A quiet night, a stack of books, a tuna melt on rye

I watched this today and liked the idea, but I don't Vlog (and try to avoid saying that word 'cause really?!), so I thought I would adapt to for the lj. And by adapt it I mean the not terribly intensive typing my answers out.
( 10 things I would say to my 16 year old self )

Yay! hotel internet is back.  It was raining like crazy here on Wednesday and Thursday, so between the bad weather and the fact that we were all in the hotel since we couldn't work it was next to impossible to get online. 

The time off wasn't a total waste.  I finished my second pair of socks, which are a pretty spring green with a lace-work pattern.  I also finally finished knitting the teeny-tiny TARDIS.  In January I started the project, thinking that if I knit a plushie sized pattern on size 000 needles using embroidery floss instead of yarn it would come out the size of a key chain and not take very long at all.  I was wrong.   Wednesday, when I get back to New Orleans, pulling out the fiber-fill will be my first order of business.  Right before I take pictures and then unpack. 

Of course, I was terribly bored the last couple of days just sitting around the hotel room, so I was quite glad that we got to go back into the field today.  We're at a really nice site, at least in regards to working comfort.  The whole area consists of very open planted pines.  Any day I don't have to deal with briars is a good day.  Even if there are horses that we have to keep an eye on lest they step in our holes and break their legs.  I'm not entirely clear on what I'm supposed to do if the horse comes charging at my unit. I don't really relish jumping in front of a horse moving a full speed, hoping to divert it in another direction. 

Also during my boredom I took one of those "What North American accent do you have?" quizzes.  I got the Philadelphian accent, which shouldn't be a surprise, but kind of was.  I did in fact spend my first eighteen years in the Philadelphia area, but since I've never in my life pronounced the sports team as the "iggles" I assumed I had avoided the accent.   I do however freely use various lexical oddities from the area (hoagie, mac machine).  I am however glad to hear the "Rocky" does not have a really Philadelphian accent, because I think I'd be mortified to sound like that.  The accompanying article seemed to think that the only authentic-ish representation of the accent was Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense.  I suppose I will have to re-watch that movie now. 

    So I've been wanting to do a post on The X-files and the movie and my late middle school and high school years, but I'm not quite sure how to word it.
    As most people probably know, or could easily find out, the x-files premiered in 1993.  At the time I was in fourth grade.  A confirmed book worm, at the time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about para-normal phenomenon.  Fictional stories about ghosts, possessions, and psychics as well as everything in the 000's of the library  (yes I was and am dorky enough to memorize portions of the Dewey Decimal System).  I saw the commercials and knew I would be interested but somehow got the idea that I was too young and it would be too scary so I didn't.
    Flash forward four years. the show still nudged at the edge of my consciousness and I decided that I was going to become at fan.  Yes, decided is the correct word.  I brought a notebook and flash cards with me to lunch one week and tested all of my friends for psychic ability to commemorate my transition to fan of the show.  That Sunday I watched for the first time. As I knew I would be, I was hooked, obsessed.  I shared the obsession with my friend Becky.  We watched every week, taped old episodes to catch up, discussed endlessly, walked around our respective neighborhoods after dark looking for UFOs, and possibly most importantly started signing our notes to each other as the characters.  She was S.A.F.W.M, Ph.D. (Special Agent Fox William Mulder, Ph.D.) and I was S.A.D.K.S, Md. (Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, Md.) 
    Then I got the internet.  And discovered usenet. And fanfiction.  Of course I was pathologically shy, so I lurked, still do, but I read everything.  During the summer I was only allowed to stay home with nothing to do for about two weeks, but those two weeks were spent up stairs in my father's study eating ice and reading through gossamer alphabetically.  The whole time I strained to hear if anyone was coming because I was a good three years from the NC17 cut off date.  At first, I remember avoiding all those fics, sure that the world would cave in somehow if I clicked.  I was, of course, a very good girl.  Then I accidentally hit one and the next page asked if I was over 17.  Truthfully, I answered no, but it linked me through to the story anyway (clearly a difficulty in web design).  The world didn't end.  No big cavern opened an sucked me down.  So I read. And read. And read.  By the time I was actually 17 smut, PWP, and the rest were old hat. 
    Becky changed schools after eight grade, so I no longer had anyone to really discuss the show with.  At some point, Kathy, the only person more obsessed than I was, handed me dossiers she had written up on each of the characters, asking for corrections.  I changed Scully's eye color which lead to years of yelling “they're blue!” “they're green!” back and forth along the hallways of East High School.  To which all I have to say is “They're blue!” On my own I continued to delight in the fact that my middle name was Kathryn and to compulsively wear the gold cross I got for my confirmation.  Wow was I mad when I didn't get to go on the health class field trip to the morgue (or was it a biology field trip).  People got to hold organs!
    My senior year I started to lose interest.  Mulder was gone,  Scully cried all the time, and I had all sorts of other things to pay attention to.  By the ninth season, my freshman year of college, I let the show play in background while I did other things.  I couldn't tell you anything that happened that season, but the “damage” was done.  I was majoring in Chemistry because science was everything, and Anthropology because forensic anthropology doesn't require four years of med-school focusing on the live people to be able to play with the dead people. 

Well I haven't even gotten to my thoughts on the movie, but I will leave you with a link (not about the movie) to which all I can say is yes, just yes.   

A meme, snagged from everyone and their mother:

You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out :)



On a completely unrelated note, I am once again kicking myself for forgetting to bring my camera into the field.  I had it in my field pack for a while and then took it out to use on the weekend and never replaced it.  Anyway, I was surveying a cow field, and there in the middle someone had stuck a political sign.  They were extolling their choice for Agricultural custodian, or what ever the official title is.  Now my question is, who was the intended audience for that sign?  The cows?

        I've been going through my past entries and assigning tags to all of them.  Wow, that's a lot of work.  Of course, in the process, I have to re-read all those past entries.  I started this LJ in mid-2004, but was never terribly diligent about updating until I started my life as a shovelbum, mostly because zooropababy told me to keep in touch, and would actually comment, so this was the easiest way.  Anyway, I find that I remember fairly well the things I wrote about in 2004 (this is with regards to remember that I wrote about them, not the events themselves) and what I wrote from Jan 2007 to the present.  The times in between I have no idea about. 
    Looking back, I wish I had been more diligent.  2005 was my final year of college and I know I did things not represented here.  That summer I did my archaeological field school, my first taste of archaeology, which encompasses one entry (and not a mention of yeti anywhere).  Life seems  much more interesting in the remembrance than it does at the time. 
    My early entries were by and large short  and by no means in depth.  I didn't start out here wanting to be a writer like so many other people, nor did I come from a background in journal keeping.  I was never really sure what I was doing.  I never had a plan for this LJ and it shows.
    Going forward, I hope entries are longer and more informative.  I hope all the back story is present, an annoyance I often find with others that I now realize I am guilty of too.  And maybe, just maybe I avoid going months and even weeks without an update.  I don't think even I can hope for an everyday type of schedule.  Finally, I will keep on top of the tags, so I never have to do this type of overhaul again. 

    Earliest memories are funny.  Theory holds that they are moments of extreme emotion, either happy or sad, often traumatic, the kind of monumentus occasions that get burned in the brain for all time.  I don’t know if mine are monumentous, but they certainly establish themes for the rest of my life. 
   
 

    Junior year of high school everyone at my school was required to write and autobiography.  While going though stuff to bring down to New Orleans I found mine.  Some of it is awful.  Apparently, I totally forgot how to use spell check and developed some sort of written ADD, where I don't really develop anything that I talked about.  On the other hand, my sections, or even just sentences continue to crack me up all these years later.  So, I feel this strange need to retool an old high school project.  Toward that end, here are two short introductory sections.

I was reading through my old high school yearbook today and noticed that everyone described me as either

1. cynical
2. blunt
3. or sarcastic

Is that a bad thing?