elanya

He allows me to gift this to you my friend's list. I will call it a present of congratulations to mousme, random_echoes and tiggothy for successful completion of the NaNoWriMo challenge. You even all got it done a few days early, so go all of you! Especial kudos to Phnee for finishing it in spite of major technical setback and the general blahness of November! *dance*!

So, in celebration,please enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest trailer! Eee! It's about Davey Joney! Not the penguin. I should tell Dr. Stewart. I bet he will find that entertaining ^-^

Anyway.... I did not sleep so well last night. I stayed up until about 1:30 working on my paper. I have about six pages written, and I know what I will be doing with a lot of the remaining space. I have some things to look up and figures, etc to add. However, I managed to stay up that late by having a little bit of caffinated beverage, so even though I was too tired to work than that, I didn't get to sleep until well after three. Boooo. :( But, as I said, I know where I am going, and I should be able to fill another nine pages with it. Or at least, I hope so... Eek! And it should be good. And then I will have a section of my thesis absolutely done done done! And there will be much rejoicing. And then there will be much preparing to work on the rest of it. *eye roll*

Yesterday was the last class of my France class. We went to the Swiss Chalet, and Dr. Terjanian bought me tea and cake :D It was a good class. It was a good course, realy. I learned a lot, not only about France, but about the practical aspects of historiographical analysis. This is something I am sure I have talked about here before, but I think it is something that is really underappreciated in its importance, especially by archaeologists. It really seems to me like most historical arcaheologists are more interested in trying to use the 'facts' of history to support their interpretations, rather than appreciating that the things historians produce themselves are interpretations which have their own developmental and theoretical history. Following on that, I think that there are better ways for archaeologists *and* historians to use their data to interpret the past.

I would also like to clarify something about my own interests. It is true that I am interested in Pirates. But I am interested in them because they allow me a point of acces for examining other interests I have that are much broader: early colonial history, maritime history and culture, marginal social groups, and the cognitive aspects of identity. I also have academic interests in completely non-pirate related things! I have a current interest in the relationship of alchemy to early science as a way of understaning man's relatonship to the world, and to God, in the seventeenth century. I have no idea how I might go about investigating such a topic, though, or who else may have written about it. In my experience, however, alchemy is not really considered histrically in this context, although it is acknowledged that some early 'scientists' were also interested in this form of knowledge, and that some people view it as the development of the discipline of chemistry, which I think is.... simplyfying things. Anyway. Once I'm done with pirates, maybe I'll start looking into that, although I'm not sure what kind of contribution could be made archaeologically.... I'll have to think about it more. But I do hear that 'history of science' stuff is the 'in thing' academically these days ;)

Okay, it is after ten, so now I must finish my breakfast, make lunch, and finish getting dressed. I'm heading out to Washington (NC) to gather data for my second-to-last landscape paper. Wheee!