Sum-Sum-Summertime!

Postponed the zoo again and went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. This well maintained arboretum is owned by the U of MN and is free to students. I was feeling a bit stir crazy since I had not left the cities since my trip to Stillwater over spring break, so I opted for the 40 minute drive out into the countryside.

It was a beautiful day and the fresh air was refreshing. There are several gardens available to walk through as well as numerous nature trails. There are also sections which specialize in specific trees, so for example, there are sections of only "Ash" or even areas dedicated to different types of hedges. I didn't walk out to these, but I drove through them on my way out and definitely plan to visit these on my next trip.

Not many of the flowers were in bloom yet, only a few flowering bushes or trees. The gardens would be quite lovely I imagine once everything has come to life for the season. Some of the specialty gardens include a multi-terraced rose garden, a medicinal garden, and a large herb garden.

I walked through the Shade Tree exhibit and the wildflower gardens which were both part of some of the trails. These were well maintained and had a pleasant and varied landscape. There were few bugs, mostly non bothersome types.


The arboretum was not far from a decent sized lake. I passed one on my drive in, but I believe the one in the photo is yet another lake.





Had another adventure previous Sunday. I went to a friend's party that previous Saturday and a friend was telling me that she had given her cat a bath. I laughed and said I could never do that with Mea because I would fear for my life! She absolutely hates water. When she gets in her mood to try to pounce/attack me, I grab a water bottle and spray her for her misconduct. The following day (Sunday) I was feeling inspired by my friend and decided to try it out with Mea anyway.

I suited up with leather gloves and a thick work shirt in the anticipation there would be much scratching and biting. I ran some warm water in the tub, got an old yogurt container to use for pouring water, added a bit of soap, then locked the kitty in the bathroom with me. I quickly picked her up, set her in the tub, and poured water down her back and did it again. She hardly moved. I believe she was in shock that she was all of the sudden soaking and did not feel the need to fight it because the damage was done. I got all the way through the bath, extra soap and all, without any trouble from her.

Her abundance of fur held a lot of water and she dripped for a long time. She wouldn't let me too near to her to help her dry off, so she had to stay locked in the bathroom for a while. I did manage to snap a photo of her all wet, which you can see posted on the blog wall. I think its pretty funny.

It is late now, so I will finish part two of this post tomorrow and inform you of my other activities of the week. Sweet dreams all!

Freedom!

Yay! I am officially finished with my first year of graduate school! The end of the semester was absolute madness between trying to do all the reading and writing for a 20-page paper in less than a week's time, grading my kids' exams/figuring out their final grades, and other end of the year requirements. It the end of it all came on Sunday. It felt very strange to finish with all that on the same day. I was so hyped up from it all I keep having to convince myself that I am truly done and that I didn't forget anything. Its been several days since then and I still feel like I'm missing something.

The first three days of my vacation were spent in front of my computer watching Heroes seasons 1-3 via Netflix, cooking (which I've hardly done this semester), and doing a little reading for pleasure. I even did some painting for fun the other night! The idea of not having to do anything academic for three months is mind boggling and wonderful. Christmas break was nice and needed, but I knew I had stuff to work on during break. For this lovely summer I now have ahead of me, I feel weightless!

I am also excited because I leave for Turkey in a month! Yay! This also means I'll be home in less than a month to see my family! Double Yay! I can't wait!

Can't remember the house situation last time I posted. I think I said I offered on a house and was waiting to hear... Well... The company who owned the house started to be really inflexible/ bossy and started trying to jerk me around with extra costs -- not to mention I didn't get the Truth in Housing report until after I already put an offer in (my mistake), which showed a lot of really required and expensive repairs. I withdrew my offer and abandoned the house. I still really love the house and think it would be awesome once fixed up, but alas. It was somewhat satisfying too because I stuck it to the man in a small way. Now, they are still sitting on the house and have had to lower their price because no one else wants it. It would have been off their hand already if they would have been decent people.

I had all but given up for the summer when another cute one came on the market. I put an offer in, but they decided to go with another offer instead. I must have been outbid since I offered full price on that one. Again, alas. I've decided this is the universe's way of telling me I am not meant to own a house this summer. Hopefully I will find something in the fall so I can get in there and get settled before winter hits. Another downside to waiting is that Minneapolis is one of the few places in the USA where the housing market is supposedly bouncing back. Bad luck.

Let's see...what else... I finally heard about my article that was supposed to be published some time this year. I saw a semi-final version a week or so ago which allowed us to make any revisions. The final, in-print version should be out in a few months. Yay! If I get a PDF copy of it I will send it via email to whoever is interested. Its full of science and statistics, some of which I could barely comprehend at the time, so if you aren't interested in reading it you can at least look at my name on the title page! :)

I've also notified my professor that I had the artifact analysis class (the weaving tool project I have mentioned) with this semester that I wanted to see our project through to publication. Bad because this means I have more work to do, good because it will solidify my authorship position, which means I'll have at least two publications before I get my PhD --- which is pretty rare! I have a few things I'm doing with that tomorrow. We photographed a bunch of the artifacts for that last week and tomorrow I am photographing the modern equivalents for these. Its pretty neat.

I met with the prof for this class last week too and she gave me a lot of praise about what a great job I did on the project and what a great contribution to this field of study it will be. I was super pleased with this and a little shocked because she seemed to think most of what I did was crap earlier in the semester, haha! I definitely needed the support though, it was a good way to end things. I also had to meet with my adviser at the end of the year and he too thought I made great progress overall. Yay!

I've definitely learned a lot this year, about my field and myself. I wont go into inner reflection via the Internet, but I spent a good deal of time pondering what exactly I want out of life, how I will get it, and what kind of person I want to be in the end. It was disappointing to me to realize I lost so much of my positive self this year (it felt like I was eating lemons/limes without salt or tequila), but I've figured out how to make and enjoy lemonade instead of attending lonely pity parties and I feel quite relieved as a result.

In close to this week's ramblings, I hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day! I'm going to the zoo finally so I know I will enjoy mine!

Wrapping It Up Like a Christmas Present

I finally have a free moment to update! The past few weeks have been a toss up between being busy, exhausted, or house hunting. Luckily I seem to have solved one of these problems!

I'm nearing the end of my first year in graduate school --- holy cow that went fast! I have a lot of stuff to do before then end of the year still. I'm almost done with the big project (analyzing the weaving tools). I have one more big paper, and then a short 5 pager. I think I'm going to make it :)

Teaching is going well. Only one more lab this semester and I am done teaching for a few months!

I bought my ticket to Turkey for the summer. I'm leaving June 20th and will spend a few days in Antalya (be sure to click the link and see the Wiki page for photos) before going to my excavation site. The site I'll be at is called Alalakh. I'm getting pretty excited. I'll be there for over two months.

On to the good news. Don't want to get ahead of myself like I did last time, but it looks like I've got a house. I should explain, my offer and such was accepted, I'm just waiting for a good inspection. I thought I was going to have a house a month or so ago, but the inspection went poorly and I withdrew my offer. I've taken photos of the house already, but I'll wait to post them until I'm 100% sure. Keep your fingers crossed! Its a pretty big house in need of a good deal of work, luckily its mostly just aesthetics --- no major structural issues that I'm aware of!

Other than that, I've been trying to have some fun when I can. I planned on going to the zoo today, but it was much colder than the rest of the week has been and it was supposed to rain, so I decided to postpone it. I did manage to get a late breakfast instead which was really yummy! I get random cravings for biscuits and gravy some days. I'm not from the South as far as I'm aware... Tomorrow my friend Linda and I are going to the Minneapolis-St. Paul annual home tour. I figured it would be a good way to see what some of the other houses around here look like so I know what my competition will be when I go to sell mine in 5+ years and also it will be good for getting some ideas about how I want to decorate! I'll try to take pictures of the good ones!

Mmmmk...nothing else too exciting to report other than my strange eating habits: I've almost eaten an entire package of Oreos in two days (only one row left), chips with canned cheese, and some other strange things. That's the thing about eating natural foods/mostly organic, when you get cravings to processed stuff, you end up binging on it and then you feel like crap later, but you just can't stop eating. I think that illustrates some major food altering/added chemicals to make you addicted to the food! Yikes!

Stress.

Classes are busy. Super stressed.

Now addicted to coffee. Non-voluntarily awake-ness late at night. Tired. Need more coffee. Vicious cycle.

Important revelation had. Grad school is like joining the military. Breaks your spirit and re-trains you how to think. Don't like the former of these. Similar to domesticating animals.

Trying to find a house to buy. Stressful. Two fell through already. Still looking. More stress with a touch of constant nervousness.

Teaching is good. Didn't get the fellowship I applied for. Sadness. Will be teaching next fall. Lame.

Leave for Turkey around June 20th. Very nice.

Figured out my tentative committee. This is good. Narrowed down possible dissertation topic. Also good.

Weather is improving. Definitely good.

Finally updated blog. Very good. Will write more later. Satisfactory.

Ello, ello!

I have not been updating because frankly I am exhausted! It is the beginning of the "bad part" of the semester and it is going to be pretty crazy. I will try to share a few things though...

My classes are fine. I am working my ass off in my artifact course. I was up twice this week til 3:30AM and haven't gone to sleep before 12:30 for the others. Its pretty time consuming, but seems to be going well. I got over my own insecurities and trusted my judgment enough to name/label my bone tools that I am responsible for based on my own opinions and reasoning. It may sound like a ridiculous fear, but everyone in archaeology has an opinion and I had to really think about why I was making the decisions I was. I had to consider whether this would make sense to others and if it was logical. My assessment was going against previous work done on this topic and I feared I may receive strong criticisms for it. The work we are doing on these artifacts will be published eventually, so I want it to be thorough and good.

I have a wonderful bunch of students this year. I've received several compliments from a few recently telling me that I'm doing a great job as a TA, that my enthusiasm has not gone unnoticed, and that they appreciate the extra effort I'm putting in making sure they are doing well and that I care. It has really lifted my spirits and confidence. I tried really hard with my kids last semester, but most were so bitter toward the course that they didn't care how hard I tried/cared. I honestly do want to see them do well and I'm glad when they do. These kids are also doing much better in the course which also works well for me because I can start using up my vintage sticker collection. Haha! I tell them to look at the copyright dates on some of the stickers and they laugh because they are definitely from the late 1980s or early 1990s. I knew I didn't use them for a reason! :)

Let's see, what else, what else... We have spring break next week which I cannot wait for! Mom and Greg are coming for a visit so I will finally see some of the cities, haha! I will be sure to update about what we did/saw/went. I also have a lot of work to do, so it wont be all fun and games.

My undergraduate professor, Mark, that I went to Turkey with has a new series on the History Channel. The show is called Battles BC and airs Monday nights 9PM E, 8 PM C. It started this week. It was fun to see Mark on TV again (he previously was on the show Bible Battles). The new one is neat because it is filmed in the style of movies like 300 or Sin City. The budget is obviously significantly less, so the quality isn't as good, but it is still fun.

Mea is well. She has started sleeping on my side of the bed now (her big monthly move of the favorite spot). She is stubborn as stubborn can be though. I got into bed last night and kept nudging her out of the way and ended up with my feet under her. She couldn't have been comfortable, but she didn't move... Are children like this??? If so...ugh.

Anywho... I'll leave all you Michiganders with an interesting link. It is a photo-story from Time magazine called Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline. It was pretty incredible to see these photos. I've always thought Detroit was an absolute shithole, but it really was something back in the day. I didn't even know half of these buildings existed. It is sad to see their current state because many are lovely, but broken and dirty now. Another strange experience I had looking at these was the feeling that I was at an archaeological site. Quite similar actually because the only things present are the structures and trash, no people or signs of life. Very eerie and apocalyptic.

Alright, on that cheery note, off to do work (hopefully).