D&D and Counted-Cross Stitch=USEFUL

This morning I finally got to go digging again, and it was amazingly eventful. By the first tea time at 10:30, I had already made 5 small finds, several of which were pretty cool. Two were just small bits of pottery but the third was a large basal sherd, which is what the pottery experts like to examine. I wouldn't have known what it was when I found it if I hadn't taken my sick day in the house cleaning and learning about pottery. Even with that I was a little surprised. It was about the size of a fist, but I could see it was pottery. I asked my supervisor anyway because I had never seen such a thick chunk. He confirmed that it was a basal sherd, "basal" meaning that it had part of the base on it, and "sherd" meaning a piece of pottery. This particular piece had a concave interior with an 'L' shaped exterior, where the base was attached to the wall of the vessel.
The other two pre-tea-time finds were worked stones, which were rounded. Anything we find on site that is round was at least brought to the site, and often worked and used for smoothing, or polishing. All of the natural stone flakes into very flat shapes. That was confusing at first because every sneaky rock looked like a man-made brick or tool. (Gee, I'm such an expert now that I've been at it for a total of three weeks.)
Between tea time and lunch, I found another five small finds, but they were all small pieces of pottery. That was a lot to find in 3.75 hours. It was much better than finding nothing, but there's definately a happy medium of not enough and too many. I was bordering on too many, because I wasn't making much progress into my context (layer of soil).
After lunch, one of my fellow "Willamettes" who had been planning, was moved on to work in the finds hut, and another of them was sent to write the site blog, so I got to take over their planning job.
Planning is drawing the outline of every stone and significant slant or other topography in a particular area. First I had to find the propper E-W line and then put a string taught along the edge of here I needed to plan. Next, I strung a tape measurer along the string, so I could line up with the last drawn square meter of planning.
There is a pre-made planning grid, that is made ofa square wooden frame, and the measurements along the interior of the frame are 1mx1m. Within the frame, there are strings making a grid pattern with squares of 20cmx20cm.
I lined the planning grid up and drew in the stones, and everything onto graphing paper, on a much cmaller scale obviously. I think the 20cm squares from the planning frame were shrunk down into 1cm on the paper. I used a plumb bob to locate where the edges of rocks were, and then counted the grid squares to draw the stone in the correct place. Using the plumb bob prevents visual distrotions because you know where in the square the point is, rather than where you think it is. You can't get directly over the grid to see straight down into the frame.
There were a lot of symbols to use to represent slopes, small finds in-situ, trench edges, and all kinds of things. The only difference between this and making a map for a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons was that here you were recording something real, where as for a D&D camaign, you record what is in your head. There were a few different sybols, since hopefully the trench doesn't contain triggers, traps, or monsters, but other than that, it was the same. Which worked out great for me because my favorite part of creating a D&D campaign is drawing the map.
So far planning is my favorite job. I know that what ever job I have most recntly learned seems to be my favorite, but I think this one will keep first place for a while. I hope I get to do more of it tomorrow, or next week.