Indispensable

I asked my supervisor today if I might be able to take off a couple of days this week to work on my thesis. He asked our boss, who said that they had a lot of stuff for me to do this week and couldn't spare me. I'll be doing at least one day survey in San Antonio on Wednesday, and probably at least one more on Thursday or Friday. While it's nice to go out in the field and help write reports and such, I must admit I was really hoping to be able to work at home for a couple of full days.
The classical radio station I listen to while writing (KMFA) is having their spring fund drive right now. It's not so bad late at night, as they only mention it once or twice an hour, briefly, and then get back to the music. During the day, they play a lot of shorter pieces and have two hosts chattering back and forth for a few minutes between each song. It's not as bad as the KUT fund drive (which starts Wednesday) but I listen to KMFA because of the long stretches of background music with minimal interruptions. They did almost get me last week, though. First, they talked a couple of times about how a lot of students use it as study music while writing. Then, they played the Theme from Indiana Jones. I do plan on giving some money once I finish (and get my tax return).
Only 2.5 pages this evening, relatively minor in that it was about a specific unique artifact rather than the overarching research questions. Also spent an hour getting the format just right for the finished chapter, which was a pain because of the pictures not wanting to cooperate. The formatting did add a page, though (I had to make my top and bottom margins bigger).
Still not sure I'm going to get all this done on time, but I'm gonna try my damnedest

Bone Examination

Bone Examination
Originally uploaded by texasrobo

This is me at work at SWCA, examining an extremely large bone (identified as a humerus) for cut marks that would indicate butchering. I'm using a giant magnifying glass that has 3x and 6x magnification. By the way, I didn't find any cut marks on this particular bone. Photo taken by Tina.
Not much going on. Yesterday I actually got to do some writing at work, which was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get everything done in the hours available, but what i did get done was pretty thorough. I spent some time now making it so that hours will be saved further down the line.
Today I examined bones under a magnifying glass all day. Most of the time, I was actually sitting on the floor, because that's where a lot of the bone is. The sand bins weigh between 40-70 pounds (depending on how full of sand they actually are) so I wasn't really feeling the need to move them around. I ended up using a photo flood light for extra illumination (and extra heat!)
BBQ tomorrow! Yay!