NOTES: You have no idea how much brighter your reviews are making my gray, overcast January. I'm so happy you all are picking up everything I've put into it, though, fififolle, Tamura is not Miko Kusanagi. Thank you, PurpleYin, for betaing this.

DISCLAIMER: Stargate: Atlantis and all things associated with it belong to other people, though Tamura and Gupta are mine.

SPOILERS: Before I Sleep

RATING: T

MARKHAM'S JOURNAL

September 1, 2004

We had our first yogurt today. We had some sweetened with honey and berries as well as goat cooked in yogurt sauce with young wild potatoes. It's not like cow's milk, but it's a nice change of pace. Dr. Corrigan made a kite out of things we've made since we got here. It's kind of scruffy looking, made up of stitched together scraps of goat leather with a bamboo frame and a tail of pounded rope plant, but it works. We all took turns flying it, though the breeze along the beach kept trying to send it into the cliffs and trees. I'd never flown a kite before, which they all thought was strange.

September 3, 2004

It rained. No ruins or grain. But I found a fruit that might be edible and Dr. Corrigan found clay. We're going to build an oven and a kiln.

Dr. Tamura says the peas are good. No peas for greedy goats.

I got a haircut.

September 8, 2004

For fun, Dr. Corrigan had us all make something from clay and we christened the kiln with a firing. It was more work than rest, considering how much wood it took, but it was kind of cool. We now have a few unglazed pots, though I'm not sure how useful they'll be. Dr.s Corrigan and Kavanaugh are still trying to figure out a way to make a glaze. I made some hooks to use for hanging clothes from the trees we use for showers. My stuff always gets a bit wet when I hang it from the shower wall and it falls to the ground half the time when I hang it from a tree. The others thought it was a clever solution.

September 12, 2004

Miss Gupta and I caught some turkeys. It was quite the adventure. I nearly needed stitches by the end of it. We shouldn't have tried it without the others helping, but I'm not sure we could have done it with so many people tromping through the woods. Since we've started hunting them, the turkeys have become pretty leery of us bipeds.

Miss Gupta showed me how to trim their wings so they can't fly, not that she'd ever done it, either. The coop's been built and ready for a while. Now we just have to hope they'll produce eggs.

Tomorrow, we're planning to dig a new latrine. The possibility of eggs almost makes up for it.

September 15, 2004

It's been two months.

Tomorrow is Dr. Simpson's birthday, but we celebrated today with a cake. Dr. Tamura and Miss Gupta made one out of meringue sweetened with honey and baked on one of our metal plates in the new oven. It was topped with custard, the fruit I discovered and more honey. I don't think I've ever had a flourless cake before. I never would have come up with something like that. It was pretty impressive.

Dr. Corrigan pulled another rabbit out of his hat. This time, he gave us volleyball. Admittedly, the ball wasn't great, but we all had a good time. We did one round of ladies vs gents and one round of the birthday Doctor's choice vs everyone else. We barely managed to beat the ladies, but for the second game Dr. Simpson chose me and Dr. Tamura for her team. That game went pretty quick.

I can't really make anything as a gift like the others can, so I offered Dr. Simpson a week of water filter maintenance. We all take turns and hers is coming up. She seemed as pleased with that as her other gifts.

Having eggs is great.

September 18, 2004

I finally convinced them to try going into space and looking for other continents. If Maj. Sheppard was out there somewhere, this was our best chance to find him. It turns out there is no other continent nor anything nearby in space. There was also no response to our signal. Still, I feel better for having known I tried.

Now we know the ship is definitely built for space travel. It was my first time in space, though it didn't really feel any different from regular flying because there was no weightlessness or anything. Maybe we didn't need to worry about the bends.

September 22, 2004

For a change of pace, we took a trip in the ship to some mountains. I hadn't realized how warm it was getting where we are until we were up there. The view was beautiful. It kind of reminded me of Pike's Peak, only without any roads or rest stations. There were some big birds we haven't seen before that were circling up high. We had to take Dr. Corrigan's notebook away from him because he wouldn't stop working on our day of rest. I told him we'll get to study this quadrant eventually. He's beginning to rethink his original theory that the Ancients would have build near the coast.

September 29, 2004

This was my week to play goat herd. We don't yet have the resources to fence off a field for them to graze in or anything, so we have to put them on ropes and take them to different feeding grounds. The closest thing I can compare it to is taking my Uncle Oliver's malamutes for a walk. They pull like there's no tomorrow and they all want to go different directions. Even though there are chances to sit, I had no idea how exhausting it was. Thank goodness Dr. Corrigan made some leather gloves, otherwise the rope burns would be really bad. The gloves we came with are all but trashed at this point and weren't mean for this sort of thing anyway.

Miss Gupta was my goat herding partner. I'm glad it was her because she seems to have a way with them. When the goats settle down to eating, there's nothing much to do. So we talked about all sorts of things, but mainly about home. She's the second youngest of six siblings and all of them are in medicine. Plus her family has four generations in one big house. I can hardly imagine it. My brothers and I all left home after graduating from high school. I wonder how they are, if they wonder why they haven't heard from me in months. I told them it might be a while.

We found another hive and came up with a bamboo apiary. We'll see if it works.

Dr. Tamura thinks she's found a good plant to smoke to keep the bugs away. No one has any problems with it except Dr. Kavanaugh, so we'll be harvesting bug retardant plants along with the fruit, vegetables, bamboo and kindling we gather. I like the latest fruit that's come into season. The flavor reminds me of kiwi.

For our day of rest, we played volley ball again. Even with Dr. Tamura as an opponent, my team won both times.