A Growing Bump

Well, I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and confusingly wishing I was bigger and smaller at the same time. I am definitely sporting a belly, but it is not definitely a pregnant belly - resembling more of a fat potbelly than a baby. At 17 weeks pregnant, I am starting to think that most people are bigger than me at this stage, and am wondering what is wrong with me. Of course, since I just look fat, I am also wishing that I was a little smaller.

*sigh* You really can't please a woman can you?

These photos show what I'm like now on the right, and what I was like about a year ago.

Home and feeling unhealthy!

Well, I've been away for quite a while doing all sorts of things (field research and a long weekend away). This means that I've been away from the kitchen for a long time, eating out, and not necessarily eating what I would normally choose. I flew back from Ireland this morning, where I had a wonderful time eating enormous quantities of Ulster fry, and I'm feeling it. This is particularly important since my middle is starting to expand due to a tiny guest having taken up residence!

So, when I got home I put on the bread machine and started cooking up a bean soup to curb the unhealthy feelings in my mouth.

The bread was wonderful, as was the soup and it totally filled the healthy gap in my body. Yum!

Battlestar Galactica

Though things have been busy around here lately, I have found the time to slowly continue working our way through Battlestar Galactica. We are currently 2 or 3 episodes away from the end of season 4 (the first half), and knowing that things are ramping up to the end of the series, I have begun to think about some of the overarching themes of the show. Adding to this, I have been reading a lot about the way fans deconstruct and relate to various tv-shows, so I am deep in the analytical mindset.

Some of the things that I really like about BSG is the characters, the fact that they aren't all shiny, perfect and new. The characters are broken and hurting, complex and definetly not nice. They are real people and it is painful to watch them struggle with hard situations in which there are no right answers. This is particularly true for Laura Roslin, who I think is one of the most interesting characters. She was recently pointed out as a wonderful female role-model, demonstrating that you don't have to be butch or physical to be strong and effective.

Religion is obviously one of the big themes of the show. The writers have focussed mainly on the emergence of a powerful and seductive new monotheistic religion and the effect this has on the polytheistic people of the fleet. Interestingly, this feeds directly into the way that people have traditionally dehumanized followers of different faiths, as this new religion comes from the Cylons. The Cylon's humanity is repeatedly questioned throughout the course of the show, and as the new religion gains more ground among the human fleet, we see more human-like interaction between the humans and Cylons.

Finally, in the last episode we watched, Laura Roslin and Bill Adama finally admitted their love to one another, making the relationship most integral to the plot a romantic one. Interestingly for a modern show, these characters do not fit into the young and sexy mold. This, in my opinion, is awesome and I fully approve! (Please don't spoil me for what happens next. . )

So does anyone have any thoughts on any of these aspects of BSG? Other shows?

Home again, home again

I'm home. And I'm exhausted. Our trip went relatively smoothly, we saw everything we wanted to see and had a lot of fun. There were some interesting events while travelling though - including a huge sandstorm on the Desert Highway which led to a massive accident that we drove past minutes after it occurred, followed by one of our fellow passengers having a heart attack! One of our flights home was also delayed waiting for a connecting flight, which had almost the entire passenger list on it - consisting of people who proceeded to provide the loudest flight I have ever been on. This was particularly frustrating since we had gotten up at 1am to make our first flight.

So, interesting and exciting.

I'm now busy processing all the information and experiences I had while out there. I was surprised by some of the sites I visited, and thoroughly enjoyed that.

Didn't give up. . . might still live

Well, pursuant to my last post, I have indeed been running around getting things organized. Top of the list was visas, second was flights. Flights were particularly exorbitant because we were traveling over Easter weekend, though we seem to have mitigated that by flying out on the Saturday. Next on the list is a hotel to stay at when we arrive at 1:30 am. Once again, because it is Easter weekend, I am finding that any place reasonably priced is totally booked up, making this difficult. NOrmally, we'd just sort it out once we arrived, but since this is such a short trip and because I have a number of research goals I need to accomplish, I can't afford to have a slow or tired start. So I'm still looking to find some place that I"m happy with.

In other news, I had a meeting with one of my supervisors this morning, and we spent a good deal of time brainstorming over the various things we could do to measure smell ourselves. I think we may have gone a bit overboard, but I foresee some sniffing in my future!

Visa application - or - Why I want to quit before I start

I'm going on a research trip this month, and have a bunch of grant money coming in to pay for it.  Unfortunately, the money doesn't arrive until early in the month, so I haven't been moving very quickly on booking things like flights or applying for visas.  Now, it's a week before I intended to leave, and I'm running around like a crazy person trying to make up for the fact that i put things off so long.  I think it will be fine, but I could do without the extra stress.  

In fact, this pre-travel planning always makes me wish I was just staying home.  I love travel and do quite a bit of it, but every time, I just want to lay down and pretend it isn't there.  I guess this is why people go on all-expenses-paid tours rather than doing things themselves!

This is the same as grant applications, scholarships, and all the other things that an academic has to do in order to survive, and I dread it.  Ugh.

Smell

Well, my friends are probably tired of hearing me yak on about this. I've been doing some brainstorming research in order to see if I could accommodate smell into my methodology. So I've been scouring the literature for some indication that people have explored smell archaeologically before and I'm coming up with bupkiss.

There has been lots and lots and lots of research on the science behind the physical sense of smell, and a fair amount of research into the way other cultures perceive smell and the other senses, but there has been almost no research into smell in a wider environment. This means that it's very difficult to find anything that could be at all relevant or at all applicable to the archaeological record.

This is depressing because smell is so important for people's experience of space, it is an integral part of the way people perceive architecture.

Life!! Ack!!

Well, life has taken over.  The past week has been really stressful for me - mostly because I've been feeling overwhelmed.  As a result, I've been making use of the tried and tested method of a to-do list to keep track of things and reduce my stress level.  I find that when I write the list of things down it means that I can focus on doing something without worrying that I'll remember to do the other things.

That being said, I am slowly starting to feel back in control of my life because I have:

Prepared and given the 4 lectures I needed to

Prepared and printed the poster for the poster day next Friday

Taken care of some admin things for grants

Called the Syrian Embassy

Gotten a handle on a timetable for my research trip

Met with my supervisors

I still need to:

Plan and book research trip

Including: apply for visas, book flights, ensure grant payment

Work in office

Poster day (Fri)

Practical teaching (2 Fridays)

Work on thesis (any spare moment)

Go to Stonehenge (Fri/Sat)

Go hiking (next Sat/Sun)

Sleep - presumably

All this to say, life is busy and I'm running around quite a bit

Writing again

Well, I don't know what it is, but I've actually gotten some writing done the past two days.  I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday, which means that I can now edit the section he had been reading.  Which also means that I am steadfastly ignoring that particular section and am full steam ahead writing a terrible first draft about space syntax and phenomenology.  It's unfocussed, scattered, and totally crappy. 

It's getting longer though, and for a first draft that's all that matters.  

I also have the motivational factor of working on a shiny new computer, and well, you have to take advantage of wanting to work on a shiny new computer while it lasts!  Because soon, the shiny new computer will become just the computer, and it won't be neato at all.

Ah well. 

Back to work.

Transition

I am currently in the downtime between submitting a draft chapter to my supervisors and meeting with them to discuss their opinions. This time, the gap between submission and meeting is going to be almost two weeks, and I'm finding it hard to get moving on something new. And there are many things to be doing. I could be working on getting my theory chapter written, I could be combing the literature for all the published sources of the next site I'll be focussing on as a case study, I could be preparing the 4 lectures I'll be giving over the next two weeks, or I could be preparing my poster that has to be given at a mandatory university poster day for research students.

Instead, I'm floating around reading articles aimlessly, generating new ideas for things I could do to my poor abused sites, and generally feeling overwhelmed by all the things I *could* be doing. Of course, once I've met with my supervisors, that list of things to do will increase as they give me edits to do and advice on the next things to focus on.

Bah

Alright, time for a plan. This weekend I will prep the lectures. Today and next week I will start organizing my theory chapter and get writing. Everything else can wait for a while.

A tasty brekkie

One of my closest friends is currently competing in a Blog Idol competition and posted a recipe for a tasty, healthy, and fast breakfast. I tried it today, including chopped apricots, raisins, and some grated coconut, microwaved the sucker for about 2 min, and then topped with some brown sugar and some sliced almonds. This was very tasty, though next time I will add some cinnamon and cook it for a little bit less (I like my oatmeal crunchier than not).

Several hours later, I am still satisfied and am very pleased.

Thanks future-Blog-Idol-winner!

PhD Update

Well, had a meeting with one of my supervisors today.  He's been really busy, so I haven't seen much of him, so the first bit of the meeting was just chatting about life and how we've been.  I then told him about the case study I've been working on now and some of the problems I've encountered.  

We then went on to discuss some of the methodological problems that I've been having that he can directly help with.  I'm not sure how soon it will be resolved, but I feel like I"m getting closer.

The biggest thing that we discussed was how to handle the next background section I need to write.  I need to write about the methodological and theoretical context of my work, which means tackling the entire corpus of theory concerning the social nature of architecture and the archaeology of architecture.  He had some good suggestions on how to structure my work, which gives me the direction I need to get started.  Hopefully it won't take me too long!

Working from home

I am at home waiting for a repairman to come this morning and am once again caught up in the eternal quandry of how to work at home.  I brought home work I can very easily do here - writing up some of the research I did late last week, and I am determined.  There are just so many more distractions here at home.

It's not like the office is any better.  There, there's always someone dropping by to say hi and to pass on the latest gossip.  I love that, love seeing my friends, hearing the latest goings-on and chitchatting.  

How can you really get stuck into work though?  

Then again, I work well when I'm flitting back and forth, but I always feel more accomplished if I've put in a solid couple of hours in of reading and writing.  Unfortunately, the only place that has recently allowed me to work steadily has been the coffee shop down the road, which gets expensive in tea.  Maybe I'll drop by later, but I sure hope I can get settled into working somewhere else.

How do you guys get settled into a working headspace?  What do you do to get yourself in the mood?  Do you force it if you're not feeling it?

Helpful colleagues

Thank goodness for people around me who have experience in the field. The problem I was having with inconsistent publications a couple of days ago has been solved since I found out that Experienced Fellow Grad Student had actually dug at the site in question and had in fact excavated the exact building I was interested in! I could have kissed him!

He couldn't solve my weird publication problems, as they are indeed weird, but he could tell me what exactly was found where and describe things for me in more detail than I was getting.

Hurray!

Experiencing the divine and pilgrimage

I listen to a really good podcast The Dark Side of Fey. The most recent episode was a thought-provoking one on Experiencing Deity. The discussion itself was fascinating, and an issue that I have struggled with myself, it triggered some thoughts on recent issues concerning experience and archaeological sites.

My field work is located very close to the famous site of Catalhoyuk. This site is now the pilgrimage location of many different goddess groups due to some scholarship from the 60's that suggested that the Neolithic community living at Catalhoyuk were goddess-worshippers. While this interpretation is no longer accepted in the archaeological community (many of the images are now believed to be bears rather than women), the pilgrims continue to come and are an integral part of the experience of visiting Catalhoyuk.

To these women, and indeed any pilgrim of any religion, the act of travelling to some particular location brings them closer to the divine and allows them a truer experience. I find this difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, I am a pantheist and believe that all things are divine, therefore no one location will provide a "better" or "truer" experience than another. On the other hand, I truly believe that you gain a better understanding for having visited a site, and have submitted many grant applications for a research trip through the Middle East based on this very belief.

Does location matter?

It seems as if I'm a hypocrite, because I would say that it didn't matter for spiritual reasons, but for academic reasons it does. But, my spiritual beliefs center around the understanding that divinity is everything and that there should be no separation. How does that work??!

Having this contradiction handed to me means that I need to reevaluate my assumptions, and I think it is very true that different experiences are available in different locations. You see/feel/smell/taste/etc different and therefore travelling is very valuable (thank goodness!), but I can't justify prioritising one experience, or one person's experience over another. All are perfectly valid and valuable, and should contribute a person's understanding of the world.

This means that the women who travel to Catalhoyuk to experience the lives of the "goddess-worshippers" will gain something from their trip, but also means that they should not think that it is the only place they can connect.

Inconsistent publications

I am making progress.  I have started on a new case study this week and so have been busy accumulating all the publications on this particular site and trying to get a feel for the layout of the site and the nature of the architecture.  This is always really rewarding and I feel like I am making progress, learning something new.  Unfortunately, working with sites that do not yet have their final publications leaves much to be desired.

The problems aren't always immediately obvious.  I wanted to work with this particular site next because I felt like there was a lot of published information and that it would be easier than the other site under consideration.  I was right in that there is a lot of information, but I was sadly sadly wrong that it would be easy.

See, these publications are not at all clear about the labelling of their buildings.  There are two buildings that I am particularly interested in, but I'm having trouble telling them apart.  Publication X has the buildings labelled 1 and 2 in the text but A and B in the photos.  Publication Y has the buildings labelled A and B in the text and photos, but the photo of A in Pub Y is the same as B in Pub X.

Confused yet?  Me too.

So I tentatively assigned the following labels:

1 (from Y) = B (from X)

2 (from Y) = A (from X)

But more problematically, the photos of the details of each building (benches, etc) aren't labelled at all, so I have to guess which building they are from and where they were located in the building.  Oh, and the photo of the same building in two different publications has been flipped left-right, so I don't know which way was East and which was West.

*tears out hair*

I would be tempted to go and dig the site back up myself, but it was flooded 10 years ago by the building of a dam in Turkey.  So no luck.

These are the days that I wonder whether anyone ever reads back over their publications to see if they made sense or if they just throw stuff together without thinking.

Is this where the promise that I will never be *that* kind of academic goes?  Best laid plans. . . 

Conference Networking

I attended my second academic conference in two months this weekend.  I presented at this conference, but while my paper was relevant to the wider community, it did not fit with the recent trends this conference focussed on (GIS and complex computer modelling).  I have really tried to keep my methodology simple and intuitive, which has the benefit of being very evocative and easy to understand.  It also means that I was out of my depth when it came to talking to the other attendees.

None of the other attendees were people I was desperate to meet, but I wanted to get to know other PhD students in order to build up a support network.  I also wanted to get some ideas of where to go with my work.  While I accomplished both of these things, I always felt very awkward once the conversation had passed the initial 5 min introductory mark where things would naturally fall into a discussion of some technical detail.  At this point, my knowledge runs dry and I tend to fall silent.  

This is bad for networking.

So, while I think my presentation went over well generally, and I met some great people, I know that I still have some work to do when it comes to carrying on conversations at conferences.

Sigh.

Stupid learning and growing.

Engaging with the Community

As I walked home last night with a few friends, we passed a restaurant where a man was smoking outside with his son.  We had had an unexpected snowfall that day, so the boy was entertaining himself by making snowballs and throwing them at passersby.  The three of us were on the other side of the street ignored the boy (he was about 10 - no need to encourage him) and he proceeded to come and throw his snowball at us.  I am no wilting flower so proceeded to give the kid a hard time about throwing snowballs at people, telling him that a snowball was *exactly* what I needed to top off my evening and thanking him sarcastically for it.  (Note - father said nothing).

I then walked face first into a pole.  Ouch.

Of course, kiddo thought this was frickin' hysterical and what I rightly deserved for having the gall to tell him it was inappropriate to throw snowballs at strangers on the street.

I got home, sore and my face throbbing, and I was really pissed.  Not at the boy, really, but at the adult who stood and let his kid throw snowballs at strangers with no regard to his relationship with the community.  I can only imagine what sort of holy terror this kid will grow up to be.

This is a common problem where I live, parents do not seem to be engaged in their children's relationship with the community around them.  No one bothers to teach their children how to interact with strangers and how to be a functioning member of society.  This might explain the number of rude and infantile adults around here as well.  

It can be truly unpleasant to go out into the world some days when common decency seems to have fled.  So what can we do?  My husband thinks that if every single person who had been hit by that kid's snowballs had taken the time to tell him off, he would have eventually gotten the idea, but I also think that he was probably looking for the attention.  Also, is it our responsibility to teach kids manners?  In some cases I think it probably is society's responsibility, but it is also a parent's responsibility.  

What do you think?  How can we engage with our community and deter undesirable behaviour?  Can we teach kids good manners when the parents don't seem to care?  Should I have kept my nose and dignity intact by not talking to the kid (and therefore not walking into the pole)?

Book Review

Well, I've finished another book that I got over Christmas, Naomi Novik's Throne of Jade - Temeraire Book 2.  I read the first Temeraire book over the summer, and really enjoyed it.  The second book lived up to all the promise of the first, with an imaginatively written world.  Novik's China was particularly creative, with the integration of dragons into their society showing that she thought about the realities of daily life in detail.  This made for very satisfying reading.

I was very pleased with the development of the relationship between Temeraire and Laurence.  In the first book, Temeraire is treated as a young child and over the course of this book he clearly matures and forces Laurence to see him as a fully independent individual.  This made Temeraire a more interesting character rather than simply a curiousity.  

The plot rockets along, engaging and very exciting.  I found it hard to put the book down and really enjoyed the political intrigue.  The writing was clear and colourful and lots of fun to read.  All in all, I really enjoyed this book. 

Drowning in Articles

I am a year and a half into my PhD and am coming to the end of writing my background chapter.  For an archaeologist, this means writing about the historical context of my research and the current state of knowledge about the time period.  I have been tackling this in thematic chunks and my material has been organized in these sections.  Now I'm starting to integrate these sections by writing the more specific contextual sections and I'm finding that my filing system is starting to break down.  I'm spending too much time trying to find a particular article as stuff is spread across the themes.

I think I need to reorganize my articles and take a close inventory of what I have and where it is.  I use EndNote and am very diligent about entering reference information.  I would like to try keeping better track of where each article is in my system and whether I have printed it off or if I've moved it into a thematic collection for some purpose. 

I think the best system for me to adopt will be an alphabetical system by the first author's last name.  I have avoided this in the past since often sets of authors write together multiple times about similar things but alternate who the first author is.  This can make it difficult to keep track of all resources on a particular topic, but clearly keeping things by topic is no longer working.  I guess I'll have to give it a try and give myself permission to redo it if it isn't better.

Now, I have a filing cabinet in my office in the department that I can use, but I intend to work from home when I move in June.  At that point, I will need to devise a filing system to use there, but in the mean time, I can use the hanging files in my office.

I guess I will be spreading my paper out on the floor sometime soon and alphabetizing and cross-referencing it in EndNote.  I'll be sure to take some pictures of the before, during, and after and keep you updated on the progress.

How do other people keep track of articles and resources?

2008 Budget Overview

The first year and a half that I lived in the UK, I went into debt.  Big debt.  Good debt.  I was doing my MA and then starting a PhD, so I had overseas tuition as well as living expenses.  I had saved up, but it wasn't nearly enough.  The Bank of Mom and Dad has been generous, but starting in 2008 I knew I had to start making some income to off-set my living expenses.  Luckily, my tuition is covered by a scholarship but I still needed money for rent, utilities, groceries, and a little bit of fun.  So, I got some jobs and started tracking my expenses (somewhat).

So here's the breakdown:

Rent: £2751.68

Bills: £398.30

Phone: £50 (£40 pay-as-you-go, £10 Skype credit)

Groceries: £703.25

Other (Cash payments): £380.16

Clothes: £284.75

Entertainment: £59.48

Gym: £69

Gifts: £48.41

Visa Renewal: £295

Travel: £498.55

Total Expenses: £5538.58

Notes: The travel includes some compensated travel and the compensation has been included in the income.  The cash includes some groceries, some travel, some entertainment like drinks, movies, bus fare, cabs, etc.  

Income: £5095.67

This income includes all scholarship money, incidental payments, but doesn't include payment for teaching I did in 2008 that won't be paid until the end of January totaling ~£600.

This means that I have successfully covered my costs!  I am very pleased and inordinately proud of myself.

The place where I could most benefit from improvement is tracking the "Other" category.  As I compiled my expenses from my online debit account, I only have records for cash withdrawals, not how they were spent.  This year, I would like to try to track these expenses more carefully so I can see how my spending breaks down in more detail.

I also want to get a credit card in only my name in order to build up personal credit.

Well, I'm sure I will update this as things go, but as it stands, I'm pretty pleased.

Book Review

I finished reading Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron last night.  I read Bear's Dust last summer based on some Amazon browsing I did to try to find some new stuff.  I was initially attracted to Bear's fantasy, but decided to buy Dust as it was not part of a series (though this was not true).  I enjoyed Dust but it wasn't exactly my passion.  

A couple of month's later, I found the author's blog and it re-ignited my interest in her writing.  I am very glad I gave her another chance, because Blood and Iron is exactly to my tastes.  The writing is snappy dense but doesn't overwhelm the plot.  That plot is complex, nuanced, and doesn't coddle the reader.  In fact, in some places, I had trouble sorting out exactly what was happening.  This is mostly due to the fact that the book was chok-full of literary and mythological references, particularly when it came to explaining motivations and emotions.  In some cases, the references were obscure enough that I, an Arthurian buff, didn't manage to make the connections, but surprisingly, instead of turning me off the book it drove me through the book and has piqued my interest in exploring more mythology.  

I am a fantasy enthusiast, through and through, and this hit almost all of my personal quirks.  The only aspect that might have put me off, is the melding of Faerie and the Modern world.  Too often, stories based on this type of world-building turn into a kid-in-king-Arthur's-court story, which puts me off.  I'm very glad I gave this a chance despite my misgivings because the relationships between humanity and Faerie were much more intricate and thought-out than I expected.

On the downside, while I initially loved the character of Carel, I found her transition into the Merlin and her choice to support Faerie to be too opaque for me to follow.  A second reading after more exploration of mythology might elucidate her character, but it right now I don't see it.  

I will be searching out more of Bear's Promethean Age books to follow this storyline further as I really enjoyed this book and it has piqued my interest in subsidiary topics!

Cooking Abroad

As a Canadian living in the UK, I am forever discovering the fact that some ingredients I want just aren't sold here (usually at the last moment, in the store, looking wild-eyed at some poor employee who has no idea what I've just asked for).  Case in point - canned pumpkin.  

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided that I was homesick and that in defense I was going to cook a turkey and some pumpkin pie.  Upon discovering that I was cooking a dessert pie with a vegetable, most of my British friends looked at me skeptically.  When they learned that this same pie was made using a sludge of the same veggie that came in a can . . . I wouldn't blame them if they backed away slowly.  Undeterred, I found the desired sludge online, and made my pies (they were delicious by the way) and fed them to my friends.  My Canadian husband thought they were lovely and we both ate quite a bit, but none of my British friends came back for seconds. . .  While this meant there was enough for breakfast (don't judge), it also meant that they weren't won over by my veggie-pie-from-a-can.  Oh well.

Now I am crossing another hurdle.  I expressed a desire for butter tarts the other night, and was once again met with blank stares.  I described that butter tarts are essentially tiny pies made with sugar, butter, and sometimes raisins and were often quite runny and almost unbearably sweet.  Once again, my friends backed away slowly.  My plans have been put somewhat on hold though when I discovered that corn syrup is awfully hard to come by over here.  I've been told that golden syrup is quite similar, so I will be attempting the substitution tonight for my girly night.

This really brings home one of the reasons it is so hard to be an expat.  Getting homesick in your own country is hard enough, but you can always run down to the local Loblaws, pick up some stuff and make it just like Mom does.  When you live an ocean away, no matter how hard you try or how good a cook you are, it is never going to be "just like Mom does" because you are starting with different ingredients.  My butter tarts will be yummy, but they won't be "the same", and I suspect that instead of making me less homesick, they will actually remind me even more how hard it is to be far from home.

Locating Yourself

I passed a girl on campus today who was talking to a friend about a possible weekend away.  They had just finished their exams and were looking for some fun.  Girl A mentioned that they should go to the coast.  Girl B asked where she wanted to go and Girl A replied that they should go to whatever coast is closest!  And laughed at her ignorance as to where the closest coast was.

To be honest, I laughed too.  To put it in perspective, I live in a city that was heavily bombed in WWII because it was a port city!  We are on the coast!  

I find it so hard to believe that someone could be so oblivious to where they are in the world.  I guess this is one of the downsides of housing undergrads in isolated residences and ferrying them back and forth to campus.  They have no need to wander around and find the port, or any other major features of the region they live in.

I want to experience as much of the UK while I'm here, and to that end I was up to Windermere for the day to see the largest lake in England.  I try to get out of this city as often as possible to see what else there is close by (and sometimes not as close!).  Traveling and seeing how places fit together is one of my passions, so I find it so hard to understand when people have no interest in their surroundings.

*sigh* Now I have map love. . . . must go find my Lonely Planet.

Bye!

Making a Commitment

Mr P and I got married over Christmas after a short engagement.  We have been together for a long time, and have talked about marriage a great deal both hypothetically and in specific personal detail.  We finally made the decision to get married and had a wonderful beautiful personal wedding while we were home.  Now though, it seems unreal that we have actually tied our lives together legally.  

One of the reasons we had been putting off getting married was the fact that neither of us could answer one question: how do you know when it will last?  We are in love, our relationship is stable, supportive, and above all fun, but does this mean that it will last a lifetime?  We are both intelligent and well educated and we know that people change and that love in your 20's does not necessarily mean that you will still be compatible and in love in your 60's.  So how do you make the decision to marry?

Obviously, we made the decision as we are now wearing some extra jewellery.  We decided that if you can never know, and as we were already planning 5-10 years in advance we figured that was as good as married anyways.  We therefore committed our lives together.

How do you make these life decisions though?  How can you know what will be best for you 10, 20, 50 years down the road?  I guess the answer is that you can't, you can only do the best you can with what you know now and commit yourself to working on it in the future.  

You also have to come to terms with the fact hat you might truly want different things in the future, and that's alright.  You are allowed to grow and change, and you can change you life as this happens.

Chile assassin

Have you ever wondered why some chiles are mild and some knock your socks off - with absolutely not way of telling the difference except popping one in your mouth?  I have been suffering from chopping up a chile to go in our dinner tonight - my hand is on fire and it doesn't matter how often I wash my hands.  Of course, I grabbed a different chile out the other night, chopped it up, and ate it and never even noticed the heat.

May your life be interesting, indeed.

Looking Forward into 2009

I know this is a little late, but I wanted to spend some time thinking about what I wanted for myself in the coming year.

1)Move and create a balanced home with Mr. P

2)Travel to the Middle East to pursue my research and for pleasure

3)Finish writing my background chapter

4)Write up the majority of my case studies (Gobekli, Jerf, Nevali, Jericho, Asikli, Mureybet)

5)Spend more time exploring the British backcountry

6)Continue to explore healthy, cheap, and more diverse meals

Of these things, numbers 1, 5 and 6 will have the biggest impact on my quality of life, while the other 3 are more timeline items than goals per se, but as a PhD is one of the biggest projects someone can take on, I think it's important to acknowledge them here.

Weakling PhD's

Well, this morning I invigilated an exam for a woman who has problems with her hands, meaning that I was scribing for her. This was the first time I was scribing, and while I understood the process, I was nervous about how things would work out - what about spelling? grammar? punctuation? Turns out that spelling and grammar weren't a problem, and punctuation was just something you had to get a feel for. All in all, it was a very relaxing exam and I got to read a little bit more of Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron, which I'm enjoying very much.

What I didn't expect was how wussy being a PhD student has made me. I wrote for maybe 1:30 this morning, and my hand was cramping like there was no tomorrow. When I was an undergrad, I wrote for hours at a time sometimes - taking notes, writing exams, and while I ended up in pain, it was after many more hours than 1:30. I guess this is what happens when you no longer attend classes and spend all of your time typing or reading - never writing longhand!

Ritual: What is and isn't?

I'm currently working on a chapter for my thesis discussing Neolithic ritual.  However, I need to expand on my definition of ritual.  To that end, I've been reading Catherine Bell's book.  I personally believe that all aspects of behaviour can be construed as ritual in nature, but this definition has little utility archaeologically - as it means that there is no category of evidence that can be separated out as being ritual.  There is the joke that any item that isn't understood by archaeologists is considered ritual, but this is also not very satisfactory for an understanding of Neolithic society.

Ritual has historically been approached from one of two directions - either associating it with religion and beliefs, or referring to the more daily aspects.  Both of these are technically correct, but religious ritual would seem to be a subsection of a wider definition of ritual where all actions communicate meaning ascribed by the participants.  

Bell points out that theorists have distinguished between the thoughts and beliefs and the actions of rituals, while at the same time saying that ritual mediates between thoughts and actions, allowing practitioners to  integrate and reaffirm their beliefs by acting them out.  This is a very theoretical statement though, that can be applied to many different sorts of actions, and again, depends on the context of the actions and the meanings that are applied to them by the participants.  This means that while all actions are ritual to some degree, as they will all be communicative and mediating between thoughts and actions, some are more ritualized than others.

How does this help archaeologists understand enigmatic artifacts that they believe would have had some "ritual" function?  I'm not sure it does, that's the problem.  We are interested in how these objects were used, what their use accomplished and how they were perceived by the practitioners.  Even if we have a very specific definition of the types of actions that are considered ritual, this does not help us answer our questions about a specific artifact.  

Conference Presenting and Recovery

Well, this weekend I had the opportunity to present my first academic paper at an archaeological conference.  It was not the first conference I had attended, but attending as a PhD student presenting a paper was a very different experience.  People actually seemed interested in speaking to me and after my paper I had a number of individuals come up to me to discuss my research.  This was very flattering and I just can't believe how exciting it is to have people taking an interest in me.

Of course, I then came home and collapsed in a heap.  I was totally worn out from all the networking and socializing that had been going on.

Yesterday, I did almost nothing but buy groceries and watch tv.  I bought a whole bunch of veggies to experiment with this week and explore some of the recipes in Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian.  Tonight, I think I'll be making stirfried pork with kale, mushrooms, and peppers with chilies and garlic - not exactly out of the book, but inspired by!