Momma Cat

Thanks to Erin and Brian, I have a new cat. That is, if she sticks around. I sense that she is quite volatile right now so I need to make sure she knows I am an easy food source and an excellent head petter.

Erin and Brian brought her last night. They have been calling her Momma Cat (she's got some buns in the oven) and I kind of like it. At first she was really freaked out by the new surroundings, but then she seemed to relax a little and let me touch her a lot. We went to the gas stating in Kechi to pick up some kitty litter so she could spend the night in our enclosed entrance. Momma Cat is not house trained and I wondered if she would understand the whole kittly litter thing. She did ... sort of. When I checked on her this morning there was a little mess on the doormat and the kitty litter box was tipped over, but it looked like she had used the litter that fell out of the box appropriately. Hey, you take what cooperation you can get.

I didn't want to leave Momma Cat in the entry all day so I let her out this morning and put some food on the porch. I really hope she hangs around.

Alright, so Schmeckfest this weekend. Good times. I missed last year so I'm due for a dose. Shorthill, I know you like the Schmeckfest, you want me to bring a care package for you to Easter? What do you want?

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Now I'm older. When I was at the gym on my birthday, the elliptical machine asked me how long I wanted to exercise, my weight, and my age. I found gratifying to punch in 26 instead of 25. Then I began to wonder if the machine would change my stats based on the new age (i.e. target heart rate, calorie burning rate, etc.). How funny that one day might cause such a change.

It's kind of dreary and moist here today. Acutally, most of the week has been like this. It sort of makes me want to sit in an English pub drinking beer and eating a tuna salad jacket potato. Too bad I'm not in Enland.

Wine

Yipee, spring break is here!!! Remember my spring break last year? Blanco Canyon, TX. Ah yes, it's all coming back - camping in below freezing weather during snow and wind storms. Good times. Actually, now that a year has passed I can look back on it and get a little nostaligic. The canyon beautiful and since we were not doing much archaeology, we went on some wonderful hikes. I even considered going back this year (I checked the weather and it's a lot warmer and dryer), but I decided to stay home to work on reasearching for a paper and some City Archaeologist stuff. If it's nice enough outside I might even go surveying here in Wichita. For those unfamiliar with the term, surveying means to walk around - maybe dig a couple holes - looking for artifacts. There are some areas of Wichita being developed that I should probably check for archaeological sites.

Now to the title. One of the main reasons I decided to stay home this spring break is because I am trying to conserve $ for Belize this summer. I'm doing pretty good, except last Friday I stepped into Jacob's Liquor on my way to Barnes and Noble. About a month ago I had a really good Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia-Crest Reserve 2002) at a restaurant. I kept the cork and decided to see how much it would cost in a liquor store. My trip to Jacob's was just supposed to be an exploratory campaign, but the salesman started talking to me and once we found the wine we were both so excited our efforts paid off that I decided to buy it. It cost $35 (but it's really good, tee hee). At that moment I past the $10 point I didn't care anymore. On my way to the cash register I picked up two more bottles that looked worth a try. $60 later I was on my way to Barnes and Noble to study. Sigh... So much for trying to save money. On the bright side of things I am enjoying a glass of an Argentinian wine I bought that day and I must say it's delightful. I guess everyone has to splurge once in a while.

p.s. I'm having a birthday party next Tuesday (3/20) so if you are around give me a call and I give out the details. I'm getting old and I love it!

Dead Sea Scrolls

I went to see an exhibit about the Dead Sea Scrolls in Kansas City, yesterday. It was a quick trip with a lot of time spent driving, but I am glad I went. The exhibit had a few pieces, what I would imagine were some of the best preserved scrolls. They had them in special environmentally controlled cases with lights that came on every 15 seconds or so and stayed on for about 5 seconds. Actually seing the scroll segments was neat, but they were in a different language and it is just writing (in languages I cannot understand) on parchment. For me, the most interesting parts of the exhibit were the historical and cultural explanations of the time during which the scrolls were written and the research that has been done since they were rediscovered in the 1940s. The information on the gradual cannonization process of Jewish and Christian scriptures was also very enlightening.

Now for some exciting news concerning Jeremy: He defended his dissertation at SDSU last Thursday. He has some minor reformatting issues to take care of (i.e. making sure the table of contents meets all specifications), but other than that he is finished. Yippy! Not having it hanging over his head is a great relief for him. I was all ready to go out and celebrate when he got back on Friday ... but when I got home from school he was passed out on the couch catching up on sleep instead. Understandable.

I'm Boring

Usually, I like to blog about interesting or funny stuff that has happened to me, but lately I have a lack of exciting stories.


Some little things have happened:
-The weather is getting more spring-like down here in KS and I am realizing as I "age" that warmer weather and more sun brightens my day. It probably has to do with not being stuck inside buildings all day.
-I found out I recieved a $300 grant for my summer thesis research from the graduate school. I had to submit a proposal and application and apparently only 3 or 4 people received the grant. Other people think my research project is a worthwhile endeavor, so that's reassuring. $300 is not much, but it will pay for a radio-carbon date.
-Sue and Linda Graber came to visit this last weekend. I did not get as much school work done as I had planned, but it was wonderful to see them (and Nick, Dan, and Lacey). I am not sure I was much of a hostess, but it was great to have them stay with me. Anyone who wants to come visit is more than welcome to stay with me.

Okay, enough dicking around. I really don't have enough time for this blog thing!

Tired of the News

I'm really getting tired of watching CNN at the fitness center. Why can't they have the TV on the channel that shows Jeopardy! or the Simpsons or something? CNN and all those other news programs and stations (can't just judge CNN) run the "news" into the ground. I am so done listening about what is going on in Iraq or Iran, the Mexican-US border, and where Anna Nicole is going to be buried. Maybe being too knowledgeable about what is going on in the world is not good for me. I start to overanalyze it all and develop strong opinions based on information that has been filtered through the media. Are my developed opinions really worth keeping or do they just cause me unwanted internal and external conflict? See what this does to me? Yuck. Spring weather should get here as soon as possible so I can start running and biking outside again where there is no CNN.

Sick Again!

Exactly one month ago, I was ill for a week. I got over it and I thought I had paid my cold season dues. Jeremy got very sick starting Saturday night. I tried really hard to be healthy by eating well, getting enough sleep and washing my hands, but it didn't work. I woke up feeling quite under the weather this morning. I was going to rush to town to get some Airborne. Then, while watching a segment on the Today show this morning I learned that this one reporter found Airborne has no conclusive studies behind it and it has way too much "harmful" Vitamin A. Ahhhh ... what to do? All these opinions, studies and lack-of-studies out there with such different objectives and sometimes contradictory information! Well, I think I will stay home for now and eat oranges, consume liquids and rest. When I have to go in later today for some school business maybe I will drive by the pharmacy and make my cold remedy decision then.

How do you spell Puxatawny?

Alright, so it's February. It actually feels like winter here in KS this year. There is snow on the ground (snow snow and not ice snow) and it's cold. I find I use my snow boots a lot more here than I ever did in SoDak. Up north, when it snows or the weatherman even hints at snow, every business and the transportation department of every city and county takes precautionary de-icing methods. Then once it snows, the trucks and plows come out - even if it's 3 am - and do their thing. By the time I need to walk outside to do something the roads, sidewalks and parking lots are cleared. That is not the case in Kansas. Eventually it gets cleared away, but the snow can remain in parking lots and on sidewalks for a few days. They probably just don't have the manpower (as a conscientious anthropologist I should say humanpower) or the budget to get it done right away, but in the end I think more accidents are caused by poorly maintained roads and parking lots.

Another thing I noticed about when it snows in Kansas is that people get excited. This is not a bad thing, but it can cause traffic problems. They want to leave their homes and drive around in their usually unnecessary SUVs and trucks or their snow fearing Ford Festivas. I think I see way more traffic on the highway that runs by our house when it snows than any other time I drive it. The Kansans' "snow excitment" rubbed off on us so one of the days it snowed Javers and I put the new flashy red truck into 4 wheel drive and took it into town to run some errands. Jeremy ended up stopping to push/pull two different cars out of the snow.

I like the snow, though. It makes everything brighter. Some psychology organization should do a study on seasonal depression and see if people affected by it get happier when there is snow on the ground.

What else is going on? Not much. Same ol' same ol'. Last year at this time I had just moved to another state AND moved in with Jeremy AND started a graduate program so I was freaking out. This year I am far less exciting. I'm okay with that.

Oh Malibu

I got my student loan money a week ago and I went on a spending spree. My VISA bill from over Christmas, tuition and books were some of the most costly expenses. I also decided to pay off the rest of my car in one fell swoop since I only had a few months of payments left. Yesterday, I received in the mail the loan papers the bank had and a copy of the title they were holding. Wow, it felt so final and so exciting. Now all I want to do is get a new car. However, while I am still living off student loans and my lover I should probably just keep the Malibu, which, in all honesty, has been surprisingly reliable.

Holy shit, I'm going to miss the Golden Globes tonight! Whatever will I do!?

I have been on bit of a blog hiatus - the excitement of posting temporarily gone with my health. I'm not sure if it was a cold or some other kind of infection, but I have been doing a lot of sitting around and eating hot soup, oatmeal, clementines and cough drops. Today, I think I feel better, which is a good thing because classes start tomorrow.

I was working on my thesis proposal last week until I got sick on Thursday so I will have to finish that in the next couple weeks in order to apply for some grant money. The preliminary reading I am doing to write the proposal has been very interesting and enlightening. It is really getting me excited about going to Belize this summer.

In other news, Javers finally replaced the Taurus. He got a flashy red, but not unecessarily large and obnoxious, Ford F-150. It will actually be nice to have something that can haul bigger items so we don't have to borrow Chris' truck every time we need to go to the hardware store or get some furniture. Last week we actually ran into another friend, Brent, at Home Depot who offered to haul our dog house wood in exchange for some free beer and pizza. The poor Taurus had a slough of problems and it was really time to stop putting money into it. Jeremy told me he was going to trade it in at the dealership, but when he went to clean it out he got all sentimental and couldn't part with it. I think it will end up with someone from his family back in SoDak. Hmmm ... that kind of gift reminds of the problematic Taurus my parents gave me for my college graduation. We all know how quickly that relationship ended (with the Taurus, not my parents).

Tonight, Javers, Chris, Chris' friend and myself are going to our first WSU men's basketball game. Because they were so good last year going to a game is pretty popular now. When I picked up the tickets last week the guy at the counter said we should get there two hours before the game starts or it might be hard to find four seats together that are not way up by the ceiling.

The Last Day My Post Will Be Dated 2006

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Or, here's the best greeting spelled out in lights I saw this year: Happy Holidays Jesus!! Nope, not Happy Birthday Jesus or just Happy Holidays, but Happy Holidays Jesus. It's the sacred/profane combo meal. Great.

Time to go shopping to get stuff for Belize. It just snowed here in SoDak. last night so thinking about the rainforest might warm me up a bit.

Good Day

I think today is going to be a good day. I just found out Lauren, a friend from my Geo-Marine job in FL last summer, just got rehired by them for a Kansas-Oklahoma pipeline project and will probably be in or near Wichita at some point. How exciting. I hope I'm not in Belize when she comes through.

I am also going to be entertaining people for the first time in the new home. Emily, Jeanette and Erin are coming for lunch on Friday. I think I might make butternut squash soup again and a chicken rice soup. Last time I made butternut squash bisque was a week ago. I only had an hour to do it because I wanted to go to an archaeology society meeting. I thought, "this should be enough time." Well it got down to ten minutes before I needed to leave for the meeting and the soup was just done cooking. I hurriedly poured the boiling hot soup into the blender and pushed "puree." The hot soup made the rubbery blender lid very pliable and it was not sealing well. That combined with the pressure from all the steam pushed the lid off while I was pureeing. The soup did not fly ALL over the room, but some of it got on the counter and my sleeve. Normally, I would have stopped and waited for the soup to cool, but I wanted to eat it before I had to leave so I just kept trying to puree it. Well, the lid flew off a couple more times just adding to the mess. I finally got all the soup pureed and the mess cleaned up, but I didn't have time to eat it or change my shirt. While I was at the meeting, I put my hand on my head and found I had butternut bisque in my hair. Mmm ... snack for later. Now I have learned my lesson and I want to try this again so I can get it right.

The other exciting thing about today is that I am meeting Jeremy for lunch at this hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in Colwich. Jeremy raves about this place all the time. Okay, Colwich is really small and it is hard to believe they have a Chinese restaurant, especially a good one. We tried to go together two other times, but it was closed both times. Hopefully it will be open today. General Tso, get yo chicken ready, here I come.

I Made the News ... but you have to look pretty hard

I have one exam left and then I am done for the semester. I still have some things to take care of for my job, but the stress of school will be in remission for a month after my test tonight. Yippy skippy. Perhaps I will take tomorrow off and just sit around all day watching tv.

As part of my job, I am a member of the Wichita Historic Preservation Board. We meet once a month and most of the time we just approve or deny things like electric signs in historic districts, renovations for historic buildings, and nominations to the National Register of Historic "Things" (i.e. buildings, monuments, places, districts etc.). Well, lately the meetings have gotten a lot more heated on account of the new arena and the county's proposed demolition of buildings in the arena's footprint. There were news reporters at the last meeting and I found myslef on tv. You can see it at www.kwch.com. The clip is called "Historic Buildings" and it aired Dec. 11. I am wearing a blue/green/yellow/pink striped sweater. I tried linking directly to the clip, but it kept linking to the film clip trouble shooting page instead. Apparently I'm not knowledgeable enough to link the clip and I don't have time to figure it out right now considering I really need to study for my exam tonight.

Amateur Meterologist?

Apparently Jennifer Scriven (another anthro. student) is an amateur meterologist. That is what she told me. Is there some sort of association or organization for these people? Anyway, she just came running into my office to tell me that there is going to be an ice storm tomorrow afternoon and Thursday. She went into details about layers of the atmosphere and suggested I stock up on groceries because it could be a whole day before I get to a store. I hope I can go 24 hours without a trip to the grocery store. What if I run out of sqaush!!!!

But seriously, Jennifer if you ever read this, I'm glad you have passion for the weather. You never know, your warning might have just saved my life or at least made planning my week easier. Thanks.

Thanksgiving

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was eventful, but relaxing. We took Emma, our new dog, home because Jeremy wanted to take her hunting and show her off to his family. I'm not even going to lie, I was annoyed that we had to take the smelly puppy in the car with us and I might have said some mean things to her and Javers about it. I usually think it's silly when people take their pets on road trips. But it ended up working out fine. The ride made her sleepy so she just laid around almost the whole time. I fed her too many treats toward the end of the ride on the way up and five minutes before we got to Reed and Sue's she barfed. Then she ate the barf. Yum. Actually, it was kind of nice because we didn't really need to clean it up.

It was good to see some of those folks I don't run into very often. This is going to sound cliche, but Polly's son, Sam, is getting so big. He was running around pounding on things and throwing puzzle pieces on the ground. I thought it was cute, but I got to leave after a couple hours. I'm sure I would be slightly less amused if I lived with him 24/7. I have a recent picture of him on my fridge. If you visit me you can check it out.

While I was eating and chatting with relatives and friends over the week and weekend I realized I should put some pictures of the house on the ol' blog. When the semester and stress wanes I'm going to do that.

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Last week, I was at the Plains Anthropology Conference in Topeka. Most of the sessions I went to were really interesting and I got to hook up with some archaeologists from SoDak. so that was exciting. I also presented a paper at the conference about an archaeological site in the Texas Panhandle with an extraordinary amount of skeletal material all in one 6m x 6m room including a mysterious pile of ten skulls near the hearth. Sounds like something from an Indiana Jones movie, eh? While the biological anthro. students analyzed the skeletal material, Ingrid and I presented on the archaeological background of the site. One of the guys we cited extensively, Christopher Lintz, was in the audience. Afterword, I was introduced to him and he told me of some other sources we could investigate that might aid our research. It was really neat to meet Lintz.

Last night I went to an Alice in Chains concert here in Wichita. Good times and no one in my party lost clothing, got mauled, beat up or arrested and that's always nice.

You probably heard - Thanksgiving is coming up next week. I am so ready for a break. (Ha, I'm always ready for a break.) I am so ready for turkey and pumpkin pie too. Speaking of pumpkin pie, make sure y'all head to your local DQ for a delicious pumpkin pie Blizzard.

p.s. Thanks John and Sara for the pear salt shaker and pepper grinder. It is my first pepper grinder and it makes me feel like I have really stepped up in the world of cooking now that I have one. I'm currently trying to convince Jeremy we need to take a short vacation to Tampa this winter.

Protein Packed

Jeremy woke up before me yesterday morning and offered to make me breakfast. It was such a nice gesture, but I had to laugh becuase I was trying to sleep and he kept waking me up to ask questions like "do you want coffee?" and "do you want eggs?" and "how do you want your eggs done?" Then he woke me up one final time to tell me my plate was on the kitchen counter wrapped in aluminum foil. When I finally got up and pulled off the aluminum foil I saw that he had made me two eggs over-easy and a huge pork chop. It was like supper for breakfast. Ha, I think I got my supply of protein for the day in that meal. It was really good, though. The man knows how to work a coffee pot and use an iron skillet.

My Life as a List

I have lapsed in my postings. Ah, such is the life of someone who is too busy to have a life. I don't even take time to feed the cat that came with the new property, but he/she is not friendly at all. I figure I'll start feeding it when I can get something out of the relationship too. Now, I know that is not how one works with animals, but I frankly, I don't give a damn.

So, what's new? (I'm resorting to list format to save time)

-The temperature has remained relatively normal in my office so that's pretty exciting.
-Jeremy's brother and two of his friends spent two weeks with us shingling the roof and putting in tile flooring in the kitchen and a bathroom. It looks good. Y'all should come out and visit us and look at it. Remember, I have a really plush towel you can use when you shower.
-I spoke to a group of 8th graders and their parents about archaeology. It was a tough crowd because I had to be interesting to youngsters and older adults. After my presentation the kids showed me what they were working on in the archaeology unit at school. It was really cool, they made up "cultures" then constructed "sites" in Rubbermaid tubs and had to excavate and interpret what they dug up. What a great idea.
-Jeremy bought a dog. Emma is a red lab approx. 13 weeks old. She is pheasant hunting with him today, but I doubt she is being very helpful. When I was gone last week he said he sometimes accidentally called the dog "Amber." Uh, that's freaky.
-I went to a museum conference in Hays, KS last week for a couple days. It was very informative - I wish I could have gone to these conferences when I actually worked at a museum.
-This coming week I have another conference. This one is the Plains Anthropological Conference in Topeka, KS. I am actually presenting a paper which will be a good experience and look wonderful on my resume but preparing for it is kicking my ass. I can't wait until I get paid to do this kind of stuff. I hope I get paid to do this someday!
-Thanksgiving is coming up and I'm pretty pumped for a break. Hopefully, I can get all my work done ahead of schedule (don't laugh!) so I can actually appreciate a break from work and school.
-Speaking of lists, I really need to go grocery shopping. We don't have much selection of food at home right now. I found a can of Cream of Mushroom condensed soup in a cupboard and made some for supper last night. Yuck, that stuff is better in caseroles than by itself. I decided to have cereal instead. Maybe I'll have popcorn and canned black beans for lunch.

I am Working on Mars

Remember how yesterday it was so cold in my office. Well, I complained and boy did it get fixed. Yesterday afternoon the room temperature started climbing. By 9 pm it was 82 degrees in here and I even had my door open. When I came in this morning it was 87 degrees. Why these extremes!? The maintenance guy came again today and I think he fixed it. The temperature has been slowly dropping. This building is crazy. You can't even open any of the windows. I think it might be bullet proof.

Hot Chicken Curry in a Cold Office

The title of this post pretty much says it. Right now I'm eating my hot chicken curry (mmm...) lunch in my really cold office. It was 58 degrees in this room when I got here this morning. My nose started running so I hung out in the library instead. I came back for lunch and the temp. is up to 65 degress. Supposedly there is a work order out so someone should be coming to fix the problem, whatever it is.

This whole thing reminds me of when I worked at the Pettigrew Home & Museum last winter. The heating budget had already been exhausted the winter/spring before so in order to save money the temperature had to be kept around 65 degreees. That doesn't sound too bad, but when most of my time was spent sitting at a desk, not moving around, I got really cold. I used an electric blanket and wore gloves. Brrrrr....