Okay yeah I know I don't update ever. It's not like anyone reads this, but I felt like I should at least tell you all what happened to me yesterday. So I'm working for the moving company again, although temporarily seeing as I'm just waiting for Nintendo to call me so I can start my real job for the summer. Game testing if you want to know. A far cry from busting my ass on a daily basis, which was no exception yesterday. So first day back with moving, I get stuck on an office move. Usually not too terrible, but everything in the office was beyond heavy. Not Ikea furniture here, only large piece of wood and steel. There were several desks that had several large steel legs that had to weigh well over 100 lbs each. So taking it out of the old office wasn't too bad seeing as it was on the ground floor. This gives us the ability to put everything on wheels and roll it into the trucks. However the destination was a second floor office space with no elevator and two long flights of stairs each with their own fun places to navigate large pieces of furniture. Needless to say, at the end of it all, I was pretty much dead. I'm still extremely sore today. So as we are leaving, one of the women decides to give us all tips. The four of us who were there all day, we got three more to help us at the delivery, each received an exorbitant amount of money. I'm thinking it has to be some sort of record. The lady gave us each a check for $1000. Who the fuck does that? I've gotten a few tips before, but they've always been between $20-40. I guess their business, a consulting firm for enviromental issues, is doing well enough to write out over $5000, the other three guys got $400 each. So I came home that evening and it turns out that the bosses of this firm know my mom quite well, I guess they didn't make the connection when they heard my last name. Also it seems that with the tip I made almost as much money as my dad had that day while he was at work. So all in all, not a bad pay day. About $100 for a 10 hour work day and a $1000 tip. It must be because I'm so damn sexy.
So first semester is done once again. Sort of. You see I still have another latin final to take, but the prof has been gracious enough to let us grad students delay that bit of fun until next semester. So yay for me. In other news, I took the undergrad final for that class today, which was actually ridiculously easy due to the prof's error. The exam should have been longer than it was in that we were supposed to have a page that was some how misplaced from our first exam, which she forgot to put in this exam. So in the end, I only had to translate one small piece of latin and answer some subsequent questions about Pro Archia in english. Overall pretty easy, so hurray for me. Well that's enough for now, so I leave you with something quite amazing provided by fark.
So I suppose I have delayed doing this long enough that I should at least make an attempt to write something before I get too bored of this. What's new? Not much. Still doing my school work and such which just involves lots of translating and reading. Nothing too exciting there. Also started the task of writing that thesis, although at this point it isn't so much writing as just more reading and trying to really define how I'm going to approach my subject. The quick and dirty is that I'm working with masks in an attempt to better explain several mysterious painted masked figures known as the Phersu found in multiple chamber tombs at Tarquinia. Shouldn't be too bad seeing as it's something that I'm actually interested in learning about. Hmm what else. Got back last night from a free advanced screening of the Borat movie. I suggest you all go see it as at one point I was laughing so hard that I not only couldn't breathe but it also hurt and I was pretty sure I was going to vomit. You'll know the scene when you get to it. I'll only say it involves a fight between Borat and his producer. All quite hilarious and worthy of 90 minutes of your life. Oh, one last piece of news. It seems my bosses are pushing me to dress up as Sparky the fire prevention dalmatian next thursday in one of the dining halls next thursday. I've been pushing for some sort of monetary bonus for the service seeing as I'm not too keen on donning a full fire fighter suit complete with dog head and helmet. Well there you go. Happy?
A few days ago I was delivering roughly 11,000 lbs of household goods to a husband and wife who had just recently been transferred by the army to Fort Lewis. These deliveries are fairly simple in that you just put shit where people want it and unwrap anything that has been wrapped with brown paper, cardboard or bubble wrap. So now to the important bits. As I was unwrapping what I could feel to be a laundry basket, I came across some interesting finds. Right there on top was a cock pump. Something I don't normally see, but readily identifiable. What made it even more special was the 8 inch, rather thick, bumped vibrator sitting right next to. Needless to say, I didn't really feel like asking where I was supposed to put the basket and cock pump, so I just left it in the middle of the living room. From then on, we started to find other fun things to go along with these first treasures. The occasional plastic tote filled with a variety of porno mags as well as several bondage mags intermingled with some paraphenalia. Good times. So here's a tip for everyone out there. If you don't want a mover to see your dirty shit, don't leave it in your house when we are packing. We will find it and we will pack it and we will know about the fucked up shit you are into.
I HAVE NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE TO SAY! HERE IS AN UPDATE! HURRAY! ONE MORE WEEK UNTIL I GO BACK TO SCHOOL! VERY FEW DAYS LEFT OF BEING A MOVER! KEEP THE FIRE!
So I had some fun today at work. You see I was spending the day in the warehouse building crates when I did something fun. I dropped a 50 lbs side of a crate on my foot. It hurt. Quite a lot. But the hurting didn't really ever go away, so I figured a trip to the hospital was in order. A short time and a few x-rays later revealed that I had broken my big toe on my right foot. So now I'm home waiting for my advil and vicadin to kick in so I can stop hurting for a while. Hurray for me!
So dog #1, Bialy, may have cancer or some such nonsense which has sent my mom into another hysterical tizzy in which she constantly berates my father into checking with the vets every 10 minutes. Now granted we all love the dog, but she has gone quite mad with the whole Dead Grandma incident. So my Uncle Bob calls tonight to say hi and to say he's okay, he just had some type of surgery on his heart, so hurray for him doing just fine. Now onto why I'm horrible. My mom tells my Uncle Bob about Bialy and how her first reaction was to call Dead Grandma who would give her some sort of comfort in these situations and how she hopes that DG is looking down on Bialy and making sure everything turns out okay. My immediate reaction was wishing that either my brother or father was there so I could make the side comment of how down would not be the direction DG would be looking from. Yes, I am a horrible grandson and I deserve to go to hell as well. What else is new?
So Italy is all done and over with, sad, seeing as I had to leave all my new homies behind. So now back to my quiet life on the west coast for a month before the craziness starts back up in Boston. Nothing much left to do here except catch up on pop culture I've missed (ie going to see Clerks 2 today) and going back to work to make some of that fat cash money. The pictures I have been promising are coming, they have now made the official leap to the computer so now I just need to find motivation enough to upload them to some site online. May take a while, but they will come. So anything else of importance? Well as it turns out, no thanksgiving in new york for me this year, sorry leila, but it seems I get to babysit my grandfather for the holidays. Whoopee. So that's it. Nothing else of interest to say for now. Look for me on AIM, I'll most likely be sitting around being bored all day with nothing to do. And Mike? Keep the fire burning.
So week 5 is done and with it comes the end of my trench. Nothing too special other than lots of tile and bricks and such. So what have I been doing? Everything except archaeologying. Gardening, sweeping, drawing pretty pictures, and generally being everyone's bitch. Good news though, I found my very first coin while sweeping someone else's trench. Pictures to come soon. So onto the drama of the week. Ron, one of Jane's assistants, decided to quit on monday, which has left me as the only male within the group. Well nothing too bad seeing as I got my room back to myself, but a bit lonely as there is no one left to be all manly like with. You know, smelling, scratching and talking about the essentials, which I think mainly boils down to boobs as was the case with this incredibly horny 46 year old man. Now onto the drama (you'll want to pay attention here Amanda, if you are reading this). It seems that not only was he a "happily" married man, but an adulterer as well. With a 24 year old no less named Emily, who just so happens to be working at a site in Pompeii. So Amanda, the Emily you are working with was at one time being plowed by a bearded nasty slightly overweight man-boobed pervert named Ron. It was really quite disturbing how much detail this man was willing to go into with me, even though I would never initiate these conversations nor give him any encouragement to tell me any more. So there you go. All done. One week to go and 5 more days to tolerate the monumental bitchdom that is our director. I'll most likely go on a tirade about her sometime later when I'm feeling more verbose. The end.
So I haven't updated in a while which is just do to my exceeding laziness when I'm not excavating. Big news in trench land, I finished my trench, so I believe the rest of my time will be spent helping the others finish theirs of the course of the next week. It seems that the final week here will be devoted to closing the site, giving a big tour to some tv crews, and catching up and finishing all of our lab/paper work. So what has been found since the last time you ask? Well my trench turned up nothing unexpected other than several more stacks of pilae as well as a complete tile floor. I suppose my trench is quite significant in that it gives an entire view of the hypocaust, but it has been fairly unexciting for me in the lack of treasure department. Coins a plenty have been turning up in other people's trenches which is neat and a few days ago, a neighboring trench pulled out a full pot from the 19th century. Kind of odd in that it was a meter down, but it proves someone was here before us. Oh well. Yesterday was kind of special for me as well seeing as I found my first diagnostic piece of glass while helping out in another trench. A pretty piece of a green base which I snapped a few shots of on site. I suppose I should explain what a diagnostic is here. That just means you can identify what something was by what survives in the piece you found. For example, a pottery sherd which preserves a rim is diagnostic because we can use that rim to determine what kind of pot it was and exactly how big it was. So there was that as well as a rather large, and complete, iron nail. That in itself is nothing to shout about as we have already found several, but this one was special in terms of its size. The nail was probably 7-8 inches long and still preserved a sharp point. One thing that is always said is that you find the best stuff in the final days of excavation. Let's hope it's true as were are now done to only 5 more days of actual digging. That's all from me, time to go play in Rome for another weekend.
So week 2 has come to a close on the excavation and there have been several pretty neat finds. One of our biggest so far has been a carved marble capital to a column, however the only problem is that it is sticking out of one of the walls of the trench. This means that it gets to stay there and we don't get to pull it out or see the rest of it unless we sink another trench on the other side. My trench on the other hand has been fairly boring in that there haven't been really any surprises as to what I have found. As expected, I've uncovered several pilae, stacks of tiles on which the floor of the calidarium rests, but I was surprised to come down upon a tiled floor. Most of this week has been spent defining and cleaning up this newly discovered floor as well as to expand my area towards a wall I can see sticking out of the ground. Nothing else too spectacular except that I did pull a significant hunk of metal out of the ground which appears to be either a bent nail or a hook. Pretty neat seeing as it's the first bit of metal I have found to date while excavating. One of these days I'll remember to bring my camera along to take some pictures of the baths so you can all see what I've been doing as well as to see the pretty mosiac floor we've uncovered, but it is hard to remember things when you have to wake up at 4:30 every morning to go dig. Anyways, today has been spent in Rome again where I've been wandering around the forum as well as the colleseum and the Vatican. All in all entirely too much walking and way too much hot. Nothing else to really report. Maybe the internet will start working in my town at some point so I don't have to wait for the weekend to do these things. So there you go, another week down and only 4 more to go.
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archaeologydork's journal
