QuaxiDanto: August 2005

QuaxiDanto

QuaxiDanto: If you speak K'ekchi, you know what it means, but don’t understand. K'ekchi is a Mayan dialect spoken in, among other places, Belize. I made several extended trips into the high bush in southern Belize at the end of the last century with a bunch of K'ekchis who gave me the nickname Danto, which means Tapir. That name had been taken so I added the modifier Quaxi, which means crazy. What does CrazyTapir mean as far as the title of my blog? Whatever!

About Me

Name: TOC

Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

I am an enigmatic anachronism, facing the world jaded and uncomfortably impressed. My chosen profession is archaeology, which turns out to be way more tedious than cool. I race yachts, hang with the bohemian artist crowd, and vacation at ancient Maya cities. Its no wonder I usually feel out of place, and am oh-so-pleased to be different (even if it is not in a good way). Why TOC?: I was participating through emails in a call-in radio show that didn’t accept phone calls (it’s college radio, which covers a multitude of sins). The host had a friend named Chuck who also wrote into the show so they started referring to me as “the other Chuck.” I started signing my emails TOC (The Other Chuck). A little later I started posting to a blog that was running live during the next program in the lineup and then a couple of other places and have just kind of stuck with it as a screen name. Again, whatever dude.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Friends and Pictures from Belize

I finally have some pictures, but I need to compress them before I upload them, which is not happening today. Andy, who is one of the co-directors of the project, totally came through though. I have about 100 images now. Unfortunately, several of the ones I want to post are 2-4 megs. I’ll get to it eventually. He and his wife Mitra stayed with me for a few days and we had a great time,even though it had not even been a month since we were together in Belize. We did a little walking tour of downtown Cleveland, which they were impressed with. We also went to Tremont and University Circle. I think they both left with a good impression of the city. We definitely had a good time. It has been a while since I had house guests. I ended up doing a little bit of the travel-guide thing, which seemed weird, but overall it was actually fun showing them around. It made me not feel bad about living in Cleveland.