Things That Are Awesome
And everything else here.
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Lifescouts: Sunrise Badge
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Lifescouts is a badge-collecting community of people who share real-world experiences online.Much like the picnic badge, this one is much less idyllic when it involves waking up at 4am for months so you can be out on the survey line before dawn every day.
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Lifescouts: Picnic Badge
If you have this badge, reblog it and share your story! Look through the notes to read other people’s stories.
Click here to buy this badge physically (ships worldwide).
Lifescouts is a badge-collecting community of people who share real-world experiences online.
I’ve picnicked for real, yes, but way more often than that, I’ve eaten lunches that require no refrigeration and have no perishable ingredients in the middle of nowhere sitting on a sideways screen, an upturned bucket, or the ground. Do those count?
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Welp, going to Italy for a field school at the end of June. Wish me luck.
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Oh my god. I’m cleaning out my field pack for tomorrow’s survey and somehow between the last project and now my lunchbox decided to give up the ghost. This is irritating, yes, but the real problem here is that the only other insulated lunch bag of the same size in the house is sparkly Lisa Frank.
I am not meeting my new field crew with a Lisa Frank lunch bag.
“I am a serious scientist, guys, I promise!”
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sphinxfeather replied to your post: Fuckin’ finally. Shovelling time is nigh once…Yay! Happy diggin, mud-movin, meticulous brushing and recordin, screen-shakin…inclement weather…insect filled fun times? EMPLOYMENT YAY!!!
I know, right? Why am I excited about this again?
Even without listing cactus and rattlesnakes. And actually, I’ll be in east TX, so depending on how swampy it is, possibly water moccasins, too. Those bastards will chase you.
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Fuckin’ finally.
Shovelling time is nigh once more!
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In the pictures of the dig that may have found Richard III (!!!!!!), who are the reenactors? Why are they there? If you had the budget, would you ever consider hiring honor guards when exhuming high-ranked human remains? --Zee
Asked by Anonymous
I didn’t see any reenactors in the article I read, where was that?
And I think an honour guard would be paid for by the family/government the remains would be connected to, not the archaeologists themselves. We did have a family…no wait, if I had been working on a cemetery last winter, there would have been a very good chance that some family would have come out to watch us exhume the guy that cemetery and associated settlement was theoretically named for (assuming such a place existed, of course), but they would have done so on their own time and money, leaving the archaeologists nervous about accidentally saying the wrong thing (archaeologists get what we call Field Tourrettes and also long bones wrapped in tin foil look an awful lot like burritos when you’ve been working all day and want dinner), but not responsible for bringing them out there.
Zee, just get a Tumblr already! And make Lex get one, too!
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I probably should have mentioned yesterday that we did get home, but I was tired.
It was the most nerve-wracking last leg to a trip I’ve ever been on, though. Small Town Dodge Dealership didn’t have the part we needed, so they zip-tied the hanging fuel line to the gas tank door to keep it out of the way so we could drive the last 5 hours home.
They also told me that the fuel line was “bent” and that it was probably possible to put gas in, but very slowly because of that bend.
So we set off, and because there’s no actual gas cap, our gauge goes down faster than we’d hoped as some of the gas evaporates. We pull in to try and slowly fill up, only to find that the line is not bent, it’s completely crumpled like a crushed aluminum can, and that there’s also a crack in that mess, so there’s no way we can put any gas in. At the last station before the massive blow-out, Mags had accidentally put about a gallon and a half more of expensive gas in than she’d intended. This extra gallon and a half was now the only thing that might get us home.
We come into Austin and the traffic is pretty good (Austin traffic is objectively some of the worst in Texas, especially compared to its size), but Austin is full of hills and the gauge is now at the top of the empty line and dropping fast. We’ve had the AC turned off for a while to conserve gas, but this is Texas and it’s hot as balls, so it’s not fun. We can see that the highway going North is completely backed up, but thankfully that’s not our problem and South is going more or less smoothly, however we’re are now at the bottom of the empty line. We get off the highway on the closest major road to our house and immediately stop at a red light. When the car is stopped, we can feel it doing the spastic jolting forward thing that means it’s eking out every last drop of gas, but it’s not sputtering yet. We somehow manage to get through every other light at green, and I claim credit for this because of the sheer willpower I had focused on every light we saw.
We pull onto our street, which is just one long hill with our house at the top. Mags cheats at the stop sign because actually stopping now means it’ll never start up again.
Victory. We pull into the driveway to be met by our oldest cat, Paul, and my dad, who had steadfastly not offered to come pick us up until we were on our side of town because he’s a self-absorbed dick.
In conclusion:
- crumpled and cracked gas line held up by zip-ties
- evaporating gas
- inability to put any more gas in
- Austin AND Dallas in our way
= Challenge fucking accepted. -
lostinpandorica started following youHm, normally I try to post archaeology stories for new followers, but I only really know you from Sherlock stuff, so…actually I’m gonna resurrect “Am I an Archaeologist or a Hitman?” It’s been a while since I did one of those.
Earlier this summer, while I was staying in a ludicrously expensive hotel and wearing my whole Jim Moriarty ensemble, someone I work with called me out of the blue to tell me that he’d found a dead body on the side of a road. Actually, to brag about this.
Was this: A) one of my henchmen letting me know that The Job was Done while I relaxed in my latest safehouse? or B) a bored archaeologist who now had to wait for a whole bunch of paperwork to be processed because of a Native American burial in the path of road construction while I went to A-Kon (leading to me taking the call in a room full of non-archaeologists “Wow, human remains? Right next to where you live? That’s awesome!”)?
You may never know.
But I did pick up a pretty sweet crown.
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![I’m on a new project now, which is not the first project since the one that may or may not have happened, I just didn’t write about those since they weren’t that exciting.
Highlights of this field session included:
Pictured is what comes out of your boots after a project
Waking up at 4:40 every morning
Going to bed at 6 one day because I’d been running on a deficit for days and sleeping happily all the way through
Seeing a chicken on the side of a highway in the middle of the small city where we’re staying. It was just chilling on the side of the road, pecking at the grass and considering whether or not it should go explore the Lowe’s parking lot.
Having a boss with brain damage. And I mean this entirely literally and not judgmentally. He’s not stupid, he’s just an odd duck and it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen next with him. I think the best anecdote to describe what he’s like is this: one of my coworkers* asked him a question and in the middle of answering it - mid-sentence - he stops, gets out of the truck, goes to root around in the back for something, doesn’t find it, gets back in the truck and picks up the sentence right where he left off. Now imagine that every interaction with him is a little like that and you’ll get the idea what it’s like to work with him. [UPDATE: As I was preparing to post this, he just sent me an extremely long text about a philosophical debate that started months ago.]
*Said coworker may or may not have also worked on The Project That Never Was, but he’s definitely the one who brought a huge book of Marvel stickers and demanded everyone have a chosen mascot. If you knew anything about comics, you could choose your own (though the selection of characters was really random so most people didn’t get anything like their favourite), and if you had no idea who these people were, those of us who chose our own would choose for you (“Hey, what superhero has four-letter turrets for Iranian Ziva?” “Punisher.” “Yes, I get to wear a big skull!”). This is how I ended up with Dr Doom on my hardhat. Said coworker shall henceforth be called the Silver Surfer. We spent this session talking about the Avengers and Skyrim.
Until we found the back way, our route into the site was a tiny strip of land just one rainstorm away from being part of the murky swamp surrounding it. There’s also very dense forest including trees that extend and meet over the top of the road and don’t let in any light, of which there is already very little because we get out there more or less at dawn. The whole place looks like it should be infested by Ringwraiths or giant spiders or something.
We have to wear hardhats in the middle of an open field with absolutely nothing else around that might possibly pose a danger to us except for falling birds or sudden rains of frogs.
Hardhats are hot as balls and you can’t wear brimmed hats under them to keep the sun out of your face.
It’s already hot enough out there that 4 people drank 4 gallons of water in 4 hours.
Hardhats are like tiny saunas for your head.
Have I mentioned I hate wearing hardhats?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6em66tJEp1qgx6iro1_250.jpg)
I’m on a new project now, which is not the first project since the one that may or may not have happened, I just didn’t write about those since they weren’t that exciting.Highlights of this field session included:- Pictured is what comes out of your boots after a project
- Waking up at 4:40 every morning
- Going to bed at 6 one day because I’d been running on a deficit for days and sleeping happily all the way through
- Seeing a chicken on the side of a highway in the middle of the small city where we’re staying. It was just chilling on the side of the road, pecking at the grass and considering whether or not it should go explore the Lowe’s parking lot.
- Having a boss with brain damage. And I mean this entirely literally and not judgmentally. He’s not stupid, he’s just an odd duck and it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen next with him. I think the best anecdote to describe what he’s like is this: one of my coworkers* asked him a question and in the middle of answering it - mid-sentence - he stops, gets out of the truck, goes to root around in the back for something, doesn’t find it, gets back in the truck and picks up the sentence right where he left off. Now imagine that every interaction with him is a little like that and you’ll get the idea what it’s like to work with him. [UPDATE: As I was preparing to post this, he just sent me an extremely long text about a philosophical debate that started months ago.]
- *Said coworker may or may not have also worked on The Project That Never Was, but he’s definitely the one who brought a huge book of Marvel stickers and demanded everyone have a chosen mascot. If you knew anything about comics, you could choose your own (though the selection of characters was really random so most people didn’t get anything like their favourite), and if you had no idea who these people were, those of us who chose our own would choose for you (“Hey, what superhero has four-letter turrets for Iranian Ziva?” “Punisher.” “Yes, I get to wear a big skull!”). This is how I ended up with Dr Doom on my hardhat. Said coworker shall henceforth be called the Silver Surfer. We spent this session talking about the Avengers and Skyrim.
- Until we found the back way, our route into the site was a tiny strip of land just one rainstorm away from being part of the murky swamp surrounding it. There’s also very dense forest including trees that extend and meet over the top of the road and don’t let in any light, of which there is already very little because we get out there more or less at dawn. The whole place looks like it should be infested by Ringwraiths or giant spiders or something.
- We have to wear hardhats in the middle of an open field with absolutely nothing else around that might possibly pose a danger to us except for falling birds or sudden rains of frogs.
- Hardhats are hot as balls and you can’t wear brimmed hats under them to keep the sun out of your face.
- It’s already hot enough out there that 4 people drank 4 gallons of water in 4 hours.
- Hardhats are like tiny saunas for your head.
- Have I mentioned I hate wearing hardhats?
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Remember when I said work sucked? That was entirely due to bad management and not the work itself, which is not bad at all. But apparently I shouldn’t’ve given the universe that kind of an opening, because now I’m being yanked off this excavation in the middle of the field session and put on a survey*.
That’s 10 miles long.
In a swamp.
We have two days.
And two people.
The other of which is a guy who normally does nautical work and is EXTREMELY BAD at authority and responsibility.
It pays about 30% less than what I’m on right now.
The higher-ups want us to do this, but don’t want to tell us any details or get us hotel rooms or work out what happens to our per diem from the project we were on in the first place.
We might also have to wear fire-proof suits, which are more likely to make us pass out from heatstroke than any actual flames.
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*Excavations mean staying in one place with ready access to water, shade, and port-a-cans, the ability to chop down any spiky things growing nearby and generally no wildlife that wants to stick around heavy machinery and people.
Survey means hiking for miles through cactus, mesquite, snakes, wasps, spiders, and angry landowners in the sun with only the supplies you can carry on your back along with your shovel and hand-screen.
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Today is the 103rd day of the year.
So far this year, I have spent 76 days in hotel rooms (3 of which were a vacation).
I am so tired.
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When you’re in field clothes, no one has to know that that stain is from breakfast this morning and not work months ago.
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I haven’t died by tornado yet, but there did end up being one 8 miles down the road I’m staying on, but I didn’t find out about it until morning. Not that honey badger would have given a shit, he had to be up at 6 and wasn’t letting a little thing like a impending death get in the way of sleep.
It rained a shitload, though, so we got stuck in the clay on the way to the site and had to call the client to send help, which they did in the form of another pickup. Which also got stuck in the mud. In the end, a bulldozer had to drag us both out.
In other news, the site continues to be boring as hell.
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I don’t think I’ve ever heard tornado sirens outside of a test before now.
Simon. 25. Archaeologist and general-purpose nerd. If a raised eyebrow could talk, that would be my narrative voice.
