Digging Day One
2002-07-24 @ 7:36 p.m.

Today was really really really great. Superlative, even. We were just doing shovel tests (which are harder than they look), and were already finding stuff, mostly coal and slag (lots and lots of slag), and fragments of wood, glass and other building materials. Oh, but one group found a brick! It was very exciting. It's a most excellent site.

I even got to dig one of the holes. Holly wasn't very good at it, so John and I took turns with the shovel. I'll bet I looked incredibly funny. The ground is so tough that, to drive blade of the shovel in, I had to literally jump up and down on top of the thing, pogo-stick style. With my shoe laces coming untied.

Oh yeah, my group members: John and Holly. They're both really nice. John is an Anthro major and really into anything that has to do with archaeology. That's great, because anything I don't understand he does. He's also good at soil identification, which is fortunate, as I suck at it. He likes the Simpsons and lives in "the old neighborhood," so we take the Orange Line back south together. He likes to joke around, so we get on well. I don't know much about Holly; shockingly, she's even quieter than I. But she works hard, she's a psych major, she has short hamstrings, and I don't think she's from Chicago. I was very luck group wise, but nearly everyone in the class is cool. I'm just glad that I didn't get stuck with stoner-guy-James.

The only thing that I don't like about the site is that it is right next to the North Entrance of the Field Museum, which means a bunch of people walking by and ogling us. The only thing that separates us from the public is a six-foot chain link fence. It's an archaeolgical petting zoo. Oh, but the most annoying thing that happened to day was the soccer players. These people (teenagers, of course) decided to use the bit of lawn right next to our enclosure to play soccer. Guess what the goal was? That's right, the east fence. Every few minutes - bam! After an hour of this I started contemplating the pick ax that came in the equipment bucket. Trowels, as John pointed out, have a more archaeological charm to them, but Holly and I agreed that the pick ax would be a more efficient soccer ball puncturer.

Thought of the Day (courtesy Mark Twain):

"There are two things that are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the Universe."

before ~ after

Failing Miserably - 2004-10-08
So Not Dead/Catching Up - 2004-09-20
Murphy's Law - 2,629,163,298, Sarah - 2 - 2004-08-23
Listmainia! continues - 2004-08-04
Continuing the list - 2004-08-02