After being on the road for 9 weeks and constantly on the go, sitting here for the past almost 3 weeks feels really quite foreign. I’ve been sorting through thousands of photos, have legit posts to write, and just wanted to throw something up on here to get everything moving again.
So, during the process of sorting pictures and backing up everything in four different places because….technology is technology and there for questionable I can across a handful of pics I took this summer before I flew across the Atlantic. I’ve picked five to have some thoughts on before I jump into ‘All The Crap I Got Up To’ later on.
1. New Doggo
After what could easily be listed as the craziest spring for me and group of friends on record (No 2019, that is not a bloody challenge) summer arrived and with it the adoption of this doggo. Her name is Zuzu, and there’s not much in there, but she’s very sweet and loves her people. For Halloween she’s going to be Cthulu, because that’s the kind of people we are!
2. Take All The Notes
In London I was scheduled to give three lectures to different groups. One was at a cathedral, one for a history group, and one for a folklore group. To get ready and present as much information as possible that was accurate, I ended up at the Newberry Library a few times. Naturally I picked to be digging through wills and country history when they were shuffling and restructuring that area of the stacks. As I searched through the shelves the only county history that had not been moved with the others to safekeeping was Yorkshire’s…
3. Back To The Start
It was a nostalgic moment to set foot in the St. Joan of Arc Chapel, where 2 years ago I did my first survey which led to my first publication. I was showing another academic around while fighting good old imposter syndrome – every academic’s nemesis. It’s odd to think I know this building as well as I do now…and stranger still that it’s become such a cornerstone where my research and presentations are concerned, but I really love this place and still like to visit on occasion when I have the time.
4. Another Old Starting Point
For the third year I spent time out at this excavation site in western IL. It was really weird going back after last year’s intensive field school, but weird in a good way. I had a much deeper knowledge of what we were doing, helped train a few other people on troweling, and dug out a large rock and named it Falstaff. Sadly after discovering Falstaff he was relegated to a large pile of rocks and I have never seen him again.
5. New Luggage. New Goals.
For 10 years I had been using the same, beaten up black suitcase that I had gotten passed down to me after my grandmother stopped travelling. It honestly had served me well for several transatlantic journeys – including my first ever foray abroad. But it was falling apart, and I wasn’t confident it could handle another flight in its state of decay. So I said goodbye and upgraded to obnoxious bronze luggage and a new teal backpack – a departure from my dilapidated one. In a way it felt wasteful, I mean I could have duct taped those old bits together…in another way it was like ‘LEVEL UP’. I was finally travelling to do some serious research, sort out career plans, give lectures, and be a bit more professional about this graffiti thing. New kit felt like ‘Achievement Unlocked: Actually Look Like You Have A Clue’, and it turns out I was right to upgrade. That backpack has got more miles on than I’d care to admit from one summer, and that suitcase took quite a beating between various airports, trains, and taxis.
Gives No Fox.... 