Surfacefind is not wholly sure how she became an archaeologist but harbours a suspicion she was tricked into it. She went to university to study physics because she wanted to be an astronaut (specifically like the ones on Star Trek), but seems to have become confused. There was a quantity of confusion at the time, related to her work in a local wine shop (resulting in the loss, among other things, of the 2000/2001 academic year).
Surfacefind is fully equipped with the skill set of an educated 21st century woman (riding, fencing, shooting, knots) and lives a life of squalour and financial insecurity upon the archaeological projects of the Middle East.
Surfacefind hopes for a better future where she can retain some faith that there’s any point to it all, and that one day she will earn enough money in a year to pay income tax.
Digging up old stuff in hot places 
I wanted to study Physics at university but went with Archaeology too, I didn’t end up in the field like you but I still empathize with the living in squalor and financial insecurity – it’s important that you love your job though. You have an excellent blog and I have enjoyed browsing it!
Just Awesome.
Also an archaeologist. Also lost a year to working in a wine shop. Also agree on income tax and star trek.
Perhaps instead of (or in addition to) archaeology, you could make enough to pay taxes through writing. Brilliant, you are. ~amy
I rediscovered a “point to it all” through the joys of cuneiform writing, more specifically, the process of adapting cuneiform signs to the English language. I have rediscovered stylus technique, tablet-forming, etc, and have thereby reaped the everlasting scorn of nearly every academic in the field. I have three sign-lists: Two are simple easily-learned 26-letter alphabets, and the other is about 700 signs, a full-fledged English counterpart of the Sumero-Babylonian list, and containing a great deal of it. I have also written nearly two thousand tablets, have established English as a cuneiform language, and will leave behind me when I am gone something I hope will be enduring and beneficial to the human race.
For entertainment, you might try listening to some of the popular music from India in the 1970’s (“Bollywood”). Full of life and crazily unpredictable.
and your writing is great. Thank you for all the work you have put into your blog and for giving your visitors such interesting, entertaining and funny stuff to read. My fizzled astronaut dream was back in the Project Mercury/Gemini days, when I was only ten. Thank you for sharing so much so well.
I use RSS to keep track of a number of blogs, and periodically it will cough up every post by some random feed. Today it showed me OldStuff…, which reminded me that we are now five months short of five years with no entries, and that made me sad.