A spot of archeology.

It's been a freaking good couple years for archeology. I mean, not only did we end a hundred year quest and find Akhenaten, but some other crazy-wild things have turned up. Thanks to modern testing methods, we're figuring out more about the past than ever before, and we're able to say a lot of things as facts, instead of the usual speculation in the field.

Case in point? The Ridgeway Hill Viking Burial Pit.

Last year, they were putting in a road to try and plan for traffic congestion when London hosts the Olympics (in, what, two years?) As is so common in England, they found a historic site. In this case, a pit of bones. At first they assumed they'd run across a mass grave or a messy graveyard or what have you. It was an old Roman quarry that someone had thrown a bunch of bodies into. But when they really looked, they realized everyone had been decapitated. The heads were stacked up, separate from the bodies. I imagine that was kind of attention-getting, even a thousand years after the fact. Rather dramatic when it was done, too.

So, of course, they sent in some really good archeologists and had them poke around.

All the bodies were male. Most were in their late teens and twenties, a few in their thirties. It is assumed they were thrown in the pit naked, 'cause there's been absolutely no evidence of clothing found. (Most folks in that area and at that time used pins - fibulae - to hold their clothes on, not buttons, or, ha, zippers.) Some of the bodies had defensive wounds on their hands and forearms.

With so little other information, they got clever. They sent some samples off for isotope and other kinds of testing.

Carbon dating put the pit at a time between 910 and 1030CE, when Vikings were raiding, settling, and otherwise over-running the native Anglo-Saxon population. Strontium isotopes in their bones place them in Scandinavia for their formative years. Oxygen isotopes in their tooth enamel also says they came from Scandinavia. Carbon and nitrogen in the dentine of their teeth suggests they ate a diet high in meat, which was typical of the Vikings at that time.

At this point, they figure that some Anglo-Saxons got the better of a Viking raiding party of some kind and executed them. Probably as a public spectacle. While it's kind of grisly, it is also freaking cool that they could figure out so much from what is just a pile of jumbled bones. Everybody with me now: YAY, SCIENCE!

---

The other major find in Britain lately is the Staffordshire Hoard. Biggest, coolest, awesomest thing in treasure hunting since Sutton Hoo (which it looks a lot like, to the point I wonder if the same craftspeople made them).


Found by hobbyists with metal detectors in 2009 (Yay, GEEKS!) 1500 pieces, I think all gold. Biggest hoard ever found in Britain that we know of. (People used to quietly dig them up and melt them down, back in the day, before archeology became a science.) They kept the exact location secret as they excavated, because the hoard had been scattered about and they didn't need a bunch of greedy wankers traipsing all over it.

Tentatively, it has been dated to the 7th or 8th century (within a century or two of the Viking execution described above). It was in the Kingdom of Mercia, an area we know almost nothing about. The only remotely detailed account of the era was written by the Venerable Bede, and he mostly ignored Mercia 'cause they were (probably) pagan and he was (definitely) Christian. So with luck this stuff will be really educational and useful.


So, it's been a busy year or so for the archeologists. Can't wait to see what they turn up next.

YAY SCIENCE!

Mission accomplished.

I used the husbeast's GPS unit and found the museum this morning. There was a great deal of squealing and yelling "LOOK A STEGOSAURUS!" and running from dino to dino. Pretty much everyone in the place was giggling.

Then we found the kid's exhibit, and, well. We were there for a while.


I'm never getting the clay out of my shoes.


I took this photo for all my fellow geeks out there; obviously, that's the main dinosaur room down there. The windows to the left? THAT IS THE LIBRARY IN THERE. I want to freaking LIVE in that library.

After I got there and started reading information, I found out that the Carnegie has the third largest display of mounted dinosaurs IN THE WORLD, after two different branches of the Smithsonian. So the Goob's gonna get spoiled. That T-Rex the Goober's in front of, in the first photo? That's not a cast replica. It's THE REAL DEAL. If you're a museum nut like I am, you're impressed. I was. (Apparently they've got their own fossil bed in Utah that Andrew Carnegie bought them, or something insane like that. Those gilded era robber baron scumbags never did anything by half.)

---

So, we got home, and I found Sekhmet chewing the stickers off the Goober's box.

Fucker.

---

The final act of the day (other than laying in bed, playing Emperor) was to run out to Barnes and Noble and buy a Vogue Knitting. Yeah, yeah, I know. I got so many e-mails and comments from so many of you, asking me to keep up the good work... well. All of you told me you found the reviews educational, and I started this blog to help share what I've learned with less experienced knitters. So it seemed stupid to stop something educational. The emphasis on the reviews is going to shift a bit, with that in mind (I think we've pretty firmly established that VK isn't high fashion). But, I bought a damn copy. Because when I get "How dare you?" my reply has always been "I paid for the motherfucker, I can review it."

Interestingly, a lot of the stuff is wearable. But their summer issues are historically their better work.

Dear Pittsburgh:

You suck. Suck suck suck suck. You suck oozing rat ass and donkey balls. You suck A HUNDRED FUCKING MILES OF BADLY ORGANIZED, BADLY LABELED HIGHWAYS. Did you motherfuckers EAT the street signs this winter, or knock them over with snow plows? DO YOU THINK YOU COULD MARK DIRECTIONS TO MAJOR BUILDINGS SO PEOPLE COULD FIND THEM?

Ahem.

We tried to go to the Natural History Museum today. I got lost. This is the third time I've gone down town, and the third time I've gotten lost. I have lived in quite a few metropolitan areas in my day (Columbus, Hampton Roads, Honolulu, Charleston, now here), and driven through quite a lot more (New York, Baltimore, DC, Miami, Los Angeles, Richmond, Jacksonville) and I am here to tell you, Pittsburgh sucks. You know those nightmare highway systems with fifteen exits branching off and literally six layers of roads all circling around each other? Yeah. It doesn't matter if you have the sense of direction of Ferdinand Magellan, if it's badly labeled, you're doomed.

Bah.

Tomorrow I will try again, this time with the husbeast's GPS navigation system.

THIS was a shock.

A while back we asked the Goober why she stood so close to the TV. She said so she could see it. That sent up some red flags, so when we found a decent optometrist in the area, we made an appointment.

The verdict? The Goober is "unusually nearsighted for her age". In other words, "DAMN! Do you see how bad her vision is?"

The good news is, she's not favoring one eye over the other, and she has no other eye problems. Since the husbeast was wearing glasses like the bottoms of Coke bottles by the time he started kindergarten, so this wasn't really a huge shock. To anyone. The Goober's opinion seems to be "right, time for my glasses!" Everyone else in the family wears them, why shouldn't she?

More updates and better photos (this was taken on my cell phone), when the actual glasses get here. We only ordered them today.

Comment on comments.

I may yet find the energy for a real blog post today (considered topics: Oscars fashion, storytelling in modern times, history of the steam engine, history of computers). But in the mean time, I've had a lot of questions and comments in the comments, so here are some replies. This is probably gonna jump topics like a frog on speed. FYI.

---

The reason I got my netbook instead of giving the laptop a lobotomy (known to computer geeks as 'reformatting the hard drive'), is because 99% of my computer gear is in a box in South Carolina. All I've got here are a couple gaming discs. No operating system, no MS Office, no nothing. Before we moved, I loaded all the software I thought I'd need onto my external hard drive (the one the hubby got me, two Christmases ago, that I said was silly and I wouldn't use -ha) and let the movers pack and store all the discs and stuff, to save space. The hard drive was untouched by the virus, so all I needed was a way to access the hard drive and the internet. So. Netbook. Plus, as I said, I'd been planning to get one anyway, just not quite so soon. So when things went all to hell, it was the obvious solution. It really worked out well (especially with the purchase of an external CD ROM), it was just a huge annoyance when I'd been planning to get a drum carder with the money. The only data I lost were the bookmarks in my browser, which, all things considered, was amazingly good.

About, geez, twelve years ago now, I dropped my laptop in the Pittsburgh airport (that place is EVIL) and shattered the hard drive. I lost four chapters of a novel I was writing, and about half of a database I was building. In comparison, some bookmarks seems okay.

I'm just mad about the drum carder aspect of it. Even if I had no room in the apartment for a drum carder.

---

I hate that 'data' and 'media' are plural collective nouns, yet everyone nowadays uses them as singular nouns, so that no matter what damn verb you use with them, it looks/sounds wrong. That's evolution of the language for you; damned annoying. This is all Johann Gutenberg's fault.

---

Around here we define 'geek house' as 'having more computers networked than we have people living in the house'. Once we get moved into a house and all the computers up and running again, we will have - by my tentative count - five computers, counting the netbook. Plus the hub's talking about plugging a hard drive into the router, so I don't know how we'd count that.

---

Why do they do premieres of children's TV shows at ten at night? Are they fucking stupid? What preschool kid is going to be up at ten at night? Nickelodeon, you assholes.

---

The problem with spinning yarn out of animal hair is always the smell. It shouldn't smell if you clean it properly, and it is dry. But usually animal hair yarn is used for outerwear, and that stuff gets wet. Once wet, well... I know someone with dog hair socks who says the only drawback is that they smell like wet dog. That's my big complaint about alpaca, actually. It smells like wet camel when it gets wet.

---

Thanks to everyone who checked in with info on Pittsburgh museums. I'm hoping to get the Goober down to the Carnegie dinosaurs on Wednesday after her eye doctor appointment. (It looks like the Goob needs glasses. Imagine the cuteness.) However, after cruising the museum web site, I saw they have half-day summer camps for kids the Goober's age, and I got her signed up for the week that they dig up dinosaur fossils (resin ones, I assume) and otherwise learn about dinosaurs. She'll be thrilled. It sounds like fun - I want to go, too. I hope to also get her into another week at the art museum later in the summer, but the camps are kind of expensive so I'm waiting until another payday. Ideally, a one week camp every month of summer would be great - I don't want to have to drive down there every damn day, but the programs are fantastic.

---
My lungs are doing better. I'm still really tired but otherwise am almost over this whole mess. The only problem now is that all the stuff they've given me to dry out my lungs is drying out my eyes to the point of pain, so I'm juggling eyes vs. lungs. The fun never ends.

Right now the biggest problem is cleaning up the mess I've made, laying around not cleaning for a month. Not. Pretty.

---

GOTTA cast on this tapestry bag to knit with my mother-in-law. She's to the hard part and needs help and I need an example to show her. Hopefully that'll happen today.

---

That's everything that's fit to print at my house... oh. A photo. The husbeast was playing hide and seek with the Goober last weekend, and snapped this photo:

I keep looking at it, and wondering when the kid grew up on me. She was a baby just a minute ago.

Meet my new drum carder.

...yeah. Doesn't look like a drum carder, does it?

Two days ago, a virus ate my computer. I'd backed it up a few days earlier, because it was acting funky, so not much data was lost. I went out and used my drum carder budget (I'd been saving up for a while) to buy a net book. The net book, plus the external CD ROM, came out to almost exactly what I'd planned to spend on the drum carder. The kismet of the whole thing should probably please me, but it doesn't.

I'd been planning to get a net book for awhile. When I go back to school, I'm going to need something like this to use for school; the days of taking notes by hand for hours at a time are over. With this, I should do all right - type notes for all my classes except math. Do math by hand. Oughta work.

So, ultimately, I just got this a little early. Didn't derail my plan entirely. But I'm still mad I didn't get a drum carder.

Fucking viruses.

---

Other news... Hmmm.

I think I'm starting to feel better. Still having trouble sleeping, but otherwise the breathing is going better. Now I need to shovel out the apartment, seeing as I haven't really cleaned in a month, since I got sick. Urgh.

Started watching Castle. Fun show. Humor, good writing, good mysteries (I have yet to figure one out in the first half hour of the show - my usual rule of thumb for decent plot), and Nathan Fillion. Can't really beat it.

Am finally gearing up to start on the bag I'm supposed to be knitting with my mother-in-law. She's been at it for two months now. With luck, this should mean fiber related posts soon. I hope.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go re-install a shitload of software. Anyone seen my Civ IV install CD?

Sekhmet, you fucker.

I finally feel good enough to spin, and what happens?

Since I've got nothing...

...and you guys seemed intrigued, I'll give some explanations for yesterday's photo montage. 'Cause otherwise, I'm out of ideas. (The new drug - Singulair - is making it possible to breathe again, so I'm feeling better. Probably just in time for side effects of my pneumonia vaccine to kick in. Whee!)

I'll do them in the order I posted them yesterday, and I warn you, a lot of them are fiber related. No, really. I haven't knit or spun much since I got sick at Christmas, but I've been THINKING about fiber stuff a lot.

---

I watched a hockey game last night (Penguins beat the Sabers, woohoo). See the guy there, in the black jersey with the Penguin on it? That's (pretty sure) Sidney Crosby. He's the dude who scored the gold-medal winning goal at the Olympics last week. He plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since he scored that goal, the whole city of Pittsburgh has been laughing about how conflicted they are: Sure, the USA lost to Canada at the last second, but IT WAS A PENGUIN WHO SCORED THE GOAL! No one can decide if they're happy or not. The radio commentary has been particularly hilarious.

---

Since knitting the Hex Jacket (Rav link to my project page), I've been brooding over hexagonal garment construction. I'm not sure I can improve on Norah Gaugahn, but if I ever get a good idea, I intend to knit it up. I've gone so far as printing out hexagonal 'graph' paper and cutting out garment shapes.

---

Well, geez, plants, I think about those all the time. Still have a low-grade urge to knit a chloroplast. I've been putting it off, figuring if I go back to school I can use the idea for some kind of project in some sort of botany or biology class.

---

This is what I call Easter grass, the fake plastic shredded stuff you put in Easter baskets. I've been eyeing it in stores, thinking "I could spin that" and speculating on art-yarn projects to be done. I have a bad feeling I'm going to break down and buy a couple packs, even if I just 'file' it in the Fiber Box.

---

Lately the Goober's been into dinosaurs. If I ever start feeling human, the goal is to figure out what museum around here has the most dinos in it, and take her.

---

Cats. Yeah, cats. Thanks to SekhmetYouFucker, they are often foremost in my mind. You know, the domestication of cats is a really screwed up subject. I keep meaning to do a blog post about it.

---

Along with dinosaurs, the Goober has discovered the joy of cool-looking rocks. She calls everything that doesn't look like gravel a mineral. It's really funny. What I need to find is the natural history museum. Dinosaurs and rocks. She'll be in heaven.

---

I wanna spin yarn that looks like the Northern Lights. Lots of it. And then knit some kind of pretty cardigan. It'll likely never happen, but I want to.

---

This is modular origami. That's when you make twelve, twenty, thirty identical little bits, then fit them all together to make something like the photo above. I've done it off and on since I broke my hand, and have concluded that I need to do some again. It's really good for individual finger strength and dexterity. (Better even than knitting for dexterity, believe it or not.) Now I just need to find somewhere in Pittsburgh that sells origami paper. Or perhaps order some off line...

---

This is not my work. But it's what I've got in mind (along with matching earrings and perhaps a pin) for the watch gears that are too big to fit through the orifice on my spinning wheel (and therefore won't be used in the yarn I'm working on). Once I get the Etsy shop established again, I'm thinking of selling some stuff like this, and perhaps stitch markers. Don't know. We'll see.

I survived February.

Historically, February has not been a good month for me. When I lived in northern climes (growing up), I was always sick. ALWAYS. Now that I've moved back, that seems to be continuing. Then my mother died in 2001, at the end of February. And my dad's birthday is in February and that has a lot of memories with it, too.

It's a crappy month.

But, it's over, and I am determined to get it together and move on. Step one is getting well. I saw the doc again tonight, he gave me a new medication, and I can already feel it working on my lungs. Hopefully, within the next day or two I'll be able to walk across a parking lot without wheezing. Which would lead to getting this stir-crazy four year old kid out of the house and to somewhere interesting like one of the dozens of museums, botanical gardens, and aquariums around here.

Since there's STILL nothing to discuss, how about a photo montage of what I've been thinking about? You can all speculate.











Looks like my brain's still working, at least.

Thank goodness.

Sekhmet, you fucker.

I hear this horrible crashing and bashing from the Goober's room...

Only the Goober is in the living room with me. So I go to investigate, and what do I find?

Actually, when I first walked in the room, it was the cat's butt sticking out, not her face. That window sill is at least five feet off the ground; the cat is using the new bed as a launch pad. Remember? From this photo?

You can see the flower and the edge of the window above the Goober's head, and get an idea of placement. This cat's jumping is more accurate than a rocket launch.

Now I will be able to share the joy of SekhmetYouFucker with the neighbors. She's gonna sit there and meow at them all day. There's a major sidewalk/pathway right on the other side of the window, that kids walk every day after school.

Good thing the landlord knows she's here.

Update on the big girl bed.

The Goober is currently sleeping peacefully in her new, big bed.

Sideways.

---

For those of you asking where I got the watch parts, eBay. Do a search for "Steampunk watch parts" and go with the cheapest of what turns up. I'd tell you who the vendor was, but I can't remember and the packaging isn't labeled - just watch parts in an envelope.

The day in photos.

If possible, I feel worse than yesterday (yay), so we're stuck with a lame photo montage of almost nothing fiber related.

I played Civ IV and drank a shitload of tea. (Mostly decaf. The last day I drank all caffeine tea I made myself sick.)

Off to the right are my glasses, watch parts, and an inhaler. I'd say that neatly summarizes my life at the moment, all in one small photo.


I played magnetic dressup dolls with the Goob.

I'd gotten her some refrigerator magnets of Hello Kitty and some clothes, where you stuck clothes and hats on Hello Kitty and the Goober thought it was TOTALLY cool, so I got her this set of dolls and magnetic clothes from Melissa and Doug. It's been eight hours she's been playing with them, straight, so I'm calling it a win. Of course she's already lost one of the shoes. I'm trying not to think about it.


I spun about two yards of wool.

Maybe. At most. I treadled for about five minutes and started wheezing.


I made some chicken stock.

No idea what in hell I intend to do with it, but I roasted a chicken a couple days ago and my grandmothers would both come back to haunt me if I just THREW AWAY the carcass.


And I admired the watch parts that came in the mail, plotting just what to do with them.

There's another bag the same size/weight. I'm thinking I need to save a few and make earrings.


Now I'm gonna go strain chicken stock, rub my sorry torso with Vicks VapoRub, and pass out.

Thanks to everyone for bearing with me while I turn the blog into a piss-and-moan about how shitty I feel. (Boy, do I feel shitty.)

Big girl, in the house.

The big girl bed was delivered today.

Between us, the husbeast and I had gotten the bedding (I really wish I'd been there to see him buy a pink and lavender comforter, covered in hearts, flowers, and butterflies). She's in there now, asleep. I keep remembering when we switched her from her crib to her mini bed, and how I didn't get a full night's sleep for two months, and I hope this goes more smoothly.

We didn't get anything more than a bed frame, because we hope to get her a bedroom suite once we buy a house and we have some idea how big her new bed room will be, and other useful stuff. Plus we don't want to move any more than we have to. Plus, if we stall another year or so, we can get her a loft bed with a desk underneath to give her some space in her room.

---

In other Goob News, well, she's being raised by smartasses. Which means she's got a lovely repertoire of go-to phrases, when she wants to get sarcastic, herself. Today, that got her sent to her room. She was highly irritated by it, and at one point shouted "CURSE YOU, MOM AND DAD!"

Then she got REALLY enraged when she heard us laughing our heads off.

---

I did some spinning the other day, and hope to finish up the orange-to-pink color blending experiment by this weekend, so I can start on the steampunk yarn once the watch parts get here. I'm also putting together a swap package for a friend in the UK. So things are gradually improving. I think I may be able to breathe soon. That would be nice.

Productivity: Nil.

Usually, when I'm sick or in pain, I'm pretty good about spinning or knitting through it. My shrink used to go on and on and ON about 'distraction' and generally not sitting around thinking "wow, I feel like shit". And I was on board with that. Hell, I still agree with it. In principle. But it's kind of hard when I feel so shitty I can't concentrate. So lately I've been staring at the walls, with occasional breaks to Tweet rude things, and cook dinner.

Here's my latest. A friend of mine asked me to spin her some 'steampunk yarn' with gears and springs and shiny stuff, spun with some violet and 'red wine colored' wool. I got this far:

A 7oz batt from CopperPot at Etsy. (Great vendor. I've ordered from her twice now. She ships lightning fast and it's always nicer in person than it looks in the photo. Can't beat it. Even though she included the weight and other info on the web site, when it got here, it was about twice as much fiber as I was expecting.) It's mostly wool, with glitter and bamboo and stuff mixed in. It's darker than it looks in that photo, and soft as a baby's butt. I'm waiting for a handful of watch parts to get here from eBay, and I'll string them on some black crochet cotton and ply it all up. It'll look really cool, if I ever get to it.

So far I've gotten as far as winding some yarn off a bobbin, today. Whee.

Then there's that whole sweater for the Olympics thing. Trying not to think about it.

---

Since there's nothing to report, how about some Goob photos?

The other day, the Goob wanted to wear her Pwincess Dwess. The husbeast put it on her, right over her pajamas. She fell asleep face-down in her beanbag chair, wearing it. Teehee.



Here she's playing with Sekhmet.



And here she's brushing her dadad's hair.



The husbeast and I are watching motocross at the moment. I'm wishing for a new motorcycle, much the way I imagine a former smoker wishes for a cigarette. (Except the damage is done to my joints, not my lungs.) Maybe I should try to sleep, so I could, you know, do something tomorrow. Like, spinning. Or whatever.

Blathering, and Egyptology.

I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I made some sort of real blog post, but then four days of that was spent with a 102F fever (uh... 39C?) so I guess I wasn't too coherent. At any rate, I'm starting to feel almost normal and the husbeast is making noise about me getting the hell out of the apartment, so I guess things are returning to what passes as normal around here.

---

So far I haven't even touched my Olympics project, which was to finish a stranded color sweater I've been working on since 2005. (2004? Geez. Way too long, anyway.) I'm trying to decide if I'll even give it a try at this point. Either way, the thing needs done, so I guess I'll poke at it this weekend and see how bad it is. It needs a lot of really elaborate finishing and some alterations, so it could take a while.

---

This weekend, we're buying the Goober her first very own grown-up bed. She's been in a 'youth bed', a small bed that's close to the ground and easy for her to get in and out of. It's worked great, but she's completely outgrown it now. She's an amazon. It's time for a real bed. Even though we wanted to wait until we were in a house and had some idea what her room would be laid out like.

Oh well. Either way, my little girl is growing up.

---

Sekhmet, that fucker, really enjoyed me being sick. I couldn't figure out quite why she was so intent about laying on me constantly. Then I realized - while I ran that fever, I was like a giant heating pad for the cat. So at least someone in the house was happy.

---

Everyone was asking what I thought about the new National Geographic news. (For those of you who aren't all up on the archeology geekiness, they released the results of the first major DNA study done on Egyptian mummies. Article here.) And, well, to quote, my first response to the entire thing was "Holy fucking fuck, they found Akhenaten." You see, the DNA study was done with mummies from the only era of Egyptian history I find super interesting, the Amarna Period/18th Dynasty. (My own thoughts on it, from back in 2007, can be found, here.)

Damn. I'm not making any sense. I shall try again.

Oookay. In the 18th Dynasty, Akhenaten, 'the heretic king' (probably also known as 'that sonofabitch' by the priests he dealt with) declared the multiple gods of ancient Egypt wrong, announced everyone would henceforth worship the Aten (sun disc), of which he was the living embodiment. Then he moved the whole kit and kaboodle of them to Amarna, a new city he built from nothing, in the middle of nowhere, where he proceeded to rule over them. To say this era of history was chaotic is a vast understatement. Ever since modern Egyptology was founded - ever since we have had some vague understanding of ancient Egyptian history - we have speculated on exactly what in the holy hell happened then.

Then, in 1922, Howard Carter found the only undisturbed royal burial ever in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Tutankhamen. And unbelievably, that complicated things even more, because Tut is the person who succeeded Akhenaten on the throne, restored the old gods, and moved things back to the old capitol city, abandoning Amarana. No one was ever quite sure who in hell Tut was, in relation to Akhenaten, how he died, why he rated such a major amount of loot (not that we know, really, because we have no other royal burials to compare it to), and, well, you get the idea. Total clusterfuck.

Now, thanks to modern DNA testing, we've answered some of the questions, finally. (To have solid answers about a confused era of history three thousand years ago is nothing short of miraculous.) Tut was the son of Akhenaten. The two young girls buried with Tut were his daughters. Most amazing of all, subject of my 'holy fuck', they identified, for sure, the mummy of Akhenaten. It had been chucked into an unmarked tomb (KV55), with all identifying marks cut off. There had been speculation for a hundred years over whether or not it was Akhenaten. Now we know. (One of the ways we know for sure is because it was compared with the DNA of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, whose mummy we have had, positively identified, for decades.)

I had been sure the priests burned Akhenaten's body. It would have been the ancient Egyptian version of sending him to hell - removed him from the afterlife, essentially.

Even though I was wrong, I'm reveling in the idea that with modern science, we've positively ID'd three-thousand year old bodies. That's a victory for science, no matter how you look at it.

For those wishing for a more coherent, educated commentary on these findings, pop over and visit the blog of my friend, Shoveling Ferret. She's formally trained at this stuff, I'm just a hobbyist. She's discussing the piles of information they got from the mummies other than basic identification - health, possible causes of death, family relationships. Good stuff. And even though she's formally trained, she's putting things in everyday terminology.

---

Hopefully, after this, I will manage to get back to regular blogging.

Still not dead.

Thanks for all the concern, everyone. (Some of the e-mails in particular have been highly entertaining.) My fever broke Sunday morning and I've pretty much been sleeping it off since then. Today was probably the first day I felt human. I hope to finally start on my Olympics project tomorrow - good thing I'd decided to take it easy for the Olympics, huh?

So, no news, but I'm on the mend. Thanks to all who checked in.

Not dead yet.

Yeah, it's that time of year, and I've got pneumonia (or what is nearly pneumonia; I'm running a fever and can't breathe, sounds like pneumonia to me). Again. This is a nastier germ than the one I had at Christmas; either it's a mean germ or I was still worn down from the damn Christmas bug. Anyway, I'm on medication, hoping it will kick in, and sleeping sitting up. That's where I've been the last couple days.

So, the few bits of news and cuteness we've got around here.

It's still snowing, off and on. They 'plowed' our road with a backhoe, yesterday. (If you plow a road with a plow, does that mean the road was backhoed, yesterday?) This is the view out my living room window:

(Sorry for the blur; I had to take the photo with a low light setting to avoid flash on the glass.) What's restricting the view is a whole lot of snow and a shrub that exploded from too much ice and cold. I know I'm in a ground floor apartment, but good grief. Really fun here.

---

With the Goober and me lying about, the husbeast wound up laying on the Goober's pink beanbag chair to watch TV last night. I tried to get a photo. He said "You're going to- blog- fucker!" But right then his phone rang and he got up, so no photo. Sorry. But it was funny.

---

I was awakened from a nap yesterday, to the Goober tucking her teddy bears around me. Normally she gets in big trouble for waking people up from naps, but that time she got hugs and was told how nice she is for sharing.

---

We now have a frog humidifier. It really classes up the living room.

---

I've found a rather odd and entertaining drug side effect. Some of my stronger painkillers dry out the mucous membranes. While I'm not suggesting you take class four drugs for a stuffy nose, it sure does help. When I take them for my hand, my nose clears right up. Finally, a GOOD side effect.

---

The Winter Olympics start at 9PM, our time. I'm hoping to watch the opening ceremonies while starting on my project. I'm doing WIPs. So the first project will be Innsvinget Ganser. It's been languishing since 2005. I need to put it out of its mercy. If, by some miracle, I get that done, I've got something else I could work on.


That's it at my house. I intend to spend the weekend unconscious. The fun never ends.

Sekhmet, you fucker.

First, she crawled into the Goober's beanbag chair and spit and growled and swore at anyone who tried to move her.


THEN, she was caught eating one of the Goober's chicken bits.


So she went and took a nap on the clean laundry.

Fucker.

Aussies, we have a situation.

So I'm wandering through Target today, killing time before my prescription is filled. (That's another story, I'll put it at the end so you can skip it if you want.) There, on an end-cap, something caught my eye. It was the words. But the packaging wasn't quite right.

They're not made by Arnott's. They're made by Pepperidge Farm (a reasonably large corporate bakery here, like Keebler or NABISCO). So I pick up the package, and there it is, "Australia's favorite cookie!" on the front. See it? And I muttered to myself, "If it's Australia's favorite cookie, why don't we just fucking import it like normal people?" and got a startled look from a lady walking past.

Of course I bought them. I brought them home and read the packaging closely. Near as I can tell, the Tim-Tams were made in Australia, shipped here, and packaged by Pepperidge Farms. "Produce of Australia - Tim Tam used under license". They look and taste (I'm chewing one now) just like the ones I've gotten in care packages from Australia. I don't know what to think. Well, yeah, I'm thinking, why didn't we just import the damn things? Why the re-packaging?

I have e-mailed the company to ask why they're confusing Tim-Tam lovers with this new package. It's just dumb. Further notices as events warrant. (The Goober is on her third Tim-Tam.)

---

The Goob and I went to the doctor today. She's fine, just congestion and a head cold. I have nearly-pneumonia again. So I'm back on another round of the drugs I took at Christmas, when I had near-pneumonia then. My response was kind of like "Huh. I didn't think I felt that bad."

It started snowing again an hour ago, and they're predicting another foot of snow. We're in pretty good shape here - our building is on the same part of the electrical grid as the schools, a nursing home, and the hospital, so we're high priority by default. But there are a lot of other people, gonna have a hard time tonight. And the back streets still haven't been dug out from last weekend's snowblitz. (Before I got distracted by Tim-Tams at the store, I was planning to do a series of blog posts about foods that make life worth living in a blizzard. I'll probably keep on with that plan, now that I've ranted over faux-domestic cookies.)

It's gonna be interesting. Brace for further weirdness.

The day from hell.

This week, I had two doctor's appointments. One this morning with a pain specialist, and one tomorrow with my regular guy. After last weekend's snow, I figured I should give myself some extra time this morning, so I left the house an hour and a half early. In normal weather, the drive would take about twenty minutes (conveniently, the new pain specialist is about five blocks past the yarn store).

After an hour and forty minutes on the road, I finally accepted that I wouldn't make the appointment if I was given FOUR hours, turned around, and went home. If it hadn't been for the other yahoos on the road, I'd have made it. The roads were okay - not great, but driveable. Unfortunately they were full of people going "AAAAAH! SNOW!" and slamming on the breaks. I saw one lunatic park their car in the middle of the road and walk away.

Then the doctor's office called me to reschedule tomorrow's appointment, because there is MORE snow coming and they wanted to close the office early.

I got both appointments rescheduled in a timely fashion, but I still feel like I've been beating my head on a wall all day.

So to distract from the fact that I'm STILL not doing anything around here, some Goober photos!


She was playing 'house' under a table last night:



And this is her this morning. She wakes up in a worse mood than I do.

That's popcorn in the bowl next to her. She likes it for breakfast, and I figure, what the heck, it's a whole grain (sort of), and full of fiber and not full of sugar.


And here's Sekhmet, trying to fit herself into a little sunbeam on the floor:

It didn't work too well. She wasn't happy. So she took out her frustration by waiting and pouncing me at about midnight.