Archeological Dig of the Pembroke Formation

We are in the process of renovating our home office/library to be more useful. This room had been a catch-all storage room, containing mostly unpacked boxes from when we moved in almost a year ago. For the past few months, we have been repairing walls, repainting, and attaching bookcases to the walls. Although we are nowhere near completion (and are in a state of panic, as family will begin to arrive in less that 14 days), I can at least say we made huge progress today as far as relocating the boxes of heavy texts up two flights of stairs.

Jeff, my husband, is not as spry as he once was. Yet, he carried each of those boxes up the stairs for me, bless his heart. He grunted and puffed along the way, and I insisted that he take short breaks between trips. I'd be lost without him! I'm also pleased to say he has just about finished painting the dungeon store room... the floor simply needs another coat, and we can begin placing boxes in there.

We spent the afternoon going through boxes upstairs, unpacking books and trying to make sense of shelf space. 99% of my texts were in dungeon storage, and I'm thrilled that I can now access them with such little effort! As you can see in the picture above, we have a long way to go, and at least 10 more boxes to unpack upstairs.

My fossils made the move without breaking. I thought I'd share a few pictures with you. (Clicking on the pictures will reopen them in a larger window, so that you can see better detail.) The claw is a casting of a fossil found near Grand Junction, CO. The fish come from a local river in Colorado Springs. I do not give out the exact locations as it is unsettling for anyone to return to a site and find that a bunch of amateurs have torn up rocks and beds looking for their own "treasures". Most people do not understand that fossil hunting is done with small dental tools, toothbrushes, paint brushes, etc. You expose what you are looking for, and then painstakingly work at the fossil embedded within the rock, chipping away bits of stone and coating the fossil itself with a compound (such as a rubber cement) if it begins to flake on you.

This office has taken on the feel of an archeological dig, right here on Pembroke. I seem to encounter layers as I dig through boxes, each layer a snapshot into a period of time in my life. I have delighted in revisiting the Wedding Era, the Dog Photo Era, the High School Era, the College Era, the Morbid Poetry Era, and of course, the Hurry-Up-And-Just-Pack-This-Shit-So-We-Can-Move-to-a-New-State-Already Era. We have a lot of boxes from that last Era. It almost appears that these boxes are a mix of prized possessions and crap; a stapler nestled tenderly next to a set of pens that I'll never use, or an oil lamp carefully wrapped up and placed next to a (now outdated) desk calendar. What were we thinking?? Oh, yes, I recall now - we ran out of time and packed the office things last.

7 PM; my break is over. Back to work unpacking.