30 August 2005
I went to Student Health today because I've been having an issue with my
ears - aching, itching, and feeling stuffy. Based on what I know of the
human anatomy and what I can find out on WebMD, I had pretty much narrowed
it down to an allergy or sinusitis. What does the doctor think it is?
Survey says... it's either an allergy or sinusitis. It's nice to know
that I'm paying fees to Student Health so that doctors can tell me the
same thing I already diagnosed myself with. :p
The way I entertain myself at Student Health, though, is to figure out a
way to tell the doctor that I'm not a moron in as few words as possible.
Sometimes it's by knowing my entire medication history. Once it was
because I knew my gluteus medius from my gluteus maximus. Today it was by
saying "You mean the eustachian tubes?" in response to some dumbed-down
explanation of what's between my ear and my throat.
Posted at 1900.
29 August 2005
It's a bird, it's a squirrel, it's a mouse...? Whatever it is, it's dead,
decomposing, and disgusting-smelling. There is a horrid smell coming from
somewhere around our fireplace, so our best guess is that a mouse managed
to crawl in between the metal chimney lining part and the brick/siding
part, and then was unable to get out. Thus, dead and decomposing.
Patrick called a chimney sweep company named
(I'm not making this
up) Your Ash Is Mine. The
woman said our best bet was to just let the thing decompose. "It'll stop
smelling in about a week," she promised. Great. Don't get me wrong, I'm
OK with dead things, but really only when they're skeletonized. When they
smell and have maggots on them, I'm very much not OK with that. This
makes me wish for a
kinder and gentler
time
when our cats were found tossing around the stiff, maimed body of a mouse
that could easily be thrown out.
Posted at 1321.
28 August 2005 - Happy bday Carl!
In response to the ridiculous equal-time claims of Kansas lawmakers to
include intelligent design in the science curriculum, one guy created the
Church of the Flying Spaghetti
Monster and is demanding equal time for his religious theory of
creation. In the beginning, the FSM created the mountains, trees, and
midgets. In
addition, pirate regalia is the preferred dress code of this religion
because there is a statistical correlation between the decline in the
number of pirates since 1800 and the increase in global warming and
natural disasters. Their heaven has a stripper factory and a beer
volcano. FSM has nearly 115,000 hits on Google (well, I guess it
has 115,001 now),
including an
entry
in Wikipedia.
But mostly, this new religion is amusing for the great many clever puns
that made me laugh out loud. Adherents to this religion are called
Pastafari. Their closing blessing is
"RAmen." I'm trying
to
decide whether I want the FSM fish-style bumper sticker or the
Kansas Museum of Science
mug. Although I'm also partial to "This mug holds coffee AND
pisses off Jesus."
Posted at 1209.
Did you know that Carl (or Karl) Ober was a character in
1940's
It's a
Date, a musical comedy about an actress who chases older men?
Carl is a European playwright who gives a young ingenue the lead in his
play over her mother, an aging actress. The role of Carl is played by
S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall. So,
happy 28th birthday, Cuddles! Now go get yourself a webpage. :)
Posted at 1425.
27 August 2005 - AHS 10th Reunion!
So I was checking on the Student Health webpage for info on scheduling my
next annual gyno exam (yipee!), and I found this
flash demonstration
of what an annual exam involves. I don't like horror films and this is
truly, truly frightening: "No,
nooooo! Not the speculum! Run, lady!" Patrick thinks the video was done
by a man. I agree, since the page is actually titled, "Here ya go!"
That, and did you notice how large the cross-section of the pelvis is in
relation to the doctor's fingers?
And, yes, this is what I'm doing today instead of going to my high
school's
10-year
reunion. God, I'm old.
Posted at 1432.
26 August 2005
I'm going to coin another new phrase: Adjunct Graduate Student.
Approaching another semester in which I am taking more courses outside my
department than within it, I think that I should get adjunct status in the
Classics department. It's not fair that only professors get that title.
Posted at 0950.
25 August 2005
Today I had a quintessentially European
experience in Eckerd, of all places. My total came to $5.34. I handed
the cashier five ones, a
quarter, and a dime. She replied, "I have three pennies!" Uhm, bully for
you. She continued, "Give me another penny." So I obliged. She handed
me my dime back. I must have looked confused because she said, "Now give
me a nickel." Thus, I was badgered into making exact change, rather than
getting a penny back on my transaction.
This kind of thing always happens in Europe, particularly when you hand
them a 50 or 20 euro note, since that's what the ATMs dispense.
Fortunately, some ATMs these days are smarter and give you a bunch of
20s,
a couple 10s, and a couple 5s. But two years ago in Greece, you'd often
get a couple 50s, and you can't change those anywhere in bumfuck Crete
without a lot of under-breath-muttering from shopkeepers. But I did
experience this even in Lisbon, when I handed a cashier a 20 for a 2,50
or so tab. It's hard when you don't speak the language - I can't even
imagine the above exchange if I didn't speak English - so you usually just
look sad and shake your head and prepare to hear your nationality taken in
vain while the cashier begrudgingly makes change.
Posted at 1517.
23 August 2005
I needed to buy a block of cheese for dinner tonight. Were I still in Lisbon, I
would have had to walk 10 minutes to a bus stop, take a 15-minute bus ride, buy the
cheese, take the bus back, and walk back up the hill to my apartment. However, I'm
back in Durham, so I got in my gas-guzzling MR2 and drove the 1/4 mile to the
Harris Teeter, bought the cheese, and drove back. Yup, I'm proud to live in
America, where no one would question this egregious lack of concern for gas prices,
the environment, and my own cardiovascular health.
Posted at 2043.
21 August 2005 - Happy Bday Doods!
OK, I'm back in the US! The flights back were pretty heinous, though.
Lisbon offered up two final screw-yous before I left: I got a nasty cold
(that I originally thought was just a hoarse voice from too much drinking
and karaoke), and the airport wouldn't let my British Air flight take off
on time. This caused me to miss my transatlantic connection from Heathrow
to O'Hare, of course. I was rebooked on a flight through JFK and got to
hang out in London drinking tea for a few hours.
The LHR-JFK flight was easily the worst I've ever taken. Because I had to
be rebooked, I got the shittiest seat on the plane: a middle seat in a row
of five between the two oldest, fattest, most Jewish people I've ever
seen. Both were literally spilling over into my seat. Not only did I not
have any armrests, but I had arm fat from other people hanging over the
armrests into my seat. They kept dropping food and other stuff and being
unable to pick it up because they were so damned fat. When their kosher
meals came, they passed food to one another over, around, and in front of
me. It seems I was in the middle
of about 10 friends who were all on a Mediterranean cruise together. So
one would come over to talk to the guy on the right aisle, telling him all
about her colonoscopy and how her son the doctor needs to find a nice
Jewish girl to marry, and would then go over and say the same thing to the
person on the left aisle, and the person a couple rows behind, etc. And
they would all bitch about how uncomfortable the plane was, when they were
taking up more than their share of the seat. Yeah.
It was totally
unclear which gate the flight from JFK to Raleigh was leaving from. Some
guy asked me if he was in the correct place for it, and I said I thought
so since I was going to Raleigh as well. He then decided to strike up a
conversation, asking me what I did, where I went to school, where I lived,
and telling me he is originally from Fayetteville, went to Campbell
University, but now plays pro
basketball for Germany. I
found
him on this Euro Basketball website. And a pic of him trying to
block
a shot. Of course, he immediately stopped hitting on me when he
noticed my
wedding ring and asked if I was married. :)
Anyway, pictures from Rome and Lisbon will be up soon. There are a lot of
them. But first, I need to unpack and wash some clothes.
Posted at 1016.
14 August 2005
Long time, no blog! Mostly because internet cafes and even the IPA have
firewalls or other methods in place to prevent me from telnetting or
ssh'ing so that I can update my blog and use command-line e-mail or pine.
Stupid internet cafes.
So things are going a bit better here now. The director of the programs
here got me into
a
different workshop -- this one with a really great
bioarchaeologist who totally knows her shit. The first day (Thursday), we
looked at teeth and she assessed our progress and just generally figured
out how advanced we were. At the end of the day, she said we could check
our e-mail (for free!) on the computers in the lab. So I went to the
closest one, which an archaeologist had been using, and noticed a PDF file
on it called "Roman bioarchaeology." I was bad and clicked on it, which
is like spying in someone's diary, but it was on the Desktop so it's not
like I looked very hard... anyway, it was my MA thesis! So I told Cidalia
and she was surprised and impressed. Then she talked to me for 15 minutes
about all the Roman cremations they have had to consult on and figured
that's why the other archaeologist had downloaded my thesis. At any rate,
it's a good thing I put it on the web - someone's already going to use it.
And I might get a parenthetical reference!
It's really quite impressive the setup they have at
IPA. Loads of skeletons - both
human and animal - researchers who are world-famous (like
Simon
Davis,
whom I think I will get to meet next week!), a bioarchaeologist who treats
me like a colleague (and has already suggested I come back for a
post-doc!), botanists, visiting scholars (including some woman who does
Roman glass and a palaeoanthro grad student from Tulane working on
Neanderthal/AMH femora morphological differences), free internet, etc.
This is the kind of program I had assumed I'd signed on for months ago.
But at least in the last two weeks I've gotten to work with the kind of
people on the kind of projects I thought I would be.
Right now, I'm at the giant mall in Lisbon,
Colombo,
checking e-mail,
eating lunch (gaspacho at the Loja das Sopas), and going to see
Charlie
ea
Fabrica de Chocolate at 3:50. At least the Portuguese don't dub
films. So things are looking up right now, although I still want to go
home. In case you can't wait for pics, a friend sent me a couple of us
(me, Jessica my roommate, and Paula a Portuguese student) at the Castle
and at Hard Rock, where Paula used to work. They're up at
killgrove.org/summer05.
Anyway, will relate the whole sordid story about the program I was in, the
instructor for it, and all the drama surrounding both when I return!
Posted at 1509.
5 August 2005
So it's Friday and the stupid instructor cancelled class again. Bastard.
We went to a castle instead and ate a big lunch and such. Yesterday we
also were dragged all over town by the Portuguese woman we befriended.
And saw the Gulbenkian Museum. Well, off!
Posted at 1634.
3 August 2005
Ola from Lisboa! So the Portuguese internet is a lot slower and more
expensive and annoying to use than what I had in Rome, hence no e-mail or
blogging from me for a while. I've been here for about a week and a half
now and am not really enjoying it. We're living in a crappy part of
Lisbon (the industrial district) that is far from everything else. My
roommates are utter drama queens. The workshop kind of blows, and I'm
really not learning anything. Mostly, I've been eating pastry (Pasteis de
Belem) and drinking the horrid Portuguese version of espresso.
Since I can't really post digital pics from an internet cafe, here's a
list of the stuff I've seen so far. You can google it yourself because
I'm too lazy to link to it and am paying for this privilege:
- Pasteis de Belem - a 19th century pastry and coffee shop in Belem,
near the museum that we're working at, that sells these amazing little
pastries that are like a cross between rice pudding and a churro.
- Torre de Belem
- Tomb of Vasco de Gama (at the Monastery of Sao Jeronimos)
- Museu Nacional de Arqueologia or whatever the heck it's called is
where I go every weekday from 10 to 4. With a 1-hour lunch break. And
usually we leave at 3:30 or so. Yeah, the Portuguese are laid-back.
- One weekend, we went up the coast to Sintra and saw a couple palaces
(Palacio Nacional and the Palacio de Pena) and a castle (Castelo dos
Mouros). The castle was cool as shit. You wouldn't see anything like it
in the US because people would undoubtedly jump or fall to their deaths.
Plus, we tend to be too fat to climb all the stairs.
- Lisbon's many funiculars, which are like trams or trolleys that go
up hills. So like a streetcar at a 45 degree angle.
Well, that's all I can think of. Perhaps I'll blog more later.
Especially if I get to the places I want to go to, like Coimbra, Porto,
and Evora (I think), which all have Roman ruins but are about 2 hours away
by train.
Posted at 1708.
