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kareinaBy Tuesday we were certain that Wednesday would be our last day working at the excavation, so I talked with my colleagues about what I would be doing for the remaining two weeks. They didn't directly need me to work in the office in Luleå, but as I had a contract for four weeks work, they would be obliged to find me something to do if I wanted to join them there. I had nothing particularly against doing work in Luleå, but I prefered the thought of heading home early, rather than needing to sleep on a friend's couch. So I asked my boss and got permission to end my job with them early.
The rest of this post got long, so I will cut it up a bit...
Wednesday felt more like a school outing than work, though we accomplished work stuff. We did drive out to the excavation areas as a group, but then two of them went to work on the last remaining hearth while two of us went to check out the house foundation our boss had mentioned. We took the wizard staf GPS tool, and I learned to used it. This is a two meter long staff (collapsible to just over a meter in length) to the top of which a cylinder gets attached which contains whatever sensors are needed to get a good reading on the satellites used by the GPS. The GPS computer itself is attached to a holder on the side of the staff, directly adjacent to a bubble level. Standing and holding the entire setups really does give one the feeling of holding onto a magic wizard staff, which is why I refer to it like that. My colleague set up the project in the gps computer, using the "use the same settings as the last project" mode, and then edited the details to enter in the new name and codes for the specific entries. Once it was ready to go we took the staff to the moss-covered foundations and poked the foundations with a cane-shaped soil sampling probe tool* to determine where the actual edges of the stone blocks were. Then I set the base of the staff right at the foundation edge and carefully aligned the bubble in the center of the circle to get the staff exactly perpendicular, so that the sensor and the base of the staff would have the same GPS coordinates, then I pushed the button to take a measurement, and the location would appear on the screen. Then we moved a little along the foundation and repeated the process, taking care to take readings at each of the four corners of the foundation at a couple along each side of the area. Those spots will all be entered into the database of all known registered ancient remains and other cultural-historical remains in Sweden as the combined coordinates for the foundation. We repeated the process to record the outline of the adjacent cellar pit, and we also recorded a single point to record the location of the higher pile of stone that is all the remains of the fireplace. Then he wrote down a description of the foundation, cellar pit, and former fireplace, and the area. Ten it was time to join our colleagues for fika, after which we took photos of them all, all of which will be entered into the database.
*cane-shaped soil sampling probe tool: the cane shaft is a hollow metal tube, open on one side at the base, used for extracting cores of soil from the ground to look at them and see if there is any visible stratigraphy changes or other interesting features.
After lunch we took the car to a location half an hour away, along the banks of the Kalix river, where someone had let us know that they once found a quartz stone scraper that weathered out the exposed soil on the river bank near a shed. They'd shown us a map, so we found the location, and had a look to see if we could see any other signs of Stone Age artefacts. We couldn't, but we did take photos of the area, and wrote down descriptions of the area, and took a gps reading, so this information can also be added to the database. As we finished up that we got a call from the others that they were done, so we returned to the excavation site and gathered up the last of tools, took them back to the car, unloaded everything, organised it and packed it all back in neatly for their trip back to Luleå. We returned to the apartment at 15:45 and I started packing my stuff into my car, while the others showered and got ready to head out to a restaurant for their last night in town. Being not interested in eating restaurant food if it can be avoided, and never being hungry in the evenings, I kept packing as they went out, till it was time to meet with my thesis supervisor to discuss my upcoming Viva. It was the first time I had seen Karen in quite a while (I count zoom as seeing), and it was nice to catch up, and she had good advice for how the Viva would go. Then I resumed packing. Given that I had packed for ten days in Lofoten, followed by four weeks in Kiruna, and had brought with me my Viking Age clothing, stone carving stuff, enough pantry stuff to mean that I would only need to purchase fresh fruit and veg, sewing projects, bedding, toiletries, and bedding, I had lots to pack. Especially as I had completely emptied the van before we dropped if off at the shop to be fixed. I would have left the chest full of Viking Age clothing and rock carving stuff in the van if not for taking it in for repairs.
I was pretty much done packing when the others returned to the apartment, just the things in the fridge and freezer left to pack. Before I did that final packing I did my yoga, and took a 10 minute nap and said goodbye to my colleagues (two of which wanted a hug when I asked, the third says they aren't huggy). Then the last things went into the ice chest, and I started driving at 20:15. with Keldor in my hearing aids for company. I drove for 40 minutes, to a rest area along the Kalix river, at the border between Kiruna and Gällivare municipalities. There I curled up in the bed in the back of the van, and slept till around 03:00 Thursday morning, when I was feeling awake enough to drive. I drove for about 40 minutes, till I was feeling tired again, so I took a 40 minute nap, and woke up just on time for the morning phone call with Keldor, and we kept one another company while driving till he arrived at work. I arrived to Luleå at 07:17 and took a short nap till my friend was back from walking her dogs, then I got the black currants I had picked the weekend before and left in her freezer and packed them into my ice chest. We couldn't really take the time to visit, as my friend needed to head directly to a dentist appointment, so I drove into the city center and left a bag of shirts hanging on the door of another friend who had said she wanted them (cute, flattering shirts I had bought when living in Australia, and haven't worn in years, and they just don't fit right now that I am rid of the breasts, so better to pass them on to someone who has breasts and will enjoy them, but is also as skinny as I am, so they will fit--she was still asleep when I got there (no surprise, as it was only 08:30 that I was there), but she sent me photos later, the shirts fit perfectly, and look great on her.
Then I continued driving, sometimes with Keldor in my hearing aids for company, when he was doing things like driving to the next job site, sometimes listening to Swedish folk music. I managed to arrive in Skelleftehamn just on time for his lunch break, so we met at his dad's house for lunch before he returned to work, and I went home, with a couple of buckets of apples from his dad's tree that he gave us. Much to my delight, having the ice chest so full of stuff meant that the frozen stuff survived the trip without thawing, and could go straight into the freezer, so I have enough black currants to get me through part of the year, at least.
However, after driving all morning I was feeling tired, so rather than unloading anything else, I made some popcorn and curled up on the couch with a book, followed by browsing facebook for an hour or so. It wasn't till Keldor started driving home from work that I did the unloading of the car as we talked (everything save the stone carving stuff, which needs to go to the basement), and I started putting some of it away. He got home just on time to go to a viewing of a seriously cute, and very reasonably priced house about 10 minutes from here. If it were just me and my things it would be perfect, but the house doesn't have anything that could be used as a guest room, and isn't big enough for both of our stuff, so we probably won't put in an offer, but damn it is cute! Nice gas stove, too, which is very, very rare in Sweden. We took a friend in the states along to the viewing via a zoom call, and he agrees it is cute, and is kinda tempted to buy it, but isn't really certain. After the viewing we just relaxed for a while, did yoga, and went to bed by 21:00.
He had scheduled Friday as a day off of work, which meant that he finally got around to calling the health center about the ankle that has been bothering him since he twisted it a couple of weeks ago, and got it looked at. They tested his blood for infections, since it is still swollen and warm, and suggested that he can start slowly trying to strengthen it by standing on the balance board.
I spent the morning getting my computer set back up and ready for my lunch time Viva, which, as I have already posted, went well, and I will get my MPhil in Archaeology as soon as I do the corrections they want and get the thesis turned in. Or, rather, the degree will be awarded at the next graduation ceremony thereafter. After my viva I had another video call with my thesis supervisor to debrief. She really wants me to come to Durham for my graduation. I didn't attend graduation for my Bachelors, Master's or PhD in Geology, but she wants me to do it for this degree anyway. Apparently they do it in Durham Cathedral, which is a pretty location, so I am considering it. The question is when? If I am quick with the corrections I could make the January graduation, or, if I take the full time my examiners have given me, it would be June or July (I forget which). If I could combine the trip with attending an SCA event, that would make it more appealing. We will see.
Today I slept in till 08:00, then had a zoom call with my sisters, all three of whom are staying at a AirB&B on an island near Seattle this weekend, since Kirsty is over visiting from Australia. It was good to see them. After breakfast Keldor and I drove back to the house we had visited on Thursday, as we noticed that they had a garage sale set up in the garage, and he spotted an item he wanted: an old stuffed squirrel of the sort that they used to have in the natural history display at all Swedish schools when he was little. I am not really clear why he wanted it, but it sounded fun to head to the garage sale. He bought the squirrel and I got a marble board with glass dome for cheese (never mind that I already have one, two is good, as we often have more than one kind of cheese in the fridge, a marble lazy susan, a nice blue glass bowl (never mind that I have lots of blue glass bowls, this one is a different size/shape/thickness of glass than the others, and I couldn't resist), a set of three desert bowls on stems, and a small jug that should be a good size for one batch of homemade vanilla sauce. We also chatted a while with the guy who lives there, he is from Germany and said that he used to be a school teacher--I can believe that he loves to talk and tell stories. When we got home I was super sleepy, so I took a two hour nap, and then caught up on FaceBook for another hour before got up for second breakfast at 15:00.
Then I made an apple pie from his dad's apples, and filled both of the food dehydrator with apple slices, and put the remaining apples in the fridge to wait till the others are dry and they can get their turn. After than I sat down to the computer to do some work.
Remember how, when I was doing that mad push to finish my thesis back in December I gave up on working in Scrivener and just edited the latest Word document I had exported when my supervisor sent me her list of suggested corrections only a couple of days before submission deadline, and I had already put lots of effort into fixing the formatting, page numbering, table of contents, etc? That was the right decision at the time to get everything done on time, but I failed to keep any sort of record of the changes, as I was deleting her comments from the onedrive version of the document as I acted on them, and I forgot to copy that document before I did. This means that the Scrivener version and the submitted version are quite different from one another. So now I am fixing that, as I really want the Scrivener version to be up to date, so I can make myself an epub version of the final thesis, complete with clickable links to the full size figures.
Therefore I have set up a trello board to keep track of the thesis corrections, and have made cards for some of the ones discussed during the viva, and will update the list with the rest of them as soon as I get the written list of corrections from them, which should be within a week. In the meantime I have also done a trello card with a checklist showing all the section numbers/titles, and I am going through the document, one section at a time, and copying the information from the submitted version and pasting it back over the Scrivener version, but doing it carefully--all of my citations in Scrivener are in the forms of links to the trello card for that paper, so I am coping everything between the citations, and pasting them in, but leaving the linked versions of the citations alone. Eventually, I will come to places where I have cited things in the submitted version that were not cited yet in the Scrivener, and when I do I will add links to those references. I am also making changes that I already know about when I come to them. For example, the research paper has been moved back to the appendices, so the document structure part of the thesis has been edited to reflect that change. With luck I will get it all copied back into Scrivener before I get the list of corrections, which I can then do in Scrivener. Then, when all the corrections are made I can compile it to make the word document and fix the formatting to make the final pdf to submit to the university, and compile again to make my own personal epub. If the epub comes out well, I will check to see if the library would like that version, too.
Now I have two weeks to get as much done on the thesis before my job at Umeå starts (my boss says that HR doesn't have the time do redo a contract so I could start early, and I am good with that, but I had to offer). I don't really expect to do all of the corrections during that time, but I will try to make enough headway that the rest can be reasonably done in some evenings after work.
The rest of this post got long, so I will cut it up a bit...
Wednesday felt more like a school outing than work, though we accomplished work stuff. We did drive out to the excavation areas as a group, but then two of them went to work on the last remaining hearth while two of us went to check out the house foundation our boss had mentioned. We took the wizard staf GPS tool, and I learned to used it. This is a two meter long staff (collapsible to just over a meter in length) to the top of which a cylinder gets attached which contains whatever sensors are needed to get a good reading on the satellites used by the GPS. The GPS computer itself is attached to a holder on the side of the staff, directly adjacent to a bubble level. Standing and holding the entire setups really does give one the feeling of holding onto a magic wizard staff, which is why I refer to it like that. My colleague set up the project in the gps computer, using the "use the same settings as the last project" mode, and then edited the details to enter in the new name and codes for the specific entries. Once it was ready to go we took the staff to the moss-covered foundations and poked the foundations with a cane-shaped soil sampling probe tool* to determine where the actual edges of the stone blocks were. Then I set the base of the staff right at the foundation edge and carefully aligned the bubble in the center of the circle to get the staff exactly perpendicular, so that the sensor and the base of the staff would have the same GPS coordinates, then I pushed the button to take a measurement, and the location would appear on the screen. Then we moved a little along the foundation and repeated the process, taking care to take readings at each of the four corners of the foundation at a couple along each side of the area. Those spots will all be entered into the database of all known registered ancient remains and other cultural-historical remains in Sweden as the combined coordinates for the foundation. We repeated the process to record the outline of the adjacent cellar pit, and we also recorded a single point to record the location of the higher pile of stone that is all the remains of the fireplace. Then he wrote down a description of the foundation, cellar pit, and former fireplace, and the area. Ten it was time to join our colleagues for fika, after which we took photos of them all, all of which will be entered into the database.
*cane-shaped soil sampling probe tool: the cane shaft is a hollow metal tube, open on one side at the base, used for extracting cores of soil from the ground to look at them and see if there is any visible stratigraphy changes or other interesting features.
After lunch we took the car to a location half an hour away, along the banks of the Kalix river, where someone had let us know that they once found a quartz stone scraper that weathered out the exposed soil on the river bank near a shed. They'd shown us a map, so we found the location, and had a look to see if we could see any other signs of Stone Age artefacts. We couldn't, but we did take photos of the area, and wrote down descriptions of the area, and took a gps reading, so this information can also be added to the database. As we finished up that we got a call from the others that they were done, so we returned to the excavation site and gathered up the last of tools, took them back to the car, unloaded everything, organised it and packed it all back in neatly for their trip back to Luleå. We returned to the apartment at 15:45 and I started packing my stuff into my car, while the others showered and got ready to head out to a restaurant for their last night in town. Being not interested in eating restaurant food if it can be avoided, and never being hungry in the evenings, I kept packing as they went out, till it was time to meet with my thesis supervisor to discuss my upcoming Viva. It was the first time I had seen Karen in quite a while (I count zoom as seeing), and it was nice to catch up, and she had good advice for how the Viva would go. Then I resumed packing. Given that I had packed for ten days in Lofoten, followed by four weeks in Kiruna, and had brought with me my Viking Age clothing, stone carving stuff, enough pantry stuff to mean that I would only need to purchase fresh fruit and veg, sewing projects, bedding, toiletries, and bedding, I had lots to pack. Especially as I had completely emptied the van before we dropped if off at the shop to be fixed. I would have left the chest full of Viking Age clothing and rock carving stuff in the van if not for taking it in for repairs.
I was pretty much done packing when the others returned to the apartment, just the things in the fridge and freezer left to pack. Before I did that final packing I did my yoga, and took a 10 minute nap and said goodbye to my colleagues (two of which wanted a hug when I asked, the third says they aren't huggy). Then the last things went into the ice chest, and I started driving at 20:15. with Keldor in my hearing aids for company. I drove for 40 minutes, to a rest area along the Kalix river, at the border between Kiruna and Gällivare municipalities. There I curled up in the bed in the back of the van, and slept till around 03:00 Thursday morning, when I was feeling awake enough to drive. I drove for about 40 minutes, till I was feeling tired again, so I took a 40 minute nap, and woke up just on time for the morning phone call with Keldor, and we kept one another company while driving till he arrived at work. I arrived to Luleå at 07:17 and took a short nap till my friend was back from walking her dogs, then I got the black currants I had picked the weekend before and left in her freezer and packed them into my ice chest. We couldn't really take the time to visit, as my friend needed to head directly to a dentist appointment, so I drove into the city center and left a bag of shirts hanging on the door of another friend who had said she wanted them (cute, flattering shirts I had bought when living in Australia, and haven't worn in years, and they just don't fit right now that I am rid of the breasts, so better to pass them on to someone who has breasts and will enjoy them, but is also as skinny as I am, so they will fit--she was still asleep when I got there (no surprise, as it was only 08:30 that I was there), but she sent me photos later, the shirts fit perfectly, and look great on her.
Then I continued driving, sometimes with Keldor in my hearing aids for company, when he was doing things like driving to the next job site, sometimes listening to Swedish folk music. I managed to arrive in Skelleftehamn just on time for his lunch break, so we met at his dad's house for lunch before he returned to work, and I went home, with a couple of buckets of apples from his dad's tree that he gave us. Much to my delight, having the ice chest so full of stuff meant that the frozen stuff survived the trip without thawing, and could go straight into the freezer, so I have enough black currants to get me through part of the year, at least.
However, after driving all morning I was feeling tired, so rather than unloading anything else, I made some popcorn and curled up on the couch with a book, followed by browsing facebook for an hour or so. It wasn't till Keldor started driving home from work that I did the unloading of the car as we talked (everything save the stone carving stuff, which needs to go to the basement), and I started putting some of it away. He got home just on time to go to a viewing of a seriously cute, and very reasonably priced house about 10 minutes from here. If it were just me and my things it would be perfect, but the house doesn't have anything that could be used as a guest room, and isn't big enough for both of our stuff, so we probably won't put in an offer, but damn it is cute! Nice gas stove, too, which is very, very rare in Sweden. We took a friend in the states along to the viewing via a zoom call, and he agrees it is cute, and is kinda tempted to buy it, but isn't really certain. After the viewing we just relaxed for a while, did yoga, and went to bed by 21:00.
He had scheduled Friday as a day off of work, which meant that he finally got around to calling the health center about the ankle that has been bothering him since he twisted it a couple of weeks ago, and got it looked at. They tested his blood for infections, since it is still swollen and warm, and suggested that he can start slowly trying to strengthen it by standing on the balance board.
I spent the morning getting my computer set back up and ready for my lunch time Viva, which, as I have already posted, went well, and I will get my MPhil in Archaeology as soon as I do the corrections they want and get the thesis turned in. Or, rather, the degree will be awarded at the next graduation ceremony thereafter. After my viva I had another video call with my thesis supervisor to debrief. She really wants me to come to Durham for my graduation. I didn't attend graduation for my Bachelors, Master's or PhD in Geology, but she wants me to do it for this degree anyway. Apparently they do it in Durham Cathedral, which is a pretty location, so I am considering it. The question is when? If I am quick with the corrections I could make the January graduation, or, if I take the full time my examiners have given me, it would be June or July (I forget which). If I could combine the trip with attending an SCA event, that would make it more appealing. We will see.
Today I slept in till 08:00, then had a zoom call with my sisters, all three of whom are staying at a AirB&B on an island near Seattle this weekend, since Kirsty is over visiting from Australia. It was good to see them. After breakfast Keldor and I drove back to the house we had visited on Thursday, as we noticed that they had a garage sale set up in the garage, and he spotted an item he wanted: an old stuffed squirrel of the sort that they used to have in the natural history display at all Swedish schools when he was little. I am not really clear why he wanted it, but it sounded fun to head to the garage sale. He bought the squirrel and I got a marble board with glass dome for cheese (never mind that I already have one, two is good, as we often have more than one kind of cheese in the fridge, a marble lazy susan, a nice blue glass bowl (never mind that I have lots of blue glass bowls, this one is a different size/shape/thickness of glass than the others, and I couldn't resist), a set of three desert bowls on stems, and a small jug that should be a good size for one batch of homemade vanilla sauce. We also chatted a while with the guy who lives there, he is from Germany and said that he used to be a school teacher--I can believe that he loves to talk and tell stories. When we got home I was super sleepy, so I took a two hour nap, and then caught up on FaceBook for another hour before got up for second breakfast at 15:00.
Then I made an apple pie from his dad's apples, and filled both of the food dehydrator with apple slices, and put the remaining apples in the fridge to wait till the others are dry and they can get their turn. After than I sat down to the computer to do some work.
Remember how, when I was doing that mad push to finish my thesis back in December I gave up on working in Scrivener and just edited the latest Word document I had exported when my supervisor sent me her list of suggested corrections only a couple of days before submission deadline, and I had already put lots of effort into fixing the formatting, page numbering, table of contents, etc? That was the right decision at the time to get everything done on time, but I failed to keep any sort of record of the changes, as I was deleting her comments from the onedrive version of the document as I acted on them, and I forgot to copy that document before I did. This means that the Scrivener version and the submitted version are quite different from one another. So now I am fixing that, as I really want the Scrivener version to be up to date, so I can make myself an epub version of the final thesis, complete with clickable links to the full size figures.
Therefore I have set up a trello board to keep track of the thesis corrections, and have made cards for some of the ones discussed during the viva, and will update the list with the rest of them as soon as I get the written list of corrections from them, which should be within a week. In the meantime I have also done a trello card with a checklist showing all the section numbers/titles, and I am going through the document, one section at a time, and copying the information from the submitted version and pasting it back over the Scrivener version, but doing it carefully--all of my citations in Scrivener are in the forms of links to the trello card for that paper, so I am coping everything between the citations, and pasting them in, but leaving the linked versions of the citations alone. Eventually, I will come to places where I have cited things in the submitted version that were not cited yet in the Scrivener, and when I do I will add links to those references. I am also making changes that I already know about when I come to them. For example, the research paper has been moved back to the appendices, so the document structure part of the thesis has been edited to reflect that change. With luck I will get it all copied back into Scrivener before I get the list of corrections, which I can then do in Scrivener. Then, when all the corrections are made I can compile it to make the word document and fix the formatting to make the final pdf to submit to the university, and compile again to make my own personal epub. If the epub comes out well, I will check to see if the library would like that version, too.
Now I have two weeks to get as much done on the thesis before my job at Umeå starts (my boss says that HR doesn't have the time do redo a contract so I could start early, and I am good with that, but I had to offer). I don't really expect to do all of the corrections during that time, but I will try to make enough headway that the rest can be reasonably done in some evenings after work.