weather suckage
I have hardly worked the past three days of this session. Saturday was a complete writeoff due to rain, Sunday we went out in the field long enough to dig about two holes each before it got too bad to go on, and today we drove out to the site, took one look at it, and went to Bob Evans for lunch and paperwork (mmmm! raspberry crepes!).
Having grown up in the Pacific NW and lived in the UK for five years, I don't mind a bit of rain, but there are practical reasons why one cannot conduct archaeological survey in this weather. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that we can't screen mud, and even if we were to try, the artefacts would be almost impossible to see. We might have been able to do pedestrian survey in the plowed fields, since the rain can make surface artefacts easier to spot, but after three days straight of rain, the low-lying areas are under almost a foot of water.
The rain is supposed to stop tonight. Unfortunately, the change in weather is due to a severe drop in temperature. From a high of 60F today, tomorrow is going to be 33F, and probably only about 17F in the morning. So all that water that's been soaking into the ground for the last three days is going to freeze tonight. That will make digging fun. And the roads should be fantastic as well. I'm going to cover myself in chemical handwarmers tomorrow morning. I wonder if I can wear sweat pants between my longjohns and my cargos?
So what have I been doing with all my free time? Well, I finally caved and got myself the genealogy software upgrade that I had been putting off buying for so long, hoping that version 9.0 would come out. It looks pretty good. At least version 8.0 works with OS X, which the previous version did not. All the genealogical information that I have is still stuck on my decrepit old laptop, and I am still trying to find a way to transfer it. I think I'm going to have to take it into an Apple store.
I did spend about a day recreating the tree I had made for chiv, which was entirely lost when my harddrive crashed last spring. It's looking as shiny now as it ever did, and there's even a little more info now than there was before. It's fun to look up all the old names and try to piece together who they were. There are lots of good names.
And now I think maybe I am going to go do some writing. I keep promising myself I'm going to make some progress on my Weasley Twins story, but it just hasn't been happening.
Edit: It just occurred to me that, ages ago, I uploaded a family tree only MyFamily.com. Well, it's still there. Looks like it was done in December 2001, so it's about five years behind my current research, but it's better than nothing. It seems to include all the direct ancestors I had noted up to that point, but none of their siblings or additional children. Oh, there is much research to be done....
Having grown up in the Pacific NW and lived in the UK for five years, I don't mind a bit of rain, but there are practical reasons why one cannot conduct archaeological survey in this weather. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that we can't screen mud, and even if we were to try, the artefacts would be almost impossible to see. We might have been able to do pedestrian survey in the plowed fields, since the rain can make surface artefacts easier to spot, but after three days straight of rain, the low-lying areas are under almost a foot of water.
The rain is supposed to stop tonight. Unfortunately, the change in weather is due to a severe drop in temperature. From a high of 60F today, tomorrow is going to be 33F, and probably only about 17F in the morning. So all that water that's been soaking into the ground for the last three days is going to freeze tonight. That will make digging fun. And the roads should be fantastic as well. I'm going to cover myself in chemical handwarmers tomorrow morning. I wonder if I can wear sweat pants between my longjohns and my cargos?
So what have I been doing with all my free time? Well, I finally caved and got myself the genealogy software upgrade that I had been putting off buying for so long, hoping that version 9.0 would come out. It looks pretty good. At least version 8.0 works with OS X, which the previous version did not. All the genealogical information that I have is still stuck on my decrepit old laptop, and I am still trying to find a way to transfer it. I think I'm going to have to take it into an Apple store.
I did spend about a day recreating the tree I had made for chiv, which was entirely lost when my harddrive crashed last spring. It's looking as shiny now as it ever did, and there's even a little more info now than there was before. It's fun to look up all the old names and try to piece together who they were. There are lots of good names.
And now I think maybe I am going to go do some writing. I keep promising myself I'm going to make some progress on my Weasley Twins story, but it just hasn't been happening.
Edit: It just occurred to me that, ages ago, I uploaded a family tree only MyFamily.com. Well, it's still there. Looks like it was done in December 2001, so it's about five years behind my current research, but it's better than nothing. It seems to include all the direct ancestors I had noted up to that point, but none of their siblings or additional children. Oh, there is much research to be done....