Stratigraphy

On my way home from work, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a shovel. Then I headed for the backyard and started digging.

It's been years since I did this for a living, but digging holes is apparently like riding a bike: you never forget. My arms and shoulders still remember exactly the leverage and pressure it takes to dig a round hole, 18 inches wide and 30 inches deep, the size of a standard archaeological test pit. Conveniently enough, this is also the size of hole the Internet recommends using to seat a hammock-post.

After 10 or 15 minutes, I started to notice what came out of the earth. At first, it was just adobe soil: incredibly hard, the kind of soil I used to sharpen my shovel for. A foot or so down, the earth became softer and darker. I bent down and rubbed it between my fingers. It had the texture of ash. I slammed the shovel down again and again, chopping a straight sided round hole into the earth. I cut through tree roots and levered intrusive rocks out of my way.

Once upon a time, I would have made this hole perfect. I would have documented the changes in soil that marked habitation layers or fire pits. I would have screened all the dirt for artifacts, and saved the ones I found in numbered paper bags.

I feel incredibly smug that even without all that effort, I found three pieces of broken glass, a fragment of a flower pot, and a very rusted but still perfectly recognizable square-cut nail.

Resolutions for Thirty

August 15 is my birthday. My guy has planned some sort of overnight something as a celebration; I'm not yet privy to the details. Before he & I started going out, I never expected to like surprises - but now I do, much the way I have learned to enjoy multiple flavors of coffee, nature shows & CSI, and funny books about travel.

I have also made some resolutions. The first is:

1. Store a clean t-shirt, jeans, and underwear along with my always-packed toiletries kit. That way, when Friday afternoon hits and I abruptly decide to get in the car and drive for a couple of hours, I'll be prepared - rather than having to madly try to make it to the Gap before they close at 9pm, as I did a couple of days ago.

You have reached the end of the Internet

This link is one of the funniest I've run across:

http://www.google.com/reader/next?go=noitems

What's the point of it? I have no idea. I just like it.

Update: down with stupid junk mail

A while back, I signed up for GreenDimes in an attempt to a) spend less time throwing out junk mail and b) cause less junk mail to be sent to landfills after I throw it out.

And guess what? It's working! Today, for example, I got exactly 3 pieces of mail: one bill from my accountant (ack, why couldn't GreenDimes have stopped that too?!); one retirement-account-related thing for my guy; and one ad from the SF Design Center, who think I'm still a grad student at Berkeley. You know what that means? No junk!

Ok, so last week I also got a J. Crew catalog. But they've been following me around ever since New York. Imagining I might escape so easily, is, clearly, way too much to ask.

Go GreenDimes go!

Trade books with me!

I read a lot. Side-effect: stacks of books that I don't intend to re-read. Solution (I hope): I've posted them on BookMooch.

So ... trade books with me! By the time you read this, I'll probably have more listed.

So far I've got:



And of course, other people have posted their books too....

In which I almost achieve a lifelong dream

Last week I received yet another "Save this cat!" email in my inbox. Sob story: cat is unhappy indoors, and sprays. Cat is sent to Animal Services. Cat is scheduled for euthanasia.

Enter the soft-hearted, cat-rescue-minded corporate employee that encountered said cat and sent out the email.

Enter yours truly. "I've always wanted a cat!" I think. "And this one has to be outdoors, so it won't cause any problems for my allergy-prone guy! This is the perfect cat for me!" I email the cat rescue person. Discussions ensue. Then I go away to a management conference (!), and ask the cat rescue woman to stall Animal Services on the whole euthanasia thing till I got back.

And while the cat rescue woman stalled, Animal Services decided that the cat did not spray after all, that probably its owners were lying (to make themselves feel better about dumping it?!). And so the cat is now officially up for adoption - for a family that has an indoor/outdoor home for it. This means that the cat is no longer for me.

I tell myself that hey, great, I saved a cat! My stalling gave it the time it needed to prove it could be a Good Pet after all. But somehow, that doesn't quite make up for expecting that by this time this week, I'd have a cat to pet when I get home.

The Portuguese are impressive

I've been in Portugal for the past couple of weeks (hence the lack of posts). I don't speak Portuguese (much), but that is largely irrelevant to travel in Portugal: most people there, at least those who work or interact with the tourism industry speak English.

And French.

And German.

In one hotel in Evora, the woman behind the reception desk easily greeted me in English, provided directions to the hotel over the phone in French, and then switched over to Portuguese again to ask a coworker about the breakfast setup. Wow. I've never seen anyone do anything like that. My own brain is far more sluggish: after just reading Portuguese for a couple of days, it refused to call up even the word for "thanks" in Spanish.

And oh, yeah, it was an awesome trip :)