This is pretty boring unless you're the commander

SO, I've just purchased my diving insurance, and boy is it a good deal! Get this: for 40 bucks, I get $125,000 worth of coverage, including emergency evac, decompression, loss of life or limb(s), AND they'll even pay to ship my soggy remains back to my mother. It's a bargain.

I've also found last year's blog of field school #2 that I'm attending this summer. It's pretty cool, but does not include helpful clues about living arrangements. As far as I know, I'll be shacking up at a dive shop 100 miles down a highway in the middle of the ocean. Here's the link: http://www.pastfoundation.org/category/slobodna-2010/

Though I know practically nothing about 19th century maritime stuff, I'm really REALLY excited to try my fins out in the open ocean AND swim shipwrecks. I might even trap a shark a la the little mermaid, but it might trap me instead (hooray insurance). Regardless, it sounds like a pretty cool adventure, even for a landlocked lubber like myself.

The hardest part, I think, will be getting there in time to hear the lessons and diving advice. A discussion of artifact identification, safety procedures, and dive schedules would be pretty nice. The problem is, I'm flying to the school a day later, due to overlap between Slobby (fieldschool #2) and a month-long Zooarchaeology field school (#1) in California. More about that later.

I've never been to Florida, and am toying around with staying in Miami for a few days. I might be too tuckered out to really get into the scene, so I'll see how travel pans out first.

How it starts

Hi all,

You don't know me, probably. I think for the most part, I'll keep it that way, because I'm paranoid, and there's something cool about reading a stranger's thoughts.

However, I will tell you some things. I'm a graduate student, for one, studying Ancient Middle Eastern History. Really though, my interests lie in archaeology, which is the meat of my degree. Which means basically that I study really old things that those Great White Adventurers studied in the 1930's onward, and sneer down my nose at them in the process.

I started this blog initially because I wanted it to indulge my escapism. I thought it would be great to write a blog about what my life COULD be like, rather than how my life actually is. That's more intriguing than the banal reality anyways. But THEN, it was suggested to me that I blog about my adventures in archaeology. Thus, I think the blog will mix one part truth to two parts delusion. That's cool, right?

Stay tuned for tall tales from the field and otherwise.