Good Times
I had a really good day today. Probably the best day I've had in England so far.

It started out fairly normally. Got up, made lunch, went to work, shoveled dirt, tea break, shoveled more dirt, lunch break. Then after lunch, Zoe and I were digging out a fill in the corner of our trench and we suddenly hit a motherload of artifacts. Things were just pouring out! Tin glazed ceramic, bones of all sorts, bottles, pipes galore and....da da da DA....a complete pot. Drool away, Tom.

For those non-archaeologists out there, this is amazingly cool. Just think, hundreds of years being underground and under a concrete drain of all things and after I smacked away around it with a mattock, it doesn't have a chip on it. It's fairly small, maybe 20 cm high or so and it's my cool find. We won't mention the other larger, suspiciously near complete pot with rather new break marks in it. (coughshoveltraumacough).

There are some days where I wonder why I chose this job. There are so many jobs out there that would be way easier and sure as hell pay a lot more and I occasionally wonder why I bother. Then I get a day like today and I know why.

Anyways, after completely owning all bragging rights for the day (I also found a near complete tin-glazed plate with the picture of a castle on it, a near complete pipe with a pipe stem almost as long as my arm and a bunch of old pipes, probably dating to the early 16th C), we had to call it a day. And since it's Friday, we of course went down to the pub. And there we stayed. We were a couple pints in, when Alexis (my supervisor) remembered that I do magic and asked me to do some tricks. He's turning out to be my biggest fan. When I went to the Roman site last week with a few other new people, one of the first things that supervisor said was "Right, which one of you is the magician"? Word travels fast :)

Now, two British pints, especially for me, is not exactly light fare. But I figured I'd give it a try. And it was one of the most fun I've had doing magic ever. Everything just went so well, so smooth. My tricks flowed together and people were absolutely loving it. I did quite simple tricks, no complicated sleights (I was a bit smashed after all and didn't quite trust myself) but I just felt so confident, so calm. My patter just flowed and things just fit together so nicely. After I stopped, one woman, who I literally just met an hour earlier, spent the rest of the night trying to convince to go professional.

Anyways, we stayed there for a few hours, then decided that we really needed food (most pubs don't really serve food here) so we headed off to a Vietnamese place. The food was amazing and we stayed there for a couple more hours. It's neat too, it has a bring-your-own-drink policy. I already switched to normal coke but others stopped by a convenience store and picked up a few beers or coolers or whatever. One of the guys actually secretly bought a bottle of brandy and brought it out at the end of the meal and we got a bunch of glasses and shared it. Very powerful stuff, just the smell of it cleans your sinuses!

It was such a great feeling, so be sitting in a pub, then in a restaurant with a great group of people. I was drinking brandy with friends in England and it felt like home.

I feel very...accepted...here, much more so than I have ever felt in Canada.

I'm happy.