Day 5.

Ah Friday. I have successfully survived my first week at the new job. Started with more labeling. Got a portion that needed to be washed again. Luckily it was KLW's so I didn't have to approach a stranger and mention that perhaps their washing needed some work. Really hoping that mine don't get returned next week. I think I did a sufficient job in the washing department. Some of that stuff is just really dirty. And after a while it's hard to tell what really is clean. The fingers start to swell and you don't have the same precise feelings as when your flesh isn't waterlogged.

Last night I discovered podcasts on iTunes. I did not know. Free: I like it. Started the day trying to listen to Kevin Smith's Smodcast. I only say trying because it's really difficult to write that small while listening to Smith ramble on the way he does. Laughing does not help with the writing. So, put on the World of Warcraft podcast(yes, super-dork) for a while, then jumped to a couple casts I found about the Watchmen. Most of the reviews were really negative. What I couldn't understand was that alot of these guys were admitting to not reading the source material. How do you not read the source material when it's there? Especially when it's a graphic novel? I digress, though. I'm getting away from my intentions here.

So, I did this until lunch. After lunch put on Tool's Aenima, which I hadn't listened to in a very long time. It was still as good as ever. A bit more labeling, then we got called to finish what we were doing to listen to a presentation on actual field work.

This really just made me want to get into the field even more. I'm ready, I want to dig, I want to get dirty, I want to get stuck in a hole and catalogue each and every nuance of it. The note portion really makes me nervous, because we're supposed to record where in our hole we found things, how they were positioned, were they on top of eachother? scattered? then we're told that we should anticipate questions our supervisors will ask. I want to do this, but I'm afraid I'll say too much or not enough or not the right thing. I guess we'll see.

During the presentation they also covered do's and don'ts. We're supposed to keep a handle on what we say to others about our site ("Loose lips sink ships"). It got me thinking that maybe I should reconsider this journal, but I decided the annonimity of it would suffice. It's not like I'm going to tell you where I live. I'm trying to be as nonspecific as possible. There's other such tips, but they're mostly common sense, and come to think of it, this should have been common sense, but I didn't think of it before.

Today we also found out there's a site away from here about an hour or so that we're going to have to participate in. It's a 4 day affair of 10 hour days. We'll get paid an extra hundred bucks via per diem and we'll get paid for mileage, they're supplying a hotel for us to stay in, and we'll get a 3 day weekend after the fact, but I don't think I'll be able to be away from V for that long. I'll just get up extra early. If she can do that and drive 2 hours to take pictures of brats at some school for yearbook, then I can do it to do Phase I survey.

(Learned this on Day 5 as well: for projects there are 3 phases of survey. Phase I is pretty much walking over the ground and visually locating artifacts on the surface. Phase II is large machinery excavation pulling samples. And Phase III is going in w/ a shovel/trowel for further exploration.)

So, yeah. Walking lines, listening to music, finding things on the ground. I can do that for 10 hours a day. I've done far more in a day for 10 hours than just that. And we get breaks.

Anywho, finished the day picking flots. Sounds like we'll resume there on Monday. Didn't do much this week, but I'm still a little tired. I guess I didn't do much in comparison to what I had been doing.