Thursday February 5, 2009

We wanted to put up a couple of new pics so you can see what we have been doing. The first one is of Dave sorting through a tray of artifacts. The second was taken in the wet lab where we washed everything. I know the shot is small, but this particular was full of small bones - especially snake vertebrae. Today we did more sorting and washing. Some of the artifacts are probably from about 4000 years ago. We saw a lot of snake and turtle bones which had been burned. This must have been a major part of the diet of the people of that time. We are still working of the Gumbo Limbo Hammock site and judging from all of the washing we did today, we will be working on this site for quite some time. Tomorrow we will be using books and charts to further identify the artifacts that we rough sorted yesterday. We now can tell the difference between hard shell and soft shell turtle carapace. I'm not sure how useful that is in daily life, but it is quite interesting. We did ask about the squirrel and apparently there is a whole family with this genetic defect. Some of them are albino, but the one we saw was not as it had the gray stripe down its back. We stopped on the way home for a burger and now are watching TV and doing embroidery. The temp this morning was 28 (a bit brisk for here), but it got up to 52 by the time we got out. It is supposed to get up to the mid 70's over the weekend - bring it on!

Wednesday February 4, 2009

Wow! We had a change in the weather this morning. It was 30 (very cold for Tallahassee) on the way into work and only 43 on the way home. They are expecting record lows tomorrow and Friday - everyone is walking around in parkas. We did some sorting this morning. We were looking at things that came from Gumbo Limbo Hammock in the Everglades and did a rough sort of the items: ceramics, shell, bones (mammal, bird, reptile), shark teeth, turtle shell, coral. It was fun to do that part of the job. After lunch, we went to the wet lab and washed more items from Gumbo Limbo. It was a bit tedious and each piece, no matter how small, has to be washed with a toothbrush to get the dirt off. We then put all of the washed pieces on big screen trays to dry for 2 days. Then we can sort them again. While we were outside dumping a batch of dirty water, we saw a weird squirrel - it was almost all white with a gray streak down its back. We will have to ask someone about it tomorrow - it was a new one to us. We are going out into the field next week. We will be working near Live Oak, FL along the Suwannee River. Will take some pix and let you know what kinds of things we find - if anything. We just finished out leftovers from our Cuban dinner and are ready to relax for the evening.

Tuesday February 3, 2009

We had a very relaxing evening last night and slept like logs when we finally went to bed - we had a very busy day! This bottom picture is a conch shell that had been used as a hammer - very cool. Today we pulled examples of pottery that had been found at various sites: Everglades, Key Largo, Sanibel Island, Miami , etc. That took us most of the morning as we had to find each one (there are about 100 boxes and each box has two levels and each level has four quadrants. In each quadrant are any where from 1 to 12 plastic bags with multiple specimens in each bag - so just finding the correct item takes a bit of doing even though everything is labeled. After lunch, we photographed all of the selected items in each category. We will include a couple of the photos so you can see the kinds of things we handled all day (see top of blog). We went to dinner at a Cuban restaurant tonight: The Black Bean - very good, but again, we will be having leftovers tomorrow night. We are now waiting for the laundry to be done so we will have clean clothes for the rest of the week. I'm not sure what we will be doing tomorrow, but that is the fun of it - always something new. We are still enjoying the warmer temps - 38 on our walk this morning and 57 on the way home from work - very nice.

Monday February 2, 2009

We did go to the Macaroni Grill last night and had a lovely dinner. We had plenty of leftovers to take back to the room. We watched a little TV and did some reading before going to bed. We slept much better last night. Got up at 6 to a temp of 46 and went for a walk. Came back and showered and then went to breakfast. We had packed our lunches last night so we were all set to go to work. We will probably be doing a variety of jobs, but we spent most of the day working with Carla. We were refiling a number of shell artifacts (4 boxes worth) from the Everglades. Some of them were very interesting. Who knew that the early people living in that area used conch shells as hammers? Of course, they don't have tons of rocks as we have in New England. Tomorrow we will be pulling artifacts out of boxes - hopefully not the same ones we put away today! Only kidding, we will be working with ceramics tomorrow. We think we will be going on a dig next week on the Swanee River - will let you know the details as we get them. We met a number of FSU students at the lunch room. We were dirty and tired when we got back to the motel and we were actually happy that we had leftovers for dinner as we need to put our feet up. We will try to bring the camera in tomorrow and put some pix in the blog tomorrow so you all can see what we are working with. The weather is certainly nice - it was 64 when we got out of work at 5:15.

Sunday February 1, 2009

Slept okay last night - it got a bit noisy about midnight and the bed was harder than we are used to, but all in all, not bad. Got up this morning and went for a walk. We managed to find a Publix grocery store not too far from where we are. We walked for about an hour - chilly, but not cold - and then came back to the room to shower. We went in to breakfast at a good time. A bus load of kids from Orlando were just leaving. They had been here for a ROTC competition and were taking home 5 trophies - I guess that was what all the shouting was for last night. Breakfast was quite extensive - lots of choices: eggs, sausage, biscuits, bagels, toast, cereal, fruit. When we were done we went back to the Publix (by car) and shopped for lunch items to take with us to work. We relaxed for a while and then using the GPS tried to find our route to start work tomorrow. We now know what the major glitch is with a GPS. It took us directly to the Archaeological Center, but right through downtown Tallahassee! This would probably not be where we want to be on a week day. It was all the more interesting because there were hundreds of people running a marathon through the city! We managed to eke our way back to the motel where we studied a map and started back to find the Center again. This route was longer, I'm sure, but did not go through the city center and hopefully will not be as heavily traveled tomorrow. We got back and made lunches, read and did some hobby work: Dave is carving a spoon and I am doing some embroidery. We will go out to eat in a while - we may walk up to the Macaroni Grill - it is not too far away. All of the walking has felt good. I'm not sure what the temp was today, but probably it was in the mid 60's. We are anxious to start work tomorrow and to see what kinds of things we will be doing.

Saturday January 31, 2009

Have a little catching up to do: We went for an early dinner last night at Ruby Tuesdays which was right next door to our motel. They had a great salad bar and broccoli and cheddar cheese soup - yum! We decided to hit the sack early and read for a while (at least one of us did) before falling asleep. We had a phone call and since the phone was on Dave's side of the bed, he answered it. What I didn't realize is that he answered it in his sleep! When he hung up, I asked him who was on the phone. He mumbled something about a phone message at the desk and the password was "hearts". I let it go and eventually shut off the light and went to sleep. We woke up quite early this morning (that's what happens when you go to bed early), showered and went to the office for breakfast. I asked the desk clerk about messages for us and she said she didn't put through any calls and that there were no messages for us. The only thing we can figure out is that someone was calling room-to-room and got a wrong number (they don't know how wrong it was!). So anyway, the magic word is "hearts" if you should get a call from the twilight zone!

We met a nice couple from PA at breakfast. They were on their way home (brrrr!) and had been in FL a month just visiting with various relatives and friends. We left the motel at 6:30 and drove across the street to gas up ($1.63). It was 27 out - thank god for seat heaters! We continued on I-95 for quite a while and then cut across through the boonies of GA before dropping down into FL about 50 miles from Tallahassee. We found our new home (a Best Western suite) with no problem thanks to our new GPS (Thanks, Louise!). We arrived here at 2 PM and the weather was 65 and sunny - a glorious day. We unloaded the car and went for a walk to orient ourselves to the area. We are on a main strip full of fast food places and stores of all sorts. We called all of the kids to let them know we had arrived and then walked over to a huge mall and ate dinner at the food court at a place called McAlister's Deli. Dad had a turkey sandwich and I had a caesar salad with chicken. We then walked through a parking lot and went to the cinema. We saw "The Uninvited" - certainly not a relaxing movie - basically a psycho thriller with a number of twists and turns. We found our way back here and will now relax for a while before going to bed. Our room is quite nice - king sized bed, mini-fridge, microwave, couch and chair, coffee table, desk and dresser. I'm sure we will be quite comfortable here.

Friday January 30, 2009

We're back!!! We have decided to revive the blog as we are on our way to Florida for our month of volunteering with the National Park Service. We woke up this AM at 2, showered, put the last items in the car and were on the road at 2:30 AM. We did quite well - hit a small amount of traffic just before the George Washington bridge and some heavier traffic in Baltimore and the D.C. area - but altogether not bad. We stopped in Virginia for brunch and then just snacked in the car until we stopped for the night in Florence, South Carolina at 3:30 PM. We stopped a couple of times for gas, but otherwise just to change drivers. We drove 785 miles today - 13 hours in total. As soon as we checked into the motel, we went for a very long walk - we both were suffering from DB (dead butt)! The temp was 20 when we left the house and it is now 58 and sunny. There are palm trees on the grounds of our motel!! We think we have about 7 hours or so of driving tomorrow to get to Tallahassee. We will be anxious to settle in to our home-away-from-home.