fossils...eat...sleep...fossils...eat...sleep

There is more to life than looking at bones, eating and sleeping, but those three things have taken up the bulk of my time as of late. And I'm not complaining. The bones are super cool, the food is tasty and the sleep is generally of high quality, although there was one night earlier this week when I was tormented by a mosquito. Luckily I brought my very own cheap-o mosquito net this year. Smart me. So at 2:30 in the morning I couldn't take it anymore and put up the net...ahhh...sound sleep ensued. Sadly, once I went to the museum the next day the torment continued (different little mosquitoes of course). Silly me, I wore a skirt and sandals and did not put any repellent on. I know better, but sometimes one forgets these little details. So I was eaten alive at least until midday when the little buggers retreated.

I looked at monkeys, bovids (hoofed/horned critters), and suids (pigs and warthogs) this week and then I started looking at hominins (casts only...because I do not have a research permit...sad, but not the end of the world). It's going quite well, although the suids were a bit of a disappointment. I am trying to focus on animals of a certain body size (think no bigger than a modern human being or a deer), and those ancient suids were friggin' enormous! My god, they must've been the size of a lion. Just huge. So I looked at them for a bit and they were cool but not quite what I was after. I want to see if animals similar in size to early hominins were chomped on by the same types of carnivores as hominins and monkeys. That's the whole point. So if I look at animals that are too big then it means they were probably eaten by different predators, which makes things more complicated than they need to be. At least at this point.

So anyway, it was a good week. And I watched TV. I know, it's not really what you'd expect, but there's a TV in the apartment where I'm staying and they have cable so ya know...it's hard to resist. I did watch some National Geo shows though so it's not total crap.

I did laundry today (hand-washing). And went to the museum to see the exhibitions (research areas are closed on the weekends). It's a nice museum. Small, but very nicely done. They have a huge collection of birds from Kenya. Some really crazy looking things with massive beaks. There is also this exhibit called the cycle of life where they display different cultural artifacts and describe the growing-up processes in different traditional groups. There was a whole thing on female circumcision acknowledging the fact that it is no longer acceptable in most groups. They also had a wooden xylophone out in the hall for people to play and lots of kids took advantage of this. With pretty good results most of the time.

Not much else to report at this point. My buddy Wayne is arriving tomorrow so I'm psyched about that. And tonight...well, I think I'll just stay in and maybe read a bit and watch some TV and eat my leftover lentils. Have a piece of cheese. I offered some cheese to my friend Emmanuel and he said "Kenyans don't eat cheese." Really? Okay. Well, they drink milk and eat ice cream so why not? They are missing out.

On that note. I need to go buy some water and other random things.