Sorry, we're closed

Did you know that all the museums and archaeological sites in Athens close at 3 pm? I imagined that we will have plenty of time to go and see the sights, but so far I have managed to see Acropolis from the roof terrace of our hotel, the National Archaeological Museum from the outside (contrary to the information in the tourist guide for February and March 2009 they are not open till 7.30 pm except on Mondays) and the temple of Zeus from behind a fence. The new Acropolis Museum (to be opened in March 2009) is not open to the public yet - but if it were, it certainly would be closed at 3 pm.

Athens

I'm in Athens then, in the Nordic PhD seminar for landscape archaeology. The flight was a bit rough from Paris onwards, because there was a lot of turbulence. I never get seasick but I nearly got airsick in that container called an aeroplane. Arrival made the suffering worthwhile, though. Our hotel is in a nice location close to the Akropolis and the Scandinavian Institutes. The weather is balmy. Food, wine and entertaining company are ready at reach.

The most unlikely thing happened: I had agreed to meet three other people at the airport, to share a taxi. While driving at a dangerous speed (considering none of us had our seatbelts fastened) towards the city, it turned out that all the three of us on the backseat had taken masters in landscape archaeology at the University of Leicester! Call that a coincidence!

Back in the business

I finally submitted the revised version of the article. This editing process has been a very interesting lesson in academic publishing. And I swear that article is cursed, because everything went wrong with it, repeatedly, right down to when I finally sent the text and the - ahem - quite large illustration files. One of which ended in some kind of a loop somewhere in the ether and kept bouncing into the mailbox of a certain respectable and very soon - understandably - extremely annoyed person. I hope it has stopped doing that by now. And now let's not talk about it anymore. Ever.

Incidentally, I've decided to write a monograph after all.

This is also an explanation for my long silence. It is not that I ran out of things to rant about. I was just too busy with everything else. I made some notes though, and might return to some of the subjects if irritated enough. There are also plans for this year, besides finishing my dissertation, of course. You'll hear more about those in due time.

Rafting on the river of Hades

Time flies, one week has already gone past. We work from the break of the day until the sunset, except for a four hours break for siesta in the afternoon. My job here is pretty boring to be honest, just augering to get soil samples. When I tried to show more interest, immediately after we came here, I was told (not quite in these exact words, but the message was this) that it is not my work here to think. Oh, great. Can you hear my motivation soaring?

So, instead of thinking, I went rafting on River Acheron today with some people from our field team. As you may or may not know, Acheron is the river of Hades. We managed to avoid the three-headed dog (well, actually he only had one head and looked pretty lame) and were safely back on the shore when I realized Kharon had extracted a payment for the trip, after all: my phone in its presumably water-tight plastic bag was dripping wet. I hope the ferryman will enjoy it as much as I did, in case it does not miraculously return to life.

But in case you try to text me, here is the explanation to why your messages are not getting through.

Long time, no see.

I was in London on a strictly non-archaeological trip with the choir I sing in, and then travelled to Bristol to see an old friend from the time I studied in Leicester (we shared a house; she became a teacher). Well, we did go to Bath to see the Roman baths, so there was some archaeology included, but I was there as a tourist. And I had extremely good time!

The last week I spent with my family in our summer place (see earlier post about significant landscape). There is something very relaxing about starting the day by lighting a fire in the oven and working slowly through the day, whether in the garden or inside the house, without ever looking at the watch. A purifying experience, I'd say.

Needless to say, these activities have not been actually beneficial to my dissertation, although I am a great believer in the theory that human mind needs times when it is not doing anything much to be productive. However, I'm still waiting for that productive mode to set in. Meanwhile, I'm just feeling I'm a hopeless looser because I did not manage to write four articles within a year after all.

Next Saturday I'm off to Greece and fieldwork.

Back at the office

After two weeks of fieldwork it is a strange experience to be back at the office. Neither has my right hand fully recovered from the experience - digging clayey soil is hard work, even with a spade. But the weather was fine (almost too fine, as fieldwalking would probably have been more fruitful after a little bit of rain), the company was good, and it was great to be outdoors. For me it was also a useful re-training course of doing archaeological work in Finland. And as a result, this is going to be a brief spell at the computer before one more week of fieldwork!

Needless to say, all this means that my dissertation is sadly neglected...

Everyday nuisances and annoyances

Guess what had happened when I came to work today. Windows had somehow reset its settings over the weekend and all my email settings and bookmarks had miraculously disappeared. Again. The last time this happened was after the Christmas vacation. After that I installed a handy add-on to Firefox for copying my bookmarks to the internet. Naturally that was also gone, and guess if I remember where to find those bookmarks now. Annoyance would be a mild term to describe my state of mind. After all, the internet is a major tool these days, and my bookmarks did actually contain relevant stuff for my research. Having to set up my email account again was a minor nuisance compared to the loss of bookmarks. It seems that I'll just have to start copying my bookmark file to a safe place at least once a week to avoid this happening every couple of months.

On the subject of the state of my dissertation: After receiving a note telling they had got my article, I have not heard anything from the journal. I hope that it is a good sign and means they have decided to give it to the referees.

I am working on the next article, one dealing with - not surprisingly - landscapes. Soon I should brace myself and hand it to my supervisor for comments. Btw, I heard that a very early and incoherent version of it, which I had subjected to peer-critique at the post-grad seminar, had been circulating at the NBA. Am very embarrassed. Now I begin to see why others only hand out almost finished articles.

Article angst I

Gaah, I've offered an article for publication - the first ever I hope to get published in an international refereed journal and now I am waiting for the decision of the editors. It's SCARY folks, it's scary. I read the names of the editors and those of the editorial board and ran across several BIG names. And I am aspiring to publish in the company of those people? I feel so inadequate. Well, the rejection will be easier to bear because I'm expecting it, I suppose.

I think the whole business of my dissertation would have taken a lot less of time had I not this tendency to lapse into extreme self-deprecation which may lead to total lack of initiative and even complete apathy from time to time. To tell the truth, more than once I've considered giving up altogether and forgetting all dreams of a career in archaeology because I feel I am not intelligent enough to do this, and only been pushed to go on by the fact that research funding has been my only source of income. Why can't I be a happy-go-lucky person who believes in their own abilities for more than a few hours in a go?