No, not on a treadmill, although it would be nice to have a bit of free time for that. Actually, it’s where I’m at with work. I’ve been thinking about archaeology and ways that it can inform things besides our knowledge of past lifeways. For the past week or so, I’ve been running into lots of articles, posts, calls for white papers, and so on that connect to that in various ways. Today I attended a seminar that brought up a number of issues that archaeology could play a part in addressing in a meaningful way.
However, to take these thoughts further means I need a bit of time to think and read, and then try to put thoughts into sensible words that can communicate with a variety of communities. But the situation at work is still pretty stressful. My boss has sent her admin assistant to help me out and get cross-trained on our stuff for a week or two. Jennifer’s doing great, but it’s a really complex job, so she does have to ask me questions (which she does, instead of grinding to a halt, thank goodness) but I don’t actually know the filing system inside out (we’ve found 2 sets of files for some things where we would only expect one, and aren’t sure what the difference is yet) so sometimes it takes some time.
I am at least making progress on the reports, although ArcMap (the GIS program) decided to get weird this afternoon and refuse to import a bunch of STP (shovel test pit) locations I needed to finish a final map for one of the reports. It should have taken less than half an hour to do the map, but several hours later, no joy. Tomorrow (fingers crossed here).
I also have to finish assembling the PowerPoint for the Saturday Schoolyard talk this Saturday. Trace sent me his piece this evening (amazingly, he’d picked the same template & color scheme I was already using for my part, so that bit should be pretty easy. Heather just found out she isn’t leaving for Fairbanks for the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) meetings until Saturday night, so she’s going to talk too.
Sunday and Monday (which is a holiday in Alaska, so we are off work, theoretically) I am making a quick trip to Anchorage. Maybe I’ll get a little time to think on the plane…
Out of Ice and Time 