Friday February 27, 2009

Today was a day of flexibility. We checked out and got to the lab at the usual time. The only one there at first was Jeff and he said he was only staying for two hours as he had to give a talk at his son's school for Dinosaur Month. He says that is the greatest consternation of archaeologists: everyone expects them to be experts on dinosaurs when it is paleontologists who study this field. I'm sure the kids will enjoy his talk anyway. Thadra came in a bit late as they were late getting back in from the field last night and Carla was not feeling well so was taking a sick day. Since we had finished our project, we decided to say goodbye to the people both upstairs and down that we had made friends with and get on the road. We had expected to work half a day, but ended up leaving at 9:15 so on to Plan B. We got on the highway and decided to spend the afternoon at Cape Canaveral. What we didn't realize was how much time it would take us to get there. As we got closer we could see that there wouldn't be enough time to really see the whole space center so we went to Plan C. We stopped at 2 in the afternoon in Titusville and gave our friends Mel and Dottie Fringer a call. Mel taught English at Fitch and Dottie taught business education at Ledyard. They were really surprised to hear from us and invited us over to their house. What a great time we had! They have been retired for 16 years and they look wonderful! They have a lovely home here in Titusville - lots of room and a beautiful screened Florida room complete with pool. We sat out on the patio and chatted about mutual friends both retired and those who are still teaching. We met their Siamese kitties, Margaret and Jackson, and caught up with their news. They go on a couple of birding trips each year. They just got back from India and are going to South Africa in the fall. They also volunteer one day a week at the National Wildlife Refuge here. They still have a camper and go with a local club one weekend a month. They also do a trip with the camper each summer to get out of the Florida heat ending up the trip in Nebraska for reuniting with family. We went out to dinner at a local seafood restaurant, Dixie Crossroads. If you are ever in this area, you have to stop! It was a huge restaurant, but well run and the food was delicious!! My favorite part of the meal was the rock shrimp - they are smaller than regular shrimp, but very tasty. We drove back to their house and said our goodbyes and got back to the motel at 9:30. We didn't read too long as we were both really tired, but we had a really nice day visiting with old friends. By the way, for those of you who teach/taught at Fitch and are reading this blog, Mel and Dottie say hi. Tomorrow we will continue on our way to see Larry and Sandy. I think I will wear shorts for the first time tomorrow - it was in the 80's this afternoon.

Thursday February 26, 2009

Wow! Another nice day. Fifty this morning and mid-seventies this afternoon. We were able to borrow another laptop this morning and finished entering all of the data for the Gumbo Limbo Hammock project. Prior to entering anything we had to count and weigh each bag of like items. There were a few things that we entered as one bag instead of counting each piece. One of these was the bag of snake vertebrates. We counted out 100 of them and weighed them. We then replaced that 100 in the bag and weighed the whole bag. This gave us the estimate - there were just over 8000 snake vertebrae in the bag! I will be seeing them in my sleep!!! Dave took a few more photos of the neatest things that we found and then we were done. We boxed everything up and Cat (the computer tech) will put the data base on the network so that it will be all set for Margo when she returns. We worked for Mike Russo (the bone expert) for a couple of hours this afternoon. We labeled shells and animal bones and put them into his collection. We stopped and gassed up the car for our trip tomorrow. When we got back to the motel, we ate some soup we had picked up the other day and then packed our suitcases. We put all of the things we don't need tonight into the trunk so that we won't have much to carry out tomorrow. Someone asked about Extreme Make Over. It seems that just the camera man is staying here and he never comes to breakfast early so we haven't seen him since the first day. According to the local TV news, the house will be finished tomorrow. We will have to catch the show when it comes out to see how it all came out.

Wednesday February 25, 2009

Well, it is finally getting warmer. It was 50 this morning and in the low seventies when we left work. We ate lunch outside today at the picnic tables - the sun felt great. We decided to go back to Torreya Grill last night for dinner - it was as good as the first time. We had the leftovers for dinner tonight. We finally finished the re-sorting today!!! Tomorrow we will count and weigh all of the specimen bags and if we can find a computer, I will enter everything so that the whole project will be in the database. Dave will take pictures of the special things that we have found such as the wolf teeth, the shark tooth pendant, etc. I'm sure Margo will appreciate that everything is done and ready for her analysis so that she can now write her report. We left a little early today so we could do a little laundry. Sandy assures me that we can use their washer and dryer, but I hate to show up with a huge bundle of dirty laundry. Tomorrow night we will pack up so that we can check-out on Friday morning. I have to say that this has been a nice place to stay and it really helped that it had a sitting room instead of just one big bedroom. We have had a wonderful month here, but we do look forward to getting home and seeing the kids and grands. Hopefully, the weather will have improved by the time we get home. Laura called tonight and she said they got another foot of snow on Sunday night! It may be some time before they have Spring up there.

Tuesday February 24, 2009

This morning was another chilly one: in the upper twenties, but it got into the upper sixties by this afternoon. Again it was quiet at the lab today. There are two students from Macao here for six months, Fanda and Domingo and they are working in the lab two days a week now. For those of you who aren't familiar with Macao, it is tiny - only 6 square miles - with a population of a half a million people. It is located near Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland and was a colony of Portugal until 1999. Domingo was sick today so Fanda helped us sort artifacts. We did finish the bag today (yeah!) so tomorrow we will re-sort and label. We had a surprise at lunch today - a couple of the guys downstairs bought two King cakes for Fat Tuesday. We purposely made sure that we did not get the piece with the tiny doll, not that we wouldn't love the one year of good luck, but because the one who gets it must provide the cake next year. We came back to the motel to do a few bills and the blog and will go out to dinner later. The two pictures I put up today are the cool shark tooth I found yesterday - hopefully, you can see the small holes drilled into the top and Flat Stanley. He ran a foot race at the MagLab open house and had his speed checked by radar. He is standing next to his speed which was posted on the board for all to see - he was very proud.

Monday February 23, 2009

The temps here are all over the place: 28 degrees this morning and 63 this afternoon. We had a quiet day at work today. Jeff, Carla, and Thadra are back out at the Suwannee River. They are being joined by a volunteer from Ohio who apparently worked here last year. They will be back on Friday. Brendon, a student at FAMU, was in this afternoon, but we won't see him again until Thursday. Dave and I worked all day on sorting artifacts. I had the best find of the day: a 4000 year old shark tooth that had two small holes drilled in the top. Someone probably wore this around his neck. I meant to take a picture for the blog, but forgot. I will try to do it tomorrow. Our eyes were falling out of our heads by the end of the day - the snake vertebrae especially are very tiny. We probably won't do too much reading tonight. The good news is that we are almost at the end of the last bag. We will still have some re-sorting to do before we are satisfied with the job, but the end is in sight! We ended up going out for dinner last night to Sonny's Bar-B-Q (thanks to brother Ed for introducing us to Sonny's last year). It was delicious and we had plenty of leftovers to have barbeque sandwiches tonight - also good.

Sunday February 22, 2009

After breakfast this morning we decided to drive up to Thomasville, Georgia. We had heard that it was a neat town and it was only about thirty miles north of here. It was quite a pretty town. It reminded us of some of the towns in the midwest: wide main street with angle parking on both sides. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and all of the shops were closed, but we enjoyed walking around and doing a bit of window shopping. They had plenty of antiques shops and it was fun to look in the windows to see some of the wares. We also picked up a walking tour guide and roamed around some of the side streets looking at the variety of architecture which ranged from Victorian to Georgian to Classic Revival and Italian Renaissance. We also stumbled upon a landmark in the town. A huge live oak tree whose limb span is 162 feet which is higher than Niagara Falls is deep! The tree is 68 feet tall and has a trunk circumference of 24 feet. We chatted with some ladies who also were admiring the tree. They were from Tennessee and were heading to Florida for a week's vacation. They very kindly took our picture standing in front of the tree. After walking for a couple of hours, we decided to head back to Tallahassee. We stopped at Publix and got a few supplies to last us for the week. We thought about catching a movie this afternoon, but there was nothing showing that we cared to see. It is a rather cloudy day so we decided to put our feet up with our books and have a quiet day. We may go out to eat later or perhaps we will stay in and have soup. We also have to finish our mango key lime pie. It seems hard to believe that this will be our last week at the lab - it has gone by so quickly - but we are looking forward to visiting our friends Larry and Sandy Levine and then getting back to our kids and grandkids.

Saturday February 21, 2009

It was quite chilly again this morning - tied the record for the low in Tallahassee. It did get warmer though - about mid-sixties by this afternoon. We started the day by catching up with the laundry. We then went out to Innovation Park (nearby to the archaeology lab) as they were having open house at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab). It was great fun! We took Flat Stanley with us and got some cool pictures of him with the Mag Lev train, standing next to a superconducting magnet, and next to a Pine snake about 6 feet long (local nature centers and museums also had booths here). We spent several hours roaming around and looking at the exhibits. They even had a potato cannon demonstration and were making Einstein ice cream which involved mixing the ingredients with liquid nitrogen which made it solidify in seconds. Flat Stanley had a great time and so did we. We then went back to the Mission so Dave could give the young man at the blacksmith shop some pointers. I sat on a bench in the sun and read my book for about an hour while Dave was doing his thing. When he was done, we realized it was after 4:00 and we hadn't eaten lunch. We decided to do linner again (or maybe lupper?) and went to a Colombian restaurant that everyone at the lab has been talking about. It is called Super Perros (which literally means super dogs, I believe - not a fantastic name for a restaurant). We shared a meal called La Bandeja Paisa. It was a large plate with a small to medium portion of many different foods: rice, beans, fried egg, corn muffin, sausage, pork rinds (neither of us cared for this), steak, salad, and plantains. It was very good and now we are stuffed! We haven't made a plan to tomorrow yet, but I'm sure we will come up with something. By the way, there are several people who are staying here with their dogs for the dog show. We saw a Great Dane in the parking lot this morning - huge, but beautiful dog!