Israel

The ADL contacted me just before Thanksgiving Break, I'm off to Israel after Christmas. It's the first time in my life I'm looking forward to early January rather than Christmas. Weee. The Latin alphabet can't contain my enthusiasm.

Anyway, I'm alone in the Arch. lab, lit by a single light. It casts a wierd glow on a goat skeleton that's staring at me right now. I mean really, how many people spend their holidays in a lab with a dead goat? On an entymological note, the word Tragedy stems from the word αιγοσ, tragedy actually means "goat song", the goat being loved by the 'Ελληνσ for it's *cough* potency.

Actually, I'm really just distracting myself. I think I need a distraction from life right now. Last week, that damn House resolution passed, dramatically slashing at student loans. Our beloved representative Cubin of Wyoming voted for it. At the same time the Senate added $60 billion in tax cuts. Effectively, students will be funding this tax cut for the wealthy, while New Orleans still lies in ruins. Fucking bastards. Anyway, if you've kept up with my infrequent blog posts, this also means that my efforts in collecting 10% of UW's student population's signatures on a petition was useless - once again, Cubin represents Republicans, not Wyoming. This feeling of futility caused me to reflect on life, and for reasons beyond me, Elodie was at the forefront. All weekend I couldn't stop thinking of her. It's been over a year since we last saw each other at the Cody airport, but losing her finally caught up to me. Losing a lot of things finally caught up to me.

I rifled through old photos from the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, and felt horrible. Oh - about that - as it turns out, after telling me that site WDC-TYA was no longer to be funded, they went ahead and funded it after I left. They had a grad student work out there all summer and find...

...nothing. They dug in under burden, i.e. beneath the site, for three months. All that talk about how horrible of an excavator I was (pulling 160+ bones in one season almost by myself), was thrown out with the rock at my old allosaur site. In fact, they did find a single bone, a cervical vertebra when widening their impotent pit. From what I hear, the curator was really mad, has all but fired those involved, and has offered me my old job back. I... I don't know what I'm going to do, I suppose press harder for Israel in the summer (as opposed to Israel in the winter), but I'm struck with indecision. It ties back to Elodie, how could I go back... when I look at everything including my over-reliance on Scott for judgement, I just want to cut my losses and run. And if I did go back, who would I be? I wouldn't be the same paleo-nut, I've moved on from that. I don't know what I want to do, or what I'm going to do. Perhaps I shouldn't confuse Elodie with the Dinosaur Center, it's easy, but two very, very different things that happen to live in the same place in my heart.

Maybe Israel will help me sort it all out... it's weird, the news hasn't hit me yet. I still can't comprehend receiving this honor. And I won't have the time with finals week comming up. In the time between, it'll be back to languages for me.

So, to conclude with some horrible mangled Greek:

Οι κρονοι πεπαιδευχω μοι, επει μοι, τισ εσμι? Εγο βουλω γνοσκοθειν μεν αρκηεολογιστον, αλλ' εγο βουλω γνοσκοθειν δε παλεοντολογιστ. Τισ εσμι?

1071 at the end

So, I haven't posted in forever, but for good reason. I've been working on a petition with fellow Dems in Laramie against House Resolution 609. This nasty bit of legislation would have introduced a variable student loan interest rate that had the potential of costing millions of students thousands of dollars each school year. It's now part of a larger set of budgetary cuts that are currently a hot topic this comming week. We've got 1071 signatures on the petitions, representing 11.5% or so of the Undergraduate population of UW. The petition is 42 pages long, representing 3 weeks worth of bugging people in and outside of class.

I got copies faxed to Senator Mike Enzi and Representative Barbara Cubin, costing me a little over $45 - I hope it's money well spent. Enzi is chair of the Education, Labor, and Pension committee for the Senate and - in a rare turn of events - Cubin could be a critical vote in the House. Currently all Dems are suppose to vote against new budgetary cuts, 202 of them in all. If that proves true, 13 Republican votes are all that stand in the way of it's passage. As such, in both the House and the Senate, Wyoming citizens have a grossly disproportionate influence on these budgetary votes. My fingers are crossed that they will listen. Enzi will - he's proven his willingness to listen in the past. I'm very hesitent about Cubin, perhaps pushing a calling campaign for next week will help.

In my non-H.R. 609 life, I've επεπαιδεθμαι 'Ελλην πολυν τω βιβλω. I'm enjoying the progress so far, I'm currently translating Lysistrata and Herodotus' 6th history. My archaeology research is going well, I spend weekends alone in the Arch. lab playing audiobooks and counting the hinge vs. step fractured flakes on the dorsal sections of larger flakes. Wee.

Oh, and interesting news. Last night durring our statistics test, I was stressing completley. I was working on the binomial equation when all of a sudden BRRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGG! The fire alarm went off. The room was evacuated, and the test cancelled. Upon checking my test, which had been finished, I had done all the math correctly, kind of a shame. But stats are going well, so is physics. I never thought I would do well in math classes, in physics I have one of the highest grades in the class (more than 100% on both tests so far). My fingers are crossed for the next.

Anyway, more tests next week, more papers, and the House vote. I would say I can't wait for this semester to end, but I have a sneaking suspicion that another one is following it.

Till next time,
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