I don't Sound THAT Minnesotan

Today was the first day of needing to know EVERTHING.  So, naturally, this is the first day Jackie and I didn’t go to open lab.  Or rather, we did, but we went super late because first we went to get coffee and print things out and waste time.  Not that any of this matters, it just shows how much I just really didn’t want to accept the needing to know it all kind of thing.  So.  We eventually get to class.  First things first, and that’s oral presentations.  We’ve each been assigned a state and we had to look into the unmarked burial laws that state subscribes to.  I won’t bore you with the details of Minnesota; just know that disturbing a grave is a felony.  However, I will bore you with some of the interesting tidbits from other state’s laws.  Firstly, New York didn’t have any laws governing unmarked graves until January of THIS YEAR.  Dear god.  What did they ever do???? How did they ever handle digging up remains?  I mean, come on.  Secondly, don’t expand your house in California.  That’s all I have to say about that.  Lastly, all the decisions in Vermont concerning unmarked graves are made the the Council of Nine.  No explanation.  No description.  The Council of Nine.  If that doesn’t sound like a cult, I’m the Easter bunny.  Or they’re the Fellowship if the Ring in disguise.  Either way.

Next was the quiz.  Oh dear.  So.  We really were supposed to know things.  Luckily for me, I knew things we didn’t necessarily have to know but it was in the extra credit so it paid off.  Basically, I need to study more but got lucky this time.  For the rest of the morning period, we learned about dentition.  Each pair of us was assigned a mandible with which to catalog all the teeth, their type of wear, and the state they were in.  Luckily for Jackie and I, (or maybe it isn’t lucky because we really learned nothing) our mandible had exactly one tooth.  And it was broken. 

We had a speaker come into talk about NAGPRA for the rest of the time before lunch.  It was interesting to hear the perspective of a Native American archaeologist rather than from just a Native American, or just an Anthropologist.  But she said I have red hair, so there were words. My hair is brown.  

Literally all of the afternoon was spend on a field trip to Sunderland Cemetery.  We all got assigned dates and were to go around and write down names, sex, and ages of forty different headstones.  It was actually really interesting because a lot of the headstones said some things on then that were kind of silly or just had really interesting genealogies.  Whole families were buried together for hundreds of years!  One had a death threat on it.  Another said cause of death was the smallpox inoculation (this was an old cemetery), and my personal favorite said, “Here lies (Insert female name here).  We loved her, but she died.”  I like it because well yeah, that’s how everyone feels.  Anyway, we took that data and tried to find average ages of death for people.  A lot of people died in 1918, I think probably from the Spanish Influenza.  Anyway, men lived to be around 65 and women to 55 in my time range.  So yeah.  It was nice to spend some time outside, plus the speaker brought us cookies.  Yum.

So the highlight of the day, for me anyway, was that I found a four leaf clover outside.  I just looked down, and there it was.  How many times in one's life does that happen? It's never happened to me before.  Every time I look at clover, I look for a four leafed one.  But i actually found one today! Also, i had a dream last night that convinced me I must start Boy Meets World from the beginning.  There goes my summer.  Lastly, I finished season three of Dr. Who today.  

Now to the title of today’s entry.  So.  Let’s just say right off the bat, my Minnesota accept is nothing compared to that of anyone two or more hours north of the twin cities.  That being said, every time I say any word containing an “o” vowel, at least three people repeat the word with more “o” emphasis, and another chimes in with “you betcha.”  I DON’T SOUND LIKE THAT.