I am making this little conversation because i am two days away from headding out on my trip and the butterflys in my stomach seem to have taken the organ and have floated away.

It's an attempt to de stress... and i want to share my excitement/fear/terror.

Feel free to add on if you want. When i get there, if i can find a library with internet access i'll check in.

okay, Two days to go, and this is what i have discovered.

A: Make sure the area is not on fire

B: look into the local bugs and Plan accordingly

C: Discovering that the local bugs are likey not to like you, scrap the camping plans and make reservations at a local hotel or hostel.

D: start packing once you get the inventory list. Packing two days before is not a good ida and tends to give you hives.

C: Take sleeping pills for the remaining nights before you leave, or you shall be forever awake.

D: did i do this number already?

E: Take deep breaths and remeber you will probibly need to put gas in your car.

F: Nurvous energy can be a good thing.. after you get packed remember that your house needs re roofing and do it in less than an hour. Your mothers Gardens need weeding and don't forget to rewire the house, replace the plumbing and run to California with the left over energy.

Did i mention i'm a bit jumpy? well thats to be expected. the furthest i have ever driven alone is up to my brothers house in Logan. but then again i had a place to go to. a garunteed bed and no doubt of where the gas stations were or if the cell phone would die if i went around the next turn in the road.

I know this is a wonderful oppertunity and something that i will remember for the rest of my life, but GOOD LORDS OF LIGHT!!! it's over five hundred miles away, 13 hours straight driving. My family and friends have been OH so helpfull by telling me their verious horror stories and making me watch true crime stories about young women traveling alone. ( i'm thiking of taking my brothers revolver.... naw i might shoot my foot off trying to figure out which end to put the bullets into.)

well i have my clothing, my hat , my emoergancy pack, my swim suit, my nerves, a new traveling cd player, no money and ... and.. a few wonderfully horrific tales of decapitation and UFO abductions (thanks big bro)

I wonder if i will see some UFO's, maybe a martian... OH Oh i know, Jimmy Hoffa.

all i need now is water, the car, the cell phone, the gas, the map and of course instant internet connection to the Tir with a live Cam link for you guys to see the place.

well if i can, i'll get some of the photo's i'm going to take and post them on my web page... maybe... if i can figure that one out.

right i feel better now thanks

well here's another thing you should check.

Make sure you have someone to cover you at work. it seems that my boss forgot to make arrangements to cover my desk and phone while i am gone, oh yeah this is going to be intrestion, it's going to take me months to catch up with all the work.

Mind you i am the receptionest. I wonder how they are going to get all their calls?

intresting... i typed intresting not interstion... for heavens sake... the butterflys seem to have taken my brain as well as my stomach

i should be working i know i should be working... okay get mind back on sorting paper work.....(a second of silence.)

I JUST CAN'T DO IT. i'm too keyed up, i'm taling twenty workds a second and am having trouble putting out the fires that the speed of my pacing on the tile flooring have ignited... SOMEBODY GET ME A BLOODY VALIUM!!!!!!!!

Laurelrose!

Put an inflatable person in the passenger seat.
Or just construct some sort of ad hoc hero type person, as long as it looks
as if someone is in the car beside you.

It works.
My wife's sister does it all the time using her luggage, a football and a cap.
She says it keeps her company also.

Just a suggestion if your feeling a bit nervous.

why thanks, thats a good idea i haddn't even thought of doing that.


the Good omens for this morning were... the sun bright blood red over the Mountains, yes i said blood red.

can you beleive it, the smoke fromt he colorado fires have made it over the rockys. *shiver* in any event that was such a good omen to wake up to.

I wonder if i should take my tarot cards.

Hmmm..... Laurelrose...... a map would be better than tarot cards!!!!!! LOL!!!!!
Just put U2 music in your CD player, a big chocolate cake in the passenger seat and gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..... riding the wind!!! Have a funny trip!!! (don't forget to write down a diary of 'trip emotions' for your friends of the Tir!!!)

okay, i arrived at te hostel with only a dehidration hangover and a severe wish to fly back to salt Lake City. The trip was fun untill i hit the desert and realised that i had no air conditioning and it was mid day. the scenery was absolutely fabulous. I did take two gallons of water with me and ended up drinking it all. thank god there were towns every twenty or so miles or my bladder would have exploded.

I can not tellyou how many dry river beds i dorve over. it's sad really most of these towns depend on the rivers and they are drying up fast.

Like suggested i dressed up a pillow beside me as a person, you know hat and scarf. but after a while it got creepy so i used the pillow to cussion my sore butt and the hat went into the back of the trecker(geep like car thingy) My father insisted that i wear a large sharp knife during my trip. it didn't make me feel any beeter, i just kept getting nurvous when i walked into stores. opening the windows brought the temperature of the vehical down a few degrees but made me worry that the soft top would blow off at some point.

Well it's sunday now and i have officaly slept in my dormitory room with others, become horribly homesick for my cats and .... well there was this one guy who absolutely annoys me.. but that might just be because he ctualy likes living in the mountains. and thinks i'm just horribly negitve about it. I listened to my cd collection and in an effort to stay awake listened in the end to Enya... okay i wasn't thinking very well at that point okay?

*grin*

Kisses

Right first day on the dig. after a rather tireing and boaring day spent walking about town the activity was a god send.

first was the half day lecture followed by lunch which i promptly forgot to bring. then half a day getting familier with the tools of the trade. hey put me and two other newbees in a room where we couldn't do much damage since most of the damage was done by an archeologist in the 1920's. he apparently excavated each room took out the artifacts then either capped the walls with cement or back filled the rooms with the garbage piles. it is one hell of a mess. mind you i did find some rather fine pottery shards which they call sherds. and some nice peices of bone and lithopragh(shards of obcidian that was worked.) one of the other two found a nice obsidian knife. oh well i did find a nice nest of biting ants.

Needless to say. after five hours scrapping away at the dirt. i was covered from head to toe in gray brown dirt, while everyone else looked like they had just taken a (small ) bit of a tumble and only needed to brush off the dirt. most of them could have gone into a fancy restraunt and passed as presentible. and i have no clue how the proffessors managed to look like they had all just taken showers and freshly laundered their clothing. well tomorrow i get assigned to a project with some merrit. okay maybe they will just put me to mapping. lords of light i hope not.

Mind you i think i shocked my new room mate, i walked into the room muddyer than a puppy thats just discovered someone left the hose running in the back yard. Needless to say i grabbed my towel and wash things and jumped into the shower before anyone else could claim it.

now, now i think i am too tired to spell let alone think..

did i mention that carbon dating Wun might only prove that she came from the wench era of the Tir and it might prove a lot more handy to to a tree ring analysis... or not.

Right this morning i excavated about two feet of dirt, discovered litho's *chipped or flacked stone used in tool work* and found umpteen amounts of pottery sherds. then i realised i was looking for a wall and went another foot and a half back in the soil and found a wall. shook horror, i know keep your gasps of amazemnt to your selves. the others in my group never actualy found their wall so they admitted to having wall envy. At another dig, they unearthed a grave site, complete with the pottery, and an animal carving that was broken on purpose by those burrying the child. for it was a child, maybe five to seven years of age. they didn't tell us the sex of the poor mite. but i will tell you that there were no jewelery or fabrics in evidance. they found several new pueblo settlements and i learned how to clean pottery and when nessisary bone. though they don't recomend cleaning bone usualy. but mine was rodent bone and recent so they wanted me to know how to do cleaning properly. then of course we had our lecture and went home. one of the other students on the dig is named chuck. can you beleive it. someone actualy named their kid that.. oh well. the child will be reburried by th local tribes with full honors as it should be.

slan and loves

......just as an aside......this weekend I'm driving w/ rugrat and his girlfriend to SLC from Albuquerque, then by myself up to Kalispell, Montana. Then am doing return trip alone.....*mutters to self..all WILL be well...all WILL be well....*......1300 miles each way....*pats car lovingly and double checks to make sure THIS time I put the oil cap back on......*

BTW......WHERE are you, LR?

FLAGSTAFF... lovely little place, love what i am doing... by and by, if you want, take a knife and attach it to your belt.. will make you feel safer even if you do break out in cold sweats everytime you pass a cop or go into a convieniance store or listen to elevator music on the radio.

okay update time... today we were set to finding a fireplace in a different pueblo. same room number. i found a lovely Morter, the first that had been found on the site that had not been broken. it was a hand held version probibly used to grind spices or dyes. I also found pot shards and pot shards... oh and did i mention the pot sherds. in any event we had a wonderful time. meanwhile another room was discovered and at the base of their test trench they found a beautiful brownwear jug with it's handle stil attached. we also found the fire pit, filled with fire ants and several nice grinding stones. several axe flakes and of course... dum dum dum .. a wall. and pot sherds... did i mention the pot sherds. well guess who had to clean them...yup me, took me three hours to do... well at least i was in the shade.... oh we also found a bone Awl. and in the bone fragments we dug up i discover the broken second half... if fit perfectly. so i got partial credit on that one. oh it was so exciting. mind you the fire ants were not that happy with us and found chuck and me conveniant and satisfying targets. then of course once we hit the floor and the target feature we were looking for, the archologists moved in with a relish.. and it wasn't tabasco either. sigh, well i am content because i got to excavate the interiour of one of the funeral pots.. i've forgotten what it was called.. but all i found was a pottery.... no no i'll let you guess. in any event the other two bowls had beeds and a nice remnant of a bone bracelet. but mine wasn't to bad. the inside of the effigy bowl(see i did remember) was a bright and stunning blue, both as a slip(clay colouring) and as a light powder. this kid was L O V E D. with all that was burried with him it was amazing to see the artifacts up close... well maybe tomorow i will discover something truely amazing... I liked working with Chuck, we worked well togeather... and he's got a degree in archeology... sigh.

Flagstaff!

Send us a postcard! Flagstaff a lovely, lovely place... I never could find Mars Hill Rd... But did wander up to Lowell Observatory... Lovely, lovely...

Pinky!!!

Pinky, i would but don't know your addy... send it to juliedyson@hotmail.com... thats my usual email... mind you if your joking.... well i'll find something.

okay today, well today after i was banned from the pit. i finly figured out why. i don't have senority. infact those that were in the pit had been at the school at least two weeks to my one. well that was okay. i got to watch as they uncovered a pit house. where we were digging, instead of finding a temperary structure we found a collapsed pit house. it had collapsed after the roof had caught fire and ash had begun to decend from one of the cinder volanoes eruptions between 1200 and 1400 BC. we found lots of lovely things including three covered storage pits and a possible post hole that would confirm everything. then after lunch i got a surprise. because i had been so patent and haddn't complained once about my not being in the pit.. okay once i told chuck that i envied him being in the pit with the dirt and the artifacts.

well after one, tom the pit crew boss told me i could get in the pit and help keep the site clear for the photographs. so for an hour i swept dust into a bucket,and managing not to disturb any of the artifacts. when the head archeologist came to take photographs of our find I was told that i had done a good job. we were then told to map the site, half an hour later we had set up for mapping the site. this was my first time at mapping anything. let alone an important archeological find. but still after some yelling and arm bending we got rid of chuck, who was starting to look like he was going to pass out( he had this odd macho, i'm a man so i don't need a had, thing going)the ladies and i mapped the site, it took up two hours to get all the artifacts into the floor map. all this time i had to keep reminding Jill( annoying little woamn who likes to tease me) that we needed the dimentions of the damn shards no just the general area... lord i think i made a good site bossy britches. Tom came up and told me that since i had done such a fabulous job today that i would get to do the artifact removal and some of the more delicate excavating tomorrow. ( now i pat myself on the back, many many many times...) you'll probly find it's only because the area being excavated is so small and i am a tiny little thing that he wants me to do that... chuck in the mean time was put to hauling dirt and sifting. which i should have been doing as the rest of the new guys in my week were doing.

hee hee... i feel good now...

and now off to a party.

EEEEEeeeeeeeeKKKKKKKKKKkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay i am extreamly excited, not only did i manage to spent 180.00 US dollers on touresty items without breaking out in a cold sweat. but i got lucky on the last day of the dig.

okay, first we set up and waited for the big boss to okay us going ahead, we had to wait for the Feild Specimen lady(woman who keeps track of the special artifacts)She showed wich was good, and then i got to start carefully pulling out the artifacts. this was call floor assemblage, also floor contact. while i was doing that i was to continue finding and sweeping off the hard impacted clay floor. i was removing a matate fragment(grinding bowl or flat grinding surface made of basault) when the pit crew supervisor came creeping up on me.. don't ask me how he did that. he crept up behind me and scared the witts out of me and about four lives too. then after he wandered off laughing we finninshed extracting all the artifacts. but as i was clearing impacted dirt froma round a very large pot sherd i noticed some peices of malactite comming out with the soil. so i stopped trowling and began working above the sherd, to see if i could get it out that way. you'll never guess what i found in the compacted wall fall fill dirt. well when i saw it i couldn't beleive it. i stopped and sat back then noticed a second section. I began shaking then called out for the resident expert. He took one look and told me not to work in that area any longer. he then went off and my supervisor jumpped intothe pit. we had finnished the floor area except for this one section. he took one look and swore. I was so proud.. we named it uncle george and were all rather stunned and surprised, after all how often do you find a human mandula sticking out of the wall.

yes that's right, your own LaurelRose found.... a human jaw bone. the dig bosses hope that it's not a burrieal or anything else for that matter. after wards we went to a lab and were showen the museums pride and joys... well that was my last day... talk sunday after i arrive back at home.

LR

okay i managed to make it home, fitting a thirteen hour drive into nine, including rest stops and getting lost for an hour. don't ask me haow i managed it, but i think i redlined the engines and i deffinately lost the needle on the speedomitere.

I know i promised that i would put up a notice yesterday, but i was wiped. i was going to go to the movies yesterday but couldn't seem to move any of my body parts. my cat wouldn't let me out of his site either. well after he sprayed the suvineres that i had brought into the house that is, and discovered thazt he could fit his entire head into my sandles. he walked around with his head stuck in one for almost fifteen minutes before i had pitty on him and took it off his head. which he promptly stuck back into the shoe.

in any event the trip was almost uneventfull. I was in a gift shop on the reservation that i have to drive through to get to flagstaff and i saw this cuted guy with hair, braided, down to his knees. one of the woman who were serving me laughed and said that it had taken the guy three years to grow it that long. i informed her that it took that long for my hair to the middle of my back from my shoulder blades. it wasn't fiar that he was cute to boot. wild life i saw on the trip.. hmmmm, lets see, dead rabbit, almost dead squirell... damn glad i have good breaks and reflexs.nad tons and tons of roadkill rubber(for those who do not know what that is... you know the bits of tire that you see all over the road, from trucks.. yes well that is road kil rubber or rubber road kill but that gets confusing.)

well that is the end of my trip.. now i just need a little nap and...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzZZZzzzzzzzzz.