Friday, February 19th, 2010
The biggest news this week in the realm of archaeology were the results of the Tutankhamun study. I’d read a few weeks ago that Dr. Hawass was planning a big announcement, but I wasn’t sure just what he was going to announce. Tuesday rolled around and there were the results of the King Tut study. I found it fascinating! He had a cleft lip, a club foot, his father was Akhenaten, his mother was Akhenaten’s sister, he suffered from malaria and died from complications of the malaria and a broken leg. I was really excited to read all that.
Tuesday was rather nerve-wracking for me. Monica from the Arizona Unemployment agency had promised to call me every Tuesday until the whole unemployment thing was resolved. I’d trusted her when she had first contacted me, but this was going to be the deciding moment: was she going to ignore me like the others had done? It was after lunch and she called me. Not only did she call me, but she had great news! Everything was resolved! I would be getting a debit card with the back pay for the unemployment benefits I’ve been trying to get since October, and every week, I’d get a little more until I’m employed again. It’s such a relief to have that all taken care of, especially as all I could see was my saved-up cash dwindling with the bills I have to pay. Now I don’t have to worry so much! Now just to firm up my employment at Jacob Lake, Arizona…
My mom and I have been working on a website for my Uncle George this week. He’s going to be renting an apartment out for people who want to visit the San Antonio Riverwalk. The apartment for rent is right on the Riverwalk! It sounds quite amazing, really. He needs a website so people can book the apartment, see what is offered, and things like that. We’re building the site using WordPress. We were getting really excited about how it was turning out. We had a lovely background, a transparent box of floating text, a custom-designed navigation bar… It was looking amazing, if I do say so myself. Then we decided to tackle the fact that, as with most WordPress websites, the blog was on the front page. We didn’t want the blog on the front page, but we wanted all the bells and whistles that surrounded the blog. That’s when everything seemed to fail. This was accidentally deleted, that was messed up, and everything just didn’t work. We’ve got to start over. It won’t be so bad, though. A lot of the code we used has been saved, so it’s just a matter of fixing a few little problems.
Speaking of the San Antonio Riverwalk, I’ll be there next week. My mom, my Aunt Andi, my Uncle Mack, and I are all going down to San Antonio, Texas to visit Uncle George. It’s only for three days, and it’ll be filled with a lot of official things. My mom (who does HDR photography) will be taking photos for Uncle George’s website, and I’ll be her assistant! I’m really looking forward to it, though it will be a busy, chaotic trip. We arrive on Thursday, and are leaving on Sunday. Not a lot of time to breathe in that period, either. Uncle George is having an open house to show off the renovated apartment to his friends (kind of advertising at the same time), which will be combined with a birthday party for one of his friends. Knowing Uncle George and his friends, it’ll be a bit hoopla!
The most amazing and almost comical thing happened yesterday. I was looking out at the bird feeder in the backyard when a young hawk came swooping in amongst the sparrows. The sparrows scattered, leaving the hawk looking a tad confused sitting on a nearby rock. Then it had the brilliant idea to fly into one of our spruce trees. There was a mass exodus of sparrows from that spruce tree. Then it flew to the other spruce tree. Another mass exodus. Dejected, and more than a little confused, it settled on the fence overlooking the bird feeder, as though waiting for the sparrows to return. As if the sparrows couldn’t see him plain as day sitting there waiting for them! He sat there for a good fifteen minutes before giving up and flying away. Luckily, I was able to get some photos of him before he left!
So here I sit, looking out at yet another bout of fresh snowfall. Time for hot chocolate! With marshmallows, of course. We have to have marshmallows, my dad and my dog would be disappointed if there weren’t marshmallows!
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Tags: DNA, hawk, HDR photography, hot chocolate, King Tut, King Tut DNA, King Tut DNA Results, Riverwalk, San Antonio, San Antonio Riverwalk, unemployment benefits, young hawk