Yo is Lame

Clearly there will not be many posts while I am away in Greece, Yo is lame. I have been in a whirlwind since I left Jordan. I spent 4 days in Toronto/Ingersoll organizing my stuff for the field season in Greece and getting my postdoc set up at Toronto. It was busy, but I got to do some excellent trampolining (a word?) with my nieces and nephew and their pals. I left Toronto for the SAA (Society for American Archaeology) meetings in Austin. It was the first time I had been back to Austin since we moved after Yo's graduation in 1998.

It was a great visit, but somewhat bittersweet. Austin is really Yo's town, he lived there for some 11 years, I was a later addition - only for 3 and he had to stay behind in Jordan. While I was there in addition to attending the meetings and catching up with archaeology pals, I met up with some of my old Austin friends and their new additions. I had the great pleasure of watching the Philadelphia Chicken dance, as well as the Moo Dance as rendered by Maia and Arik. I got to meet the newest addition to that family - 7 month old Ezra. I also had a wonderful dining companion in Miss Vivi. It was such a treat to see familiar faces, drive around old haunts and visit the married student housing complex where Yorke and I lived for 3 years. Thanks so much to Leslie, Eitan, Elizabeth and Lanette for making me feel like I had not been anywhere but Austin for the past 9 years.

Then back to reality as I struggled to write something coherent for the session on Imperialism - War, Violence, and Archaeology. There were a lot of really great papers and I was asked to comment on the themes in general. For an admitted control freak it was tough going, getting the papers only a few days before the session (I like to finish my papers up before I hit a conference), hopefully I appeared calm, cool and collected. I doubt it though, as I came down with a nasty bout of laryngitis just before I was scheduled to speak - nice timing. Then Sunday morning I was off to Athens, from where I write this entry.

These are some replicas of the types of figurines (although ours will all be broken) we uncovered last year. Hopefully we will uncover some more this year.

I arrived this morning and immediately received a panicked phone call from one of the team members in Greece. Apparently there might be a ferry strike tomorrow and I am not sure where that would leave me and 10 students all scheduled to leave on the 5:30pm ferry. The latest update is that our ferry will leave, but there will be no metro service, so we will have to take taxis to the port. Hopefully we can still meet the rest of the students at the metro stop, so we can board the ferry as a group. This is an interesting beginning to an adventurous summer.

Keep your fingers crossed that we get on the Blue Star tomorrow...