So here's a ridiculous story:
Background: One of the guys in my cohort is out of town and the other guy in my group and I are helping to take care of his cats and dog while he and his fiance are away. Went there last night, no big deal...played with the dog, cuddled the kitten. Perfect.
This morning: Ended up staying up All Freakin' Night working on a paper for today that I FINALLY finished at 7:30 am. Ugh. Lay down for a bit and then headed back over to let the puppy out and check on things. Everything is fine except my car window on the driver side seems to not be up all the way. No big deal right? It's electric and I'm resourceful so I play with it as I pull up to the apartment. Doesn't seem to be going up...huh, I think to myself....well, of course I can figure this out, I like to fix things. So I make the horrible horrible decision to roll the window down.
My car door eats the window and makes some really bad 'breaking of something probably really important' sounds. So now my window won't roll up and I can't just park the car with a rolled down window for the rest of the day while I am in class - I live in a nice part of town, but its still a city and while I don't have crazy expensive things the last thing I need is someone to have easy access to steal the radio or even the car itself.
SO...I figure not a big deal, probably just came off the track - not that expensive. I know this because apparently I am also a mechanic. This positive outlook lasts about as long as it takes for the really young and adorable mechanic to take my door apart - which is actually pretty cool looking, by the way. I had already told him my diagnosis and he kind of laughs and make some joke about how I thought it was a simple fix. Yeah, freakin' HILAR-ious.
Turns out...all of that awful crunching and breaking heard earlier? Yup that was the regulator deciding to shatter into a half dozen pieces. This is not hyperbole, I counted those sad little pieces that fell to the ground as the door came apart - a handful of broken white pieces of plastic that means I can't roll down my window and have to get a replacement part - a $200 piece of plastic. Perfect.
So they drill a bolt through my door to keep the window up - which works - and now, $75 later - I am trying to find a cheap regulator to fix my window (which I am told is not likely, but I am research girl - I will find it even if I have to check ebay).
*Sigh* Yeah, so good times this morning. Thank God! I got my paper (due this afternoon) done this morning before I left. Now just two more papers to go before I am taking a day off - I get to watch a Beatles tribute band with a friend of mine this weekend which should be a good time.
Any ideas of where to search for parts other than the junkyard and e-bay would be awesome.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Good Times at the Fair
State Fair was awesome last night! What could be more great than going to a place where just about everything you buy is some sort of fried thing on a stick. The new additions this year? Fried mac and cheese - which I couldn't find - and fried pecan pie - which I saw. My friend tried the deep fried twinkie - she said it was actually pretty good. I was boring and unadventurous and stuck with the normal funnel cake. Funnel cakes at a fair remind me of growing up in WV and going to all the fair and festivals my little town held with my grandmother and getting a funnel cake with her. Sternwheeler Festival and the Parkersburg Homecoming - for being a small area - had some pretty good music come in. Dixie Chicks before they got famous, Diamond Rio, Molly Hatchet Band (who knew they were still touring).
Tomorrow (Monday) would be a good time to go back to the fair - if I had time, what with four papers due this week - because Bobby Flay of Food Network fame will be there...what he's going to do I have no idea, hopefully it will involve making a delicious Southwestern style corn dog with a mango salsa ..yum! (my friend Jo came up with a great recipe he should follow)
Got to see some of the baked and canned goods that won prizes, makes me want to enter a contest sometime with my pepperoni rolls. I'm sure there were larger animals, but we did get to see the champion bunnies - some of those things are huge. I don't know what you are going to do with a 20lb rabbit...maybe eat it?
Anyway, good times at the fair and now its back to environmental archaeology articles.
Tomorrow (Monday) would be a good time to go back to the fair - if I had time, what with four papers due this week - because Bobby Flay of Food Network fame will be there...what he's going to do I have no idea, hopefully it will involve making a delicious Southwestern style corn dog with a mango salsa ..yum! (my friend Jo came up with a great recipe he should follow)
Got to see some of the baked and canned goods that won prizes, makes me want to enter a contest sometime with my pepperoni rolls. I'm sure there were larger animals, but we did get to see the champion bunnies - some of those things are huge. I don't know what you are going to do with a 20lb rabbit...maybe eat it?
Anyway, good times at the fair and now its back to environmental archaeology articles.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Coming up for air
Wow, so I just realized that I haven't updated the blog since August. Sorry for the lack of attention, I have been working on keeping my head above water with papers and midterms. On the bright side, my relationship with grad school is a lot less abusive now and according to my mid-term grades, I am not altogether horrible at this - it seems I am actually kind of good. Which has been a nice surprise. Literally, just got out of my second osteology exam. This time it was the bones of the skull plus any of the leg bones from the last section he wanted to throw in. Feel like I did a lot better this time, but I don't like to build myself up and feel cocky just in case things don't turn out so well.
Fall break was last week. Used the time to get a little bit of work done, but mostly just hung out and breathed. It was nice to relax and catch up on sleep...spend some time away from school...after all of the stress and all-nighters from September. Half of my first semester is officially over and for the most part (aside from the usual readings and papers) my attention is turning toward the big semester papers that will come due for two classes in about a month and a half. The nice thing about it is that my profs. have split it up a bit and have deadlines throughout the term to make sure we are progressing correctly. It's a little bit of hand holding that I wasn't expecting and kind of appreciate since I am a notorious procrastinator and will focus too much on all the short-term work (of which there is plenty) and lose site of the long term stuff.
On the thesis front, things are coming along. Hopefully I will be doing something with the Town Creek collection. I have been looking for other settlement sites of the same culture, South Appalachian Mississippian, but so far have not found much in the literature. Apparently the Tennessee Valley Authority talks about them in one of their Environmental Impact Survey, but I haven't found where they were doing their survey work. But there are plenty of mounds in the western part of North Carolina, at least one of them is bound to be from the culture I am studying. Sometime this summer I will need to head out that way and check some of them out if I can, at the least it's a good reason to go get some good barbecue. This part of the state has too much of the Eastern Carolina influence which is way too thin and mustard/vinegary for my taste. And I am still looking for a good Chinese food establishment - found one that is ok (mostly it's just really convenient and cheap), which makes up for the sub-par orange chicken.
It's definitely Fall now. The fact that I lived in Florida for the past two years is now really apparent, because I am ready to break out the heavy coat and everyone else is still walking around in t-shirts. I'm going to have to buy a space heater soon.
Got two books in the past few weeks, one I've read before - the excellent Clea Koff's The Bone Woman...if you want to read about what its like to work as a forensic anthropologist in the '90s Rwanda and Bosnia, this is the book you should be reading. I already knew what I wanted to be before reading this book and after, it has only validated my choice.
The other book is the Forever War by Dexter Filkins. He's an embed journalist who was in Iraq and Afghanistan..though it seems to be more of an Afghanistan emphasis. It reads like stream of conscience and he jumps from one story to the next, current war to one ten years ago, from one country to another...which is slightly disjointed, but the more you read it the easier it is to understand. The thing I like about it so far is that Filkins spent a good bit of time in Afghanistan back in the '90s...and so can contexctualize the current stories he has of the people there with history on the Taliban's rise, what Kandahar was like when the warlords were fighting for power, and the influence of foreign money and fighters in the support and shoring up of Taliban power.
Afghanistan is a place many people in the US don't know much about outside of our current involvment. It's been through a hell of a time for the past couple of decades and lost a lot - the oppressive laws women were subjected to and the loss of important archaeological and cultural history when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Buddha are just a few examples. I'm glad there has been a shift in increased awareness and focus on our military and civil efforts there - the Pentagon has even started employing cultural anthropologists to help provide some insight in what can be done to help the population. You hear so much about America's war fatigue and it has been going on for a long time, but we can make a difference and have been making a difference - we just need to stick it out. But that's the end of my soapbox, I'm going to go start on the copious amounts of homework that I have and look forward to my break tomorrow when I get to have a funnel cake at the fair. Whoohoo fair : )
Fall break was last week. Used the time to get a little bit of work done, but mostly just hung out and breathed. It was nice to relax and catch up on sleep...spend some time away from school...after all of the stress and all-nighters from September. Half of my first semester is officially over and for the most part (aside from the usual readings and papers) my attention is turning toward the big semester papers that will come due for two classes in about a month and a half. The nice thing about it is that my profs. have split it up a bit and have deadlines throughout the term to make sure we are progressing correctly. It's a little bit of hand holding that I wasn't expecting and kind of appreciate since I am a notorious procrastinator and will focus too much on all the short-term work (of which there is plenty) and lose site of the long term stuff.
On the thesis front, things are coming along. Hopefully I will be doing something with the Town Creek collection. I have been looking for other settlement sites of the same culture, South Appalachian Mississippian, but so far have not found much in the literature. Apparently the Tennessee Valley Authority talks about them in one of their Environmental Impact Survey, but I haven't found where they were doing their survey work. But there are plenty of mounds in the western part of North Carolina, at least one of them is bound to be from the culture I am studying. Sometime this summer I will need to head out that way and check some of them out if I can, at the least it's a good reason to go get some good barbecue. This part of the state has too much of the Eastern Carolina influence which is way too thin and mustard/vinegary for my taste. And I am still looking for a good Chinese food establishment - found one that is ok (mostly it's just really convenient and cheap), which makes up for the sub-par orange chicken.
It's definitely Fall now. The fact that I lived in Florida for the past two years is now really apparent, because I am ready to break out the heavy coat and everyone else is still walking around in t-shirts. I'm going to have to buy a space heater soon.
Got two books in the past few weeks, one I've read before - the excellent Clea Koff's The Bone Woman...if you want to read about what its like to work as a forensic anthropologist in the '90s Rwanda and Bosnia, this is the book you should be reading. I already knew what I wanted to be before reading this book and after, it has only validated my choice.
The other book is the Forever War by Dexter Filkins. He's an embed journalist who was in Iraq and Afghanistan..though it seems to be more of an Afghanistan emphasis. It reads like stream of conscience and he jumps from one story to the next, current war to one ten years ago, from one country to another...which is slightly disjointed, but the more you read it the easier it is to understand. The thing I like about it so far is that Filkins spent a good bit of time in Afghanistan back in the '90s...and so can contexctualize the current stories he has of the people there with history on the Taliban's rise, what Kandahar was like when the warlords were fighting for power, and the influence of foreign money and fighters in the support and shoring up of Taliban power.
Afghanistan is a place many people in the US don't know much about outside of our current involvment. It's been through a hell of a time for the past couple of decades and lost a lot - the oppressive laws women were subjected to and the loss of important archaeological and cultural history when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Buddha are just a few examples. I'm glad there has been a shift in increased awareness and focus on our military and civil efforts there - the Pentagon has even started employing cultural anthropologists to help provide some insight in what can be done to help the population. You hear so much about America's war fatigue and it has been going on for a long time, but we can make a difference and have been making a difference - we just need to stick it out. But that's the end of my soapbox, I'm going to go start on the copious amounts of homework that I have and look forward to my break tomorrow when I get to have a funnel cake at the fair. Whoohoo fair : )
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Obturator, obturator. Foramen, can you hear me?
So, update on grad school - it pretty much rocks. It's hard - ooh boy, it's really hard and there are a lot of papers and reading, but I got to play with bones the other day in my osteology class and that really makes it all worth it. Now I am WAY out of practice, I haven't looked at a real bone - let alone mapped out the geographic points on it - in two years so there is quite a bit of review going on for me right now. But this is all still very awesome.
We have been learning the lower long bones - femur, tibia, fibula - as well as the pelvis and patella. We have also been going over techniques of siding - figuring out the left and right - as well as sexing them - and that's not what you think.
The other bone kid in my grad program showed me a pretty cool - and maybe slightly insensitive - way of siding the pelvic bones (called innominates or os coxa).
Think back to pictures you have seen of the pelvis, there is a notch about halfway down on each side. This is called the Greater Sciatic Notch...place your thumb there like you are picking the bone up (with your palm covering the socket where your femur connects). Now hold it like a phone. The crest of the bone should sweep upwards by your ear and the pubic ramis should angle down toward your mouth. It's not as gross as it sounds. Now, whichever side of your face the "phone" fits more naturally is the side of the body the bone belongs to.
The accompanying diagram of an innominate will give the less anatomy inclined an idea where the geographic points I have mentioned are located. Notice that if you picture the technique, the pictured bone is from the right side of the body.
The weather is starting to cool - it's that interesting mini-season that North Carolina has where the hot summer weather has finally broken, but its not quite chilly enough to be called fall. It feels a lot like springs in Wilmington.
And it's about that time of year, where senior undergrads and those just wanting to go to grad school are starting the application process and taking the unhappy GREs. Good Luck!...and what are you still doing on the internet? Go study! : )
Monday, August 25, 2008
Into my second week of school now and wow - so much reading...and just a lot work. I am at times incredibly excited and amazingly overwhelmed. And I can't quite shake the feeling that I am in way over my head on this one. Kind of a weird feeling since I am really good at the school thing - it's my bag - and yet, here I am worrying about if I am good enough to make it through this pretty intense program. It's a lot of classes in a pretty short amount of time and I am not really sure what my thesis topic will be and it seems like we already need to have a really good idea of what we want to study.
*Sigh* Anyone else feel this way? It will probably pass, I will turn in my first paper and it will be awesome and I will feel like I'm on the level with everyone else. But after being out of school for two years...I feel out of practice.
On the upside, had some good extended family time - we were celebrating the grandparents' belated 60th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing, although I can't quite imagine spending that much time with one person. Not that I am a fan of jumping around - I have always been more of a penguin. And obviously marriage is a serious commitment, but after 60 years - you have been married for way longer than you were ever single. Pretty inspiring, since divorce is so prevalent and it happened to my family - made me pretty cynical about the whole love thing. But there is still hope, if both sets of my grandparents can stay married for 60 years - well, we will see about me.
Anyway, back to reading - got to get a little homework done before heading out to see Tropic Thunder tonight - looks like a pretty funny movie and hopefully it will live up to the hype.
*Sigh* Anyone else feel this way? It will probably pass, I will turn in my first paper and it will be awesome and I will feel like I'm on the level with everyone else. But after being out of school for two years...I feel out of practice.
On the upside, had some good extended family time - we were celebrating the grandparents' belated 60th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing, although I can't quite imagine spending that much time with one person. Not that I am a fan of jumping around - I have always been more of a penguin. And obviously marriage is a serious commitment, but after 60 years - you have been married for way longer than you were ever single. Pretty inspiring, since divorce is so prevalent and it happened to my family - made me pretty cynical about the whole love thing. But there is still hope, if both sets of my grandparents can stay married for 60 years - well, we will see about me.
Anyway, back to reading - got to get a little homework done before heading out to see Tropic Thunder tonight - looks like a pretty funny movie and hopefully it will live up to the hype.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Getting ready to start classes soon, whoohoo! Definitely a good thing since it feels like all I have done is sit around and continue to spend money with a little bit of unpacking sprinkled in here and there. Some of you will be proud to know I am finally throwing away boxes that I have kept for the past two years - they were broken down and put into the recycling the other day. There are a lot less to finish, but seems like I will never get everything unpacked. Oh well.
The town has been good so far, with the cool Carolina nights starting to set in. Hopefully, the days will get cooler, too - I've had enough of hot and humid from being in Florida where you could walk out the apt door at 7:30 in the morning and start sweating.
Driving on the interstate the other day, I saw a small herd of deer on the side of the highway, strung out along the hill. Nice to see deer again, didn't see any in Florida (which are about the size of a big dog from what I was told). These were your average NC deer - about 4 or 5 ft at the shoulder.
Spent time with the folks this weekend and got some puppy time in. I have never seen a German Shepherd as obsessed with a tennis ball as the parents' puppy is, always thought it was more of a lab thing.
Attaching another movie with this post. When I was in England my friend, who graciously shared her flat and showed me around, recorded a message for our friend who wasn't able to make it over. Enjoy! both of you - hope you like the music choice :) *Took down movie as it fulfilled its purpose : )*
I will be adding another movie of England highlights - hopefully minimizing the shakiness and increasing the interesting-ness. :)
The town has been good so far, with the cool Carolina nights starting to set in. Hopefully, the days will get cooler, too - I've had enough of hot and humid from being in Florida where you could walk out the apt door at 7:30 in the morning and start sweating.
Driving on the interstate the other day, I saw a small herd of deer on the side of the highway, strung out along the hill. Nice to see deer again, didn't see any in Florida (which are about the size of a big dog from what I was told). These were your average NC deer - about 4 or 5 ft at the shoulder.
Spent time with the folks this weekend and got some puppy time in. I have never seen a German Shepherd as obsessed with a tennis ball as the parents' puppy is, always thought it was more of a lab thing.
Attaching another movie with this post. When I was in England my friend, who graciously shared her flat and showed me around, recorded a message for our friend who wasn't able to make it over. Enjoy! both of you - hope you like the music choice :) *Took down movie as it fulfilled its purpose : )*
I will be adding another movie of England highlights - hopefully minimizing the shakiness and increasing the interesting-ness. :)
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Finally! Moved to North Carolina and getting the new apt set up for the start of grad school. Can't wait to meet the grad kids I will be studying with for the next few years.
I am missing Florida though. It feels weird not going to work everyday and I feel really slack just sitting around unpacking and spending money. It's like I am still on vacation and tomorrow I will wake up remembering that in a few days I will need to pack my suitcase and drive back to Gainesville.
Spent some time at the mom's house with the puppies and took some video. I am posting that as well, you all get to see my very first movie! Very exciting, but also keep in mind it is my first - so it is rough, plus it's not that exciting - but I figured some of you will enjoy the puppy time : )
Hope to have more interesting news for you all soon.
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