And now … now, we’re listening to BBC Radio 3. They’re currently playing Ravel’s Bolero, done on home-made instruments. We’re traumatized.
Category: Life
Everything else.
How much time does it take you…
I’m just wondering whether you’d all consider how much time you actually spend using FaceBook (or, as I call it, FaceHook). I’m sitting here, realizing that I’ve finished reading my blogs for the day, and that I do have homework to do, but that I’m missing the fiddling about, being a voyeur into the “lives” of those people who are on FB. So. How much time do you spend on there, anyway? What do you get out of it? Do you really feel like you’re connecting to people? Do you have lasting, deep friendships because of it?
May 17, In Retrospect
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May 17 is a bit of a strange day, In Retrospect. The top row of pictures, there, are all from the Cranston Street flat. You can clearly see the “elevator scaffolding” in the picture out the window, which was why we ended up giving up the place: neither of us could concentrate well enough to really work, with all of the construction and things, and as the weather was getting better, we wanted to open the windows but could not, due to the blowing dust and the noise. It’s a shame, really, because it was a nice enough flat. Sure, it had its drawbacks, but not as many as those of the Angel Building flat!
Fortunately, we love our new flat, despite the boiler issues, the windows rattling, and the students singing (or shouting) their way home from the pub at 3 a.m. With the sun coming in our massive windows, sometimes we Hobbits are almost ludicrously happy in this our little corner of the globe. This flat is where we’ll stay, for the next year or so. And then? Nobody knows. Where In The World, indeed.
The 2010 School Year is ov-ah! D. has invigilated his last exam, and his End of Year Review is tomorrow. It was supposed to have been an hour meeting with each Ph.D candidate, a serious, grueling, going-over of his dissertation progress thus far. In a turn of amusing irony, it has been shortened to …thirty minutes, with half of the time being given to D. to verbally outline his plans for next year! Fifteen minutes seems endurable, and D. considers it a good sign that his time has been cut… for the most part. We’ll have to let you know if he’s correct.
Iceland’s volcano is at it again. Most of the time Glasgow has received little or no effect except in the upper atmosphere where planes fly, which means that occasionally planes are grounded and the airport is closed, and in the presence of heavier dust (which, in Glasgow, might not be anything but normal, since this city has at least five hundred building projects going on at all times, and there’s construction pollution everywhere). Unfortunately, Monday it was quite windy, and we noticed what we thought was snow flying past. Since it was stormy and we’ve already marveled at the had hail we had earlier this month, we didn’t think anything of it… D. actually wondered if it was snow. Only later did we find out that Eyjafjallajökull had rumbled again. We are now getting pieces of ash that the size of confetti, and the airport will revisit the idea of reopening on Friday.
We may be spending June at home instead of going to Washington D.C. for T. to receive her book award! (She seems oddly unbothered by this.)
Get thee behind me, FaceHook!
So, I deleted my FaceHook account today, not without a fair amount of angst and some resistance from the friends and family who continue to use it. I just couldn’t countenance the thing any longer, and am glad that it’s gone, frankly. I figure that it’ll get me some incentive to get back to blogging, and that this is a better way to keep in contact with people than that thing ever was.
Now, it’s off to make bread.
Eyjafjallajökull
I couldn’t help but do a double-take & then take a picture upon seeing this sign:
You see, Eyjafjallajökull (in Iceland) has been throwing the world over here into turmoil with its ash, disrupting air travel all over Europe and now even into Northern Africa.
We’re wondering whether T’s trip to Washington D.C. is really a wise thing, considering that we might just get stuck over there, waiting for the volcano to calm down. Iceland, Fire Exit, Keep Clear Please indeed!
The irony, here, is that Iceland is a supermarket chain.
Home: Some Assembly Required
It was bound to happen eventually, one supposes, though we have met other Americans who have said it’s never happened for them.
We’ve apparently now got friends*.
Oh, okay, fine. We’ve had lots of acquaintances, and they’ve been lovely, but though everyone is charming and friendly (except the people who are not), there is still an air of reserve with many of our acquaintances in this city, and though we know tons of people we’ve been invited to the homes of only a few. (T. takes this moment to point out that this is entirely okay, and she’s not angling for any invitations anywhere, ever – we’re just pointing out a cultural observation, as it were.)
So, it was a bit of a shock the other day to have a friend of D’s text that she was on our street, and wondering if he wanted to have a meal with her, and then to have her, upon finding that we’d already eaten, take him up on his polite invitation and agreeably wander to our back gate.
You can imagine T’s …well, full-out shrieking hysteria. She cleaned the bathroom and put out fresh towels and lit candles, and wondered if she had time to wash the volcano dust off anything but the windowsills. Bad that it was a former staff member at the university; worse that it was a woman whom she’d never met. Worse still was the fact that the wind had picked up, the volcano had gone off again and there was gritty black ash dust on every flat surface. There was much running around and eventually it was determined that there was nothing else to be done, so we sat down, and our guest arrived.
Good thing we’d just gotten a couch.
Okay, yes. We’ve been here in this flat a full year now, and spent a year with only the most basic of furniture. Friends of ours from Napa were “in the country” and dropped by and …sat in our office chairs, while we sat on pillows on the floor. Most of our friends and family in the 50+ category prefer not to sit on a hardwood floor, for some odd reason (and some much younger seem to have the same objection), so we’ve been thinking that perhaps we ought to do something about our theoretical guests’ level of comfort.
Plus, we’ve been told that our living room, what with the file cabinet and the desks, looks like an …office.
We declined to visit the Blue and Yellow Box of a Swedish Store Which Shall Not Be Named, and instead looked around to see what we could find locally. Futon couches and a reasonably priced kitchen table and chairs (*cough* Yes. We’ve been eating in the office chairs, too. We know: Uncultured Philistines.) were easily found; a little more searching and parting with a bit of cash turned up a great big wardrobe with drawers, for much needed bedroom storage. We found and ordered all of these fine things for delivery, only to have them arrive in bits and pieces. D. got out a few tools, and went to work.
That Swedish Store has had just too much of an influence on the world at large. EVERYTHING seems to be flat-packed nowadays. Many stores offer a builder to assemble these products in your home, but as this is money many people don’t want to spend, on top of having just bought furniture, they determine that they can do it themselves. And the person of average intelligence usually can. Granted, the instructions might as well be written in Sanskrit, but trial and error generally brings things to a decent conclusion. It just may take a few hours. Or, days.
We will draw a veil over the muttered imprecations, the weighty boxes, the lost hinge screws and the big fat blister in D’s palm, and instead leave you with the pleasant images of a room or two that finally look like part of a residence instead of an office suite, and a hope that your weekend is filled with all the friends you want (or all the solitude you crave), wherever you are.
*FOR THE RECORD: D’s friend? Was born in Liverpool, England. So, we still haven’t had any Scots just “drop in,” and probably won’t. But, still. It was a surprise! A good one, but a surprise.
You say “Ambulance,” we say “Paramedic.”
As if to exemplify the language divide between the US and the UK, an “ambulance” is not “something to transport injured folk to the hospital.” No, here that may include “a paramedic on a motorcycle who just happens to show up when you need some help, but has no way of getting you to the hospital unless you want to hang off the back.”
In the UK, an “ambulance” can be anything from a full-blown emergency vehicle to a car (in case you have a medical appointment and don’t want to take the bus) to … a motorcycle. This is, apparently, in case you called for help and needed somebody to be able to weave through the immense traffic and provide a bit of first aid, perhaps a few drugs, whatever; you needed somebody now, so they’ll get there quick. They just won’t show up in a van which is able to get you to the hospital or anything.
The world is different, here. How different? Well, let’s just say that it’s 9 p.m., it’s 11°C / 52°F outside, and our regularly-scheduled ice-cream truck has just gone by, playing its music to attract those who have found the day too warm. Yes, this is a warm day in Glasgow (it’ll be down to only just-below freezing tonight). That never stopped the ice-cream truck, though: it went all winter.
Midweek Meanderings
This should prove nicely that we grow other things in our bathroom other than disgusting fungi… This rosebush is from a birthday arrangement that T. felt would die, as all others have managed to do. Imagine her surprise when just chucking it on the bathroom windowsill and basically ignoring it meant that it would thrive!
Greetings!
It’s springtime in Glasgow, and between the renewed ash belches from Eyjafjallajökull and the usual eruptions of pollen, we’re a sneezing, sniffling mess. But all is well in our little burg, fortunately, and despite the pollen, we’re glad at least the tulips have finally at long last come into bloom.
We are both relieved to be free of deadlines at the moment, and are back to our usual pace of work. D. is wrestling with the software to break down his survey into readable, useful statistical information, and T. is busy realizing that after one wins an award, one’s opinion is sought by various publications, so is being kept busy writing essays and being interviewed and quoted (latest is in The Horn Book Magazine in conjunction with a rather …unique article about the connection between childrens’ book writers, animal characters, and vegetarianism. She occasionally snickers aloud when reading these things.).
We are having our usual spring bout of insomnia, as the light of the solstice rapidly approaches. The sun now goes down at almost 9 p.m., and rises at five-twenty. (By the end of the month, it will rise at five, and by June, we’ll be well into the four a.m. hour, and it will set well after ten. There is nothing like going to bed and then rising with twitting birds who feel a need to sing at three thirty a.m.) She is growing slightly concerned at the routine volcanic activity which is shutting down air traffic, and has advised her editor and coterie of attendants that her June flight to D.C. for the Coretta Scott King Award Brunch might be somehow compromised. (Sadly, it probably won’t be. But one can hope.) At any rate, summer plans continue apace. As well as D.C., we have been invited to a wedding in Ireland, a wedding in Scotland, and on a trip to Italy, as well as a four-day jaunt to further explore the Highlands. We are looking forward to myriad photographic opportunities – and while we probably won’t return to Italy this soon, we hope to try Spain in the fall.
This week, D. is “invigilating” away, as the myriad students who require word processors, silent rooms and pacing space take their individual finals, and the PhD students are called upon to oversee them. Aside from his invigilating duties, D. is avoiding campus, as there has been a scarlet fever outbreak, which started in the nursery, where staff children attend, and has apparently spread to a childless professor of D’s, who is home covered in spots and running a high fever. Since scarlet fever also weakens the heart, D. is definitely avoiding campus for T’s sake. While it seems sort of horrifying to us that scarlet fever even exists anymore as a disease, it’s apparently fairly common here among children, and doesn’t produce the debilitating 18th century plague effect any longer. A simple antibiotic clears it right up. (But still! Scarlet fever!!! T. feels she has read far too many 19th century novels to ever be blasé about it.)
Far from clearing up and all blue skies and flowers as is appropriate for May, it is still leaden and gray here, although rain has been at a minimum for a few days. The cool weather (the high today was 59°F/15°C, and dropping) is no deterrent to the number of short sleeves, open-toed sandals and shorts to be seen on Woodlands Rd. We wonder if the ash in the atmosphere is responsible for the coolness, but the Met Office promises faithfully that the endless winter and the cold, drippy Spring mean that it will be a fantastic summer.
We roll our eyes and carry on.
Greetings from Scotland,
D&T
The Economics of Public Transportation
First Bus have raised their rates again for a minimum fare: £1.25 for the minimum charge, and £3.75 for an “all day” ticket. That means that, for us, who usually only catch a bus because we’re going to the University, or downtown, it is now financially less advantageous to take a bus when two of us are going: a cab downtown, or to the University, also has a minimal fare: £2.50.
What this means is that, each time we have to go somewhere, we must do some mental gymnastics. Are we going to go out together this evening? And, if so, will we be taking the bus? If we’re going to be making more than 3 trips anywhere together, the “all day” ticket is our option. If, though, we’re not going to be making more than 3 trips, then calling a car is the best option, financially. If one of us needs to make more than 3 trips (£3.75) but the other only needs to make 2 (£2.50) … we’re going to take the bus (this assuming that we’re going to 2 places together, but not the third, which is rather bonkers because we’d still need to get home, so when wouldn’t we be making more than 3 trips, but hey, sometimes somebody walks somewhere). But anytime we both need to take only 2 trips to someplace close by, we’re going to take a cab.
Yes, we could walk these distances – a half-mile at most. We don’t, though, unless the day is fabulously wonderful (rare) and we care to just wander about in Glasgow (even more rare). This varies, of course, if we’re going somewhere like Kelvingrove, where the trip is all through the park. Walking about the city, though, is a different story: it’s a strategic trip, to get somewhere in particular for a particular reason, and best dealt with by avoiding contact with the filth and muck by whatever means possible.
T. has finished her revision and is awaiting word from her editor. D. has a deadline of next Monday for his. We’ll be back to blogging more regularly soon. We promise. Life is just … frantic.
OK, we have TWO questions…
Because … well, since when does Sainsbury’s Roasted Potatoes With Goose Fat, Taste the Difference count as a “vegetable?” I mean … really?
Shopping in this country is mightily entertaining. Truly.