May Day

I don't mean to be negligent, I've just been consumed by the act of getting up early, working outdoors all day, and being tired after work. Life isn't that exciting right now.
We spend a lot of time at work talking about random stuff, like American politics, levitation, and zeppelins. A definite key to success in fieldwork is being able to talk about anything that could randomly come up. Otherwise, I could just get pissed off that Stephen Harper is being the dink we all knew he would be with a little power in his paws, or with whatever else is fucked up in the world,but what's the point? I can't solve it out there in a dusty field surrounded by bulldozers, so I'm trying not to get too riled up.
I read an interesting blurb in the most recent issue of Archaeology magazine by Brian Fagan. Basically he's saying the good old days of idle excavation in archaeology are gone. The future is CRM, working to publish neglected collections of field notes and artifacts, and basically being versatile enough to go and talk to the public about archaeology and then hit up the lab for some good old cataloguing and cleaning (and other stuff too numerous to type right now). I have to admit, he's kind of right. There are too many academic archaeologists out there in the world. Aiming to be a professor (like myself) is one thing, but being an archaeologist without contributing to the overall body of knowledge the way a lot of scholars do (or used to do) is just pointless. I may never have a job with benefits and a pension, or at least not a job that seriously pays well. Hopefully that situation will hold off for a generation or two because dammit, I have student loans to pay off and I'm crazy enough to think that I like this enough to want to stick it out and figure a way to get some money out of it all. In the end I guess you just have to pepper the resume with versatile toppings. I think I can do that...