7:40pm

This morning, I finally got up close to the pyramids. Sure they're big, but give me a fucking break. People rant and rave about how big they are and even standing next to them I was only marginally impressed. I mean, New York, that's big. Some people really need to get out more.

Past research has shown pretty clearly that the yellow limestone that makes up most of the constructoin doesn't come from local quarries at all, but may have been transported up the Nile from more distant locations. Of course, Everett thinks there's some local source. I think his paper for the conference is something like "Evidence for Depleted Local Quarries". Give me a break.

Later, I got to take a look into the collapsed gallery in Cheops and the tunnel into the chamber in the foundation. The tunnel walls are unusually smooth with minimal fracturing in the limestone junctures, considering the previously proposed methodologies for its creation. Drs. Heinz, Schmidt, et. al. allege that this is due to erosion over time caused by seepage from the foundation and crest, but the current dryness of the chambers and tunnel as well as some slight groove marks near the foundation chamber would seem to deny this possibility. Sometimes I wonder if these idiots ever actually visit a site, or if they just come up with a theory over cappucino and decide to write a shitload of mindless papers about it. If there had in fact been substantial erosion, it seems these grooves would have been eroded as well. Do they mention the grooves in their papers? No. Morons.

The gallery does look like a sudden jarring caused the collapse of the support structures, and I collected some stratification data from the exposed seams for my thesis. If this is local limestone, I'll eat my thesis. While Sarah agrees that the stones are unlikely to be straight quarry stones, she doesn't concur with me that they were poured from a limestone mix.