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!