Good Morning, Baltimore.

Hello, everybody.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm working on two massive posts from this weekend, which will detail a museum trip and my time around the pyramids. I meant to finish last night, but happy the coincidence of margaritas, sunshine, and piña coladas declared otherwise. Will have it together by the middle of this week though!

Cheers, and Happy Memorial Day in the States!

Cas

Tali'Zorah vas Commune

Hello gorgeous girl and followers of this adventure, 

Monday night, Lindzey and I trekked out to McKinny, TX to pick up Miss Tali'Zorah. 

Damn. Terri knows how to place her puppies and she did a fantastic job socializing them. I had only just stepped into Ela's yard when I was flocked by two adorable little pyr shep beauties. Tali and her brother D'art. 

It was very cool to get to see the personality difference between the two puppies. D'art was sent to an agility performance home- my kind of dude. Bold and never stopped moving. Then there was your Tali, Sweet, extremely people oriented, she happily crawled into the closest lap for a snuggle. She certainly defaulted over to the person she knew most (at the time that was Ela). I think she'll shape up to be a friendly little girl who will be happiest with -her- person, but comfortable with others. Exactly what you wanted. 

She is very happy to just hang out. She spend a good hour and a half on my bed curled up next to me while I watched Teen Wolf. Give that girl a bully stick or a toy and she's the happiest skap in the world next to you. 

She is a talker. For someone so young she certainly has a lot of stories to tell. Talkative runs in the breed, it's really quite charming. The only thing we need to work on is mooing when she knows I'm up and moving but I've left her in the crate (Sorry Tali, I really don't need you in the shower with me). 

Another thing- Tali and Harley Quinn quickly became the BEST of friends. Terri was right, Tali plays very kindly. They race and tug and tumble together. Usually Harley gets the party going and Tali is very happy to comply. 

 She fits in just fine here love :) Knight was a little jealous at first, but some special cuddle time with Lindzey smoothed things over so all is well in his world. 

The communers have happily taken up the task of cuddling her as much as physically possible. She is going to be so ready to slip right into your life. 

She's a beautiful girl with a beautiful soul. Dog magic at it's finest my love. 

Hey, Pachuca!

Hello, my dear heart. And Hello, to the rest of you.

Tonight is a bit of a long post, given the large amount of down time that we have from the storms and everyone being in separate stages of work. The storms are nothing new; every evening seems to bring a massive thunderstorm that flickers the power and sends us ducking for the inside of the great house. Speaking of the great house, I figured I'd show you where I'm living for these two months.

View from the entryway. Behold Central America, land of concrete.

I dunno if I mentioned it earlier, but the lab is inside a locked and gated compound that only we have keys for, which were registered to us when we arrived. The great house where Sarah, Dave, and I are staying is in the very back of the compound, through the door by the car in the first picture. The lab is to the left, us working in the second story with Dave in the bottom one. Both floors feature space for analysis and probably several elephants' worth of lithic, ceramic, and bone evidence that has been excavated, not to mention the archives from the original mapping project. Across from the lab are three tiny houses, called casitas, where Dr. Hirth, Sean, and Mark are staying. 

Stairs to upper lab, and the casitas. They are one room, one bathroom.

More of the casitas.

Stairs and areas for ceramic washing.

The space is nice to have, and although it can feel empty at times, we will have more people arriving at the end of the month so we should savor the quiet while we have it. Last year, there were almost 25 people working out of this compound, on multiple projects including PATT and Altica, including the actual excavations. 

In adition to showing you my space, I wanted to say a little more about what I do as a lithic analyst and lab technician. In a nutshell, the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica used obsidian glass to form various tools for their uses, developing flake and blade technologies to suit their uses. We, as analysts, can look at these tools and classify them, according to their place in the technological series, the source of the obsidian, and even their use, according to patterning of wear on the blades. At Teotihuacan, the city held a monopoly on a specific site of obsidian that produced green obsidian, called Pachuca. This type was highly desirable across Mesoamerica, because its color had ritual significance. At Teotihuacan, however, it was just the most readily available, so most of the assemblage is comprised of this green obsidian. This isn't to say we don't have other colors, such as grey, but the Pachuca obsidian is by far the most common.

Green obsidian blade tip, specifically a third series distal.

3rd Series Medial section of grey obsidian, from Otumba.

Tonight is wierd because we just finished our first massive set of bags from a site that Mark excavated, that alone weighed 7.5kg. As Sean, Sarah and Mark wrap up the last of that bag (recording, counting grey and decortification debitage,) I started the next set of bags, which are about 3.5kg each. Each of these bags is filled with thousands of pieces of obsidian. Its an exhausting process, but the amount of data we are gathering is awesome, and we get some super cool stuff too, like the exotics or even bifaces.

Grey Biface, probably a projectile point!

A lot of work is still ahead of us, but its great stuff and really less work hours per week than all of last semester by almost half (70-80hrs of work last semester each week.) And, the benefits of the excellent food and fruit and coffee and great company make this a very easy time, more vacation than work. 

I am leaving the introductions to Tali to Hill, as they have a billion more pictures and a thousand more things to say. Suffice to say I am fully in love with this little girl and I can't wait to meet her. Welcome to the family, Tali'Zorah. We are so very glad to have you.

Missing you much, lover mine. Looking forward to our next skype date. :)

To the rest of you, have a lovely week, look for a post come the weekend. 

Cheers,

Cas

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Last Day of the Three Dog Life

Today a two-fold last day. my last day of "summer" break before Maymester classes start and my last day living the three dog life for the summer. 

Tomorrow is the day that Tali'Zorah joins our ranks. The whole Agility Commune is very excited about it. We've been squealing over pictures of Tali all morning. She is indeed super adorable. 

Tali'Zorah

The past few days have been filled with yard work to get the property looking less like something off the set of the walking dead and more like the agility commune we all know and love. It's hard work but deeply satisfying. You know me, always one to enjoy a good manual labor project. Something about seeing the progress of my work is soothing, the added company of Lindz and Kristen certainly helps the hours go by faster too. 

The more I see of Tali the better I feel about this whole wonderful adventure you're about to embark on with her. 

I am legitimately getting some real feels from the e-mails I get from Terri, including this one:

I work hard to match puppies to people and honestly I do think this puppy is perfect for Cassie. She is sweet and people focused, a happy and sometimes goofy little thing, always smiling, always up for a game but settles very easily. She does not have the drive for performance really, but she is a world class companion in my book. And she is very, very pretty. She will be quite a stunner when she is grown.

She is so funny! You know that picture I posted of her where she tried to jump over a stool and her sister? She landed ass over tea kettle (family expression and I have no idea what it means) with her butt in Blaze's face and I swear to you, she laughed! She looked so goofy and happy at her own folly. Even Blaze, who is pretty serious, laughed! And she stayed like that for about thirty seconds with her butt on the stool and just grinning from ear to ear.

Anyway, happy she has found such a great home and extended family. She is going to bring a lot of joy to your lives.

Dog Magic, Love. Dog. Magic. 

Welcome to Teotihuacan, Land of Tiny Glass Bitsies

I meant to write every day and do small posts, but this week has gone by very quickly. Now, at the beginning of the weekend (we work a half day on Saturday) I can finally catch up.

I landed in the afternoon on Tuesday and immediately sought out food. Let me tell you, finding food in the Mexican airport past customs is a bitch. I ended up at a place called WINGS that did not serve wings, but did serve excellent huevos rancheros, bread, and coffee. I tipped my waitress a massive amount for tolerating my atrocious Spanish. I waited around for the rest of my group and then drove an our through rain and lakes of water (ayy never build a city in a lake basin kids) until we got to the compound.

Located in San Juan Teotihuacan, the compound is home to the first Teotihuacan Mapping project run by Dr. George Cowgill. It has since expanded and now is home to the Altica Ceramic Project, and our project PATT (Projecta Archaeologica Tlajinga-Teotihuacan), which focuses on obsidian lithic evidence. The cool thing about obsidian is that a whole system of technology was developed to form it into blades, and the debitage (leftover glass bits) and the blades themselves are highly diagnostic for the level of development of a society. The fragments can also be sourced, so we can see where they got their obsidian from, and thus build economic models of Mesoamerica. Its super cool.

My room, shared with Sarah, featuring my obnoxious red-orange suitcase.

Also my room, from the tiny doorway (Mexico is not really built for people taller than 5'10")

Sarah, Sean, Dr. Hirth and I are here alone at the moment, though more people will be arriving in late may and early June, including others from our university and from different projects. Mark, who is a PHD student at Tulane, but was trained by Dr. Hirth, joins us tomorrow for analysis.

Ceramic typology in the lab, courtesy of the Altica Project 

lithics

even more lithics (boxes can hold up to 10,000 pieces)

 So PATT's purpose is to analyze lithic evidence from lots 17 and 18, which were excavated over the last few years. These are workshops located off of the Avenue of the Dead, and contain hundreds of thousands of fragments, or whole blades. When we are finished, this will be the largest body of analyzed lithic evidence in Mesoamerica, hitting roughly around 300, 000 pieces of analyzed evidence. We are currently sitting around 250, 000, so we have our work cut out for use in the next two months. We've made good progress though, probably doing at least a couple thousand every day.

My work space.

First Bag!!

What is really neat about this specific shop is that we also have evidence of sequin crafting (called lentjijuelas) and a large amount of exotic bifaces, sometimes in the shape of animals, like puppies!

               

From the type collection.

           

                                                 I found this one!! Looks like a Varren.

All in all, its a wonderful opportunity and I am adoring my work. Its constant and monotonous, but very wonderful and exactly what I want to do for my masters work, in all honesty. Hopes everybody is well and taking care of themselves! I'll just be over here, coffee in hand, navigating a sea of ancient glass.

Cheers!

Cas

Avenue of the Dead, Teotihuacan

I've Been Thinking Too Much

This week brought on the now familiar hell that is finals week. Many late nights at Starbucks ensued. 

Tuesday, the day of 4 finals, went surprisingly well. The sense of relief upon waking on Wednesday morning was almost a tangible thing.  I walked my crew of Papillons, got a pot of coffee going, and sat down to finish up the last of my finals.

Bang kept a close eye on me through the whole procedure of my Science, Skepticism, and Weird Behavior Final. 

I did it. The first semester at UNT has been completed. Now I'll have 4 whole days off before I jump into my Maymester class that I will regret taking for the whole duration of the class (thankfully it's only 3 weeks, I got this). 

These next few days will be packed with cleaning. Cleaning the house, fixing up the yard, cleaning my dogs.... cleaning my car.... And of course, puppy prep for Miss Tali'Zorah to arrive. 

We're supposed to be getting a lot of rain again this week, fingers crossed Texas gets all this nonsense out of its system soon. I want to frolic though the fields with my doglings. 

I've really enjoyed getting all your texts lovely girl. There's my Cas with her little fragments and her little buckets :) You sound so happy my love.

---In other news, the new Twenty One Pilots album gets released in America soon, I AM SO HYPE--

Its 10:53. I have to be awake in five hours to go get on a plane.

Too bad my sleep schedule still hasn't reset itself from finals week.

Regarding Tali: all paperwork has been signed, all checks (save one) have been mailed. Everything is ready for the baby parsnip. I'm so excited. I'm so apprehensive. I believe Hill and I call this emotion "blargh." So much has gone into making these couple of months a reality and I get on a plane tomorrow for a massive opportunity.

But there is a part of me that would rather be on a plane to Dallas, to spend a couple of months with Hill and the little snap and just be a dog person again for awhile. Just take some time to be Cas. Not Casana M. Popp, IUG Student of Athropology and Classics. Not Cassie, the twenty something woman who's taking twentysomething credits and is eating popcorn and beer for dinner.

Just Cas. Who likes sunshine on her face and grass under her toes and a good RPG to sink her teeth into.

But this is really exciting and I'm literally working in the shadows of ancient pyramids, with cutting-edge (haha obsidian joke) technologies. I'm so excited. I'm such a nerd! But, I still can't wait to be in Decatur again, with my love and our bizarre little family.

So cheers to Teotihuacan and the Agility Commune and eventually Belize! Just taking things one little step at a time.

Restlessly,

Cas