Maybe if I sit here and start writing a long post, it will jinx my dad into ahowing up.
Today was the last day of the Oneida Workshop. We brought the kids to the lab, had them clean all the stuff we found this week, then took them to Mr. Ed's for ice cream. It was kind of sad to see it all end. Not in a sappy "I feel down because the workshop is over" kind of way, or "I cried when I realised I'd never hear Tupac offering his colorful thoughts on female dogs, African Americans, and people who enjoy sexual intercourse with their parents from Carl's enormous headphones." It's just that the past two weeks I felt like I was really working, for the first time in a long time. Maybe it's just the fact that it was physical labor that left me tired enough to feel like I could indulge in a nice lounge around when I got home, but not mentally demanding enough to impinge upon my chosen methods of amusement (such as sitting here typing into Blogger). But aside from that, I think it's also because what we were doing was real -- a real site, real artefacts, which we were really destroying in order to learn about it. As I'm typing this, I realise how incredibly trite that sounds. But just because a feeling is common doesn't make it invalid, does it? I can't be coming up with profound and original breakthroughs all the time. Of course, having been at this for four weeks or so now, I'm probably due for some profundity.
No dad yet. I need another thought.
I decided just now that if you have more than a cubic meter of stuff, you have too much. I'm looking at all my boxes piled in the corner, and it seems like when I add the things that are piled on my dresser but not packed yet (due to lack of boxes), it will add up to about a cubic meter minus computer. So I have too much stuff. I wonder how I ever made it all semester in Australia with only two suitcases and a backpack full of stuff. Granted, I didn't take my stereo and I didn't have a computer. And this calculation doesn't take into account all the stuff that I use, but don't own -- a refrigerator, a stove, a washing machine, etc. Prof. Kerber and Siobhan were issuing dire warnings about the amount of stuff one accumulates when one owns a house. And volume is actually a rather silly way to measure the degree of a person's materialism -- if I had a laptop instead of a desktop computer, I'd cut the biggest item I have down to a fifth its size or so (not counting the extra room the packaging for the computer takes up). But I still look at the pile and say, "wow, that's an awful lot of stuff to be dragging around." I want to be like a nomad, not owning any more than I can carry on my back. But what stuff could I get rid of? And again, why is it volume that's so important? Maybe because volume makes the situation look better than weight. Well, for me at least, becuase a lot of my stuff is paper (books). Paper is incredibly heavy for its size.
Still no dad. He's 18 minutes late so far (by my clock). I think I'm going to go waste time elsewhere.
Today was the last day of the Oneida Workshop. We brought the kids to the lab, had them clean all the stuff we found this week, then took them to Mr. Ed's for ice cream. It was kind of sad to see it all end. Not in a sappy "I feel down because the workshop is over" kind of way, or "I cried when I realised I'd never hear Tupac offering his colorful thoughts on female dogs, African Americans, and people who enjoy sexual intercourse with their parents from Carl's enormous headphones." It's just that the past two weeks I felt like I was really working, for the first time in a long time. Maybe it's just the fact that it was physical labor that left me tired enough to feel like I could indulge in a nice lounge around when I got home, but not mentally demanding enough to impinge upon my chosen methods of amusement (such as sitting here typing into Blogger). But aside from that, I think it's also because what we were doing was real -- a real site, real artefacts, which we were really destroying in order to learn about it. As I'm typing this, I realise how incredibly trite that sounds. But just because a feeling is common doesn't make it invalid, does it? I can't be coming up with profound and original breakthroughs all the time. Of course, having been at this for four weeks or so now, I'm probably due for some profundity.
No dad yet. I need another thought.
I decided just now that if you have more than a cubic meter of stuff, you have too much. I'm looking at all my boxes piled in the corner, and it seems like when I add the things that are piled on my dresser but not packed yet (due to lack of boxes), it will add up to about a cubic meter minus computer. So I have too much stuff. I wonder how I ever made it all semester in Australia with only two suitcases and a backpack full of stuff. Granted, I didn't take my stereo and I didn't have a computer. And this calculation doesn't take into account all the stuff that I use, but don't own -- a refrigerator, a stove, a washing machine, etc. Prof. Kerber and Siobhan were issuing dire warnings about the amount of stuff one accumulates when one owns a house. And volume is actually a rather silly way to measure the degree of a person's materialism -- if I had a laptop instead of a desktop computer, I'd cut the biggest item I have down to a fifth its size or so (not counting the extra room the packaging for the computer takes up). But I still look at the pile and say, "wow, that's an awful lot of stuff to be dragging around." I want to be like a nomad, not owning any more than I can carry on my back. But what stuff could I get rid of? And again, why is it volume that's so important? Maybe because volume makes the situation look better than weight. Well, for me at least, becuase a lot of my stuff is paper (books). Paper is incredibly heavy for its size.
Still no dad. He's 18 minutes late so far (by my clock). I think I'm going to go waste time elsewhere.
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