Eastern Mystery

In the process of packing we’ve been taking a hard look at everything we own, to decide whether it’s worth keeping (or should be off to a charity or something, or into the bin). Naturally, when cleaning out the kitchen, we find ourselves considering drawers and cabinets full of odd teas and spices … and happened across this gem, on the back of a Turmeric bottle: “Use Turmeric to add Eastern mystery to new favorites….” We wondered what, exactly, ‘Eastern mystery’ meant, and immediately imagined wonderful dialog to go along with it (“Here, this pudding is kinda bland – let’s add some Eastern mystery.”).

Yes, we’re tired. Tired of packing, mostly, and of being organized about it – we’re at the point where we either want to just chuck everything in a box, or just throw it all away. Something about the whole process reduces us to eating cold cereal for days, along with the truly odd things found in the depths of the fridge / freezer. It also, of course, means that we end up with half a dozen boxes sitting about the house, open, awaiting those final bits (the last pot & pan, the toiletries, what remains of the cold cereal). Still, we’re looking forward to actually having moved. We won’t have time to unpack anything except for the fridge / freezer things once we get there, as we’ll be off to San Francisco a few days after moving. We’ll be in California most of June, with a side-trip to Miami for work.

We are really looking forward to picking up the few things that we determined we need for the next year – namely some good, solid boots, and a few things from the San Francisco Herb Company, of course, as well as some yarn, probably (although we’ve both been knitting from our stash for 8 months now, with little sign of it diminishing). Through the magic of online shopping, aside from a few clothes, everything else is waiting for us on the other end. Christmas in June, to make up for not having been able to get home during the Winter.

After this trip it’s back to the salt mines, with a dissertation to write over the summer (the UK student writes a dissertation when doing a master’s degree, and a thesis when doing a PhD – exactly opposite of the US terminology); and after the dissertation it’s another 3 years in Glasgow to finish a PhD.

The new flat is literally right around the corner from the largest reference library in Europe, which may prove to be a help. We certainly plan to take advantage of its café, if nothing else!

We return to Glasgow on the longest day of the year, so this time we’ll get to experience the full horror of the decline of the long lovely days and the descent into Scottish Winter. One more item on the home shopping list: more full-spectrum sun lamps!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.