'Tis The Season

My sister (you can follow her exploits here http://ilacktoastandtolerance.blogspot.com/)  looked at my blog a few weeks ago and reminded me that I haven't published anything since summer.  Of course I haven't - I've been juggling full time grad school, work, docent work, and two church callings since late August.  But since my third semester of school is FINALLY over, I can post again.

I really love Christmas.  I really, really love Christmas.  I love to sing along with my Bing Crosby White Christmas CD for the 5th time in a row, I love to wear a Santa hat, I love to wrap presents, I love to be overly bubbly and kind and wish everyone happy holidays.  I'm probably a bit annoying, just like other people doing these things, but just know - we are happy, are we are trying to share it.

I have worked retail during Christmas for about 6 years altogether, and it doesn't get me down.  For me, the thing that puts more of a damper on the Christmas season than anything else is school.  I arrive at the end of finals on the 12th of December an absolute wreck.  I can't think straight.  My stress acne is acting up.  My blood sugar is a disaster.  My laundry hasn't been washed in two weeks.  There are dirty dishes all over my bedroom, along with piles of books and articles that I have been feverishly looking through.  My roommate is getting sick of me not washing my dishes, and of leaving my junk all over the place.  All I can manage to do is curl up in my bed and let anthropology ooze out my ears until I have slept it off.

Putting my life back together afterwards takes at least a week, and attempting to do so while suddenly realizing that Christmas is in 2 weeks causes more panic and stress.  I have not sent out cards.  I have no packages to send to my family or friends.  And for some reason all the more tragic - my apartment has not been decorated.  Having grown up in a house where Christmas decorations were a sacred procedure and something that stayed around from the first of December until midway through January, having not a scrap of tinsel up is frankly upsetting.

But as of today - it's done!  The packages are ready to ship.  I have sent out all my Christmas cards except one, and the apartment is decorated!  It's not AS decorated as I would have liked - t
he mobile of snowflakes above the kitchen table is not going to happen.  The giant turquoise snowflake is not going to get made.  But I'm all right with it.  It looks beautiful and festive as I could make it on my student budget, and I'm going to sit back and enjoy it.

Before.  The horror, the horror.

After: festively flocked.

Yes, I am an inverted tomato cage.

My stocking hanging on the "fireplace."

Wise men bringing gifts.

Thank you, Pinterest, for ruining my life. Sorry, saving.

Indoor snowstorm, in blue.

 Now I am going to sit back and enjoy a mug of hot chocolate and try this Christmas thing a bit more slowly for the next week and a half.

Labor Day Weekend

When you're a student, you don't really get "vacations."  Even though the school system tells you there are a number of "breaks," "vacations," and "holidays" within a semester, they're lying.  Well, maybe not if you're a freshman and can afford to take a break.  But the further you get into school, the bigger the lie of the vacation is.  I was settled in at my desk for a long day of reading through three monographs, taking notes on them, and possibly doing a few of the logistical tasks that have been written on my To-Do whiteboard for ages.

And then my housemate said she was going mountain biking.

Dang.

On the one hand, that meant the house would be quiet and I could focus, and on the other, that meant no one would be around and I would probably end up watching half a season of Doctor Who or something.  I believed a compromise was in order.  I asked if I could come with.  She would bike for a few hours, and I would hike until I found a nice spot, get out my blanket, and do my reading in the lovely outdoors.

The view from my 'desk.'

Under a shady pine tree.

Wildflowers.

I will never get over New Mexico's skies.  Never.

The dry streambed behind my pine tree.

Wildflowers...with messed up camera settings.  

Grass.

Really.  Why would I do homework INSIDE?

The Turquoise Trail

I was sitting on my bed, laptop open, empty cereal bowl on the floor, unread theory books piled on the desk.  The sun was streaming in the windows, it was a beautiful day with clouds building over the Sandias, my housemate was still at work, and it was only mid-day.  I was terribly bored.

I had browsed Pinterest and Facebook until my mouse no longer wanted to function.  I had probably consumed half a box of Smith's discount corn flakes, and my theory books were leering at me from the desk, judging me.  I should be studying for my comps exams.  

Never.  It was summer, and I was supposed to be having fun.  

A few nights before, I had had been looking on Google Maps to see if a huge swatch of green, tilled land many, many miles from my worksite was labeled.  It hadn't been, but there had been a picture of a town called Golden nearby, and some interesting historic structures ruining off the side of the highway.  It struck me that I should find Golden and these ruins, and photograph them.  And so I did.

The Turquoise Trail runs from just east of Albuquerque, off I40, to Santa Fe, by a much more scenic route than taking I25 will give you.  In between the ABQ and Santa Fe are a series of small towns: Tijeras, Cedar Crest, Paako, Golden, Madrid (as in mad, angry: yes, I know it's wrong), and Cerillos.  The whole drive, without stopping, takes about an hour.  The road is good, thin, winding, and rolling.  Great views, no pull-offs.  Be prepared to drive a bit slower so you can gape at the scenery without becoming a permanent part of it.  Although the roadside crosses are pretty, it would be in everyone's best interest to avoid making more.

I had already been through Tijeras and Cedar Crest, so I will start this tour in Paako.  Paako is actually an archaeological site.  It is a prehistoric pueblo, with some historic Catholic church ruins mixed in.  However, what you see from the road is a slight opening in the trees to the west, and if you look closely, a battered blue sign announcing Paako, and that it is state land.  I think.  Please drive up to the fence and look over with your binoculars.  You won't see much in the way of ruins - this isn't Chaco or Mesa Verde, but you can see slight mounds, and the sign has more information, once you're closer.  If you're observant you might see some potsherds and such just the other side of the fence.  Please remember - look, take pictures, but DON'T touch, move, remove, etc! (Seriously, I will get you.) And if the prairie dogs who live there currently have been doing their jobs, probably not much will be on the surface near the fence.  You'll probably want to move on pretty quickly.

Leaving Paako (the real one), a minute later you'll drive past the turn-in for Paako's golf course.  No, not the prehistoric golf course.  For some reason  beyond me they've decided to make Paako's backyard into a gated community with a golf course.  It seems to have escaped builders, landscapers, real estate people etc that one of the reasons Paako was temporarily abandoned was because the water ran out.  Water ran out.  No nice golf course lawn for you.  Bad golf course.  

Ahem.  Getting off my soap box and back on the road, New Mexico State Road 14 has officially become the Turquoise Trail at this point!  Ten minutes further up the road and into my adventure, the speed limit dropped to a rather alarmingly low speed, and I crawled into - and still almost missed - Golden.  Golden is a few houses, a mercantile which looks charming and is never open, the ruin you see from the road, and a church.

Mining car on the west side of the road; ruins beyond.

Ruins on the hillside.

And the sky there?  Whew.  Talk about blue.

A stunning sky, a quaint mining car, and lovely solitude on the side of a road are about all the charms Golden has to offer, but it is still worth the stop.  And at this point in my journey, I was in no mood to turn around, so I decided to drive all the way up to Santa Fe, and stop at every random thing that took my fancy.  

The next town on the Trail is Madrid.  Not Madrid, as in Spain.  Say mad, like you're very angry.  Then add 'drid' onto the end.  Madrid.  Very good.  Again, I have NO idea why New Mexicans have decided to say it wrong, but go with it and they'll treat you like a local.  AKA, tell you where the only public loo in town is.

Madrid's main road is narrow and short - maybe a mile long?  It's packed with locals, tourists, children running amok, hitchhikers smoking, and bikers (motorized), so drive even slower than the posted speed.  It's kind of like being on campus, really...

Again, sky!

There are lots of places to eat, every house on the street is selling Bohemian clothing and New Age or Modern art, so find a parking spot (if you can), and walk it.  Eat.  Food is a bit pricey there, but tourism is the only income the town has.  It was a boom mining town, then in the 40s was said to have shipped coal out for the Manhattan Project.  After the war was over, it became a ghost because, get this - there is NO water.  None.  All of the water Madrid uses is piped in from ABQ.  Wells are too impractical here.  So when you're visiting, there are public vault toilets on the south end of town, on the east just next to the tavern and railway museum.  No water.  Crazy!

The Weather Bone makes me laugh.

A delicious pizza from Jezebel's Soda Fountain.

A boot store made from an old AT&SF rail car!

Go into the tavern and pay $5 for the tour.  They let you run around the old railyard and play in the train.

My favorite house there - it looks like part of a Wild, Wild, West set!

And that is lovely Madrid!  I definitely recommend it; it certainly made my day about twenty times more amazing than it had been before.  And I dragged my housemate back a few days later, and then my folks a month later when they came to visit.  Madrid is absolutely going to make you smile.  And eat ice cream.

Another 15 minutes north of Madrid is the turn off to Cerillos.  Cerillos is the complete opposite of Madrid; the nicest building in town is the State Park office.  I think it's a state park....hmmm.  You'll have to go check.  Take the turn-off, head west into the little drainage, and welcome to Cerillos, which boasts dirt roads and an impressive Petting Zoo/Gift Shop/Mining Museum all in an adobe house lined with the biggest number of aqua glass insulators I've ever seen in my life.  And I've seen my share of aqua glass insulators.

The Petting Zoo is free, and you can get a $2 bag of birdseed to feed the llama and goats from the gift shop.  The museum is also in the gift shop, and is another $2.  They only take cash. The gift shop is full of oddities found during the mining period.  There are also some other articles in there I wouldn't suggest buying (you'll know them when you see them), and things from other periods (the 1987 Pakistani paisas, for instance), but it's a great place to go if you like to buy rocks and minerals for your children.  And the llama is very friendly.

The llama eating some birdseed.

A nearby old structure next to the railway.

My parents feeding a goat.

After Cerillos, it's about twenty minutes to half an hour of smooth, lovely driving through the mountains before you reach Santa Fe.  The first time I drove the road a thunderstorm rolled in at this point, and it was spectacular.  Once I got to Santa Fe, I had spent about four hours driving, and had wiled away most of the afternoon.  You can be sure I took the Turquoise Trail back to ABQ, though.  No I 25 for me.

My next adventure - the Rio Grande Gorge and Taos.

Summer 2013

This summer was, quite simply, the best summer of my life.  That summer that Hollywood makes cheesy coming-of-age feel-good films about.  The one you don't forget.
Barring all of that cheesy nonsense, 2013 was ultimately the best summer so far.  It was essentially one long vacation from May until August, where I got to travel, meet new people, make amazing friends, the whole nine yards.  Bonus?  It was my job.  Being an archaeologist is the best - you won't find a better summer job.  Anywhere.

I worked 10 days, then was off for 4, and, being completely footloose and fancy free for 4 whole days at a time, I explored New Mexico.  For nearly a year people have been bugging me to get out and see stuff - visit places.  I would happily have done, but there was the small issue of full time grad school, two jobs, two church callings, and a very limited budget.  I didn't seem much beyond the neighborhood park for a lot of 2012.  So when opportunity came knocking, I took it, locked it in the trunk with my tent, and drove away slightly faster than the speed limit.

I drove the Turquoise Trail and explored all of its little side attractions.  I drove through the Rio Grande Gorge and finally visited Taos.  I ran amok in the Jemez Mountains and Valles Caldera.  I made it as far south as the Very Large Array and Stallion Gate.  I camped at Chaco Canyon, then camped at Chaco Canyon some more.  And I saw and tasted more of Albuquerque than I have all year.  :)

Of course, being me, I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures.  I edited lots of them.  I deleted lots of them.  And lots of them I am going to post here for all you good folks (okay, three of you) to enjoy.  

Coming soon...  The Turquoise Trail.

Honey, I UNshrunk the Shirt!!

Yes, like most other women I know, I am a  bit of Pinterest addict.  Maybe more than a bit.   Aside from desperate attempts emulate the style of such persons as Alexa Chung or the hairstyle of Emma Watson (and failing miserably), I don't really try things on Pinterest.  But when I stumbled (wait, wrong website) across a pin claiming to have a method of unshrinking clothing, I felt I should try it.  A couple of weeks previously I had made the mistake of wandering into Forever21 on my day off....and came out with a great sweater that was on the half off of clearance rack, making it a whopping $5, and a cute stripey shirt for $9.  The next laundry day, I remembered to air dry the sweater, but into the nice and toasty dryer went the ill-fated stripey top.

Of course, my perfectly fitted top was now two sizes two small.  I may have been able to wear it when I was ten, or possibly even fifteen when belly shirts were all the rage.  Sadly, my $9 steal could only now be worn over another shirt, or never again.

Enter Pinterest.  The directions were to soak the clothing in warm water with baby shampoo, they lay out on a towel and stretch (see full directions here: http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/10/how-to-resize-shrunken-clothes.html ).  I figured that baby shampoo sample bottles were cheap, and as baby shampoo is essentially mild soap, it couldn't damage poor stripey shirt any further. 

I took a before picture, just in case it did work, and then filled up my bathroom sink with water and Johnson's baby shampoo.  As a side note, I will mention that the scent of plain old baby shampoo wafting from my bathroom was pleasant, and made me quite happy.   After a good long soak (during which I washed my new black jeans inside out in cold water elsewhere in the apartment complex), I rolled the shirt in a towel for about five minutes to get rid of excess water, then laid it out on a clean towel on the floor and commenced stretching.   I stretched if manually for several minutes, then got some old hardbound books to hold it in place.  After about twenty minutes of that I restretched manually and left it to finish drying.  Bonus: the top smelled like baby too.  :)  Here are the happy results:

The shirt stretched a good 4'', which may have been a liiiitle more than I should have gone, but I'm not complaining.  I have another sweater that shrunk several sizes as well, and I'm planning on unshrinking it when I get some free time.

Gasp!  Something on Pinterest worked!  

Day at the Museum

I am lucky enough to work at a fabulous anthropology museum - and even though I'm only in the gift shop, I still feel very privileged to be here at all.
This morning I had a case of grumpiness as I opened up shop, and proceeded to make a list of all my pet peeves about the museum.  And then because this seemed like not such a great way to start my weekend, I made an even longer list of things I love about working in the museum to remind myself how great it actually is.  :)

Here are my lists of Pet Peeves and Loves about the museum.

Pet Peeves:

1 Guests who go through the museum galleries in the wrong order.
2 Docents who don't tell the guests what the correct order is.
3 Docents who tell guests to start with the last gallery and move backwards through the museum.
4 Guests who spend 15 minutes in the entire museum and think they've seen everything.
5 Guests who spend 3 hours in the museum and have to be told that it's closing time.  Twice.
6 Docents who don't tell guests that the cases are alarmed.
7 Docents who don't mention that flash photography is not allowed.
8 School groups that don't adhere to the 'five students AND a teacher in the gift shop at a time' rule.
9 Guests who come into the gift shop 15 minutes before closing and REALLY take their time.
10 Docents who allow guests into the museum 15 minutes before closing without telling them when we close.
11 Guests who come into the gift shop, mess up my archaeology books, show me their Clovis tattoo, and proceed to treat me like I don't know anything about archaeology.
12 Guests who are about 30 years behind the times on politically correct terms.
13 Guests who make derogatory remarks about racial and ethnic groups.
14 Guests who complain about the museum displays without stopping to think the museum has next to no    funding - it's a free museum, folks.
15 Guests who ask me what in heaven's name I'm going to do with an anthropology degree.
16 Guests who think the gift shop is the place to start in the museum.
17 Guests who insist upon bringing their own 'artifacts' in -which clearly aren't artifacts - and then begging to see the curator.
18 Students who traipse through, loudly complaining about how lame the exhibits are.
19 Battles between curators with different ideas about exhibits.
20 The creepy basement with the lights off.
21 The anthropology department and the anthropology museum wanting nothing to do with each other.

Museum Loves

1 Kindergarten classes who think every display is beautiful and interesting.
2 Elderly couples on a date.
3 Most tourists - especially the foreigners who are just as excited about Chaco as Americans are about Paris.
4 Little kids' reaction to the Neanderthal display and the interactive Touch Table.
5 Making pottery and rug displays in the store.
6 Meeting the artists who come to sell their work to the gift shop.
7 Listening to the classical music station all day.
8 Inside information on all the museum events and lectures.
9 Leftovers from the museum events.  Lunch!
10 Hundreds of books to pick from and read when I'm tired of class assignments.
11 How quiet it usually is.
12 Hunting for expired cockroaches every morning before the guests arrive.  (Weird, I know)
13 The Kwakwaka'wakw crest pole in the courtyard.
14 The story the security guard feeds to people about the crest pole coming from Africa.
15 The cicadas singing in the courtyard.
16 The Isleta family that comes every Wednesday and bakes bread in the horno.
17 The life-size recreation of the rock art panel from El Morro.
18 All the prehistoric pottery.
19 The Chaco Canyon excavation recreation.
21 The awesome janitor who wishes I spoke more Spanish and who I wish spoke more English.  And vice versa.
22 Meeting the Dine weavers who helped make the Woven Stories exhibit.
23 The creepy basement with the lights on and other people around.
24 Men who come into the store and desperately want me to help them find something their wife would like.  This includes modeling jewelry.
25 Couples going through the museum and you can tell which person actually wanted to come.
26 Knowing more about the anthropology museum than most students in the anthropology department.
27 Volunteering at rug auctions.
28 Knowing all the curators and directors by first name.
29 Picking the museum exhibit coordinator's brain about the types of lightbulbs and preservation techniques that are used in exhibits.
30 Watching new exhibits go up and seeing them before the public.
31 Being able to tell guests about nearby archaeological sites and other museums.
32 The sweet British lady who runs the university's journal press and knows when every single public Pueblo dance is being held.
33 Doing favors for the admin by taking extra books back to SAR press in Santa Fe.
34 Learning about the process of buying artwork directly from artists or through a middle man.
35 Going through the new shipment of Zuni fetishes.
36 The time a woman came in and said she had no pictures of her grandmother, but had seen her grandmother's name on our website, only to find out that the museum has several photographs of her. The woman now has pictures!  :)
37 Kids begging their parents to buy them a bag of pretty tumbled stones.
38 The little boy who claimed the Neanderthal was actually a monster from an episode of Scooby Doo.
39 Hearing the curators plans for new exhibits.
40 Loving coming to work!

Valentines

With Valentines just around the corner, my roommate had an awesome idea.  I mean a TRULY awesome idea that she should probably win a prize for.  Instead of bemoaning the fact that we're two utterly single (yet pretty much okay with that) 20-somethings with no plans for Valentines, we were going to make the cheesiest Valentines possible and send them to all our family and friends.  And what were we going to use to make these amazing Valentines?  The most logical thing, of course:

Seed catalogs.

That's right, seed catalogs.  As our mania continued, our catalog selection evolved to contain two fall Anthropologie catalogs (my contribution), an ArcGIS catalog, and a Civil Engineering offering.

Following my roommate's utterly genius lead, we soon came up with a handful of utterly terrible vegetable-related pickup lines.  Alas, I neglected to take photos of the cards I made for my family, so I will beg your indulgence in imagining pictures of fruits and vegetables and other garden-related items you might find in Johnny's or Burpee's catalogs.

'Lettuce' have no secrets - you're incredible!
You're not 'jostaberry', you're a 'peach!'
'Shallots' I compare thee to a summer's day?
I don't mean to be a creeper, but you're pretty 'phloxy.'
I'm not your 'stepping stone,' but you can 'walk on me' Valentine!
Did somebody 'turnip' the heat in here, or are you really that 'raddishing?!"

You can see how much was lost by my inability to remember to take photos.  Needless to say, when round two went down last night, I made sure I got the camera out.  I re-used a few of the pickup lines, but as our Burpees catalog was more air than substance at that point, I think I can be forgiven.

Courtesy of my roommate

As you can tell, sheer genius. Happy Valentines to all!