A Bowl of Glasgow Blue

¡Mira!

Look! Just look at the color of the sky. It’s an amazing azure bowl with the last cold vanilla streaks of clouds, like leftover ice cream. The color is as saturated and stunning in person as it is in the photograph.

But boy, is it Brr! Our usual Sunday stroll through Kelvingrove Park, en route to Woodlands Road, was gloriously sunny, if still a bit damp from the usual rain, and quite chilly as well. The morning high was something like 43°F, which was startling. The U.S. is still wrapped in warmth and up and down the East Coast is still suffocating under high humidity and the result of various tropical storms, yet the cold has hunkered down over the city, and our green grocer commented Friday that he expects this to be a very hard winter. It’s difficult to imagine what might be in store elsewhere…

We enjoyed a relaxing weekend, and took the cold in stride. For D’s birthday he got spiffy new shoes, and a new lens for the camera, to round the number of “toys for the camera” up to three. Many of the recent shots you’ll see on Flickr are wide angle shots (it’s an 18mm-50mm zoom, when the widest angle he’s had previously was a 45mm). He’s been hemming and hawing and considering buying a new lens for a long time, but finally broke down and got a used one. (Yes. This you read correctly. He bought his own birthday gift, rendering T. completely useless and twiddling her thumbs yet again. SOME PEOPLE are just difficult.)

The lens is a bit gimpy (there are a few specks of dust inside, so there are some visible spots on the pictures), but he’s disassembled it and cleaned it as far as he felt comfortable in doing, and it’s improved quite a bit from where it started. Apparently dust inside is a common failing with this type of lens, but it’s good enough for the moment. Maybe when we’re not being students he’ll get a better one. (Moving the tally of “toys for the camera” up to four…?)

Walking through the park Sunday morning, we happened across a family gathered around what we call “the bee bush” – a pink flowering bush which seems to always be covered in sleepy and cold bumblebees for some reason. Well, we figured the family was simply enjoying the bees, but we noticed their small boy waving at one of the flowers — not something most people do to bees, unless they’d like to offend them. He was shrieking that we should “Look!” so we had to stop and see, and happily discovered butterflies — or maybe they were moths? Either way, there were three or four of them, resting or flitting about slowly. There were two gorgeous iridescent varieties, and no bumbles to be seen (to D’s mild disappointment, as he’s been trying to get some good pictures of the elusive “white butted bee” for several months now). The flying flowers patiently allowed D. to crouch down and photograph them numerous times. What was funny was that we were so entranced by them that we attracted a crowd — by the time we left, another couple had turned to take out their camera, and come over. It’s always amusing how it rarely occurs to other people to photograph something until someone else does it. We encounter that whever we (and the camera) go.

It has been alternating sunshine and rain hourly for several days now, and we’re seeing somewhat sunnier weather than we have all summer. Though there have been myriad dry days this summer, the overcast has remained fairly constant. The ten days of sun forecast have actually been — sunnyish. Who knew. However, temperatures have dropped low enough to turn on the thermostat in the mornings, and evenings are growing much colder. The switch has been thrown for autumn for sure.

Little details continue to surge together to create busy days. D. is peer reviewing this year for eSharp, an online journal for postgraduate research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and education, and already articles are piling up. His social calendar is filling, as department meetings and “get togethers,” at which attendance is expected, if not required, have been scheduled for the first week of October. Even if one only has to show up for a half hour or so, it’s still something else to cram in next to work — which in itself has gotten really interesting. A newly hired efficiency and organization expert (whom they call The Scheduling Wench) has D’s boss urging him to work from home — to avoid her endless badgering requests for work updates and staff meetings. (T. is deeply amused by the idea that the company hired her, but apparently no one wants her to really organize them, and no one can make her stop.)

D. has already begun doing some reading for research, and the Hobbits will start German lessons in another week. We’ve packed our days to insure a busy Winter, and we’re determined not to let the weather stop us this year! We may even go see the Mary Poppins musical in Edinburgh … although, maybe not, as T. really hates musicals, and D. really hates Disney. Perhaps something else. But we’re definitely planning to be out and about more, and to encounter more of the UK and Scotland’s myriad beautiful places while we’re here.

– D & T

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