So I am back from my first of two conferences, which are almost back to back. This first one was a conference organized for emerging scholars and was focused on material culture studies. It was very interesting, and very different from other conferences I’ve done, which mostly are anthropology/archaeology conferences. I got some interesting feedback for sure. Some useful, some I’m not sure how so much though given it was mostly historians commenting on our works. However I will use what I got to revamp this paper a little before the next conference. Actually it’s not really a conference, more like an informal symposium on Delaware Valley Colonial Archaeology.

The conference was at this fancy estate in Delaware, which as it turns out was the Dupont’s summer home. Yeah, fancy! No we didn’t stay there though. We were put up in the visiting scholar’s residences, which were the old farmhand’s houses. Not only were they creepy, they were quiet . . . really quiet. It was erie, and I didn’t sleep too well. The beds didn’t help, these old singles much like you’d find in a college dorm. But hey, it was free 🙂

We got a tour not only of the University of Delaware’s campus, which looked oddly like Williamsburg, but also a tour of the Estate, which is now a museum. It reminded me of the grandmother’s house from “Flowers in the Attic.”

Right now I’m feeling very drained. Conferences always do that. I’m not only mentally drained, but physically drained. I walked around all day with a backpack packed with things, including my laptop and a bunch of student’s paper’s I had hoped to grade. Needless to say I hurt, and the weather changes today didn’t help. Getting old sucks! I am planning to take a nice bath as soon as tonights TV shows are over.

On another note, I took the advice of many people and started reading the Percy Jackson books. I am liking them so far. Very much a Harry Potter ripoff in many ways, but then I’m sure Harry Potter didn’t invent the mold (Wrinkle in Time, Narnia Books, etc . . . ). I got the first for the kindle app on the iphone to try it out. It is nice to read in bed at night without having to turn the lights on, and after awhile it helps me get to sleep cause of reading off the phone screen. I’m not so sure if it’s great for one’s eyes, but then neither is looking at a computer screen most of the day 🙂

So I’ve had a fun week this past week! Well, at least it was very eventful. I woke up Tuesday to find my left eye swollen and sore. Okay the eyelid. Turns out I had a stye gone wrong. It has a technical name, something like a Churiza or something, but not to be confused with cinnamon confectionary amusement park goodness. Basically my eyelid was purple and swollen. In kids it’s caused by stress and bad eating. Yeah check for both of those with me lately! Fortunately with drops and over the counter drugs, it’s fine now. Just took some time to go down.

What else . . . so I sent out a feeler to the second conference I was considering (using a tweaked version of the paper for the first conference) and was basically invited to it. Two conferences basically one week apart. Yeah, I’m gunna be a mental wreck that week. I still have to sit down and put together my power point for them too. Ahhhh! But it builds my CV and looks good. Should have a published article out by this summer too hopefully.

So I have been having some jonesen for the new Apple Ipad. I had written it off, till I found out you could get a versions of Apple’s iWork applications on it. Suddenly it became of interest to me. I had been thinking about a netbook for awhile now to replace my laptop when traveling, but just haven’t committed to one. I was waiting to see how Windows 7 ran on my current laptop, which has been pretty well. But it’s still pretty bulky. Now I’m thinking about an iPad. I played with it in the Apple Store the other day and it was pretty! So far i’ve held off on it though . . . so far!

So from my Tweets, as some noticed, I spent part of the weekend working with a class doing basically a CSI like exercise. I helped out with a class in Forensic Anthropology, where they investigated a mock murder scene. It was big fun. It looks like I’m on the roster for at least the next year to teach, as well as probably the following. I might be offered some different courses than I’ve taught so far, so yay! We’ll see what happens 🙂

I still need something to supplement my income though, at least for the next year. There was a big “work at home” job fair here today that was all over the news. I went to it thinking “What the hell?” and went, but it was a big disappointment. They claimed that all the vendors had been screened to make sure they were legit, but there were far too many pyramid schemes for my liking. You know, like the Acai Berry stuff. Yeah they were there, as were others far too much like them. I did pick up a few pamphlets of places I knew were legit, though I could have found them on the web had I wanted to. I also gave my name out to a few places I felt comfortable with. We’ll see what happens. I’m not expecting much, and am ready to go out to some local places in late May to see who is hiring part-time. Yet again I fear I’ll be saying “You want fries with that?”

So I’m typing this on this handy dandy Mac app called MacJournal. It is a diary/journal app, but with the ability to post them to blogs. We’ll see how well it works, especially since I’ve attached some photos and resized them.

I can also apparently download ALL my previous blog entries into it. We haven’t tried that yet, we wanted to see if posting went okay first. If it works though, it will be a handy way to have a solid back-up of the blog in a format other than the MySQL database wordpress stores them in.

The weather lately has been wonderful. I just hope the nasty rain and cold stay away 🙂 Well obviously we need rain, but not days of flooding rain! In spite of the lovely weather, I spent most of the weekend with a migraine. I know where it came from, I volunteered to do some manual labor in the sun on Friday at school. The next day . . . migraine! Aside from feeling crappy, I am now behind on work. Story of my life lately!

Speaking of school, I am teaching in the fall and next spring most likely. I was told the prospects of keeping me around look fairly good right now. Fingers crossed! I have my conference at the end of this month, and am entertaining submitting an abstract to another local conference that happens in May. Fortunately I can and will use the same paper, with some minor tweaking 🙂 The dissertation will finally be finished and defended this summer. It’s dragged on long enough, and by fall I expect to be working a lot and it just needs to be done.

In a little over a month I head out to visit my friend Heidi. Unfortunately we have become a fat-ass! I was shocked and horrified when I stepped on the scale this morning. I have not been exercising enough lately with working so much, and I’ve been drinking too many non-diet cokes for caffeine boosts at work, as well as grabbing too much fast food cause it’s quick and easy. None of this is good considering we are doing some water parks. Me in a bathing suit like this? GASP! It’s diet time again and I now have to be serious. I also picked up a copy of EA More Active, the sequel their personal training Wii game. I liked the original well enough, aside from the fact it was such a lunge nazi. Lunge lunge lunge! I got sick of always lunging. I’m hoping the sequel is better, I’ll give it a go tomorrow morning to see if it revs me up.

The doggies have also been getting their exercise as of late. I’ve been taking them to the enclosed field next to us to run around sans leashes and play Frisbee. They get pooped out pretty quick though. They are as out of shape as I am 🙂 Enjoy some photos I took of them today, as well as one of Little Bunny Poo Poo, who is now a little over a year old.