TadMack – Page 20 – Hobbits In Rivendell

This Land is Your Land, Oh, Wait. Not Really.

August 17, 2011

9:47 pm

11 Comments on This Land is Your Land, Oh, Wait. Not Really.

Ah, August. Time of flooded festivals and The Fringe and in George Square it’s the time of movie-making frenzy. Our usually placid square has been carved up, fenced off, and is a major traffic causer. Why? Two words. Brad. Pitt.

He’s makin’ a zombie movie.

This gets a BIG eye roll around these parts. Last year, in the service of being a judge for a book award, T. had to read one and later complained, “The whole zombie thing has never to me made sense. How come the zombies never eat each other? And yeah, we’re omnivores and designed to be that way, but how does a person spontaneously develop a craving for brains, and how does one’s (undead) digestive system suddenly deal with eating people raw? I mean, seriously. Zombie outbreaks happen, and you never see people rolling around in agony and dying of bowel flux and dehydration. Sorry. That’s unspeakably gross. But I have trouble suspending disbelief about some things.”

Neither could she care less about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their six U.N. representative children they’ve hauled up from London for the month.

However! Should you care, the movie is called World War Z, and is apparently nothing like the book (movies never are) which allegedly takes place in Philadelphia. Having never been to Philly, we have no idea if it looks the same, but frankly throwing up a few street signs, American traffic lights and scattering yellow cabs and SWAT and police vehicles around a Scottish city doesn’t exactly make it look American. On the other hand, those things are like adding spices to a dish; they’re tiny touches that no one will notice but which will make a difference. Unless you’re from Glasgow, and then George Square will still look a lot like …George Square.

It’s all in good fun, though. Except to the cab drivers, who would like to set the whole bunch of them on fire for snarling up the traffic.

Ah, well. In four days, none of this will be our problem anyway. Woot!

In Which We Are Awash in Boxes, and Our Housekeeping SkilIs Are Disparaged

by TadMack

August 8, 2011

12:07 pm

16 Comments on In Which We Are Awash in Boxes, and Our Housekeeping SkilIs Are Disparaged

Upheaval

You’ll have noted the long pauses in blog entries. The reason? We’re busily packing…

One of the things you never remember about moving is how …just… grubby the whole enterprise ends up being. It’s not that you never clean beneath your couches — we do, with a dust mop, at minimum on a weekly basis. It’s just that dust is a sneaky, sneaky thing, and like its namesake bunnies which breed horrifyingly quickly, it gets behind furniture and quietly gives birth. Add to it that the Georgian date of the building, the fact that they’re doing dig-up-the-sidewalks type of construction again just across the street (in front of Bridget’s old flat), and that we have single-paned windows that don’t really seal, and you get drifts of sand and flakes of paint along with the dust and the general human sheddings of dander, skin, and hair.

Remember how when you were little, sometimes certain parts of the floor were lava and you had to jump across? Yeah, well, when one is moving, at times the whole house is deemed lava-land. We want to perch atop our boxes and stare down in dismay. Instead we… clean. And clean. And clean again, as each new crop of dust bunnies (or slut’s wool, as T’s grandma used to call it – a bit more pejorative, that) reveals itself… because of course the property manager insists on running herds of potential renters through while we’re trying to pack everything away, and T. still grimaces when she remembers being teased once by the property inspector about a dusty baseboard.

It’s hard for us to see how finding new renters so soon is reasonable, as we’ve been in this flat for over two years. In the part of the U.S. where we’re from, the law states that after one year, an apartment has to be freshly painted, and the floors cleaned for the next tenants – it’s more of a health/safety law than anything else, but it does mean that there are frequently brightened apartments. Here, that’s not the law; the owner essentially does what they want, and in this case, the owner wants money, and so farewell to the idea of someone figuring out, once and for all, what is wrong with the boiler — we’re considering leaving the wooden spoon we use to jimmy the reset switch, but have a feeling that probably won’t help; farewell to the idea of scraping away the paint from the wooden windowsills and redoing them. Farewell to thoroughly cleaning the blinds and the drapes and removing the strange discolorations and molds from the ceiling where the tenant can’t reach. Just… shove in the next crop. ::sigh::

When last we spoke on the topic – in June – we thought we were moving, but had no idea where we were going, and D. was sending out résumés in stacks. To Canada, to the U.S., to various companies with offices in Puerto Rico, the British Virgin Islands, — he was taking interest in both academic and tech positions everywhere. To our surprise, there wasn’t a lot of response. While the economy is indeed job-poor, we thought that it would be fairly simple to find something acceptable… but companies are being cagey and going with closer candidates for shorter periods of time with more money, but no benefits. Universities have been mildly interested, but of course they want people with degrees-in-hand who don’t have any thought of tenure or anything but adjunct positions. After about four months of trying, D. realized that a.) since his grades for the PhD don’t post until December, job-hunting will be easier in January and b.) despite the fact that his contract was, on paper at least, meant to last ’til September, he’d worked himself out of work, and needed to rethink things in order to keep the roof over our heads. We realized that maybe it wasn’t yet time to leave this place, no matter what we thought we wanted.

Almost as soon as we came to this conclusion, a woman from a nearby town phoned and mentioned that she had seen D’s resume somewhere, and requested that he come and interview in Stirling at her company, forty minutes away. And just like that, things came together. D. starts the job next week as the head of the developers, so he’ll get to mentor and teach and do all those things he loves for as long we we’re here.

Meanwhile: the new place has double paned windows, is made of plain old brick instead of sandstone, and was built within the current century. This means it will hopefully breed less dust in the back corners of things, but there’s no guarantee on this. Flat hunting was trickier with the distances and having to take the train to all appointments, but we managed. We were too flustered to take any pictures, but it’s in a quiet little village called Cambusbarron and the townhouse is nestled next to picturesque woolen mills from the 1830’s.

The townhouse is tall and narrow like a treehouse – a narrow central stairway twists up with rooms branching off. First, downstairs the garage and a library (or what will be the library), with shower/toilet/sink combo and a door to a small backyard. The next floor has a lovely kitchen/living room open up in a bubble of light from north and south, which means those will be lighted rooms in the dark of winter as well as now. The full back wall of the kitchen is windows, as well as there being picture windows in the living room, to overlook the lovely fenced yard and larger greenbelt in the back. Up a floor from there are an office and a very tiny room which literally has only room for a table – we’ll make it a work room – a full bathroom, as well as another shower room for the master bedroom. (So now we’ve gone from one bathroom for the last several years, to three. Why we have all of this largess now…) Pictures to come soon.

But, for now, all of that quiet and order of the new place is but a dream. Before us are ten more days of living with boxes and sorting things into piles of what goes, and what goes out to Oxfam. Right now, we ADORE Oxfam, and hope they enjoy the donation of paperbacks and kitchen stuff and nice-but-under-used clothing which will soon be theirs.

Meanwhile, D. has received some last changes to make to his thesis / dissertation thing before submitting it. Yes, you thought he had submitted it! So did he, but his advisers sprang into action suddenly and want to be sure it’s perfect before it goes on to the larger committee.

Ummmm…yeah. You see there’s a lot being left unsaid, and since this is a family blog, we’ll leave it that way. The bottom line to this sudden influx of input is that the date of the oral exams is irretrievably inching its way toward an October date, not a September one as was originally planned to facilitate an out-of-country student. It really is just as well that D. has a job in this country still, or he’d have to be flying back for exams, which would be an expensive nuisance. The way this whole process has gone has been a nuisance, but we keep reminding ourselves that soon it will be done, and D. will be the latest (and most unique) Dr. M.

That’s the news from Lake Glasgow, where the women are cranky, the house is filthy, and the men are running out of strapping tape…

They Still Have Little Tails

by TadMack

July 28, 2011

11:03 am

6 Comments on They Still Have Little Tails

Uncategorized

Back in April, T’s buddy Leila the Great raved quietly about a quinoa dish she’d made, that her honey, Josh, wouldn’t eat, because of the little tails. T. was dismayed by this, because she disliked quinoa for the same reason, plus a few reasons more, but she hates agreeing with Josh about anything, so decided that this attitude simply would not do. She took it upon herself to buy a several small bags of quinoa and get to know it.

Well. It was a good idea, anyway. But, after maybe one stir-fry meal where we used it as a rice substitute, it sat in its sealed little container and stared at us. And we …looked up at the ceiling and whistled.

Enter better weather, months later, and a plethora of avocados, pear tomatoes, and Salad of Bounty items. Enter a serendipitous the-cupboards-are-bare supper, and voilá – a stupendously tasty Salad of Excellence ™ (not to be confused with the Bean B. Salad of Awesome ™ ). We scarfed up our dinner salad, then got up early to try and recreate it to send off for D’s lunch. Salad of Excellence ™ is never quite the same twice, but chunks of avocado, corn, tomatoes, cilantro (or coriander, if you’re Scottish), and beans (we’d prefer pintos or black, but had kidney on hand) are the main notes. Add chunks of cheese, grilled asparagus tips, tangy green olives, charred summer squash, or julienned green beans. For those in need of more “padding” to this single-dish meal, don’t forget to chop your lettuce (cabbage? greens?), sliver your carrots, and other basic salad fare to stretch the dish. Another trick is in the dressing – we use plain vinegar, olive oil, mustard, and Thai green curry paste. The flavored vinegar we chose specially from our local Asian market to add a touch of sweetness – it contains pineapple juice!

One trick that people who try quinoa might not know is that before cooking it, it’s best to let it soak for fifteen minutes, drain and rinse it, and then cook it. Quinoa has a strongly grassy/grain-y smell, which can be off-putting. Soaking it will dilute some of that smell, and reduce the soapy, bitter flavor of the saponin which is naturally present on the grain. Soaking away the saponin will help you digest quinoa, otherwise it causes lower GI irritation, and acts as a laxative… This is good information which would have helped us get along with quinoa a lot sooner!

Hot quinoa and cool veg, or cool quinoa and hot veg – either way and any way, this is a tasty salad, mixing the strange protein-laden South American grain with the best summer produce you can find. And there are plenty more quinoa recipes to try, like pancakes, muffins and crumbles! We tried it as a breakfast cereal on our chiropractor’s suggestion with a little butter and a squidge of maple syrup. It tastes surprisingly good – like waffles.

It’s a triumph for healthy heating!

…T’s just glad to go back to disagreeing with Josh.

Project Management: A photo essay

by TadMack

July 19, 2011

5:38 pm

6 Comments on Project Management: A photo essay

Miscellany

…let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to… Strawberry Fields… Just add a tiny bit of water, and a long, slow cooking time. Later, as little sugar as we can get away with, and this time we also added fragrant lime zest and juice, to preserve the color, as much as possible, and add a little bite in what can sometimes be just a bit too sweet. Both the strawberry sauce and the rich, dark preserves, sweetened with brown sugar, turned out beautifully.

Never at any other point in our lives are we judged as harshly or scrutinized as thoroughly as we are when we are in school. We met a guidance counselor for the university, who, finding that D. is a PhD candidate, remarked, “After completing a PhD, many students are relieved at the idea of 9-5 employment.” Indeed.

If you suddenly had the burden of the last 65,000 words or so lifted from your brain, you, too, might find yourself buoyed, and bewildered by the incredible lightness of your being (five points if you can identify the author within two seconds) (Sorry. Reflex. Was remembering school…). D. has often said that he’s a fairly simple person. “Either I’m happy, or I’m stressed.”

It’s so nice to see “happy” again.

(“Nice” is such an unbelievable understatement.)

So much to do these days suddenly emptied days – weddings to attend, fruit to find, flowers to photograph, random women to anoint with thick henna paste… Okay, wait. That last one we don’t advise just anyone try with any random woman. First, pick someone wearing shorts nearby, whom you can be certain won’t clock you one upside the head. Next, one must beguile said woman, and approach them whilst they are reading, and utterly ignoring everything but their book. Then, the ensuing grunt of assent means that as long as you can get them to hold their book or pick-and-tap on the computer one-handed, one can do whatever one pleases with the other hand. Or, leg, as the case may be…

The librarians smile when we come in with our huge bag. We, who were weekend regulars for two years suddenly vanished for the last two. They may have wondered at our reappearance, thinking us gone back to our country, but no. We only just now have realized how circumscribed our lives had become, under the burden of student budgeting, stress, work, and more stress. Reading absolute nonsense from the new fiction section makes a weekend afternoon feel like a holiday.

And so the summer – thunderstorms and rain showers notwithstanding – finds us savoring various projects. How are you?

Pirates and Zebras and Bards (Oh, My.)

by TadMack

June 28, 2011

11:19 am

3 Comments on Pirates and Zebras and Bards (Oh, My.)

Glasgow

Since the temperature has hovered in the mid-to-low sixties (16-18°C) here, it’s been harder to think “summer,” but lately it’s been hovering in the sixties when it’s overcast, and OY! Hello, humidity hair. Along with the bouffant locks, and we have clouds of “midgies” around our back gate, hideous, nearly invisible specks that actually hurt when they bite. Strange times over here, weatherwise.

Fortunately, we’re having positive times with regard to friends and activities. AB is on a QUEST to make SURE we enjoy ourselves for what might be our last summer in the UK.* A dizzying array of concerts and picnics and dinner activities have us wandering from one end of the city to the other, and next month she plans to drag us back to Edinburgh for the Book Faire…during the Fringe Festival (Be afraid).

Our most recent excellent time was last weekend where we rose and went back to BBC Halls in Candlerigg… and once again forgot to take a picture of the BBC Stage Door sign. ::sigh:: The gathered crowd was given pencils and scores and directed to various sections of the performance hall, where the audience became the performers. The BBC Chorus and orchestra, under the direction of Andrew Manze, played a sang the solos for Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and we were the chorus.

We had been invited by AB to accompany her mother, and her mother’s good buddy, both of whom are in their seventies, and knew all the words and the tunes to the rollicking piece from their school days (Apparently, it was de rigueur to have students learn light opera in British schools in the thirties/forties). While the rest of us frantically sight-read, having only listened to the entire piece the night before, they had a marvelous time.

And, in the end, so did we. We weren’t very sure of the whole thing, to begin with — tongue-twisters? Policemen? Pirates? And though indeed the words are ridiculous (Inshort, inmatters animal,vegetable,andmineral, (gasp) heistheverymodelof amodernmajorgeneral), it’s a workout for the brain to get it all right, and it was fun to have our section rehearsals, and then a final “dress rehearsal,” after which we left, feeling like we’d accomplished something, if only for ourselves. And that was the nice thing – it was only for ourselves. The purpose of the morning of play with the orchestra was simply to learn. Bonus: we sounded really wonderful.

We thought we’d only be recorded for BBC Radio 3, and were a little astounded to see… cameras. Oh, the rushing toward the toilet during the break between section rehearsals and the dress rehearsal! Oh, the pounds of makeup whipped from various bags, and hastily applied! Oh, flying hairbrushes, couture adjustments, and puckered lips in the mirror! Oh, the primping! Oh, the snarking AB and T. did… ::cough:: Eventually, BBC 3’s Light Fantastic will have pictures and a recording up — we don’t know when, but the fun for us was just in being there.

T. decided that she would like to kidnap the conductor and make him direct every single chorus she’s ever in, for the rest of her life. Maestro Manze was amusing and patient and soft-spoken and just was into the music – no fuss, no frowns. (AB did not swoon, tending to be rather cranky at that hour of the morning, but it was a close thing for T. – his courteous mien truly is a big departure from some other conductors we’ve had in this country.)

While we loved Pirates, we were disappointed that the rehearsal overlapped with the Come-and-Sing Messiah held at St. Mary’s just up the block from our house! Our friend Dr. B played a big part in celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with her church – she got to process up the aisle on strewn rose petals and swing what T. somehow insists on calling the “thurigible.” (AKA thur-i-ble) The Messiah was just the culmination of a day full of song and celebration, including Parry’s I Was Glad for the hymn and the orchestral evensong the following night. We are making a point of wandering over to St. M’s sometime soon — they do a lot of that orchestral/organ/choral stuff, just as part of their regular services. Some days here it feels like we are surrounded by the best music in the world.

Our post-musicale quest for food found us wandering through the city to a place called Khublai Khan. A Mongolian bbq joint for a bunch of vegetarians (minus one) seemed an odd choice for lunch, but truly, one can have the very best stir fry in the world there, and the chefs kindly reserved a clean grill simply for our veggie-only orders (you can get them to do that when there’s only two other parties in the whole restaurant. Just don’t try that on a Saturday night). They supply diners with a bowl, and they load them up with their favorite veggies, meats, and seasonings — they had various oils, sauces, and spices in a station, and “recipes” supplied to help people choose complimentary flavorings.

The statuary was meant to bring to mind the Qin terracotta warriors, and while the restaurant itself was pretty nifty, we were a little startled by the menu for the omnivores. Apparently the restaurant, for good or for ill, culls safari parks in Southern Africa for their meat. They had springbok, ostrich, zebra, kangaroo, and camel on the menu, to name a few beasts. Khublai Khan is definitely a good place for the gastronomically creative to eat… and those who like to watch the gastronomically adventurous eat and ask, “So, does it taste like chicken??”

This week’s adventure includes The Bard in the Botanics — we’re off to see A Midsummer’s Night Dream in the botanical gardens — the main Victorian glasshouse called the Kibble Palace. We’re going to dress lightly, as we expect the venue to be a bit warm, and we’re going to take along picnic foods so as we sit on our benches we can enjoy our play with dinner.

Speaking of picnic foods: we are loving the early strawberries that are cheap and plentiful at present. We are experimenting with an unsweetened life for a few weeks — just adding no sugar to anything and not eating desserts, and early on in the experiment, T’s skin is suddenly clearing up. She is torn between being disgusted and delighted, as she rather likes her sugar, thankyou. On the other hand, the berries right now require no sweetener whatsoever, and will be a welcome addition to Thursday’s feast. Sadly, we have no photograph of our after dinner repast from last weekend – Claire and T. set to those piles of strawberries, and they are GONE.

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts. We are deciding right now not to think about, answer questions about, or talk about moving, relocating, or anything to do with what will happen “next.” Paramount to our lives right now is T. finishing her science fiction revision (1/3 of the novel to go, and she’s been urged to use a cliffhanger and make it a series, because she was told that, “you may hate them, but readers love them, dear,”), and D. finishing and turning in his Big Fat PhD Paper without losing what is left of his precious sanity. Too much job hunting and talk about “what next” to the exclusion of all else has produced an incredible amount of pressure and stress and more than a few bad moments and sleepless nights. We’ve decided that level of panic isn’t conducive to what we need to do, so for now it is a closed subject. *Thus, this COULD be our last summer here, or the path may lead elsewhere in the UK. We don’t know, and we’ve stopped trying to pry a glimpse of the future from the hands of the divine – for now, it is enough to just take each day, and enjoy it, end of story.

And, at present, there’s a sliver of blue in the sky, and a cricket game going on. We’re going to go run outside.

Victory!

by TadMack

June 22, 2011

9:22 am

4 Comments on Victory!

Glasgow

For those who have ever participated in a pub quiz, you know sometimes those things are HARD.

If you watch QI on BBC America, you know that Stephen Fry asks random, weird questions for no points at all, and while the randomness of the questions may be similar, there are teams at a quiz, and you strive for the glory of your mates and your place in the ‘hood. Or something like that.

Well, the Hobbits, who are generally useless at things like this, despite having two heads stuffed with minutiae, were on a winning — okay, within a half point of — team! We were invited to attend The West End Festival Literary Quiz at Partick Library on behalf of the Langside Book Group, our friend AB’s book club. The quiz was tough. We covered books and authors from the countries of India, Spain/Portugal, China, America, and Scotland. Guess which ones we were most helpful on? Um, yeah. Yay for Anne Tyler, Amy Tan, Pearl S. Buck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and knowing the names of all the girls from Little Women, and who wrote The Little Princess. Good old children’s lit to the rescue; T. mopped up that section. She was fairly useless at India, but D. turned out to be surprisingly competent in supplying replies for some of the rest. We had a 38-years-in-the-trenches librarian on our team, and she was fifty-eight shades of impressive. She continues to kick herself for losing us a point and a half, but without her, we wouldn’t have even come close.

More fun than just flexing our wee brains over tea and tiny cakes was the fact that we got prizes!!! Did we need more books? No. Did we covet them anyway, especially with their commemorative World Book Night 2011 covers? Well, yes! A book of the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi a new book by Christopher Brookmyre — a local gent, apparently — a wee cake of a notepad with pencil from Costa Coffee (purveyors of REALLY big mugs of anything) and eraser from the Aye, Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival, a Glasgow: Scotland With Style pin they HAD to have dragged out of the vaults somewhere*, and a lovely Waterstones book bag completed our stash. We were as ridiculously gleeful that we had conquered the other teams to receive all of this.

The West End Festival is usually good for the spectacle of the Festival Parade, for fun coffee talks, and a concert or two, and we’re pleased to have participated. And (mostly) won.

T. plans to proudly display her “Scotland With Style” pin right along next to her “Yoga Kills” pin. They both make the same amount of sense.

The Dance

by TadMack

June 21, 2011

9:17 am

4 Comments on The Dance

Glasgow, Identity

*This post is a slightly modified version of an essay on T’s blog

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

This weekend we attended the epic wedding of friend Axel and were the on-the-spot photographers, as our gift to him. It was an epic wedding because a.) it’s Scotland, and people here party like it’s 1999 pretty much every night, b.) Axel is Romanian, and the Romanians party like it’s… 1989 (when Communism fell) as often as possible, and c.) it lasted for two days, and many, many, many sweaty, midge-biting (at the outdoor bbq) hours.

T is an introvert, socially backwards in some ways, and sometimes weirdly shy – so there were parts of the whole thing which made her break out in a sweat, including waltzing into the bride’s dressing room and photographing she and the groom’s sister getting ready (We teased Axel a long time about his imaginary girlfriend, because we’d never met her – so, “Um, yeah, hi. Don’t mind me, I’m just here to photograph you while some random chick puts lipstick on you. Just ignore me, thanks,” was T’s introduction.). D. was the quietest photographer on record, and also was too shy to be as bossy as he needed to be, but with a camera in front of his face, he is fairly impervious, and got some amazing, excellent shots (most of which we cannot share, because they are not ours. But! We will share some innocuous ones soon).

There were moments which were beautifully surreal, which included the sung Greek orthodox service with the cantor and the priest singing lovely duets, and the mystical looking gold-leafed icons, and the marching around the altar three times, and the crowns – the bride and groom are crowned in an orthodox service, which, along with the sugared wafers they got to eat was pretty great. (NB: The sugar represents the sweetness of marriage; some use sugared almonds for this symbolism. The crowns represent their new authority as a couple, since marriage gives them their own wee “kingdom.” The crowns also stand for the crowns of martyrs (!!) as the sacrifices of marriage are many. ::cough::) The cake was adorable – a stack of suitcases for all the bride and groom’s travels over their long distance, Minnesota-Scotland Skype dating; the Romanian gents, resplendent in their kilts, were too cute – they wore them well. But the moments we loved the best were the dancing.

Like many of you reading this blog (Hi, Adventists, Muslim ladies, Pentecostal folks, and Southern Baptists!), we were raised not dancing. The Hobbits, during their Bad Movie Nights, have never yet sat through (okay: suffered through) FOOTLOOSE*, that angsty 80’s dance film, but we’re told our lives run a parallel to the theme – churchy folk Just Didn’t Do That, because dance Led To Lust And Other Things. The only differences we see are a.) we’re not angsty 80’s boys, and b.) we figure we’re too physically awkward to worry about dancing anyway. (True or not, that’s our conclusion, and we’re sticking to it.)

The not dancing, though, takes something away from a person. We’re talking actual dances with steps, not what the “kids” these days call grinding or freak dancing or whatever – please. Real dance. To not dance — as families, as cross-generations, as human people — is to miss a pair of middle-aged women attempting the Virginia Reel and ending up in a breathless giggling tangle – or to miss being the groom quick-stepping his mother around the floor and singing with her some silly ABBA song, and to miss first-date couples and grandparents and shy Scots boys paired with shyer Romanian girls attempting cèilidh dancing for the first time, trying desperately to remember which way to step, hop, clap, and twirl. To not dance would be to miss all the suddenly unselfconsciously delighted Romanians of all ages — resplendent in their kilts, oh, yes — who ran shouting out onto the floor, arms raised, at the first strains of their traditional music. To not dance is perhaps to miss the turning of the world.

It was joy in action, celebration embodied. And we both felt crippled that we couldn’t stand up and join in. (Technically, we could have, but we weren’t really guests. And, T. begs you remember the descriptor “socially backwards and weirdly shy.” Thank you.)

English 102 in the undergrad years gave us William Carlos Williams’ The Dance, and T. recalls first looking up the painting. We still laugh at the words to the poem — Williams was so right about the round butts and heavy shanks — and this weekend we remembered again the circular phrases that remind us of the dances – running along, laughing, stepping and trying to keep up with the crazyfast Romanian circles, or the amusingly named “Dashing White Sergeant” or “Strip the Willow” or “The Pride of Erin Waltz” in the cèilidh – all stumbles and laughter, wild twirling and fumbles — learning grace with a slow, slow, quick, quick step. The laughing, the joy, the freely swinging hips, the stomping feet — all of those images swirled through our heads. So, these are our fantastic memories of someone else’s celebration – and a reminder to learn to uncripple ourselves and join the dance, metaphorically and literally.

The Dance

~ by William Carlos Williams~
In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess

* Okay, here’s the scoop on Footloose, which we know is deeply unfair to hate without ever having seen. It’s T’s fault, totally, and let us tell you why: A#1 Reason She Hasn’t Seen It:) the music. Okay. It’s fun, catchy, whatever. But. T. had this Eeeeevil Aerobics teacher, pre-Zumba days, when people still did plain old aerobics. She made T. do this… well, it can only be called a chicken dance thing — complete with rapid, full-extension can-can kicks, arm flailing, and side hops — to the title song to this film.

A lot of hate going on, after that. A lot of hate…

The News from Lake Glasgow…

by TadMack

June 13, 2011

2:17 pm

3 Comments on The News from Lake Glasgow…

Uncategorized

Last night we saw animals going by, two-by-two, and in herds of seven…

After one of the “driest April’s on record” in the UK (to which we said, “REALLY!???” Apparently it’s true. Central England birding societies claimed people should flood their gardens with hoses so that swallows had mud to build nests. It was never, in Glesga, anyway, that warm or dry…!), it rained almost daily through the month of May, and is well on its way to deluging through the month of June — with sporadic hail, and what T. swears was slush the other day. Welcome to the lake! At least it sounds like a summer destination…

People are CRANKY, hilariously so. We always talk about the weather in Glasgow, but now it’s devolved into swearing about the weather. What’s amusing is that people are making up one-liners and pithy little asides — and even as they’re being cranky, they’re making us smile. The minute the sun peeps out — and it tends to do that first thing in the morning, and last thing in the early evening — there are fifteen people running into the crescent park, tossing down their disposable bbq’s and filling the air with the smoke of their burnt offerings. Eventually, the rain gods will be propitiated…

Meanwhile, the flowers have given up on waiting and are bursting forth at last. We have some stupendously bright poppies in the Kelvingrove Park promenade area. Whoever is responsible for changing the plantings each year should go on our Christmas list. The flowers have been wonderful every year, but this year is especially fine. We have never seen poppies so bright or so big! (No, it has nothing to do with the extra rain.)

The world seems brighter because D. is so much better. T. opened the last can of pumpkin in celebration. (Yes, she actually shared her pie. She was that happy.) He is making up for lost time and working hard every spare moment on his big final paper. So far with not a lot of direction, as it appears his supervisors are both concurrently on holiday. However, D. merely is continuing to make the expansions and adjustments he noted that were missing in his first draft — as those edits are approved, he can’t go wrong.

In more work news, D’s company is being sold. Again. Apparently it happens every three years, and makes sense to the owners/shareholders — somehow it makes them all more money. D. was hired on almost four years ago, right after the last sale went through, and missed the time of panic and chaos that went with it. This time, all i’s were dotted, all t’s were crossed, and everyone was pushpushpushpushed into making themselves look as good as possible on paper and otherwise. D. took as much pushing as he could, and then retired to his “home office” to work, but at last the nonsense is over, and his department has received a commendation. (Yay!) That sort of thing doesn’t make much sense to T., but she’s glad it’s over, since that, on top of everything else, has been more stress than D. really needed, just recovering from being so ill! Meanwhile, T. finally has finished the edits for Book #3, and that is off to copy editing at Knopf/Random House. Book #4 is in the queue with the editor, and #5 is in that mid-revision stage where T. sighs a lot and groans about Why Did I Think I Could Write Science Fiction. She spends a lot of time Googling NASA and reading up on the statistics of newly discovered planets. (This may or may not help.)

Things are continuing to wind down — as we reach midsummer, we have to start seriously focusing on, “Okay, what next?” D. has so far sent out twenty+ resumes to various companies on the North American continent, and we’re eager to begin hearing back from them.

Job-hunting remains a supremely vexing, highly amusing exercise. With the plethora of job sites around, it’s easy enough to do all of this from the comfort of one’s own home, and then the groans and sarcastic mumblings are that much more fun. D. kept a tally of those recruiter words that he hates — passionate (one ad managed to use the word SIX TIMES), dynamic, fast-paced, amazing, innovative, thrilling, fun, high-end, top-flight, agile, amazing, awesome, live-and-breathe your work, trendy, hip, and the phrase, “we get it.” Technology positions – whether in the academic realm (we did find a few of those) or just in the business environment, are detail-oriented, precise, maybe even painstaking. But passionate? Dynamic? Hip? Trendy? Really??

Seriously, though: does one often feel that one’s job is amazing and dynamic? Are you passionate about the top-flight place where you work? Does your boss “get it?” Do you live and breathe whatever it is you do in your fast-paced, amazing office, doing whatever, which is both thrilling and innovative and any of the other adjectives which would mean that you’re successful in the baffling dot.com boom/recruiter parlance? Except for T’s eldest sister, who loves her job, and whose boss is a seventy-year-old nun (this does not mean she is made of spun sugar, people, just that she’s straightforward and amusing), most people don’t have this glorious relationship with their workplace. (At Big Sister’s office, they even get a dog. That’s probably both hip and trendy. Nun bosses: who knew!) At this point, we’re merely praying for something which is reasonably stress-free, pays decently and doesn’t suck up D’s whole life.

D. is finding it hard to remember life before working and going to school full time. Once upon a time, he used to play the violin, draw on a scratch board, knit, bake, sketch, skate, cycle, swim, garden… you know, live? We’re grateful to our friend AB and others for dragging us to concerts and plays and trying to help us remember to make time to live a balanced life — it will be easier once we get away from having to worry about That Huge Paper…! Two weeks from this Friday, he turns it in…

Many of you have asked us where we’re off to next, and we’ve concluded that what’s important to us right now is perhaps not so much a familiar place, but a place that’s a little closer, thus the continent switch. For all we know, we could still end up in Hong Kong or something, but our aim at this point is to put a little less travel time between us and our nearest and dearest. We’ll see how that goes.

The season of celebrations has arrived – in spite of the weather – or, maybe because of it – there are parties all over. D. discovered a great little pub down an unexplored side street when his office had a going-away party for a mother-to-be, and is planning to drag T. over for their “skinny French fries! Real ones!” (She is resisting thus far, arguing that her life has been better with no French fries, because she refuses to eat the thick-cut chips people restaurants seem to prefer here, but D. is insistent. She may have to cave.) A chorus friend is departing for Tanzania, another friend for Germany. Many farewell celebrations are planned, and it’s almost more difficult to see friends go, not knowing where we’re going, but we’re glad that so many people already have a “next destination” planned.

The first of our summer weddings will be celebrated this Friday. Our darling Axel is marrying his Minnesota belle (Sadly, she is not from Lake Wobegon, but we can pretend), and we’re on work detail to man the cameras and capture the event for posterity. This is so much better than being a mere guest. T. has “martha-ing” in her genes, and finds it hard to just sit still in a floofy dress in the middle of strangers anyway, so now with a camera in hand, the Hobbits practically have press passes. We can hang with the caterers and snitch food, and run around paparazzi-ing everyone.

Our last wedding is in July, and T. plans to get a professional henna-ing job done on her hands, and is getting a specially made wrap from India. Neither the first nor the last wedding is going to be in English, which will be interesting, but we’ll be glad to celebrate with our friends as they embark on their hopeful life journeys.

Well, that’s the news from Lake… um, the West End of Glasgow, where the men are fair – pale, poor lads, since the sun refuses to shine – the women are stuffed into “jeggings” and teetering on cobblestones in high heels, and all the children are in wellies and colorful raincoats, watching the animals go by toward the Ark…

“Fresh” winds and “Worthy” causes…

by TadMack

June 4, 2011

8:47 am

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We love the BBC Weather icons (the sun/cloud/raindrops icon is so classic — and classically indecisive — that people have had T-shirts and bags made) and their banal Radio 4 descriptions of how the forecast is shaping up. We have snickered for months about the alleged “Wintery Mix,” which is apparently what the confused state of rain/sleet/hail/snow/rain again is supposed to be called. Spring — which it seems we’re finally having, despite a “Wintery Mix” just at the beginning of this week — is affording us new things to amuse. We snorted the other day to hear 35 mph gusts of wind described as “fresh.” When there’s a vent to the outside right behind your bed, however, one must disagree. In particular, we disagree because the pigeons nesting in the vent disagree so loudly… MAN, we wish those birds would finish with the eggs already and GO AWAY.

Anyway.

As with the tidbit vs. titbit controversy, wherein we received an email from someone we actually thought to tell of their typographical error – briefly, until T. used her mad OED skillz – the word “worthy” was another thing T. thought she ought to warn someone about… then she looked it up.

One of the definitions of “Worthy,” sez the OED, is “showing good intent, but lacking in humo(u)r and imagination.” Soo, when T. saw the word in a children’s book review — “Emotionally charged, this is a wonderfully touching story which never slips into worthiness” she thought the writer had meant, wordiness or …SOMETHING else.

Nope.

Right, then.

We’re off this morning for a short, slow walk — short, yet slow, so we don’t overtax newly energized muscles — and to brunch at our friend C.’s house, where we’ll just chat and catch up with thoroughly unworthy topics, and hope the wind isn’t too fresh on our way home…

And though we didn’t get to say it last weekend when it was all going down, The Hobbits are officially proud of their wee-tall Little, D’Nic, who last weekend graduated from high school. The Hobbits also send good wishes and their presence in spirit to their sister Bulia, who graduates from nursing school next weekend. We’re proud of you two, and all others of our circle who are moving on to the next phase of their existence. Unlike what all the graduation speakers will try to tell you, the world is not your oyster (what does that mean, anyway? That it’s something you can gag on with salt and lime juice?), and you cannot do “anything” you please now – not just because of the present economy, but because the world never works that way. Individual excellence often depends on teamwork. We look forward to cheering you on as you do as you’re intended to do in this world, which is to find your place in the madness, put your skills and talents to work for the whole, and thrive. Here’s to being part of the team, peeps.

And Now, The Recap

by TadMack

May 24, 2011

9:28 am

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While others concerned themselves about being taken up from the Earth, we spent our weekend in more mundane pursuits. First, we rested up. Next, we rehearsed. Finally, we regaled our audience with our best performance, ever — and our last official performance of the year.

And then The City of Glasgow Chorus went home and fell down.

T. forgot to take a shot of the Stage Door entrance, which clearly says BBC above it, which was a small thrill for her. Apparently the Beeb uses the building to record concerts for radio. What was once the site of a candleworks — thus the name of that area of the city, Candleriggs — the City Halls/Fruitmarket area is now all things gentrified and nice, full of little shops and restaurants, and no whiff of tallow — or fruit. We didn’t have time to do much exploring, however! We were signed in, and hustled up to the sixth floor for our three hours on the stage.

While the rehearsal was long and basically boring and filled with bits that had nothing to do with us — any full dress rehearsal tends to be, and why does one never remember to bring a book to these things?! — the concert itself was all things lovely and gorgeous. A young violinist, whose father sings with us in the chorus (he was so proud he was practically vibrating) played the romantic Vaughn Williams tune, A Lark Ascending and brought down the house. She’s in the last moments of her last year as a student at the Chethams School of Music, and is off to the London next year, to take the world by storm.

Most of our soloists are students from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and are up-and-coming professionals. This time our singer was Brazilian-born baritone, Michel deSouza, who was just amazing, and also quite resplendent in his tux and tails. (T. imagined him singing in The King & I, because his delivery in the Belshazzar piece was very lordly — reminiscent of Yul Brenner.) Mr. deSouza clearly enjoyed himself; even during rehearsal both the chorus and orchestra smiled as he emoted dramatically and sang. Honestly, next time we do this, someone needs to suggest costumes.

The Scottish Festival Orchestra, which is T’s favorite orchestra, is made up of all of the best professional musicians from the various orchestral groups throughout Scotland. It is, for that reason, so very good, and they’re also a lot of fun to work with, unlike some orchestra groups who seem to see the chorus as a horrible encumbrance they’re forced to endure. Also, they have great cellists, who saved our semi-chorus from going slightly flat in an unaccompanied section by very quietly drawing their bows across the bass note — and voila, the entire semi chorus re-tuned. (A great save, which may have even been written into the music, but probably was not.) Amended, 6/1: Apparently El Maestro reads this blog, and argues that the semi-chorus actually wasn’t flat, and the cellists came in, right where they were supposed to. We accede the point, and maintain that the Festival Orchestra still has the best cellists, ever.

BEHOLD! The Blouse of Purple Hideousness! Live and in person.
Though the chorus looks full, many people couldn’t make it – we usually rehearse with about twenty additional people!

Another thing T. was excited about was the number of women in the orchestra and in the brass, who, while sadly not pictured, were stationed along the sides of the room in their own little balcony – which made their voluntaries ring out very nicely. Aside from the usual section of female flautists (what IS IT with that?! How does an instrument become so gendered? Parents: encourage your girls play the French horn and the bassoon, the cymbals and the trumpet. Please. Enough with the girly flutes.), there were myriad females on all instruments, including a lady trombonist and a silver-haired lady on percussion. (She does a fabulous buzz roll on the snare drums. The entire percussion section got quite a workout during the Belshazzar.)

The acoustics in the City Halls are very live, which was a real pain whilst rehearsing; we could not hear ourselves over the orchestra — we actually felt rather painfully deafened. However, once the hall was filled, we heard ourselves just fine, and believe that the audience even heard a word or two. As always, singing with no electronic amplification is a tricky thing, and very reliant upon the room and the crowd, but it worked out fairly well this time.

Almost ten p.m., and still twilight.

Afterward, T. stripped off The Blouse of Purple Hideousness (We note El Maestro seems to have no opinion on this one. Hmph.) for the last time — with a sad little pang, and many sighs of woe from her section — and we staggered home. A stagger it was; D. overexerted himself just hanging out through the rehearsal and into the performance — a full seven hours, and T. sang so loudly in the final chorus she had spots swimming in her vision and the room darkened alarmingly. (It was also overly warm in the choir stalls.) We were both well and truly ready to go home and crash, but were awakened early Monday morning. Now, usually our morning wake up comes from The Ring-Necked Pigeons From Hades, they who have chosen to nest in an old chimney stack, and we can hear their mad cooing down the vent into our bedroom, which is right behind the bed. This time, however, our early wake-up came from The Wind From Who Knows Where, which rattled through said vent. ::sigh::

Monday’s day long gale force winds rose and rose, getting to just above 70 mph. at times. Eventually, the winds shut down the train system throughout the city, due to branches on the lines and random flooding. Meanwhile, planes were already grounded (or headed that direction) due to the Icelandic volcano ash. D’s coworkers were shooed out of the building at five minutes to five, in order to catch the last moving conveyances going anywhere.

“Scotland cannot take any weather,” one of D’s coworkers sighed. Well, that’s not exactly true. Scotland can take any weather just fine, as long as everyone goes home and sits tight and stays off the roads and the trains. Then, everything’s great.

It seemed a good evening to go home and make soup. And oat bars.

Monday was D’s first day at work on his new schedule, which gives him a day on and a day off, in order to see if the cataclysmic weariness he experiences can’t be coped with in that way. So far so good – we have had nine days in a row with no falls or mishaps or calls to EMT’s. Sometimes in the battle of What We Want to Do vs. What The Body Says We Will Do, the body wins, and so we learn to take it easy and listen when the body says “I’m too tired to keep going.” Epstein-Barr or mono, or whatever this is, really humbles and focuses a person. Meanwhile, we’re still awaiting the lab results, which should probably come in on Wednesday of this week (or we’re going to go and storm the lab), and D. is working on his departmental presentation. After this week, he’ll know how much revision he has left on his dissertation (or, if you’re a UK citizen, his PhD thesis), and the date for his oral exams will be set. We will finally have a clue about the time frame for what we’re doing next.

This picture we shot in between heavy rain showers. When we see what’s going on in the rest of the world, we’re grateful our weather is merely wet and a bit windy, and hasn’t hurt anyone.
Do take care, wherever you are.

Glasgow:
NY:
Grinnell:
Roswell:
Berkeley: