The world, as we see it in the morning. Do notice the pigeons, please (no, they are not rats – we zoomed in and made sure, because we were so freaked out at the thought).
-D
Category: Life
Everything else.
We Wish You…
The wind is gently rattling the windows.
The rain is falling in misty sheets, sideways. We are being very bad today, as we are ensconced in pajamas, sipping tea, reading; post-bath and post-nap and very cozy. This is the weekend of the Glasgow Faire, which means few people are coherent enough to be at work today anyway, since there was a big celebration downtown and on the Green from late Friday onward. Traffic was choked around George Square as hundreds of people crowded in for a concert Saturday night, and rainbow flags swished and swirled in the damp air. It was definitely a party atmosphere, which is why we’re home doing nothing particularly party-like. We went to a wedding this weekend and it was a big enough party (Froth! Feathers! Fascinators!) for all our needs for quite some time. And now, we just want to veg, and enjoy being home. Eventually we’ll get up, look responsible, and clear up the mess in the living room, which has limped along under a load of half-finished books and blankets, a couple of screwdrivers and a pair of wirecutters, for some reason. Eventually we’ll get dressed, and maybe find some lunch. Eventually, we’ll put in some wash.
Eventually.
Years ago, when T. worked at summer camp (six long years of this, people, which makes her oddly less sanguine about the pitter-patter of little feet) her favorite time of year was Christmas in July. It was, of course, a conceit of great ridiculousness thought up by wily camp personnel desperate to give campers something else to look forward to in the long, heat-dense days of July. Christmas was the Other Big Thing in a year hemmed in by schoolwork and recess — after summer itself, of course. And July 25 was exactly six months away from the Other Big Thing.
The whole week beforehand, after swimming lessons and Nature class, the nefarious little elves would gather, and instead of resting quietly or writing letters home during rest period as they were told, they would make Christmas cards with copious amounts of glitter and nail polish and glue, and plot what gift to give whom, and which cabin should be ambushed with water balloons under cover of night. (This was the girls, of course. The boys were probably having water fights and origami frog races and deciding which cabin should be booby trapped with the balanced bucket prank and festooned with toilet paper. There was just a lot of pranking going around, much to the staff’s collusion.) There was much shoo-shooing and giggling and many shrewdly narrowed eyes. The counselor lay in her bunk and pretended to be completely insensate, as was appropriate. You could also pair these with some flowers for your girlfriend and there you have the perfect gift.
The day itself was always almost anticlimactic; there would be an especially silly flag raising and line call — elves racing by on horseback with a stolen bag of gifts or something like that — followed by a huge, special breakfast, complete with cinnamon buns and hot chocolate (first thing in the morning, because having that any later would mean we’d be sweating as we sipped), with a short service of lessons and carols in the morning, and then the usual Go-Karts and BMX riding and trail rides and art classes and swimming lessons — with the swim teacher wearing a Santa hat and making the kids dive for silver dollars on the bottom of the pool. The fun would continue throughout the day, and then at last, supper, with a visit from a suspiciously Camp Director looking Santa, and the breathlessly awaited gifts and games in a garishly decorated cafeteria. The day was always rounded out with s’mores at campfire and an outdoor movie, usually something like the original Hayley Mills/Disney The Parent Trap, which was amusing to the staff as well as the campers.
And then, late at night, when the campers were finally somewhat in bed, the staff would come around caroling, the one time of year when one can sing of sleepovers in barns, Infants in straw-lined mangers, shepherds on hills and a silent star, and have it make sense. (Really, can you imagine shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem in sub-zero climes? It snows in Bethlehem in December. Just sayin’.) From being a day filled with too much sugar and hysteria, the night tended softly toward the downright magical.
Fun memories, those.
The best thing about Christmas in July is that it is …anticipatory, yet completely offbeat and dare we say, weirdly juvenile. Which is why T. has decided we must do it this year. She has invited our friend C. along, with a garishly glittery card, to attend a supper and a movie – sadly not out of doors nor accompanied by a campfire; we’ll have to make do with candles — and is plotting the making of gifts and the settling on a menu of significant poshness. We must, of course, begin the day with hot chocolate and rolls (with orange zest and cardamom in the dough, of course), read T’s third favorite Christmas story, and then perhaps do something completely off the cuff — like go berrying at East Yonderton Farm, in Inchinnan, which provides a U-Pick of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. (This will have to do, since we have no swimming lessons available, and no horses.) We’ll enjoy stuffed mushrooms and a roasted veg bread pudding starter, some sort of roast beast, garlicky green beans and butternut squash, a salad with slivered almonds and something, and then, our dessert – something or other with berries.
(As you can see, the menu is a work in progress.)
We will force C. to play her recorder for her supper, because what else are friends for if not for force you to play the instruments you have in your house but allow to be covered by a thin layer of dust, and then we’ll settle in with our DVD of The Hogfather, an adaptation of the Pratchett novel which is not Death Takes a Holiday, exactly, but more Death Takes Over A Holiday, and we know C. is as weird as we are, and will enjoy it immensely.
It may be the only Christmas celebration that we’ll have this year, thus it’s doubly important. Instead of our usual trip home, spending six weeks among family and friends, we’ve decided to save our shekels for the inevitable interview trips D. will have to make the nearer his graduation looms. Jobs – money – things to pay off school loans – these are the sorts of things which occupy our minds just now. Occasionally, T. wakes D. up in the middle of the night and asks, “Where are we going?” He has no real reply, and since he usually isn’t too deeply asleep anyway (the long daylight is still making REM sleep a fond and distant memory just now), just makes up something vague yet promising (He is very good at this.) which allows her to let go of her nightmares of penniless wandering and go back to plotting the next three novels, and eventually to sleep.
Where are we going? What are we doing? And what happened to summer? Some days it seems like it’s all rushing toward us rather rapidly. In less than a year — finishing up, the summation, another novel due, an oral defense — And then we remember: only the weather thinks it’s October. We still have plenty of time to finish things, wrap things up, do our last deeds in this place. And we’re going to celebrate every day as much as we can, until we have to get serious about the future.
So, Merry Christmas in July. Here’s to not knowing the future, but feeling it bloom heavy with mystery and promise. Here’s to the days of anticipation.
July 12, In Retrospect
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Two years ago at this time, we were just finishing our time in Tallinn, Estonia. It was a rainy day there, so there weren’t too many pictures taken, as visibility was poor. We took a tour bus around the town, listening to the commentary until we got tired of being slightly damp. We’d just finished our first full year in Glasgow, and were enjoying a bit of a break in the midst of D. writing his Master’s dissertation / thesis. We loved the red-tiled roofs, and the mixture of old Europe with modernity we found in Estonia. We also enjoyed seeing a different ethnicity and realizing that, yes, Estonians are a different ethnic group, despite being fair of skin and hair. For Americans, it was a big difference; that’s just now how it is in Ye Olde melting-pot of the U.S., and it’s rare to see such a strong set of features repeated across such a large group.
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Last year at this time, we were just wrapping up our trip to Oban and Mull. It was, again, a rainy day, yet we’d enjoyed some glorious days of absolutely stunning sunshine and marvelous company. We weren’t quite ready for the return to rain, but we at least felt that we’d gotten a decent amount of sunshine, and had experienced a taste of The Islands.
This summer as D. buckles down for this last year of the PhD – data analysis, writing, rewriting, more reading, and more writing – we’re thinking back on our time, here in Scotland, wondering where we’d like to end up. We really have no idea what doors will open, so we’re trying not to hope we’ll end up anywhere in particular … but we’re sort-of looking around, saying, “where have we enjoyed being?”
Just about everybody we know or meet asks us whether we’ll be going “back home” when this is done. We think … we think we’re still up for an adventure, but perhaps one which doesn’t include quite so much rain, nor quite so much cold, nor quite so much darkness. On the other hand, we’re also told that one gets used to the snow: our Norwegian friend claims that, “they know how to deal with the snow, there!” And with full-spectrum bulbs in just about every room of the house … well, we’ve come to deal with the darkness, if not the rain or snow.
And the Norwegians believe in hot tubs. And saunas.
So, where will it be? Probably nowhere which has bagpipe bands practicing in the firehouse, due to rain. But possibly somewhere just as small, and quaint, and quiet. Or not.
-D & T
How Strange This Is
So, I downloaded a new application, because it was just so cool. The Photographer’s Ephemeris, an application which runs on Adobe’s “Air” platform, will tell you when the sun and moon rise and set, and where they’ll be in the sky, anywhere in the world. Behold!
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| Winter in Glasgow: the sun never visits the rear of our house, only staying up for 90° of 360°, giving us about 7.5 hours of weak daylight. The yellow line is sunrise, the orange line, sunset. |
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| Summer in Glasgow: the sun comes up and floods our bedroom, then goes down … 270° around the sky, giving us about 7.5 hours of “night.” Again, the yellow line is sunrise, the orange, sunset. |
For those of you who haven’t visited (and why not?! Hmm?!), this place is crazy and crazy.
I plan to spend some time, now, tinkering with the application to see just when the moon will be ideally situated for some good photos of it. Hopefully the camera will be back from the shop soon, so that I can take some good pictures when some more friends visit next week.
-D
Are You Working in an Oppressive Corporation?
Firewalls. Proxy Servers. They’re there to keep you safe, right? And to keep the bad guys from ruining the corporate network? Really? Hmm. Let’s think about that for a minute.
Are there websites which come up as blocked when you try to visit them? I know that, for me, when I’m at work there are. I’m told that they’re blocked for “adult content,” or for “dating,” or for “social networking,” or for “malicious software.” That last one gets me quite often, because programmers and hackers are often trying to accomplish some of the same things: send emails, manipulate the registry, change files on disk, etc. I’m “protected” from the sites of hackers, so have to go elsewhere to find the answers to my legitimate programming questions. Because the solutions are provided by hackers … means they’re somehow unsafe?
I run a safe (Firefox) browser, believe me: it annoys ME how many times I have to explain to RefControl, NoScript, RequestPolicy, and/or FlashBlock that I really do want to allow a site to run some script, or display some content from a site that’s different than the site I’m visiting, or to see a Flash video (in the case of RefControl, though, I haven’t had to say much except, “don’t tell the stupid site where I found them, because they don’t need to know!”).
Am I immune to viruses or malware? No: Conficker got onto my work computer and it’s still having a few echoes of that trauma. But I’m not an idiot, either, which is why I’m wondering: is blocking me from all of these “harmful” things a method of social control rather than something which protects the organization? I believe that the case for proxy servers acting as “protection” may have recently been blurred, by the idiot idea that “chat” is a valid reason to block a site. Yes, that’s right: sites which exist for the sole purpose of “chat” are now blocked where I’m consulting.
Why? Well, ScanSafe says that chat is unproductive, and that some huge percentage of the traffic they’ve successfully killed has to do with chat.
Yes, you heard correctly: typing a message into a chat window takes up time. Time which would otherwise be spent getting up from one’s desk, walking around a dozen cubicles, and asking a question which could have been typed out in 15 seconds. Or, you know, time which could be spent sending a text message of, “do I need to go to the grocery store on the way home,” with all of the elaborate hoops it takes to get the phone to do such a thing, rather than taking the 5 seconds to ask the question, and the 10 seconds in response.
I realize that I’m inordinately attached to chatting: I’ve spent the last 15 years with a chat window open, of some sort or other. True, the first 2 of those 15 years was with Windows Messenger, asking questions of the other accountants. Those were the dark, old days of chat, when you had to be on the same network, and nobody much had a web browser. Yes: those days. Since about 1997, though, I’ve had a chat window up which could connect to T., and have asked and answered hundreds of simple questions such as, “where did you put my wallet when you unpacked the luggage?” Those questions which take no time whatsoever to answer (“In your computer bag, sorry, I didn’t think you had anything important in it.”) in chat, but which would require a phone call or a text message to answer otherwise.
So, for over a dozen years I’ve had an always-on connection to home, and perhaps a few coworkers. This week, that connection was ended interrupted by ScanSafe.
My solution? Well, I could have installed some chat software on our ISP (and thought very hard about doing just that). But, rather than go down that route, I went with EFF’s TOR, coupled with a portable version of Firefox browser. This has the added benefit of anonymizing my communication, by routing it through a very twisty path. It also lets me chat with T. and with one of the other programmers, both things which I would not willingly do without.
If you work in an oppressive corporation, consider downloading one of the bundles. Yes, your work owns your computer. It does not own you. If you’re unproductive, I would hope that somebody would notice. If, however, you’re more productive by bypassing their idiotic “security” measures? Good for you, and I truly hope that you can make it work.
-D
P.S.: An added benefit, of course, is that you could check your FaceHook while at work, if you’re silly enough to still have an account.
P.P.S: I bet the network admin is going crazy, looking at my traffic: just about all of my connections have been over secure connections (HTTPS), even my searches (with Ixquick). So, I’m not leaving him much of an idea of what I’m doing on the web. Surveillance? Yeah: evil stuff. Let’s see how long it takes him to work up the nerve to ask me what it is I’m doing, not letting him spy on me.
The Ironies of living in Glasgow
Before we left, we finally broke down and switched internet providers. British Telecom was charging us an arm and a leg, compared to Sky, plus they have this arcane “fair usage policy” which says that they punish you for a month if you’ve downloaded a lot in the previous month, no matter that you purchased the “unlimited” package.
Of course the new router arrived while we were in D.C., so I had to go down to the postal depot to pick it up, at 7 a.m. on Monday. Sky will not let you connect without their router, and unhelpfully told me that I could go to a friend’s house and see if I could find something on Google which would let me use my existing router. SIGH.
On the way to the postal depot, I shared my woes with the cab driver. He, also, shared his woes of dealing with his internet provider, which has a call center in “India or Pakistan.” His woes? They couldn’t understand him, and finally gave him the number of a call center in the UK.
Yes, indeedy: if you can understand the Glaswegian, you can understand anything.
-D
A Sweet Slice of Americana
My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of …
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…children, facepaint, pigtails, streamers, bikes. |
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…4th of July parades, bubbles, sprinkled sugar cookies, corn on the cob, bbq smoke, fireflies, motor scooters, firemen. |
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…tricycles, temporary tattoos, silly glasses, jacks, jump ropes, and smatterings of stars and waving stripes of red and white…and liberty, |
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…of thee I sing.
From every mountainside…court, circle, crescent, street, avenue, summer-hot asphalted cul-de-sac and front yard… let summer fun and playtime — and freedom — ring.
Post-parade, we assembled in the house for more Popsicles and naps for the small and overwrought, and our hostess crowed to her mother, a voting pollster, that there were “Two Asian kids in the parade! Two!” We remarked on the African American policeman, who was quite tickled to see T.; she was nonplussed that he hit the brakes and chatted her up for a bit. (“Why’d he stop!?! How embarrassing!”) Grandma Pollster says she’s been watching her neighborhood population since the eighties. “We’re coming along,” she says. !!! Racial integration in Northern Virginia: one infinitesimal step at a time.
En Vacances
No Hobbits were harmed in the making of this salad. Honest.
There is nothing like a beautifully set table. When it is beautifully set in your honor, that is even better.
We’d never been to “the South” to stay anywhere but with relatives; frankly, staying south of the Mason-Dixon isn’t something which interested us. Childhood memories of mosquitoes the size of helicopters, frog-heavy monsoon rains and sickeningly hot days had discouraged us from ever, ever, ever wanting to go anywhere near there. Yet, somehow, when T. decided to agree to visit the ALA Convention in D.C., it escaped her attention that D.C. is indeed south of the Mason-Dixon. Hello: it is in the SOUTH, and as JFK once said, “Washington is a city with Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” We should have known our vacation would have a few …kinks.
The first kink was the HEAT. It was roasting like only a Southern summer can do. 90% humidity, 100°F/35°C+ temps. We walked off the little walkway between the plane and the airport and gasped. It was after 8 p.m., and it was still in the high eighties — heavily moist and dank. We felt like we were walking through blood, or fetid breath. :shudder: The driver who was sent for us grabbed T’s bag and hustled along to the car, walking briskly and chatting all the way while we gasped and sweated and stumbled after him. When we left Glasgow, it was in the mid sixties, so the thirty degree jump was a bit much.
The second kink was heat-related; T. had neglected to bring her water bottle, so was forced into the $1 per ounce water at the convention center. (And the water came in THREE OUNCE BOTTLES. It was ridiculous.) We were both frequently horribly thirsty, tended to be dehydrated, and with dehydration comes headaches, poor appetite, and general crankiness. We neither of us needed that, so we took to carrying empty bottles with us and filling up anywhere. Unfortunately, D.C.’s water tastes like they pull it unfiltered straight from the Potomac. Bleeech!
The third kink was the mosquitoes, which we’d forgotten about. Neither of us can stand bug spray unless it’s absolutely necessary — and we figured in the city, it wouldn’t be. We had a few late nights which had us walking back to the hotel through city streets, and for the most part, we remained bite-free… but it didn’t last, and we have been chigger’d, mosquitoed, and whatever else’d like everyone else who runs around barefoot and barelegged and wanders at night.
But all of these are very, very small kinks. We met wonderful people during our time in D.C. and Virginia, and enjoyed the careless (in the sense of carefree) hospitality of “pull up a chair, there’s plenty!” Beautiful, bountiful tables were set — or we were pointed toward the fridge and told to help ourselves. We enjoyed hearing actual birds – cardinals, goldfinches, owls, hawks, and doves — instead of the ever-present harsh cries of the garbage-raiding seagulls that plague the city of Glasgow. We enjoyed… silence. And doing absolutely… nothing.
We realized it was the the first time we’d really rested somewhere for ages.
Our friends’ homes could not be more different. One was a new home, in the woods, away from everything except deer, birds, and foxes; the other was an old, old house in the middle of a long, sprawling block surrounded by a gracious old neighborhood and massive trees. One home was open and airy and full of light and carefully placed artwork and pretty toys from the past; the other was dimly cozy and full of nooks and crannies and rooms upon rooms full of interesting old books, objets d’art from all over the world, photographs, puzzle books, and …children. The ping pong table in the garage, the full bar in the basement, the pool table and the swimming pool out front spoke of a house used to being full to the seams and bursting. In one home, we sat and talked sedately, went out to dinner, and enjoyed being grownups; we sat down for tea, had a beautifully laid out breakfast, and admired the perfection of our surroundings. In the other home, we ran outside barefoot, caught fireflies in jars, slept in until we woke up, and ate meals when we thought we were hungry. Cookies were constantly being baked — and devoured — mini-concerts on the piano vied with questions about the periodic table from the younger set (these kids are seriously brilliant. Six, seven and nine year olds talking about the elements and chemistry? Yes.), and everyone was careful to keep out of Grandma’s special chair, so she could do her crossword puzzles and have a nap when she felt like it.
In either house, books were everywhere, one could be part of the conversation, or find a nook and read, and we were made very welcome.
So, we made cake.
It’s what one does for one’s hosts, right? Lemon Cake was the order of the day, and we intended to make this fancy dish at both homes. Nope. Grandma said, “Chocolate. If I’m indulging, it had better be chocolate. Of course, we hear and obey. We couldn’t find Guinness in single cans (and who wants a whole six pack for one cake?!) so we made a modified Guinness Cake with Cointreau, cider, and Crème de Cacao. This lent a chocolaty, orange-y flavor to the mix — tasty. Lacking a regular bundt pan, we baked the cake in a angel food pan — and man did it rise. Glazed with a rich dark ganache, it was truly gorgeous.
Isn’t it ironic that we forgot to take a picture of it, or the huge cinnamon rolls we baked on our last morning there?
No, no, no. Not ironic at all. We were practicing being in the moment.
Okay, no we weren’t, we just forgot, but the fact is, when you’re on vacation, it’s okay to forget. It’s good to practice that “in the moment” thing. As a species, we’ve gotten a little overly involved in our electronics; people will drive and text, check their voicemail in the bathroom, and get on Facebook while in a theater. Sometimes, the “now” is a good place to be — not checking on anything else, not looking to see who else is where, not trying to view the pictures of where we just were while we’re still there. Just enjoying where one happens to be at the moment is enough.
End of sermon.
The intention for this week was to check out the Smithsonian American Art gallery, and their library to see the pop-up exhibition. We had so, so many plans — to visit the Air & Space Museum, to go to an aquarium, the National Archive, the Library of Congress, to take a nighttime tour of the monuments in the city — but after a day of travel and four days of dancing to the tune of a six-page itinerary, T. was exhausted, covered in heat-rash, and limp, and D. was of a mind to just veg somewhere he didn’t have to be wearing his good shoes and slacks. After taking the Orange Line (Washington Metro, which is so much like BART it’s scary) from city in Virginia to another, and visiting a Farmer’s Market (the blueberries this time of year are huge!) we neither of us had any compulsion to do more than watch the world glide by. We did manage to get to the National Cathedral, because we wanted to see the gargoyles and we have a magnetic attraction to visit churches, since they’re always nice and cool inside (bonus!), but other than that, we merely played ping pong, pool, and board games, sang around the piano (and made our hostess cry – with happiness, we hope), lit fireworks, ate corn on the cob, and watched the bats swing and circle in the blue dusk. The morning we left was the neighborhood 4th of July Parade, with police cars, veterans in convertibles, kids on bikes and on foot, and a lone fire engine with its lights flashing. We stood on the walk and waved our flags. (A photo essay on that little slice of Americana to come.)
D. went to school every summer from the age of 5 to his junior year in college. Summers, T. was required to recite times tables daily and do busywork school stuff, and held a summer job from sixth grade on, ’til 8th grade when she had an after school job and a summer job. Neither of us know how to have vacations very well, but in the few days we spent with friends in Virginia, we got a taste of the Quintessentially Happy Childhood, and it was good.
More anon…
The Great American Vacation
Behold, it is done.
The smiling, the schmoozing, and the awarding have all been completed; the dressing up is done, and now we can retire to relative annonymity and peace. Relatively. But first, we are cruising around Virginia and D.C., remind ourselves of the awesome kindness of strangers.
Due to the fact that the National Holiday is almost upon us, staying in a hotel past the date of the convention was ridiculously pricey. Fortunately, T. has several poetry, writing and blogging friends in the immediate area, all of whom invited her to stay with them. All of them invited her. Faith in humanity renewed, we’ve embarked on a very fun vacation. We made cake and communed with teddy bears in the house of our friend Jama (Jayma), and now we’re embarking upon the Quintessential Happy American Childhod with our friend Charlotte, her mother and sister and their boys, who are our guides. So far, we’ve eaten sugar cookies with red and blue sprinkles, corn on the cob in the backyard, and we’ve poked holes in a jar and caught fireflies.
FIREFLIES. Somehow, they are the exclamation point at the end of a good day.
We’ll be flying home on Saturday night and hope to take action shots of the neighborhood 4th of July parade. We are tickled to be part of the fun.
Sometimes, truly, there is no place like home…and even though we’re on the other side of the country from where we usually lay our heads, this is, indeed, home, in a “My country, ’tis of thee,” kind of way.
We are taking photographs like crazy, and will probably be posting some as soon as we finish pawing through them. Unfortunately, no one filmed T’s speech — for which she is eternally grateful, but which upsets other people tremendously for some reason.
Tomorrow D&T take on the National Cathedral and will be let loose on the Smithsonian to make a pilgrimage to Julia Childs’ kitchen. More dispatches from the front as we can.
Travel and Librarians
So, we made the journey across the pond, and are now safely in Washington, D.C. British Airways? Won’t be flying with them again: they’re essentially a “Cattle-Class” airline like Southwest, but with UK Regional accents. We chose KLM for a reason: they were good, and they knew that long-haul flights needed legroom!
That said, the hotel is quite nice, and the internet access is better than we had in Glasgow: I dialed into work to fix a minor problem … and had better connectivity to Glasgow from here than I do when we’re in Glasgow. I’m glad that we’ve chosen to drop British Telecom as our provider. Sky will connect us before we’re back in the U.K.
We’re, of course, not adapted to the time yet: we were both wide awake at 3:00, local time, which is 8 a.m. in Glasgow. Nothing was open, of course, so we had to linger around for Starbucks to open at 6 a.m. Perhaps not surprisingly for here, there were about a dozen other people waiting, and the restaurant was fairly hopping at 6:45. These librarians / publishing folk are quite the morning people. Perhaps it shouldn’t shock me, but it’s a change from Glasgow, where nothing’s really awake until 10 a.m., at best.
Time to iron some clothes, and to pin on my ALA name badge (which identifies me as belonging to Random House). I think I’ll be able to milk that badge for all sorts of people pictures!
-D