Jaleika's blog

So it turns out one of the things Tart was not used to when I brought him up to the Bay Area was ticks.

Ticks are pretty much a fact of life in more humid parts of the U.S., but apparently the Los Angeles region either does not support a tick population or doesn't support enough of one for them to be a common warning to hikers and campers. At any rate Tart wasn't previously aware that ticks were a common problem after spending time out in the hills, and was rather freaked out when I told him that as we spent more time out in the open space areas for the Archaeological Survey class we're in, we'd have to start looking for ticks - although as I attempted to reassure him, in all my years living here I'd never actually gotten any ticks.

There is an amazing amount of food that barely tastes like food in this country.

It's something I've been vaguely aware of growing up, because my mother always had a backyard garden and anyone who's eaten a homegrown tomato knows that it's a night and day difference from the tomato-shaped but flavorless objects sold in grocery stores. I think we're generally aware that there's a sharp difference between food grown for mass production and long transit and that grown closer to home, but that the same applies to meat and animal products is more likely to fly under the radar - at least, if my experience is any indication.

So we're working on our second project for zooarchaeology this quarter, which in this case involves a raccoon (there's also an owl, another squirrel, and a few tiny birds in the freezer for later).  Having learned a bit from the previous project, we decided to start on this project by defrosting it overnight, then skinning and eviscerating it before tossing it in the pot for boiling.

So for the last few weeks I've been spending my Fridays boiling and attempting to slowly deflesh a Western Fox Squirrel, which isn't native to the area but is basically standing in as a "practice animal" for building a zooarchaeological type collection (or rather, as "this is what we could scrape up on short notice").  What this is is a collection of boxed disarticulated bones from different animal species with the individual bone types identified (e.g. "femur", "tibia", "mandible") so that they can be compared to bones collected in archaeological settings.  This is primarily used for faunal analysis, the determination of what animal species the people living there were eating/using, but it can also be useful for identifying the species source for worked bone artifacts.

I know people have been asking me to draw stuff since Tartare drew his picture of Malky, but seeing as my job has me keeping utterly bizarre hours for a while longer that's not likely to happen any time soon.  That said, I know Euph at least knows that I draw and wanted to see more of the sort of things that I do, so here's a few things from the old art folder in the meantime.

So the good news is: I have a full-time job.

The bad news is that it's pretty temporary - probably four weeks, maybe five at most.  The other bad news is that the hours for it are pretty unholy (my normal hours are going to be 4am-12:30 pm, Friday through Tuesday). 

That being the case, I'm going to be putting myself down as tentative for raids for a while; I should be around and functional for them since we generally end raids based on Eastern times, but for a few days at least it's going to be iffy if I'll be online or unconscious at 8pm server.