one day and would now like to go home. but he won't be too late 'cause I have to leave in time to go home and change for belly dancing and I can't imagine Andrew (the guy from the museum that he will be working with next year) being willing to drive him all the way to Bergvliet ... but if he's not back in time, I'm leaving. and if he's not at home by the time that I leave for belly dancing, he'll either have to come and interrupt me or stand around outside until I'm finished. and this means that the dogs will be fed late again!

related to this - belly sweat starts again next month! yay! it's only R80 extra, which is cheap for a second class every week. of course, considering that 2 classes per week is only R200, it works out the same... of course, it's going to be the third class that some people are doing. for those of you who are unaware: belly sweat is an aerobic style belly dancing class, aimed at increasing fitness, etc and should only be considered as a supplement to a proper belly dancing class... I would say that more information is available on Tenille's webpage, but she hasn't updated it recently. that and I really can't imagine that very many of you care.

I should be working, considering the millions of stones still to go through. first I have to decide which are LSA and which aren't. if they're LSA they stay in my (second) cubicle. if they're not, they go back to SARU. thankfully they are already (mostly) sorted into raw materials. I have to sort them into stratigraphic units and from then divide each square into the correct categories. each category in each square in each unit for each raw material gets a label and a bag. all the little bags from one unit of one raw material go into one big bag. now that I have a (semi-)working database, each artefact needs to be entered into it, measured and weighed (depending, of course, on what measurements can be taken for that category, etc.) ... fun isn't it...
I explained all of that to Yancke and Rolf earlier. they ran away. they claim that they had lectures to go to, but I know the truth ... and I sympathise, really I do. if I didn't understand what was going on, I'd want to run away too...

FishFood

So, I'm up here in my ivory tower, and thankfully Nic has done something about the fish 'cause they no longer smell so awful - but the fish food! It stinks! And I'm terrible when it comes to feeding the fish 'cause I always give them too much or too little - which is why I only do it when I think that no one else is coming in. Which may be the case today, tomorrow being a "public holiday".

In other news, DragonFire? happened. I was there briefly and it was fun. I got to LARP (and I still can't believe that bastard shot me! I'm going to get him for that!), which was fun...
And I got lots of hugs, which made me happy, and saw lots of people that I haven't seen in ages ... which covers most of you, actually!

Otherwise, Steven arrives on Sunday. It's my grandmother's actual birthday on Saturday. My parents leave on Saturday. I have to go to the airport twice in one weekend! This annoys me. Especially since I've never driven to the airport before and I'm worried I might get lost. I know that it's difficult to lose something like an airport, but I've lost a river before (admittedly, that was in Germany, in a place I was completely unfamiliar with, but that's not really the point!)...
And Guen's birthday - for which I have bought her a present, which is why I didn't get to DragonFire? until about half past 5 on Saturday - I blame Sally for that though, I wanted to go shopping much earlier. On the other hand, it did mean that I was at home when Steven phoned me and I got to chat to him, which was nice.

In terms of allowing hordes of CLAWfolk? into my house ... I have decided (against my better judgement) to extend an open invitation to CLAWfolk?. We will be watching Monty Python, because I have 3 of them.
There are some rules though: if you want to get drunk, do it somewhere else.
if you want to smoke, do it outside. if I don't know who you are, I'm not going to let you in.
you may have to sit on the floor and be covered in dog hair - I don't really care, the dogs live there, you don't. (of course, I don't really expect lots of you to arrive, but stranger things have happened). seeing as how it's just going to be me and Steven there, there won't be much in the way of food or drink - so if you want some, bring some.

I suppose you need to know when - given that there are 3 movies and I have a tendency to get cranky when I'm tired, we're going to start relatively early, probably sometime between 16:30 and 17:30. You're welcome to arrive anytime from then on. Oh, on Saturday, the 20th of August.

Beyond that, I am cold and tired. And hungry. Mmmm... food...

AmazinglySociable

hmm... Germany appears to have done something to me. I am being sociable on a (fairly) regular basis. Even going so far as to consider allowing hordes of CLAWfolk? into my house while my parents are away. Not sure how (or, rather, when) that's going to happen and not sure whether it'll really be hordes of CLAWfolk?, or just a small group that I decide I can fit. The main problem being space, as the hordes would be there for a specific reason. But I haven't decided yet and I'm waiting for input from the houseguest that I will have during that period (his name is Steven, he's American, I met him on the dig in Germany and he's going to be working here come January and so is coming to check out ZA for a couple of weeks on his way home from Germany).

Otherwise, I am getting absolutely no work done, as the people that I need to speak to in order to facilitate the work being done are not here. I know where two of them are and when they'll be back. I think the other one is hiding from me {angry} So, I've been sitting here emailing people all day (well, not quite, but that's what it feels like!) - like Duncan. Of course, the main reason that I'm emailing Duncan on a continuous, all-day basis is that he emails me back! Of course, d@vid emailed me back almost immediately as well, but that was a different sort of emailing!

Besides that I don't really have much to say. I'm sitting here typing this 'cause I've run out of people to email (with the exception of Duncan and people who can't email me back anyway 'cause they don't have internet access during the week) and I'm waiting for my mother to finish work and come and pick me up. It's kind of weird not to have my car here, but, and this is the important point, I didn't get up at 5:45 this morning! Well, I did, but I went back to bed after I realised that my mother still works on a Monday and that this is a convenient thing because I never can get to sleep on a Sunday.

Apparently a lot of people suffer from that and they tend to put it down to anxiety about the week ahead. I don't think that's what it is. I think that most people aren't tired when Sunday night comes along 'cause they spent the whole day sitting around the house doing very little. Admittedly I tend to do most of my work on a Sunday 'cause I have nothing better to do, but that's not the point...

And it's DragonFire? this weekend. Guen's birthday the weekend after that. And, for that matter, I have to take my parents to the airport on the Saturday and fetch Steven from the airport on the Sunday. Badly timed in my opinion. Oh well, at least I'll have had some experience driving to and from the airport when I go to fetch him... maybe I'll make Mary come with me ... except she'll be at church! Annoying Christian friends {angry}

Ulm

So...

I spent the weekend after the one in Tübingen in Ulm with Victoria - the creepy guy at the internet cafe hit on us. But we´re back here now ´cause the cool one that we found has closed down. But we´ve got Steven (an American) here with us to protect us.

There are 2 other girls in our group, but they´re currently wandering around in Blaubeuren - we´re all coming back to Ulm tomorrow ´cause there´s some big thing with fireworks. It has a name, but I keep forgetting - and it´s because Monday is Oath Monday, which commemorates something ... it´s all in the book, which I won´t see again until Monday night ... but we´ll be watching fireworks over the Danube tomorrow night :-D

In other news, Victoria found part of an ivory figurine and I found enormous cave bear bones, while excavating in Hohle Fels. Steven found an ivory pendant while schlämming today and Larissa (a Mexican studying in the Netherlands) found an ivory pendant while sorting. The stuff we´re schlämming and sorting from Vogelherd isn´t nearly as interesting, but it´s just backdirt, so we can´t expect that much (or, with a different point of view, we can, but that´s just treasure hunting... long story with much ranting that I won´t go into here {angry}).
Nicole hasn´t been having much luck in finding things - but she´s only in second year and her first excavation (the four weeks before she came here) was spent in Jordan.

In other news, I leave Germany next weekend and arrive home on the Monday. So I will be around again. Although, I have two weeks of isotope lab work to do and loads of work to do, so I won´t be around so much as hiding in my ivory tower, working myself to death.

That´s about everything that I have to say.... For now.

Tübingen

I am currently in Tübingen (Württemberg, Germany). It´s a nice place, even if it is rather hot and humid. I don´t mind the heat, I mind the lack of violent, cold winds blowing off the Atlantic Ocean. Clearly Capetonian.

Anyway, I´ve been working at the site of Vogelherd since I got here, which is nice. But it would have been nicer if they´d finished on time. Currently it consists of moving enormously heavy bags of stone down a hill so that we can empty them into the holes. This is done for safety reasons. Pity the people that have to dig them out next year when they return to excavate some more!
We´ve been staying in Oberstotzingen, which is not quite the same as Niederstotzingen, but I´m not sure why not.

German keyboards suck! WHY would you put the z where the y is and the y where the z is? And moving the question mark? Whose bright idea was that? This makes typing rather difficult!

Anyway, sometime next week we´ll be moving to Blaubeuren, and the site Hohle Fels. That´ll be better ´cause it´ll be actual excavating. At least, once we´ve done the schlemming (sieving wtih water) of the stuff from Vogelherd, we´ll be excavating.

I´m staying with Victoria, who is from Texas, and Maria, who lives here. It´s not exactly in the center of Tübingen, it´s in Lustnau, which was only incorporated into Tübingen in 1934 (Ah, the joys of guidebooks!)

Next weekend Victoria and I are planning to go to Ulm, so maybe you will receive an update on that then....

Comment: They're German... (by OOPMan on 2005-06-29 10:31:00)

...that's why :-)