I would like to note that every day when I walk down the corridor to my apartment all the way at one end of my building, I swear I am inhaling huge plumes of maple and brown sugar oatmeal air from my geriatric neighbors--- and I mean EVERY day. Just thought I'd let you in on a little bit of my olfactory experiences here in Philly. Also, the old folks in the building I'm pretty sure use the apt lobby as their 'gathering place' most afternoons and evenings, which I notice when I'm walking through after work. I swear I'm living in a nursing home sometimes. Why do they have a work-out gym, then? Why did all these old ppl choose MY apt building? Perhaps, how did Nate and I end up in THEIR building is the more appropriate question.
Ahh, ruminations.
So, I now have three younger 'minions' that I supervise on a daily/weekly basis at work. One volunteer intern and two workstudy students are now listening to my crazy-talk and doing what I tell them to do, and believing the nonsense that comes out of my mouth. It's kinda fun, actually (yes, yes, of course it is good experience, but that's beside the point). One girl is a senior undergraduate at Penn, and a freshman at Penn, and the other guy somewhere between freshman and senior at Penn. I 'supervise' these 3 "kids" three times per week. There is also another volunteer intern girl with whom I ocassionally share office space and is nice to talk to; she is a recent Bryn Mawr grad (B.A.) and keeps me from simply talking to myself most days. Having more people around besides my own supervisor is a NICE and very welcome change. I haven't wanted to blab a whole lot about my supervisor, for good or bad, on my blog-- because you never know who's reading this-- it is public and she is my employer. I WOULD like to get a good reference in the future so it is probably best not to say much, or one day I might be upset and say something I regret. Either way, my supervisor is not my 'friend', so I have to respect that line. Sorry kids. I will say that as I am at Penn longer, my relationships with the Museum folk get better as I get to know them.
Back to my minions....
Basically, they help me inventory objects for a big project I am working on. They are really doubling and tripling my efforts and I can hardly keep up on the back end of things I need to do after that part of the project is done. So, I am very thankful for them and they are helping me immensely. Without them, I would be doing it all by myself. Currently, we are working with objects from the Late Bronze Age site of Hasanlu in Northwest Iran, specifically the metal finds. Examples are weapons, horse accoutrements (decoration and armor), battle armor (e.g. shields, helmets), bronze vessels, figurines, jewelry etc. Mostly the objects relate to war time material and are pretty awesome stuff. Think about it-- arrowheads and maceheads and spearpoints the likely took part in the destruction of the site sometime between 1200-900 BC (and that includes the many people that were involved). I think I am gona need a face mask soon though because the metal dust is getting pretty bad. Overall though, it keeps my job interesting and keeps the interns interested.
My family is coming to visit a week from Friday for a few days, sans Bob :( Bob has to work, so I guess I can respect that... :) I am looking forward to finally doing some serious site-seeing as well as visiting. Yay!
Here are a few recent photos to give this post some color:
View over the Schuylkill River looking toward downtown, riding the train to work-- the name of the river is pronounced, as far as I have surmised, as: "school-kull". Those damn Pennsylvania Dutch make learning place names EXTREMELY tough.
Pulling in to 30th St. Station at the butt-crack of dawn
Me, sleeping in front of some Roman pottery.....
Types of weapons found at Hasanlu (not an actual photo of artifacts, photo of a public poster)
Modern map of MiddleEast: Hasanlu is just on the southern side of the lake in the NW corner of Iran, just south and west of modern Tabriz (click on pic for better resolution)
