Thursday, February 16, 2012

Alright, lets do this.

Current Location: our tiny studio apartment in Tucson
Current Music: Random iTunes, "In The Summertime" Mungo Jerry


I'm not sure why but I get really nervous writing on our blog. I feel like all day I'm thinking of stuff to say. Then I finally get to the computer and....... I freeze. Totally clam up. Maybe I should try to start from the beginning. A little about me. A little about Adam. A little about the company.

Hello, I'm Kate. Thats proper right? Saying Hi. Ok about me. My family is from Massachusetts, and I was born and raised outside Chicago till 1999. Then we moved to Detroit. Hmm, I like to pretend I'm an artist. I love to sketch and paint. I have a degree in Photography and Fine Arts. Im slightly over dramatic, sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time. I think the only people that find me "piss your pants funny" are my family. My cousins are some of my best friends. My folks are awesome, but not in a Brady Bunch kind of way. My baby brother is, well... not so much a baby anymore. I lived in Detroit until May 2011. Then I moved to THE MIDDLE OF EFF-ING NOWHERE. Diamondville, WY. Go ahead look it up, less than 1,000 people, one gas station, the works! Needless to say it was a massive culture shock. I mean come on what 23 year old city girl wouldn't move there? Any one that is sane! But, I followed a man. And a good one at that. Adam. Some smart person said something like, "Love makes you insane". Clearly.
Ok, complaining is done. Because in all reality I have nothing to complain about. Adam cares about me unconditionally, I'm working with fossils (coolest job ever), theres more stars up there that it blankets the sky, we have the best/ worst dog, and did I mention I have the coolest job ever? Right. 

Zeke - he's mentally handicapped. Im not kidding.

As for Adam. Lets see if I can describe him with out getting all "chick-flicky". He's the hardest working person I know. He also has one of the greatest hearts and souls I've ever met. Adam grew up on a lake in Minnesota. He's worked with the Green River Formation fossils since he was a child and he loves it. Adam also collects things. Well to me its everything. Where I'm the kind of person to purge quite a bit, I hate clutter. Adam has collections; Fossils (of course), minerals, Magic: The Gathering cards, old school video games and the councils, band tee-shirts, vinyl records, guns, trinkets, ect. If it were completely up to Adam our whole house would be display cabinets. He's funny about it. 

How did we meet, Adam being from Minnesota and I from Michigan? 10 years ago on Venice Beach in LA. He was visiting his father for spring break and I was visiting my dad. My little brother, Zack, and I went to Venice so I could take some pictures and he could skateboard. Zack got bored skating along and was too shy to ask any one. So it was up to me to find him a boarding buddy. We started walking down the boardwalk and I picked Adam out of the crowd. Walked right up to him and said, "Hi, I'm Katie." And thats that. We were friends immediately and had been since. We started dating March of last year seriously. We dated long distance successfully. Adam came out for a long visit to Detroit for his birthday in May. The night of his birthday we went to a concert, his favorite band, Manchester Orchestra. He asked me to move to Minnesota, we talked about it, and decided it was the next step. I was going to be moving at the end of the summer. The following evening I put together a little birthday party for him at our favorite local bar. We were there for maximum 45 minutes and Adam received the worst phone call of his life. His older brother, David, had been killed in a horrible car accident. I rushed us back to my house packed our bags and we got on the first flight out to Salt Lake City. Within hours Adam's life was turned upside down and mine along with it. We were going to stick together and switched the move to Wyoming immediately. We've made David's house our home. 
Adam lived in Wyoming for the summers to dig the fossils but always returned to Minnesota to prep and restore them. He's reflected on that choice since saying, "It was stupid for me to keep driving back and fourth for so many years, I should have just moved there when I knew this was my career path." 

For the past year things have definitely not been easy. Losing David, cleaning out and needing to gut the house, moving us both across the country, training me to prep fossils, teaching me how to dig, adjusting Adam's family, and adjusting to life in BFE. After almost a year of living together we finally have down our flow. I know no matter what the relationship moving in with one another is an adjustment but I just feel like ours has been a bit more trying than your average Joe. I have learned a whole of a lot this past year. Adam and I are stronger than hell. We have a great relationship, a wonderful business and a phenomenal friendship.

More later. 
Kate

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Current Location: Our winter studio apartment in Tucson, AZ
Currently Listening To: Quick Mix on Pandora, "Too Long/ Steam Machine (Live)" Daft Punk

So, the Tucson Fossil, Gem, and Mineral Show officially ended Sunday and man are we tired. Not only was it ending but my dad, George, came into town to see us. He's actually the one that suggested that we start a blog. At lunch before we brought him to the airport he kept saying, "There's so many people out there that have interests in paleo work, but theres no one to really connect with." I suppose thats what I'm trying to do. Get ourselves out there and open up about our company. What we do isn't easy, but its not brain surgery. Theres so much that goes into it. If you follow me on here, your going to read all about the quarry, sales, the shows, family, what it does to us individually, and a tiny bit about us as a couple trying to make it in the fossil business. 
I've never blogged before, I'm crossing my fingers that I'm good enough. Hell, I hope that we're interesting enough to follow. 

Enough for now. There's so much to reflect on but for now I'll have to leave it here. 

http://myworld.ebay.com/baenidae
www.ancientlake.etsy.com
www.ancientlakefossils.com