Today was a busy Sunday. Bill, Mara (our Bronze Age ceramicist), and myself had a chatty-chat (PKAP lingo for a serious talk) about ceramic processing. Mara is down for a week to look at the pottery we collected last season from our survey work on Kokkinokremos. After this I did some computer work for a few hours, and then we stopped work for lunch. On the way to the sandwich shop, since Nick Karatjas (my colleague from IUP) had never seen it, we stopped at the Church of Ayios Lazarus for a brief sightseeing trip.
After lunch Bill and I went to the airport to pick up some PKAP staff members who arrived: Dr. Dimitri Nakassis (a professor from the University of Toronto whose specialty is the Aegean Bronze Age), and Michael Brown (a graduate student from the University of Edinburgh whose specialty is the Cypriot Bronze Age). While we were at the airport I tried to pick up an extra rental car but Astra was out of smaller cars, i.e. inexpensive ones, and since they had not received my email from yesterday requesting to pick up one, I will have to go back tomorrow around noon. When I wondered back into the airport waiting area I noticed Bill standing on the left side of the waiting room. The airport guys try to keep people who are waiting on passengers behind a railing on the right side of the waiting area. The only people who are allowed on the left side are arriving passengers and drivers/tour guides who stand around holding up signs with the name of the people they are at the airport to pick up. I noticed Bill was standing over there with these people and that he was also holding up a sheet of paper. I wandered over and when I looked at the sheet of paper he was holding, expecting to see Dimitri’s and Michael’s names on it, I saw that it was blank. I have to admit that for the next 20 minutes it was hysterical because when people looked at the sheet of paper and realized it was blank they did a double-take. One guy nearly tripped and another stopped to tell Bill he must be holding the paper backwards since nothing was printed on the side facing the crowd. Since I figured that security might eventually notice, I slid a few feet away from him and tried to look like I was not associated with him. Eventually Michael and Dimitri came out and it amazed me that neither said anything about Bill’s blank sign, but they both know him and probably weren’t surprised. Anyway, that was the high point of the day. We went back to the airport after dinner and picked up Brandon Olson (a graduate student from Penn State whose interest is in the Late Roman military). That does it for airport runs until Thursday.
As I am finishing this up in my room, I just caught the end of the conversation going on in the kitchen as Brandon talking about someone – “He is getting really old, he must be 40.” As someone in that general age group I am going to have go in there and……….
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 