Ca va bien, et toi?

I was sitting in the UW Archaeology lab looking down at a small selection of soil gastropods from some ho-hum site in Wyoming, my mind instantly classifying them into different groups based on their shell morphology. Some sunlight drifts in past pine trees, reminding me of spring. Books on various obscure subjects surround me, a couple of human skulls are cranium-down on the shelf behind me, the shiny enamel of the molars refelcting the sun, the dull dirt staining across what should have been a white bony structure reminded me that these bodies had been buried under ground for longer than England's existance as a nation.

It struck me at this moment that I was content. I know this sounds a little mundane, but I had never felt that sensation before. Usually I am a wreck of crashed ambitions or in the spring of a new hope, a new screenplay, a new, even cooler theropod. But this time, it was just a nice lab, some small gastropods, and a couple of skeletons that made me realize that at that one moment, I was happy. Everything seems so bloody stable for the moment that I can't help but relish it.

Well, so maybe the soil gastropods don't quite measure up to the dinosaurs. In the off chance that my SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) is right, the evolution of these little soil gassies will be fast enough due to their low generational time that I will be able to date a stratigraphic sequence on the presence of specific species alone, which would save Archaeologists in the tri-state area lots of money in the comming years (who needs Electronic Spin Resonance or Radiocarbon dating when you have diagnostic shells?). But, we'll see.

For the moment, I'm cool with just about everything.

I've finished 5 scripts, and another two should be done within a few months, or risk becoming eternal projects. I've got my foot in the door for a Velociraptor, Oviraptor, and a couple of Ornithimimisaurs. And the Allosaur is mostly finished, except for a couple of odd little bits that need clarification.