My Home: enter at your peril...

So lots of "want photos!" come my way regarding the house.  And I ran about taking photos here and there and then there was the usual hysteria on the couch where I tried to figure out how to put all of these in a post that wouldn't be a complete disaster and then it came to me.  Like the Virgin Mary, speaking words of wisdom... only it was Bill Bryson.  Or maybe not, because I haven't actually read the book yet, it being brand spanking new and I not having money for random books of bliss...

I seem to be wandering.  Where was I?

Oh, yes.  We are going to do a home tour.  Room by room.  Or maybe more than one room on some occasions.  Screw it, folks, we'll do as many damn rooms per post as I freakin' feel like, okay?

So without further ado: the entry way.

 

This is the front door.  Is this not an awesome door??  And yes, my house is yellow with white trim.  Strangely enough, a vast majority of the houses I've lived in have been yellow with white trim.  My mom has an obsession for yellow houses with white trim, especially if they have green shutters.  Someone, please make my mother's day by bringing her 16 green shutters for her house?  Oh, and while you are at it, you may want to finish painting the trim.  Bring a ladder.  Oh, and repaint the house... it's faded a lot over the years.  Especially on the south side, facing the sun.

Going in through this door, which is RIGHT ON THE STREET, because front yards happen to other people not living in this town, you enter my vestibule.

If I were to be staging a house to be sold, I obviously would have cleaned.  If I had not been worried about being hit by a car while I hunkered down on my front stoop to take this photo, I would have at least moved the jackets so you could see the newel post.  You'll just have to trust me that there is a newel post and not a small child under all of that mess.

Anyway, the door on the left leads to the parlor.  Which we just found out will be stocked with a large dining set that we are getting for free from the inlaws.  In fact, all the furniture we had "bought" is now "free" and we aren't paying a dime apart from the cost of getting it from there to here.  Seems that attempts to sell it for a small fortune were undone by a Danish public obsessed with Arne Jacobsen egg chairs, who are all noses up at heavy wooden country-style furniture.  I WIN, Denmark!

The door "straight ahead" is to the kitchen.  Just to the right of that door, hidden by the staircase, is another small door to a tiny bathroom.  Not a half-bath, but one fully equipped with shower.  And hidden closet to utilities.  Oh, and a blocked up doorway to the world's smallest courtyard.  All ahead on "My Home"!!

Standing in the door from the kitchen looking back at the door that is now CLOSED!!  You are trapped!!

You decide to approach the tiger saying "nice kitty kitty," wishing you had a steak in your pocket.  Turn to page 83.

You decide to claw at the door and cry like a baby.  Turn to page 15.

You decide that the tiger is a figment of your imagination and stride boldly towards the next door.  Turn to page 106.


I sucked at "Choose your own adventure" books.  I just thought you should know.

So welcome to my home.  Toss your jacket over the rail and kick off your shoes.  I'll bring you a gin and tonic and we'll wander into the next room...

Adventures in Gardening

We purposefully set out to destroy a plant in our yard this last week.  We don't know what it is, but it's wicked spiky and it is trying to kill the rhododendron.

At least *I* think it's trying to kill the rhododendron.  I tend to anthropomorphize plants.  Actually, I tend to anthropomorphize everything, but I like to think it's part of my charm.  A small quirk of my overactive imagination, if you will.

You can't see it in this picture - but it's totally beating the crap out of the rhododendron!!

The spiky plant had to be brought low.  And it was, with help from some garden sheers.  But it will be back, oh yes, it will be back.  I fully expect it to become my nemesis.

There was a plant just like it back in my parents front yard.  Both myself and my sister have tried to kill it.  One time I completely chopped it up, dug down, and poured paint on its evil tap root, all in an effort to poison it completely.  Water-based paint being the most dangerous thing I could get my hands on at the age of 12.  My parents were careful people who were obviously two steps ahead of their possibly dangerous children.

Anyway, the plant wouldn't die and now that my dad has landscaped the yard to the point where we can't get at the Satan Plant, it is happily thriving.

But back to the garden I have now, not random patches of scrubby grass I have had in my past.  The New Satan Plant will continued to be attacked, the rhododendron will be nurtured and I have learned the great secret of gardening.

***SOMETIMES YOU PULL OUT THE WRONG PLANTS***

Oopsy-doodle.

I would now like to tell you about the lavender plant that I have.  It's not a rosemary bush like I thought.  But I am happy to report that I think it will survive and I'm glad I almost killed it discovered it was a lavender bush before I tried to cook with bits of it.  I'll make sure to say nice things to it whenever I pass by.

Meet: Alot

Alot is not mine. 

*snicker*

Alot wandered into my back yard the other day *heh* while my husband and I were gardening.  Until this point, he wasn’t known as Alot.  *guffaw*  He was known as the-cat-that-wasn’t-the-ginger-cat-or-the-little-black-and-white-one.  After a five minute description of the cat THAT WE WERE BOTH LOOKING AT just to say, “and he’s very friendly, this cat,” that I suggested we give him a name.

I mean, we simply could not go on this way and the cat was certainly settling into our garden with intent.  Intent to loiter.  Intent on being cute.  Intent on entertaining the Archaeogoddess with his little fuzzy butt antics.

“Why not ‘Alot’,” said my husband, who is still reeling from the humor of Hyperbole-and-a-Half’s brilliant Alot post, even though I read it to him over a month ago.  Mind you, it *is* genius.  I laugh every time I read it.  My husband, who thinks puns are possibly the highest form of humor, secretly harbors a desperate love for Allie.  At least I think he does.  It's okay, I harbor a not-so-secret desperate love for David Tennant.  We all have our little quirks.  Anyway, I suggest you read it, not only because it's ridiculously funny, but also so that you’ll get the ongoing joke in this post and realize that I’m not stupid, I know an a lot from an Alot. 

But dude, I’m telling you, we named the damn cat Alot.

*bwahahaha*

This let to all kinds of hilarity in the yard.

“Honey, look, there’s Alot in the car!”

“Is that Alot in your jacket, or is it just happy to see me?”

“Oh my god, Alot just fell into the pond!”

Alas, I didn’t get a picture of Alot falling into the pond.  Even if I’d had the camera and been pointing it his way, I would have collapsed in hysterical giggles without ever firing a shot.

I knew it would happen.  I was pretty sure it was going to happen a few days earlier when Alot and the black and white cat, who has of yet no name but I’m leaning towards “Heck” so I can yell “It’s a Heck and Alot!,”  were bounding around the garden chasing each other, their own tails, and the various flying bugs that frequent my yard.

But nope.  Alot’s downfall came when trying to stalk my husband’s hoe-thing.  Hoes will lead you astray, man, every time.  So while Alot was trying to sneak around behind the Danish Boy, he headed towards that nice flat green patch, beyond which the bushes offered a safe location from whence to pounce.

Imagine if you will, dainty cat feet.  Dink-dink-dinking across the ground. 

Dink-dink-pause-dink-dink-pause-dink-dink-plop-plop.

Up to his armpits in algae. 

He withdrew to a safe distance to try to salvage his dignity. 

And we laughed a lot at Alot.

Yesterday Alot wandered into the house, causing my dear Dane to exclaim, “Alot scared the crap out of me earlier today.”  Today we almost took Alot with us to Århus.  One of the great things about Alot is his ability to do things that let us maximize the punning potential of his name.

He’s obviously not our cat.  He does go home, wherever that is, in the evening.  We don’t usually see Alot out at night.  He’s well fed, well groomed, and very friendly.  He’s not neutered, which I think adds to his roaming nature, but so far he’s not treated our yard like a giant litter box.  As far as my husband is concerned, he’s the best pet ever - the kind that costs nothing and gives you hours of entertainment and joy.

We like him, Alot.

This is that post...

I've been waiting and waiting to use this image (unless I've used it already, but I'm not going to go back through all my posts, no sir-ee-bob) and this is that post.

From Pictures for sad children.  I'm pretty sure John Campbell isn't Danish, or married to a Dane, or have had any reason to sit through a Danish party, and yet he really nails the experience.

This post may be a bit touchy, so I'm putting a break in it - continue reading after the jump.

It's not just me!!

I'm not the only one to see the inherent evil in ducks.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I didn't caption this photo, I swear!

If I have different favorite colors every few years, does that mean I have schizophrenia?

Totally stole this from All About Me and A Bag of Chips.

I am very attracted to the color beet - but my toenail polish is currently lake.  Make of that what you will.

In the garden of evil... baby....

I've been a very good girl and taken pictures of my garden for you all.

This is my garden from my bedroom, right before spring errupted.  Across the road is the duck pond, where the nefarious Ducks of Doom await and plot world domination.  Then there's the harbor and the sea beyond that.  My uninterupted sea views are, in fact, interupted by the harbor.  But come Fleet Week, I get a great view of both ships.

BWHAHAHAHA!

Actually, we did have two small navy vessels in port a few days ago.  It was a little dark to take a non-flash photo and I only take military photos when I am sure no one is going to catch me because I don't want to get shot, thankyouverymuch.  So you'll just have to trust me that we had sailors in town.

*Insert seaman joke here*

Of late I've been suffering from insomnia.  This is partially exasperated by having my husband rush off back to Aarhus to make money as a taxi driver until his job here beings in July (more specifically, until his first pay check is deposited) and I just kinda forget to go to bed.

I'd forget to breathe if it wasn't a subconscious act.

But it means I end up getting to watch the sun rise over the duck pond.   Once I even managed to photograph it!  I love sunrises.  Provided that I've been up all night to watch them.  I'm very unfond of seeing sunrises because I've had to get up early.  I like watching the sun rise and then going to bed.  I also like wandering around town after everyone else has gone to bed.  But taking pictures in the dark is a little difficult - I would need to find the tripod, learn to use a camera properly, and have patience.  Posh!  The point of wandering around in the dark at night is the wandering around in the dark at night!

I hear tonight is a full moon.  I'm so tempted to go out and wander around in it.

Anyway, my garden.  I didn't plant it.  According to our landlord, he spent a Great Deal of Money on it and we must take care of it.  This would be much easier if I knew anything about plants.

Like this plant.

I like it.

It's all spiky and the red flower thing is even more red in real life, but I'm not a fabulous photographer and I lack photoshop.

And I have no clue as to what kind of flower it is.

There is also this flower that's growing in the gravel and nowhere else in the garden.  This suggests it's a weed, but it's pretty and I want to keep it.

Then there is this flower.  Bush.  Flower.  Bush.  Flowerbush?

It's got spiky thorns like a rose, but it doesn't look much like a rose.  I was going to lean in and sniff it, but I'd have to step on some things that may or may not be baby plants and possibly grasp another spiky plant-bush thing in an effort not to fall on my face into the flowerbush and that would just suck.

This picture also shows how much lusher my garden has gotten since I took the picture at the top of this post... just a few days ago.

I also really like this plant.  It's a purple plant.  Has little bitty flowers that remind me of a plant back home that I used to think was Fox Glove, but now I know is not.

Oh, you say, I thought you said you didn't know about plants?

Yes, well, I am sort of a nut for poisonous plants used in murder mysteries.  And Digitalis is one of the fun ones.  But I did just learn that it's considered a weed by the USDA.

Then there is this little yellow flower growing right next to my ornamental pond.  It's got leaves that totally scream "weed" or possibly "romaine lettuce" but a quick wikipedia trip doesn't tell me if lettuce has flowers.

Because of the whole Fox Glove thing, I tend to not eat random plants in gardens.

That and my mother liked to tell us kids the story of the boy scouts who went camping and then used Oleander sticks to roast marshmallows and DIED!

Speaking of the ornamental pond...

Here is a picture, with a newspaper for scale.  Or perhaps I've kidnapped this pond and this is a proof of life photo.

It's about two feet across and probably about that deep.  It seems to be made of a cement ring, sunk into the ground, with some solid bottom keeping the water from leaking away.

And it is full of dead leaves.  Topped by small green plants that do not seem to be algae and perhaps are meant to be there.  Not really sure on that one.

My husband is at a loss as to it's purpose.  In my husband's world, things have purpose.  I like things to have a purpose, and in my house, if you don't serve a purpose (which sometimes just has to be "entertain the Archaeogoddess for half an hour) you don't get to move with us then next time we change addresses.  It's a harsh old life in the Archaeohousehold, but it makes it easier to move from house to house.  However, I recognize that sometimes we don't need to know the purpose of a thing to appreciate and like it.

That being said, the ornamental pond creeps me out.

I went and fished a plastic bag out of it the other day and I thought, just for a minute, that I was about to fish a foot out as well.

A human foot.

I mean, come on, doesn't that pond just scream "body dump" to you?

It would have to be a small body.

Which just makes it all the more creepy, doesn't it?

Don't worry folks, if I was going to go about killing people, I would definitely not put them in my ornamental pond.  Because putting the body in your own backyard is how they catch you.  There is also the problem of size.  My pond is just too small.  To fit a body in it I'd first have to cut it up and deep fry it until it was crispy and then run it through the wood chipper, and if you are going to go through that much trouble you might as well just dispose of the body somewhere else, like the fertilizer ponds that are all over Denmark.  Your victim could be spread out all over Samsø without you having to lift a finger.

Then there is all that business about pig farms.  Lots of pig farms in Denmark, you know.  This country is just crying out for a crime syndicate and a mob boss.

So it seems...

So it seems that the only way I am going to graduate with a PhD is if I cut out everything that I was even remotely interested in and focus entirely on bits I specifically did not want to write about.

And for what?

So that people can call me "doctor"?  That's a bit pompous.  Was I going to use it for anything other than slapping it on a business card?  I'm not planning on going into scholarship or academia.  I get physically ill at the thought.  Teaching is great, it's the rest of it I can't stand.  I might get paid a bit more as an archaeologist.  Except that experience is very important when hunting for a job in the field and of course, I can't get any more experience while I'm supposed to be finishing this thing.  (I had to use our extreme poverty as an excuse to go and work in Qatar and I've been going against my advisor for years when it comes to my digging in Israel and Jordan - if I listened to my committee I would never dig until after I got a degree.)   I might have better opportunities for jobs, except that having a PhD is a requirement for the jobs I don't want and not a requirement for the jobs I do.  It might help others get better grants.  And while I do love my colleagues very much, I'm no good to them if I have a complete mental breakdown over this.

I managed to finish a draft after hours of pain - tears, cramps, headaches, nightmares, bit lips, chewed off fingernails, stomach aches, nausea, acid reflux, heart palpitations and sleepless nights.  I shut off the bits of my head that told me what I was doing was pointless and stupid and wrote the biggest piles of poop I've ever written.  I can't actually read those chapters.  I have full on panic attacks when I think too much about them.

Those are the chapters my committee wants me to keep, of course.

The chapters I wrote, that I slaved over, the ones where I worked on the sentences until I can proudly step back and say, yes, I wrote that and I think it's pretty good.  The chapters that I can read without getting that horrible feeling in my chest... those are the ones they want me to throw out.  "Pointless" was one, unforgettable, comment.

I brought this up to my advisor, because I was rather upset about the whole thing and he told me to stop whining and complaining and that he should have thrown the book at me long ago.  Thanks, that was really helpful.  I'm glad you're here to advise me.

Can someone tell me why I'm doing this again?

Oh, yes, I wanted to be an archaeologist.

Wait a minute - I *am* an archaeologist!

I'm a PAID archaeologist!

Why the hell am I turning down opportunities to go do what I love to do so that I can sit at home surrounded by post-it notes, sobbing hysterically and clutching a German-English dictionary?!  Why do I keep having to send apology emails to my advisor because I'm miserable and need help and it's "getting on his nerves"?

What about my nerves?  I'm a wreck when it comes to this thing!  I'm sitting here sobbing NOW and all I'm doing is talking to you lot about it.

I don't need to prove that I'm smart.  I know I'm smart.  I don't need to prove anything.  Especially that I can write hundreds of pages of crap that I cannot defend.

(But it would be a funny defense.  Any question my committee would ask would have to be answered with "because you told me that if I didn't put it in here, I wouldn't graduate.  I personally think it's wrong and stupid, but what do I know?")

There's the usual, oh, but my dear, you've spent the last 10 years of your life working on this!  You can't just walk away now!!

If I'd spent $50,000 trying to get a $2,000 car working, you'd say I was an idiot, right?  And you'd tell me to stop throwing good money after bad, right?

I've got one life to live here, folks.  One life.  Every year I spend doing what I hate, and paying to do it, mind - we've been paying to keep me enrolled for 5 years now - is another year gone.  And I will NEVER get it back.  Money is just money.  This is my life I'm spending.

Instead of sitting in a library, trying to find every last different meaning for representations of fish in the 3rd century CE (there are a lot, and by the way, I think that there is an interesting relationship between images of acquiring food and images of food itself and that someone might make a really interesting dissertation out of it... I'd rather kill myself that write it, but if you are interested I will totally tell you all about it and *you* can write it), I could be out trying to get jobs in the field.  I could be going to conferences and meeting up with people and making contacts and exploring other things I may be interested in.  I could be enjoying life EVERY DAY instead of just the days I decide that I can't possibly be asked to try to work on this horrible horrible pile of crap.

I remember feeling like this before.  It was in my last marriage and every conversation we were having about why I was unhappy had to do with me not trying hard enough and not compromising enough.  All I did when we were together was cry.  And feel stupid and unworthy of his attention.  Leaving him was the best thing I ever did.  I learned that love is about loving the person that you are and the person you are with for who you and they are RIGHT NOW.  Not who you want to be or who you want them to be.

That was sort of a non sequitur, but that was also major depression that resulted in some heavy medication that gave me the courage to just go off and do what I really wanted to do for once... still non sequituring.... but the point being, I don't want to be that depressed again.  It sucked.  And it's starting to feel like that again.  Not the marriage.  The current marriage is great.  Graduate school, folks.  Graduate school is depressing.

If I'm so unhappy in graduate school, working on this dissertation, that all I do when even thinking about it is cry, if working on it makes me feel stupid and unworthy of a degree - WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WASTING MY PRECIOUS TIME ON IT!??

I know I'm not stupid and I'm not unworthy of a degree - but I don't need to get a degree to tell me that!

In many respects, grad school has been great.  I really enjoyed the first few years.  I met people I really needed to meet and without it I wouldn't be here today.

I mean that in every sense, by the way.

But I'd really like to go back to being able to look up stuff I'm interested in, read the things I'm interested in reading, think about the things I'm interested in thinking about without feeling guilty.  I'd like to not feel nauseous in my office.  I'd like to stop having heart palpitations when I check my email.  I'd really like it all to be over.

That's it.

I'm done.

Let me out.
Let me off.
Let me go.

And if I could just get someone in my department to email me back it would be fan-fuckin'-tastic.

Island life...

So I may have mentioned that I moved to an island who's name I cannot pronounce, to a city who's name I cannot pronounce, to a street who's name I cannot pronounce.

This is the joy of Denmark, constantly being unable to ask people how to get home because you can't tell them where you live.

I think this is the real reason they invented identity cards in this small nation.  How else could the Copenhagen police know which train to put west coasters on?  It's not like you can understand the words that are coming out of their mouths.  I mean, jeez!

And at some point you *will* need help getting home.  Maybe because you've had too much to drink, but it's just as likely that you'll discover that the bus stops have moved and the buses have been rerouted and suddenly you shouldn't be taking the 15, because that no longer goes by your house, or stops anywhere near your house. In fact, the 15 now goes to Hamburg.

Which is in Germany.

And we don't go to Germany.

Unless we are buying ridiculous amounts of cheap snacks and liquor which would have cost us the same amount if we'd just gone to Bilka because we used half a tank of gas to get us to Germany and will use half a tank to get back, and petrol is viciously expensive in Denmark, but going to Germany to load up on crap reminds us why we fought the war.

Oh, and we go to Germany to visit Berlin.

But as we all know, Berlin is not *really* Germany.

So OTHER THAN THAT, we don't go to Germany.

Speaking of Germany, if I went to the south side of my island I might be able to see it, on a clear day.

Thus giving me enough foreign policy experience to run for Veep.

*hurried whispers* What?

*stressed whisper* Oh.

Apparently, my associates tell me, I live in a foreign country and have worked in several other foreign countries, thus giving me OODLES more foreign policy experience that some people who have, in the past, may have run for certain public offices.

Moving on...

This island.  Under 7000 inhabitants.  Which still makes it a larger community than what I grew up in, shockingly enough.  You can only get here by ferry boat.  There are three ferry boats leaving from different cities and arriving in different cities.  This does mean that from time to time you race from one end of the island to the other trying to get on a ferry boat.  Important note if you ever visit me: make a reservation for your car.  We get weekenders.  *scoffs*

I have lived a good chunk of my life in tourist destinations.  This is because I share my parents philosophy of "why just visit a lovely place when you can freakin' live there!"

(They probably wouldn't put it that way, or they'd point out that they have other, more important philosophies like "be kind to others" and "please don't bring the car back without any gas this time" - but they did decide to move us all to a charming town in the country rather than raise us in suburbia because it is way more awesome to live in a beautiful place all the time, instead of living in a sucky place and only going to pretty places when you can.)

So I tend to have a bit of impatience with tourists and a certain smugness when it comes to where I live.  Add that to my irrational hatred of summer homes... and well, I'm an islander by nature.

My husband and I have had oodles of fun exploring the island.  We've been beer tasting at the local brewery, we've gone in search of the butchers so that I can get a shoulder of pork (not a common cut in Denmark, by the way) and we've been antiquing (which is very touristy, but also a great way to find out if you can afford to decorate your house... and the answer is NO).  We've found out that although we live on an island and a huge number of people living here are fishermen, you cannot buy fresh fish in any stores.  But some fishermen may be keeping some fish from their catches, which they aren't supposed to do, and these men may be willing to sell you some under the table, which they aren't supposed to do, but of course, no one really knows if this is *really* so...

For those who wonder, yes, there *is* a hospital on the island.  Somewhere around here.  I just had it a minute ago, must have set it down somewhere... forget my own head next...

We've discovered that we can get just about everything we used to be able to get in Århus, except some American foods (no SuperBest here) and I'm having an herbal issue, where I keep buying potted herbs and then eating them instead of planting them.

I feel strangely guilty about that.  I mean, I buy my chickens pre-dead, cut and packaged for my dining pleasure - why can I not get herbs the same way?  Having me buy herbs in a pot forces me into some big lie about how I'm going to take this potted herb home and care for it, give it a good life, nurture it.  When the reality is, I'm going to go home and pull it's little leaves off!  The herbs even come with little tags telling me how to care for the plant.  I tell you, it's just sick.  Now if I bought a bush of mint, it might last - although the care tag tells me that mint is not meant to survive in northern Europe and therefore needs plenty of sunlight - ohmygod, set me up for failure why don't you!  Denmark, sun?  WTF?!  But a small, scrawny mint plant is just not going to hack it in my house if I'm making a Jamie Oliver risotto (ever notice the man asks you to throw in handfuls of everything?).  The guilt is compounded by the similarity between the scrawny mint plant and the Christmas tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.  I feel like I should be swaddling the mint in a blankie and singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" at it instead of systematically stripping it of the ability to photosynthesize.

If you are also wondering if you remembered correctly that I get seasick... uh, yeah, I do.  Does this mean it's really rather silly that I live on an island that can ONLY be reached by BOAT... uh, yeah, it is. But I also hate flying and yet spend a lot of time traveling long distances by plane, have allergies and yet spend a lot of time outside, suck at learning languages and yet live in Denmark, etc.  If I avoided things I do not like or make me uncomfortable, I'd have to live in a lab somewhere in Kansas.  And never leave.

Boring!

I shall now leave you with two photos of the town in which I live that I did not take.  Alas, the photos I seem to have taken of this island SUCK.  I'm going to have to do something about it, but not now.  Not while it's so cold the ducks have frozen to the sidewalk.

What volcano?

It snowed today.  In fact, it may snow again.  And it's April.  Freaking April!!

Isn't there a statute of limitations on winter?

I spent 5 months, count 'em FIVE MONTHS in the desert avoiding winter.  I do not want to be experiencing it now.  Especially when we should be having spring.  I don't want to hear about how it can be spring in Denmark and still snow.  I follow a strict philosophy when it comes to the seasons, one in which snow = winter.  I'll admit I was a little hesitant to join my fellow inhabitants of Denmark in celebrating the coming of spring.  The majority of the trees and bushes in my yard and lining the street on the way to Netto are still as bare and dead looking as they appear in the dead of winter and thus did not say "OHMYFREAKINGGODITSSPRINGYO!" but rather "uh, y'all celebrating prematurely" and while I am a bit better with nature than my husband, I am no Grizzly Adams.  So I bought into the idea that it was getting warmer.

Fool.  FOOL!!

Because it snowed today.  Big ol' puffy flakes of cold wetness drifting down upon the knit cap of our heroine.

Or would have drifted down upon her cap, expect she is NOT going outside in this.  Nope.  She's got toilet paper and pastrami and leftover frikadeller and some mushrooms, she doesn't *need* to go outside.

Except that if she keeps referring to herself in the third person, she may have to seek outside intervention.

But as the weather continues to confuse, confound, and generally obfuscate my life (like right now: brilliant sun... seconds ago I was trying to turn on a light, but failed because it was too dark to find the switch), I look for something to blame.

I mean, someone has to take responsibility for the this weather - I won't have it being an act of god.  I won't.

I'm blaming the ducks.  The ducks in the pond across the road from my house, specifically.  I'm sure they are up to something.  They certainly aren't your normal quack-waddle-quack ducks.  These guys are organized into an effective gang of duckishness.  Just yesterday our next door neighbor was a little slow in getting out to feed them and they sent a duck into his yard to remind him who was in charge.  Meanwhile the others milled about on the bank, quietly quacking amongst themselves.

There's something afoot here.  I'm sure of it.

This post has no soul

I really ought to be posting Stories From the Field, like about the time the camel spider ran through my tent and I was trying to be all quiet about hunting and killing it and then my tent mate from the other side of the partition wall was all "Ah HA! Got you!  Oh shit." And it turned out that she was chasing the same camel spider around her side of the tent and didn't want to alarm me and so was being quiet about it.  Only she was chasing it wearing nothing but her knickers and with bare feet, so she'd whacked it with a slipper that she picked up and that didn't work so she'd put one sandal on it and was holding it down with her hand and thus was now stuck in a Very Compromising Position with a possibly Very Angry Camel Spider under a Not So Substantial Sandal.

It was like Schrödingers Cat and the world was held for a brief moment at the crotch of the Trousers of Time.

I came over with a not-a-proper-hand-ax, or some fancy geology term for a small hand ax that is completely useless for archaeology which is why the museum authority bought so many of them for us, and gave the flat spider a good further flattening.  Just in case.  Because you know how in horror movies when the baddie comes back from the apparent dead?  SPIDERS DO THAT!  Then I carried it's corpse into the desert.  Or the courtyard because it fell off and I wasn't going to pick it up again because I had the post spider heebee-geebees.  And because bending over the pick up a dead spider is EXACTLY when they turn zombie on you and bite your face off.

So that's what this post should have been about.  But instead I was distracted because I'm back to living in a caravan, trying to connect to people who may or may not be in Denmark and my breakfast bun with cheese and jam tastes of onions because I tried to save half an onion last week before going to Spain and now everything in the small 'fridge tastes vaguely of onion.  On one hand, yay, I have half an onion that I can use, on the other hand, I don't need that onion now because the onion flavor is already in everything.

For my patient readers...

Especially those who have been waiting and wanting photos...

The photos are not on this blog.

I have photos that have friends and coworkers in them and to protect their privacy, these photos cannot be uploaded to the blog as long as the blog remains completely open to all and sundry.

My options were then to either make this blog private, which would on one hand work, but would keep me from meeting random people on the internets, or to make the photos private.

Which I may have been able to do.  In a round about fashion.  Probably making it harder for myself than was truly necessary.

This leads to a quick question: how on earth is it that I can get a grip on FinalCut Express in just a few hours and yet spend all day trying to figure out privacy controls on photo sharing sites?

Anyway, to keep these photos private I have to "invite" you to see them.  That means you need to send me an email at the address you see on the main blog page.  Then I will send you a link to view the photos.  Ooooh, I know, how cool is that??

Please be advised that this process is not instantaneous - I'm popping back to a temporary home near my husband's school in order to help him with his computer needs (very funny considering that I have a hell of a time with this blog) and that means lousy internet connection.  And caravan living.  Yup, caravan living.  I'll be checking the email and trying to send links as fast as I can, when I have internet.

Also, for those who know me via Facebook, most of the photos are the same as those you see there.

If this works... this photo sharing site, that is... if I can choose certain photos albums to be shared and others not, I'll try to post more photos there and link them here or send out guest passes and thus save me the hassle of trying to load photos one at a time, cutting out some of the most interesting ones because of privacy issues, and will allow you to see oodles of photos in one go.

Fingers crossed, folks.

I don't know what day it is nor what country I'm in...

Actually, my watch tells me it's Wednesday and I'm cold, so I must be in Denmark.

But I spent several days in Spain.

Because, you know, why not?

Oh, okay, honestly, I had a wedding to attend.  Yes, my friends rock.  My husband and I were discussing our friends and their inherent coolness in timing over breakfast as we looked out from the hotel in the Sierra Nevada (in Spain, not the one I grew up next to) and realized that we've been on three destination weddings over the last four years, four if you include our own.  And not only does that average out to one a year, it really has been one a year.  That makes this a tradition.  My husband and I do not go on vacations, we go on weddings.

So, friends of ours, we're ready for our next destination wedding.  I'd like to try Greece.

Holy Easter Eggs, Batman, it’s April!!

How did that happen?  Anyone?  Hello?  Anyone still reading?

Boy does the time fly.  The last four weeks of the dig were completely and utterly mad.  The end of a season is always mad; on a four-week project the last week is non-stop mayhem, on a five-month project… well, let’s just say it was a blessing that we learned to brew our own refreshment.  That and the generosity of ex-pats.  Bless those ex-pats!  Gin is a wonderful thing, don't you agree?

At the end of the project I’d catalogued 802 objects.  There are still more stones to catalogue.  But I’m not really enthusiastic about possible hammer-stones.  I mean, it's a rock.  Maybe someone used it to hit something once or twice, but does that mean it's a cultural implement worthy of my time?  Or architectural fragments.  At what point, exactly, do you stop cataloguing architectural fragments?  Do you only catalogue the really pretty pieces?  What about the pieces that aren’t pretty but are interesting because they show construction methods? What about the random crap that comes up that I’m supposed to store but would rather accidently drop down the loo?  (This is the vast majority of plaster artifacts that come out of the field.  I look down at them and think, why, god, did you give me this chunk of plaster doorframe?  We know they had doors.)

Apart from cataloguing, there was also the matter of storage.  Over 300 crates were packed.  Each crate needed a tag and a list had to be made that indicated what was in each crate so that we knew a) what we had and b) where it was.  MSExcel and anal-retentiveness are our friends.  Once packed we then had to move all of these crates.  Half went to the fort and half went to our house in town.  Using our hired workmen, we moved everything in two days. While the goddesses of registration were doing this (that would be me and Miss H) everything else, including my office, was packed up and put away for next year.  I can tell you where the ceramics from locus 1215 are, but not where you can find a ball-point pen.

The last day we were in camp, we got up at 6 am and were out of the tents by 7 am.  This is vital, because the tents started to come down at 7:30 and if you weren’t out with your stuff, you were likely to be surprised when the whole thing came crashing down like an unwieldy umbrella.  By breakfast at 10 am, the entire camp was dismantled and packed up.  We left camp at 2 pm for Doha.

I don’t think I’ve ever been part of such a smooth breakdown and pack up of a site - ever.  Especially considering how much stuff had to be moved and cleaned and boxed and moved and packed and moved.  I think it really shows what a great group of people I spent five months of my life with - no one had to ask for help, people did what needed to be done and then asked if they could help someone else.  It was smooth and easy and really stress-free.  How stress-free?  So stress-free that I finished typing up the last of the lists, walked out of the office and discovered that all I needed to do was get my bags and get in a vehicle.  There was this amazing double-take - "wait, what, we're done??" followed by "yeah, okay, I'll get in the car, no complaints, I'm ready."

I still can’t believe it’s over.  Where did five months go? 

I also can’t believe I’m not going to get up in the morning and hear AW and TR in the kitchen, meet KC in the bathroom and trip over the doorframe going into my office.  I don’t have to shake my shoes out before putting them on… in fact I don’t have to put on my shoes to go get coffee anymore!  I certainly do not miss the public toilets, but I sure do miss the people.  Thankfully, they don’t live too far away.  (Odd, isn’t it, England now qualifies as “not that far away”?) Many of them are even trying to get jobs or into university here in Denmark, which would be Very Convenient as far as I am concerned.

But after five months of seeing the same people day after day?  All day.  Well into the night, every night, in fact.  To suddenly not have these people in your life, right at your fingertips, is very jarring.  Especially since I really really like them.  

A moment while I get all maudlin and melancholy. 

This post wraps up the general boring posts from Qatar.  There’s a few random stories to tell, but I really must post about What Happened While the Archaeogoddess Was Not in Denmark, because my husband got a job and moved us to a small island and I only just started to unpack in my new huge house when I was swept into the car and back to the big city to camp in a caravan for a week so he can finish a school project (so as of this moment I am still freaking camping!!) and then we’re flying off to Spain for a week before another week of camping back in Denmark and *then* I might be able to go back to my GORGEOUS house and finally unpack from Qatar and the move, but only if we can buy a new washing machine so that I will be able to wash my clothes properly for the first time in five months (now going on six).  But for the moment I need to see if I can post this, er, post before I run out of battery, because I’m using mobile internet in a café and there’s no damn power sockets.  WTF??*

*Note: still couldn't post this in the cafe because the internet crashed and I had to go back to the caravan for power.  This is attempt to post take #2.

Hugs to all and hope to post more frequently in the near future!

BY THE WAY FOR ALL THE PHOTO NUTS OUT THERE... THERE ARE PHOTOS (not mine, but taken by a lovely woman who will let me post some of them) AND I STUPIDLY LEFT THEM ON MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE WHICH I CANNOT PLUG IN WHILE I HAVE MOBILE INTERNET ON!!  I'M SORRY!!  I'll try to get you some soon.

Boredom leads to mayhem

Just over four months in, with only a few weeks to go, and we're slowly going mad.

Actually, we've probably all been mad for a long time.  I mean, we are *here* after all and we are archaeologists, which requires a good healthy dose of madness to begin with.

But let's just say we are going madder than normal.

Part of this is boredom.  There is not a lot to do 'round here that we haven't done before and that doesn't require a massive amount of effort.

So what did it lead to tonight?

Chat roulette.

There's a website for this, which I'm not going to link to, because you can google it at your own peril.  But it led to an amusing half hour.  During that time most people hit "next" on their page to get away from the waving and shouting archaeologists.  Obviously, people who are looking to chat with random strangers are not interested in meeting us.  Do we really look that crazy?  Okay, maybe the stuffed shiite hawk with the red glowing eyes that we have hooting at the screen is a little odd, but come on, you logged onto a site that hooks you up with random strangers with web-cams... we are not the worst you could get.

We know the worst.

We did have the obligatory penis appearing at one point.  It wasn't OUR penis, thank you very much.  But it goes to show that flashers are everywhere and really like the freedom that the web can give you.  Just think, he managed to flash us in Qatar.  From wherever his mom's basement happens to be!  The power of the web, man.

Then a group of us drove madly to the beach to splash in the water after one of our number called to say that there was phosphorescence a-happening.*  This turned out to be way less spectacular than previous reports had led us to believe... but as the water warms up, we hope for a better show.  Gives us something to look forward to, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, the last few days are upon us and boredom will be punctuated with frantic bouts of intense labor.  Like crating up all of the finds.  Because we finally, after four months, have crates.  One hundred crates.  We expect to use them all in the next day or so and then we'll have to order more.  Sigh.  The other question will be "where do we then store all these crates?" To which I must reply, "I don't know" and "I'm not going to worry about that right now" and "It's not my problem" and "I don't care."  I have other problems, like database malfunctions... or more correctly, Access is being overly helpful and rounding up my data.  Fine, I can handle losing some of the box numbers and having to type that in again, but should it decide to round up the global positioning coordinates of the finds, this will be a serious problem.

But right now, it's late and the most pressing question I have at the moment is: is anyone going to eat that last piece of French toast?  Because I'm totally going to eat it, if no one speaks up.

*I can't seem to do a spell check - but Blogger does tell me if I spell something wrong, so I want you all to be amazed that I spelled phosphorescence correctly.  Eventually, that is.

I'm not dead...

But Blogger is trying to kill me.

Can't sign in 99% of the time.  Can't read the private blogs because I suddenly don't exist.  Can't leave comments because I don't exist.

What have I been up to the last month?

Changing taps on the sink (oodles more fun when you can't turn off the water running to the sink).  Chasing people out of our tents - honestly people, I FREAKING LIVE HERE AND THATS MY HOME YOU ARE INVADING!  Answering stupid questions, usually "Yes, I live here" and "No, you cannot look into my tent," but the best was the one our computer guy had to answer "Is this the way to Saudi Arabia?"  Um, we're on the north coast of a peninsula.  You have to drive hours in the wrong direction to end up out here.  You have to be unable to read a map SO BADLY that you fail to notice that the signs for the towns you are passing are putting you farther and farther away from where you want to be.  You have to be so stupid that you can't remember the simple fact that the sun ALWAYS rises in the east and sets in the west and therefore north is this way and south is that way and when on a peninsula that rises NORTH out of Saudi Arabia, one must therefore drive SOUTH to reach it.

We've also had the Tour of Qatar bicycle thingy come through.  The women's run started from our car park and the next week we stood on the side of the road to cheer the men as they raced by.  Then we almost got ran over by a truck because he took BOTH HANDS OFF THE WHEEL TO WAVE AT US WHILE GOING AROUND THE BEND.

We've had the boy scouts of the middle east camped in our backyard.

We've continued Adventures in Cooking Over a Campfire.  This weekend we'll be trying to roast a goat.

We've had porto-potties show up, finally.  But they empty out of a pipe shoved under the toilet (and held up to the hole by a rock, no less) just a few feet away from the porto-potty so we've kept the locks on the doors, because yes, the tourists did try to use them when they first arrived, despite the fact that they didn't have the holes for the toilets cut in the floor yet.

We've had something die in the ceiling of the office.  It's raining maggots.  No, really, I mean it.  Maggots were dropping on my desk from above.  Thank god I'm on vacation!

Which brings me to my big announcement of the month - my husband is arriving in... 6 hours!!  I'm taking a couple of days off to enjoy his visit.  He's like, so you'll show me the country, and I'm like, how about the inside of a hotel room, because, let's face it, four months is a really long time.  But we'll have plenty of time to see the country.  It really won't take that long.  This country isn't very large and there isn't much in it.  You realize this when you become The Tourist Attraction of the year.  If my tent is the coolest stuff you've seen in a while and you take a picture of yourself standing outside of it because it is just that darn exciting ("oh look, honey, TENTS!")?  Then, damn, this place is dull.

The Archaeogoddess takes no prisoners...

Oops, that's a typo... should read "the Archaeogoddess takes no pictures"!

This is a photo free blog until the end of March.

Why?

Because I am finally having a day off and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend it editing, resizing, and uploading images.  Add to that the time I put into making sure that any image I want to post is not going to upset the museums authority, various persons that appear in photos, or infringe on copyrights.  All in all, it is a VERY LONG TIME INDEED.

I'm only getting a chance to post this now because I'm in a hotel with sturdy internet.  Camp is not the place to try to post.  That last post took forever to load and if I hadn't typed it up first and then cut and pasted into Blogger, I would have lost it for sure.  Our internet connection does like to come and go like camels in the fog.  One minute it's free sailing and I'm reading an email, the next I've got my email server telling me that no, really, I can't see the next email as the connection is lost, please try again later.

So, instead of finding myself cringing whenever I go to read the comments and then neglecting to post things because "oh I don't have any pictures to post, my readers are going to be so mad at me"- I'm going to try to write more and not worry about photos.  At the end of the season, when I am back at home with FAST and RELIABLE internet, I will try to post photos.  Maybe I'll do a flickr page or something and link that in.  But for now I'm not going to stress about it.

So don't comment about it anymore or I'm going to send you an angry email and stop posting all together.

This week was a trying week.  We lost power in the bathroom which means no hot water, no washing machine and no lights to pee by.  If we are lucky we might get an electrician out some time this week.  The kitchen septic tank is full and overflowing and we've been told that we don't need to have it emptied, we should just dig a ditch through the middle of the camp out into the desert where it can drain.  We are also having a cash flow problem where we need to have more cash than the accounting office can keep up with.

Vacation time, once seeming so full of potential, is now proving to be more difficulty than it's worth.  Anyone going to the UK comes back with a cold that they then pass around camp.  Thanks guys, thanks a lot.  Meanwhile, three people in our group want to go to India... they've spent the last two weeks playing a run around game with the Indian Embassy.  Now they need an official letter saying that they will not be doing research while they are there for 5 days.  Eh???

Is it something about this place that means that nothing can actually ever happen or get done?  We haven't been able to even enjoy a day off at the camp because we keep getting overrun by tourists and so lounging around is right out.

This weekend our field director enforced a two day weekend.  He cancelled our workmen and told us to go away.  Myself and my co-registrar and another archaeologist (all of us are in the same tent) booked ourselves into the Ritz.  It was fabulous.  Being away from camp means no one can ask us about stuff or when we'll be done with the internet so they can have a go and you can have food not covered in flies and take long hot showers and wear tank-tops and skirts and not be stared at by passers-by.  Someone else can spend today throwing tourists out of our camp.  We have been the watch-dogs for long enough!

Thankfully, everyone is back from vacation and new people arrived so the camp is buzzing with activity again.  For a while it was just a few of us and then we couldn't go away because it needed to be defended.  Talk about cabin fever!  All day, every day, in the same 40 meter by 40 meter compound.  Stared at by visitors (who drive by slowly with the windows down and STARE at us).  Showering in the public toilet....

The three of us think we should Ritz it EVERY WEEKEND.  It's not like we really have the time to take all that vacation we've built up by working six day weeks.  But if one morning a week we could get out of bed and not shake out our shoes for small crawlies, we'd be happier people all around.

And if it means I can finally start writing emails to all the people who have emailed me, I know I'd stop feeling guilty every time I looked at a computer (I look at a computer all day... imagine the ulcer I must have)!

If it weren't for the fantastic weather we are having (did I mention the tank tops and skirts?) and the fact that I really like all the people I work with quite a lot (I'm going to adopt our computer specialist and I think the illustrator and I were separated at birth) I'd be completely miserable here.    If you've got to be stuck in an insane country, tilting windmills, make sure you can do it in light cotton clothing surrounded by good people.

Things I didn’t know I needed to know for archaeology

When you first start off  trying to become an archaeologist, you worry a lot about what classes you should take.  Geology?  Anthropology?  Aramaic?  You end up taking classes like “Stone Age Archaeology as Seen Through Fiction” (true story, and it was a great class, oodles of fun) and “Anthropological Theory” (aka One Dead White European Male a Day).  You may even take “Archaeological Field Methods” or some other method and theory class that tells you how older stuff is under newer stuff, but leaves out the bits about double bagging and double tagging, which as a registrar I consider to be Quite Important, Thank You Very Much.

But I find that out in the field you draw on knowledge of all sorts.  Some of which you didn’t know you knew and some things that you knew you knowed (new word, watch for it in Webster’s) but never thought you’d use.

Like changing tires.  Everyone should know how to do this.  Why?  Because if you are digging there are bound to be rocks and where there are rocks there are tire punctures.  Or rakes used to rid your area of rocks are left in roadways turned the wrong way up and there are not only tire punctures but also the sudden loss of rakes.

I am a champion tire changer.  NASCAR could use a person of my skills.  Only NASCAR has nice areas where you park your vehicle and I doubt any pit crew has ever had to move finds bags out of the way to get to the jack.

Fire starting is also a handy skill.  Whether you are trying to clear a site of flesh rending thistles or find yourself in the desert in the winter where it is colder than you recall deserts being, being able to light a successful fire is a welcome skill.  

Being surrounded by other archaeologists that have spent seasons digging in all sorts of places is a learning experience.  Just about everyone has a skill learned on a site that comes in handy.  The amount of baking that has taken place on an open fire… yes, baking.  Apple crumble was successfully made using a large pot, some tuna cans, a baklava tin, and an iron wok.

Soda cans have been sculpted into fantastic light fixtures, furniture has been built, and we may have to write a book for 1001 things you can do with string.

But now you’ll have to excuse me, my fire has been left to smolder and it’s gone all smoky on me.  I wonder if there are any marshmallows left….

My tour of Qatar hotels continues.

The Ramada wins top marks due to it's internet connection.  Very fast and reliable.  I can finally post some pictures.

Here are some camels.  We see a lot of camels wandering around.  You can also see the mobile phone tower - the generator for this runs constantly.

However, without it, we'd have no cell phones.

But the constant humming may drive us insane.

Is connectivity all that important? Really?

This is my tent.  Well, the left hand third is mine.  I enter through the left-most door.

See how the upper edge of this photo is purple?  My camera is dying.  It just keeps getting worse and worse and now most of my photos are just purple blurs.

This is the inside of my tent.  (Actually, the layout has changed since I developed a leak in the corner right above the pillow.  But now my camera is refusing to talk to me.)

It *IS* usually cleaner, but I was packing for the Eid trip when I remembered I needed to take photos.  That's my clothing on the bed.  It then took me how many weeks to figure out how to shrink my photos down to the size where they might be able to be posted on-line?  Hush, I don't want to talk about it.

Our toilet block.  We share it with all the visitors to the fort.

What fort? you ask.

This is the fort - if you haven't seen it yet.

It looks all big and impressive, but that canon sitting out in front is a regular sized canon sitting right in front of it.  The door is rather small, most tourists duck when they go through it.  It is NOT a big fort.



WARNING: POSSIBLY DISTASTEFUL PHOTO AHEAD
The inside of that toilet block pictured above.  You put your used toilet paper in the trash can.  Not down the toilet.  This is the old toilet - there was no u-bend so the water would rush back into the pipes after we flushed and the smell was profound.  We now have a new toilet.  Which looks exactly the same.  But doesn't smell!  Yay!  You can't see in this photo, but there is a pipe sticking out of the wall that is our shower.  Yes, we shower in the loo.

You have no idea how nice it is to have the toilet fixed so it doesn't smell.








Then we go and stay somewhere like the Sharq....

The bedroom and the bathtub in the bathroom were very nice.








But I'm typing this up from the best internet connection I've had so far - in the Ramada Hotel.  The Ramada also has the REAL swim up bar (which my roommate and I discovered almost immediately after jumping into the water an hour after we arrived).  And although the rooms are rather 80's styled, we've decided this is the best hotel we've stayed in.  The water in the pool is 31 C/ 87 F!  Of course, it's only 24 C/ 75 F outside, so you really do need the heated water...





My 80's room.






So we spent Christmas lounging by the pool, drinking beer and opening presents.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a late check out so that I can get a few more hours in by the pool...

"Qatar is a country of extremes..."

said one of the archaeologists here.  And boy was she spot on.

For Eid we were given two nights in a very swanky resort.  Very swanky.  My roommate, the girl who intoned the quote above in reverent tones as we pondered our existence on the balcony, was later rather ill from overeating lobster for lunch.  This after we'd stuffed ourselves on fois gras (spelling anyone?) the lunch before.  We seriously over ate.  And did not drink a single drop of alcohol, even though there was a happy hour every night.  Too busy trying to digest while lying on feather beds trying to gear up to take ANOTHER BATH.

I managed to bathe three times in one day, one of those I did in milk and honey.  In the biggest bath tub EVER!  I was able to float on my back in it.  FLOAT.  On my BACK.  In MILK and HONEY and BUBBLES and ROSE PETALS.

It's a lot easier to float, by the way, if you've eaten ridiculous amounts of fattening goose liver.

The week after this luxurious weekend found us frantically digging a trench in the pouring rain trying to divert water from the parking lot, which was channelling directly into the tents, back out into the desert.  We were wet for days.  I had a leak in the corner of my tent and had to rearrange the room so that nothing was getting dripped on.  I've now added the extra blankets to my bed, the nights are rather cold.

This does not mean we haven't had a camel spider sighting in a while.  Oh no, one of the guys had one crawling up his leg while he was in BED.  But, as the guys in the tent point out, they've had Qataris, Japanese, scorpions and cats wander into their tent, why not camel spiders?

Fridays are great for tourists to come out and photograph themselves by our tents.  "And this is me standing by the Pakistani army tent in the desert in Qatar, because I've stupidly come to the conclusion that tents = bedouin and I'm not going to ask permission of the white people sitting over there staring at me because they are obviously only tourists too even if they come over and yell at me for going in and having a look around."

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to march up to someone and say "excuse me but this is my HOME and you can't go into it!"

I WAS going to upload some images, but the internet is too slow.  Our hotel you'll have to look up online: Sharq Hotel Doha and I'll have to find some other solution for the images I've taken of the camp.

Till then!