inspiration

I am doing office hours in the Classics department - every Friday, 9:30-10:30 - and this coupled with my other outreach efforts to Classics have reawakened my long-dormant academic interests. If there are no students (or faculty) looking for help - today has been the most quiet I've seen it - I spend my time poking around the Classics and archaeology blogs and web resources, trying to update myself on where things have gone in the 8 years since I've been aware of things. I mean, last time I was actively doing archaeology, blogs barely existed, and the main classical archaeology web site was a collection of links maintained starting in about 1994 by Sebastian Heath at Michigan.

Turns out there are some interesting people - some of whom I know or have met, like Sebs and Charles Watkinson, others of whom I am one degree from, like Chuck Jones - who are thinking about the intersections of classical archaeology, publishing, libraries, and technology (Sebs is a technologist, Charles is a publisher, and Chuck is a librarian). It's very interesting, and it makes me say to myself, hey, this is an area I could have something to contribute to! So. Need to keep reading, and get up to date, and then think about a) sticking my nose out there in the conversation and b) connecting with the archaeologists I know here and elsewhere and bringing these ideas to them.

in immense dorkitude news

mr. flea's working title for his current project is: On the Origin of Feces: Source Characterization of Pathogenic Contamination in Agriculturally-Impacted Watersheds.

And yes, it is about tracking back where bad germs (like e. coli) that come from animal shit came from, when they end up in public waters, like rivers and lakes.

severe weather night

We had tornado watch #3 - nine months into living in GA - tonight. This was not in the advertisements for beautiful Georgia. I don't think we ever had a warning in NC; I recall one in Cincinnati once and I was terrified then, too. And at least there I lived in a brick building with a basement.

We seem to have evolved into big booming thunderstorms now; there's a tornado warning maybe 15 miles south right now but the storms are running pretty dead west to east. Casper managed to fall asleep about 30 seconds after an enormous crack of thunder. Before that we talked about how even if lightning stuck our house we would probably be safe (I think that's true, anyway), and if something happened to our house we would go next door to S.'s house and call 911, and S.'s family would let us sleep there if our house was destroyed, and I explained insurance. And then we talked about mummies and vegetarianism. The wide variety always amuses me!