blog karma

I figure I'm on the negative side for blogging karma. So it'll be a long one.

I guess I have to go back to Tuesday, when I handed in my thesis. Had a day to relax and run errands and whatnot, then it was off to Holland to visit my Oma and Opa who are there visiting relatives right now.
It was very interesting to see all of the 'aunts' and 'uncles' and 'cousins' (all second or third I think) that I hadn't really seen since I was 11. Most of the trip involved sitting around listening to conversations in dutch (no, i don't understand dutch), but we also went to a couple of really beautiful, very old, little towns nearby and on the saturday my cousins took me out clubbing dutch style. The legal drinking age there is 16 and the club was huge (4 different dance floors, each the size of one of ours) with full fog, light, tv, and laser effects. oh, and a pool. but I was told if you went in the pool, you got kicked out of the club, which made me wonder why they had it there in the first place.

so after listening a whole lot of dutch, and picking all the cherries a person could humanly eat from the cherry tree in the yard, I returned home sunday night to a Viva Voce exam monday morning. The viva didn't go fantastically well. I think I held my own and babbled a minimum amount, but I did get the distinct impression that one marker in particular thought my topic extremely pointless. So I think I may be looking at an alright, but not great mark coming up (I won't know at least for a couple of weeks). Hopefully it will be enough to get me some funding...

But hey, it's now all over and I have nothing left for my masters but to wait. And I have nothing left to do here but run some errands and enjoy myself. This week holds two huge parties, the King's affair, and the king's graduate formal dinner. The affair is King's answer to a ball (which is what most of the other colleges have) and is instead just a massive party where we are allowed on the lawn (ooh!). I find it amusing that all the other colleges have themes like: 'the moon', 'through the looking glass', and other fancy things that I can't remember right now where they all dress up in formal gear... king's picks 'aftermath'. That's right folks, it's a post-apocalyptically themed affair. That means wearing ripped clothing and gas masks. Sounds like fun to me, and we'll be formal formal for the grad dinner anyways. gotta love king's.

And then I'm off on Saturday night. Weird. So weird. It's definitley coming up quicker than I expected. But I've got myself a 'learn greek' tape on my
(brand new!*) ipod and my trowel so I'm all set.

*my wonderful mother sent me an early birthday present with my grandparents... a fantabulous black 30 gig video ipod! I love it. My old ipod, though also fabulous, was having serious battery issues, so it had to be done. So exciting.

Oh! and the cows are back in the pasture. they're white and lovely.

The thesis is in folks. That's it. That's the program.
weird.
So, after being severely sleep deprived, and excessively sedentary, I spent the day lounging around with others and punting. I can look forward to my Viva Voce exam in about a week, but until then I will be heading off to Holland to see my Oma and Opa.
Sorry, it's so short, but I am excessively tired and can't think straight.

I will elaborate soon.

Well, I'm still alive though I know it doens't seem like it from the lack of bloggy-goodness. Just not a lot to say really.
Thesis due in two weeks
Recieved a good mark on that pot sherd project
Am in a new relationship (that is inherently doomed in a month and forced aside due to work but still)
Rainy and cold this week... but I suppose it's better that it get it over with now than when the paper is done

yup. That's it.

Miss you all.

Well, it's definitely spring. The period where you have to work the most and yet want to the very least. I'm looking back at all you fine folks who are done school and enjoying the thrills of staff training with envious eyes.
Missing the fort pops up at random times and places, like from the smell of my wool jacket in the rain. But at the same time, I'm contented and secure in the fact that I'm heading in a direction I want to go. (you'll hear the following in many posts to come I'm sure but...) I'm very much looking forward to after June 12th - the day my thesis is due. I then have a viva voce exam and some time to enjoy my new found friends and then it's off to Greece for 6 months. I have very little hope for continuing this upcoming year, but I think I should manage to be able to come back in 2008. My marks, though it depends on these last two, haven't been good enough as of yet to warrant admission into the classics faculty, but I could easily get into archaeology which is perfectly fine with me. It's really the funding (or lack of) that matters anyways.
So for now I am in a cycle of procrastination, reading, and writing. I'm not sure, but I _think_ procrastination is winning at the moment (seeing as I'm blogging rather than finishing the draft that needs to get done for tommorrow), but *meh*.

I guess I thought I'd best get you all caught up, and that's pretty much it.

i am an idiot

seriously. who comes to greece specifically to see an exhibition and doesn't check to see that it's still showing? An idiot. i.e. me.

joy.

Well, after a very long couple of days I have arrived in greece.

And I mean a very long couple of days.
So my third project, the sherd one I've been posting about for what seems like forever was due monday at 12. My supervisor had been away so I was already a bit behind on everything, but I felt that I was at least somewhat on track. I had worked most of Saturday and had about 5 hours of sleep, alright. That's fine. But then I go to layout all of my catalogue images that I drew and _oh my goodness_ did the technology just about kill me. No matter what I did I could not get my images printed out at the correct size (and keep in mind that the whole point is to be exactly correct in all aspects of everything). So I spent the entire day trying to get this right, and to no avail. Finally I gave up... which left the night to do everything else I needed to do ie. get some maps, and finish and redraft my essay part of the project, write my bibliography, and double check my catalogue. This means I slept, oh, about an hour, and woke up without knowing how in the world I would get my images to work out, and still needing to make some changes to my essay. So yup.
Thank goodness the fates gave me something... a friend who offered to layout my images in her much superior program, indesign, while I finished the essay part... and a slight extension. Even with this girl who has done professional catalogue layouts as a job, the images magically resized themselves the first time and she had to do it again. But it finally worked, and though I don't think it is bug free, I handed it in at 1:15, only an hour and a half late.
So then I run the errand that I had been meaning to run and do little things, like eat, that I hadn't had a chance to do. I just miss the 3:30 bus to the airport, almost miss the 4:15 bus because I hadn't realized they changes the location of the stop, but get the the airport in plenty of time.
I arrive in Greece at 2:30 their time (I managed to sleep a little, but was surprised I didn't sleep more since they were playing 'miss potter' as a movie... can you say boring? I should have been sleeping like a baby). I splurge for a cab to take me to the hostel, and without wanting to pay for another night, seeing as it's like, 4 in the morning already, they let me sleep on the couch. I have just now finally showered and checked in and am raring to go...

Alright, so that's where I'm coming from right now. a combined total of around 11 hours of sleep between three nights and 5 of those being on a plane/couch. Yay.

But the potential abounds and I hope that the journey proves worthwhile.

Natural selection

This is the short film that I mentioned awhile back, but as a recap... some of my friends did this with super eight film and submitted it to a film festival. I'm thoroughly impressed.

I should post.
Though I honestly have not much going on here. I'm working, slowly, having trouble getting a hold of anybody in general and my supervisors in particular (being that we are still in easter holiday). I am also having trouble sitting inside working all day when the springy weather outside constantly calls to me. It's telling me that it's okay to go on 4 hour punting excursions or play football all day... the sun hypnotises me into states of non-caring. I can undertand why in edmonton they start and finish earlier because I don't think they could hold us in when spring came full force. Could you imagine going until June? You'd be wasting half the summer studying for exams. Ah well, I'm glad for the time, it'll be crunchy as it is if I keep going at this rate.
(By the way, I hear it is snowing... my honest condolences and hopes that that blasted winter departs, I no longer hope to rub it in because that's so unfortunately absurd)

There is, however, stuff happening at home. I missed two birthdays this month, my sister's and my mom's. Combine this with easter and a random upsurge of internet chatting with my friends and I am missing being home. This is, however, mixed with a feeling that I'm not finished here in Cambridge. I really hope that I get the grade that can keep me here. Not so much for next year specifically, but at least if I get the grade I can reapply for 2008 and really go at it for funding.

Oh, and I just booked a ticket for Athens for the end of the month. I just have to go for a few days to see some of the sculptures I am writing my thesis on, and an exibit that's there right now that's about polychromy. It has a bunch of coloured casts. It's really annoying because I check the websites, make sure the museums aropen on the days I want to go and buy the tickets. Then I find out that the first day I am there is a Greek holiday. Figures. The museums may be closed. I should still have enough time to see what I need to see, but I mean really. one out of 2 and a half days shot. I am so annoyed at myself, but at least I found out before I got there.

You are all going to silently hate me already for complaining that the weather is too nice to focus, so I may as well add in another point. I don't want to go to athens all that much. It's completely necessary for my thesis, it will give me that first hand experience that will make or break the paper, but it's so much effort. I am not looking forward to getting in that plane. It's British Airwas, which is better than olympic, but still. And I am banking on getting funding to go, so I really hope it comes through, but I can't get a hold of my supervisor to write a letter of support for the application so I'll be going first and hoping for the funding later. Besides I am worried that it's going to be taking precious days out of my 90 days allowed in Greece which is the exact amount of time I need to be there for this summer. I hope they don't give me trouble about it.

sorry. I'll stop now. I realise that having to go to athens is most definitely not the worst thing that could happen.

spring!

The baby ducklings have hatched! This of course results in two things: first, an automatic baby voice and desperate urge to cuddle, and second, a guilty joy knowing it's still snowy where you are and wanting to rub it in. Karma may just hurt me soon, but I don't care. Now all I need for the spring transfrmation to be complete is for them to bring back the King's cows.

First, an apology for being so very very lax on the blogging. I'v have, though been working a lot... finally. I am finally at the point in the project that I've been mentioning for awhile now, which makes for a very nice change of pace. apart from a wonderful day in london where I went to the museum and had a great dinner with kate, I've been drawing and cataloguing and inking everything pretty much all day for the past few days.

With that also comes watching way to much Xena: Warrior Princess in the background while fixing up and inking.

Ah, the joy that is the pseudo-Greek world that she inhabits. Fantastically bad. So bad. So bad.

For all of you who ask, why draw pot sherds when one can simply take a photo, I shall explain. Drawing sherds is something that you can do that will show both the interior, exterior, and a profile all in one. It also helps to show clearly the decoration when it is not always easy to see on the sherd itself, or if you need to recreate something, you can. So you draw it like:

then you ink it up and scan it so it looks something like:

Mine aren't fantastic. They are fine, but I need more practice. I don't seem to have developed a steady enough hand for illustrative drawing just yet. You have to be so exact it's disgusting. But still, I enjoy it.

I've been swapped softly

Yay! I've received a lovely little bear (and some skor bars). deceptively little that is. He actually built stonehenge he's that cool. seriously, not aliens, not celts, but a lovely blue teddy bear with a scarf (and skor bars). did I mention I also got some skor bars?

OOPs

So, the next two posts are mixed up.... go read the second one (the one with the title) first, then come back up.
And I thought I was being smart.

in the background of the picture above you can see the Abbey which has some interesting relief on the front. basically it's angels climbing up and down ladders, referring to a dream that the priest had that told him to erect the church in the first place.

On the way back to Heathrow we stopped at a couple of places on the way, Avebury, Stonehenge, and Salisbury. Salisbury was interesting for their chapel as well, which apparently has the highest church tower in england and was very beautiful, but also had one of only 4 existing copies of the Magna Carta. Avebury is one of the places with stone circles, like stonehenge, but earlier and smaller stones. It also had larger and more circles that you could wander in and out of. But it was really very windy, and we messed up with the parking machine and were worried about getting a ticket, so we kind of rushed a bit. But the stones there look like this:

Which is compared to stonehenge where the stones look like this:

I thought that Stonehenge would be more touristy than actually interesting, but it was actually extremely satisfying (despite the brutal wind that would not let us be). It intrigued me because it took a lot for it to be built and is in relatively good condition for being 4000 years old. Some interesting facts about Stonehenge: The largest stone weighs approximately as much as 7 elephants. They used woodworking techniques to construct it and even rounded the stones slightly to make the circle properly. Some of the stones came from miles and miles away, but are so heavy that it would have been extremely difficult to transport them here over both land and sea. The rocks are home to over 40 different types of lichens.

Nifty, eh?

After that it was home again home again jiggity jig.

Any questions?

of driving around england

So I have returned from my 'grand tour' around England.
Thoroughly enjoyable and so much fun. It was fantastic to see the folks again and see some great sites while doing so.

Care for a play by play? of course you do, everyone likes to live vicariously right?

So we started in Cambridge where I actually did some of the things I've been meaning to do since I got here, like actually go and visit some of the other colleges, and go up on the roof of King's college chapel, and punt. Punting, by the way, is tricky but very fun and I can't wait for the weather to warm up a bit so we can just punt at random. Maybe next time I'll actually move forward rather than side to side.

From there we went up to York. I am now officially jealous of the Tudor Rose. A very very cool city with both Roman and viking undertones. The shambled was a neat little street of Georgian architecture that looked like it should already be falling down the beams were so warped. York minster is my new fascination in it's oddities and jumble of seemingly random things (like the clock that chimed by two knights that would twist and hit a chime with their axes, the cloister with a large number of seats with intricately carved images of faces, some paganistic, many with demon-esque creatures, some with birds eating their faces, but all different, a tombstone for a woman who had something like 26 children and died at 40...). It was also built over top a Roman principia, where they believe Constantine was proclaimed emperor.

Next stop, Wales. What an interesting language. I would love to learn their alphabet since it looks like ours, but it most definitely is not the same and I have no idea how to pronounce the names. I mean, really, how cool would it be to live in a place called 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'. That's an extreme case of course, but still. We walked around Conwy Castle, which was very well preserved.

That night we stayed above a pub that was reputedly haunted. Didn't see any ghosts though so I fail to be convinced.

On towards bath, but along the way we stopped and went hiking in the Cotswalds. Stunning landscape and we wandered in and out of farmers fields. This included encountering many, many sheep (I thought a lot of that zombie movie that crafty bean blogged about and was relieved that none of them tried very hard to eat me), an uncomfortable closeness to a (fortunately lazy) bull, horses, partridges, and other random animals. We thought the walk would take around 2 hours of walking and another hour or two of sitting in local teahouses/pubs but, alas, it was 4 hours of pretty much straight hiking in the hills.

The best thing in bath was, surprise, the baths. The roman hot springs was very built up, but still, I like the idea of healing spas and the emphasis placed on bathing as a social aspect of life. I think we could do with more naked hot spring bathing here (though I have a feeling that Big Round Head may disagree?). And let us not forget the whole process of the cold room, the hot room, and the oil message afterwards eh.

I have a feeling this is getting too long, so see the next post for a continuation...

I just wanted to mention that I won't be blogging for a bit. My folks and I are going to be driving around england for a bit. We probably will get lost and spend the entire week driving, but hey, at least I'll get to see the countryside right?

vice journal

Though I realise that continually recording my vices may not be an extremely positive way of looking at the world, I think it will help. So I've decided to keep a journal of sorts that will help me get myself in order.
I have a horrible tendency to forget things, my brain is odd in that I'm not stupid, but I have a very difficult getting things in there and keeping them there. I can learn stuff and test well, but I can't hold onto the information for very long after. Or if something is mentioned or I see something one day and it doesn't have a direct consequence for what I am doing presently I don't bother to remember it. This journal is an attempt to help me learn stuff that people should just generally know. For example: Roman numerals (I never really learnt roman numerals, so I put them in there); Names of people (in particular any one who is mentioned in regards to the academic world I'm in that I should know); singers that I want to hear; authors/books that I want to read; facts that I learnt (new words is a biggy here); the general idea of books that I did read... the list goes on. Basically anythinthat I can, and do forget. I want to train my brain to start remembering things and actively make it a point to remember things better.

I thought since I'm also worried about the weight I've been gaining here it would be a good idea to keep a food journal, at least for awhile. What I eat, why I eat it.

Also, since it's my first time being out of the house and financially strapped, i think i should be keepg a closer eye on the spendature than I have been doing, so maybe keeping a record of what I spend so I can analyse it and make a better budget.

All in all, a journal of vices in hopes that by recognising them in a physical, concrete format I can rule them, and not have them rule me.

And I thought I'd blog about it so that I would actually do it.

Here's hoping it helps.

band wagon hopping. Seemed like fun.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

So wicked was wicked. Such an easy pun to make, it needed to be done. it was perfect musical fodder. Not exactly a deep story line, but witty enough to keep it interesting. The music was fairly standard and extremely emotive, lots of good belty moments since the main role is a lower voice (alto I think, but maybe mezzo-soprano). Nice set, elaborate costumes, good effects and a sweet message about being true to yourself round it off. I'm sure that this musical has become the bain of the auditioner's existence since a few of the songs I'm sure will have already become fast favourites.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was fantastic to see my folks again.

Academically, I've still been getting nowhere fast. My sherd project has turned towards a nw focus that as left practically all of the work I've done on it thus far obsolete. But I think (/hope) it will be the better for it. And knowledge is knowledge right? never wasted.

I also just found out that the supervisor I thought I was doing my dissertation with is actually leaving the country. So I'm dissapointed about that, I don't think I'll do as well with someone else guiding me. She was fantastic and wasn't afraid to tell me when I was bullshitting. I'll figure it out, but I'm cursing a bit.

I talked with another professor about a project that could form the basis of my Phd. Can you say underqualified? It sounds like the perfect project in that it's interesting and new that has both a specific focus and a broader consequence and it would be linked to an archaeological site. It would be a lot of responsibility on me though to be extremely accurate. I would be in charge of creating a pottery sequence of the materials in close association with the stratigraphy, both informing the other. This would also mean that I would go on the excavation and it would be on me to choose the sherds that are representative samples. I could easily screw this up, and if I were starting tomorrow, I'd be screwed. But I'm not starting tomorrow, I have some time to get m act together and I'm excited for it. It seems that it wouldn't be a problem if I can't start this year due to funding/ acceptance and it would also allow me to take the job at knossos I've been offered for a few months to gain some experience in cataloguing and databasing. The main thing I have to do is get a first on my dissertation so that I can even worry about funding.
It would also mean that I don't really have to focus on learning german... just turkish. Gah.

I was at a film festival the other night since some of my friends had made a 'super 8' film that was being aired. Their film was fantastic (and I;ll post it as soon as they put it up), but they showed this short while the judges were deliberating and I felt it needed to be shared. very very nice. Plus, I'm very proud of myself for even getting it on my blog, rather than just linking but if it doesn't work go to Yuki