Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Yesterday = Much More Fun Than Today

One of the perks of my new schwanky job (stop laughing) is the amazing people I get to meet. Last Friday, I had a tour of the museum at the Carter Library by none other than the director of said library. He was President Carter's Undersecretary of State for Energy Issues, or some such thing, & has an encyclopedic knowledge of the 2nd half of the 20th century. He also used to live in New Orleans (whoo-hoo!). Anyway, as we're touring, he mentions that a survivor of the Soviet gulag is coming to speak at the Library in December, which prompts an entirely juvenile reaction from me - something along the lines of "oh, please, please, please, please can I stand in the back? I promise to be very quiet & no one will know I'm there" - so he says he'll see what he can do. (Here's hoping it works out....)

ANYWAY.

The point of all that is to say that I've also met a very groovy chica named Terri who is an archaeologist for the state DOT. They're excavating a site up in Cherokee County for a new bridge, and they're finding AMAZING stuff. And she invited me to go up & "help!" So, I was able to spend 4 hours yesterday digging in the dirt. I personally got to touch lots of shards of pottery (some of which was stamped with beautiful designs), part of an ancient pipe bowl (this was their favorite - apparently it's rare to find these), chipped quartz from stone tools, ancient daub (mud made into adobe-like building material), & a clay bead. Then, I got to "help" with this cool gizmo that shoots ground-penetrating radar into the ground (duh) to look for soil irregularities that might point to additional "features." (Look at me & the lingo - we're friends!) Obviously, they were very nice people to let me "help," and it made me want to be an archaeologist for the first time since about the 3rd grade. Naturally, I didn't have to do any math (beyond measurement) or chemistry, which made it seem much more attractive than it would actually be.

This is what the area sort of looks like:


Only right now it is GORGEOUS because of all the foliage. (Melissa's current favorite word, I believe.)


ALL of this beats my fun morning today, spent at the Department of Revenue for the state, convincing them that yes, we did pay our state taxes, and we can prove it! We can prove it because we have a COPY OF THE CHECK THEY CASHED IN JUNE. Amazing. Then, I got to buy a wedding gift that I didn't really want to buy because the one I wanted to buy was not at all worth the money. Sheesh.

This is a warning: if you are getting married anytime within the next decade, you might just be getting a gift card. It doesn't mean we don't love you, it just means that I don't think the things on your registry are worth the money being charged for them.

That sounded ugly, but I meant it in the nicest possible way.

Onward to turkey day - yippe. ;(

4 comments:

Unknown said...

that is soo awesome. one summer i went to a camp that was assisting in a dig held near an indian mound . i remember finding this perfect arrow head. they said that it was the largest of that type they had found so far. i really loved that camp.

K2daK said...

I am a little jealous, that sounds like a lot of fun! I hope you get to go see the speaker you want to hear too!

Monkey said...

That sounds very cool! I use to make my own scavenger hunts when I was bored playing all by myself in the woods growing up! That's where the great imagination comes from! ;) Oh, and I haven't said "foliage" in days!! :)

Amy M. said...

I have always wanted to see the Carter Library. How cool! And the dig sounds fun too. Although I have a master's in Anthropology, I was never as into the archaeology part of it. Guess I don't have the patience for it. Although I do like getting my hands dirty!