the Dalaverse

All right. I have much to catch up on and less time to do it in. Well, not time so much as energy. So I shall cover it in weekends.

This past weekend, it was Tidewater Archaeology, which is this thing Historic does where people come to the site and screen our dirt. All we do is fill buckets and tell them that yes, that is indeed a rock (okay, I'm being unfair; Saturday someone found a musketball and a beautiful piece of Staffordshire slipware, and yesterday one of the kids at my hole found two pieces of terracotta pipestem, in addition to the usual rounds of brick and bottle glass). I'd been apprehensive about it, but it was really a lot of fun; we didn't have to work ourselves too hard and the six hundred or so folks who showed up really seemed to enjoy themselves. I had both kids and adults who pored over the screens for two or three hours at a time. And only one person fainted from the heat, and nobody tried to climb the backdirt pile or caved in the hole walls, so all in all it was a success. My parents also came down to visit and had a good time. I need to call later today, though, because I feel really really bad about dinner last night. We were going out for Indian and I asked if Anne and Maria could come if they paid for themselves, because the stupid Great Room was closed and there was nothing to eat here. Only, I couldn't figure out how to politely convey this to the girls, and they didn't offer to pay. This is not really their fault, since the 'rents had brought us sandwiches for lunch and turned down their money. But that doesn't change the fact that we can't afford to spend one hundred dollars on a meal. And I ordered a cocktail and a dessert. Wah. I don't even care if my mother is mad at me, I just feel bad for making them do that, even unintentionally.

The weekend before -- actually nothing really happened except happy hour at the Door and hanging out at Lydia's, but earlier in the week we took our field trip to Williamsburg. We got an early start and went right to the lab, where they let us OPEN ALL THE DRAWERS and TOUCH EVERYTHING OMG. Scissors! Leather shoes! Whole ceramics! Tim then led us around Williamsburg, first to their site and the one on campus (they were doing garden archaeology *heart*), then to the church where he quizzed us on brick and construction details. (You can no longer walk through the graveyard, which means I couldn't get to my favorite tree ::pouts::) Then he left us to wander free in the stifling heat, and much as I love Williamsburg, being there and being flat broke sucks. All I could afford was a bottle of fantastic Kings Arms Tavern ginger ale. After we left, we checked into the hotel and planned the great liquor run before splitting up for dinner; I went to a Mongolian grill buffett with Tim, Henry, Anne, Maria, Hannah, and a few of the others. The rest of them went to...wait for it...Hooters. When we got back, the drinking began. I stuck to vodka and rum and got pretty well smashed, enough to think that scaling the pool fence and going swimming during a storm was a capital idea. And by 'swimming,' I mean 'skinnydippiing.' We went out a second time about an hour later, played chicken and tried our best not to drown. Frankly, I'm amazed we didn't get thrown out of the place. But it was great fun.

This is getting long and I don't feel like cutting it, so I'll finish with the trip and the two weekends preceding it later.