Random events of the last 6 weeks

So, this last six weeks has been rather full. I posted most of these photos on facebook already, so for those who "see" me both places may well have already seen these, but for those who don't, here's a quick catch-up in photos... (May looked rather sparse for blogs, so I'm cheating and using this as a catch-up!)

First off, my friend (and Jeremiah's wife) Shawna had to leave in the beginning of May, so we had one last party over at our friend Jeremy and Elizabeth's house. As before, there was much sing-star-ing (Jeremiah and I managed a top score as did Shawna and I. The secret to this is one-note wonders of songs!). It was, of course, followed by some Wii boxing, bowling, and tennis.

Kathleen and Jeremiah singing with Shawna enjoying the surround sound.

Shawna and Jeremiah show off the method for a happy marriage. (Shawna won the boxing match, btw.)

The following Monday I had to go back to Glasgow to do my biometrics for a third time (I still don't have my visa nor my passport back, but that's a different story and I am working on rectifying this situation -- my flatmate meanwhile is threatening to turn me out and rent my room to a legal-immigrant!). Kathleen kindly let herself be convinced to drive me to Glasgow and then do something interesting afterward -- the interesting activity being my first visit to the Kelvingrove museum.

Kathleen outside the Kelvingrove.

Continuing my Pre-Raphaelite quest, a Rossetti!

Random hanging faces with lots of different expressions... So I had to join in, of course!

Mom, this one's for you, reminds me of so many of the books at home!

The star of the Kelvingrove, a stunning Dali (Christ of St John of the Cross)

The following weekend involved an evening/overnight/gourmet breakfast at Meg's with Kathleen featuring quite a number of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes - and the stunning pancake/egg/sausage breakfast the next morning. This was immediately followed by a trip to Glasgow with Team Bridesmaid for Nina's wedding -- the first time all 4 bridesmaids were in the same place in an attempt to find us dresses for the wedding. The attempt was partly successful in that we identified the best dress but unsuccessful in that Monsoon didn't have them in stock in the right sizes. (Nevertheless, she was eventually able to order them online, so the day was, all told, a success!) That was then immediately followed by the Castle Ceilidh - something I've wanted to do the whole time I've been here but never have actually done. It's exactly that, an outdoor ceilidh in the grounds of the castle. There were probably 150 or so people there, swinging and spinning and running into each other wildly. I met up with Meg beforehand and Verena in the castle and danced the entire evening. There was a good ratio of guys to girls and once I got over my very first asking-a-complete-stranger-to-dance fear, I then danced nearly every dance -- with strangers, some repeats, a few friends... as it should be! =) It was a blast!!

The chaos on one I chose to sit out and have a breather.

Meg and I. Sad she's leaving in July - it really helped that she's way more extroverted than I and got me out there dancing at the start...

Starting up the torchlit procession in town. It made me think of days when this would have probably been a terrifying mob scene leading to someone burning at the stake or something. This was just vaguely organized chaos...

A last farewell to the castle at 10pm - still light out!

The torchlit procession wound its way along from the castle to the cathedral...

...and then to the end of the pier (at which point I ran out of camera battery). We sat up on the hill by the cathedral watching the traffic jam at the end of the pier until the first lights began to head back along the top of the pier -- and hoped no one fell off that narrow ledge!

A few weeks of other undocumented stuff - such as Amber and Paul's baby shower, the Eurovision party for which I've already shown photos, a farewell party for some other friends, as well as a ton of work, last weekend brought in a high degree of hilarity and randomness to my life. All along I've known I was very lucky with my current flatmate, but since I was gone somuch in the fall I hadn't really gotten a chance to get to know her until this semester. She's one of those amazing people who actually does the things I've always thought about but not done - which brings a great deal of randomness and fun into life.

So, Friday we (with someother of her friends) watched Momma Mia! and pondered how much brain space was wasted between the two of us with Abba lyrics. Saturday I somehow found myself standing at the carwash holding down our very grey (white plastic) bench from our garden while she powerwashed it. We returned with a light grey-white bench which she then scrubbed with steel wool while I cleaned out (for the first time ever) the back corner of our garden. We now have a very welcoming little sitting area back there -- but we also then wondered if this was really the best use for our energies... But anyway... Sunday afternoon she then kidnapped me and took me off to Tentsmuir Forest, a nature reserve/beach just north of Leuchars to which I have shockingly never been. We wandered out to the beach where conversations went along the lines of:

V: "Ooh, a hole" (stoops to photograph said hole for next 5 minutes).

V: "Ooh, driftwood!"
V:" Ooh, more driftwood!"
V: "Ooh, broken bottle!"
Me: "No. we don't need that."
V: "Yes we do!" (bottle bottom comes with us along with all the driftwood fragments)

V: "Ooh, driftwood!"
Me: "We are NOT carrying a 10ft long tree of driftwood back to the car!"
V: "We totally could!"
Me: "No. We are Not." (driftwood tree does not come with us)

V: "Since I couldn't have the tree I can keep ALL these other pieces of driftwood."
Me: "I think you should drop that one - it's ugly and boring!"
V: "If I pick up another piece that's more interesting I'll drop it."
(Picks up another piece but keeps boring cut piece. Threatens me with broken glass when I threaten to remove boring wood. I concede this battle.)

Me: "Ooh, I like that rock!" (rock added to collection).

After which we discover on walking back that we are a good mile-and-a-half away from the car. It was a long way back.... =)

Tentsmuir beach, looking north

Tentsmuir beach looking inland to the forest.

Verena, applying a subtle applying a subtle layer of sand stubble.

On our way in to Tentsmuir, we both confessed to a long-standing desire to jump around in a rapeseed field. Next thing I knew, the trip home involved a quest for a suitable yellow field... Finding one, Verena pulled the car over and in we went. My camera alas was out of battery again (there were a lot of unshown photos between various dead battery experiences), so I was dependant upon her SLR to capture the experience and I also took some of her on her camera -- but here's me investigating what it's like to leap around a rapeseed field. It's fun. Sonya reckons it might work on me like catnip on a cat -- I think it's the bright colour though! Most people around here cringe with an allergic reaction looking at these photos -- thankfully neither of us are allergic!

An initial leap - but you can barely tell that I'm leaping for joy (except for my face, which is fully expressive of said joy!).

I checked out the straight-up-in-the-air method of leaping to more success. =D

Good times were had. As I said to her by the end of last weekend: "I feel like my life took a turn for the random when I took you as flatmate!" It's so so so good and so healing for me. She brings such joy and humour to my life!

This past Saturday (yesterday) she helped me pick out a pair of glasses. It was rather comic and at points I put on bizarre pairs just to watch her face twitch as she tried to contain her reaction of horror to various looks I tried. One pair I really liked from the front had really bright and pattered sides -- apparently not such a good look on the whole as I watched her trying to hang herself with an invisible noose. Ultimately when I was down to 3 (or 4 including the one she hated so much!) we called in backup - not everyone answered their phones but Emily came along and provided the tie breaker. I'm getting a red, squared off set - quite stylish, but not overly obnoxious. The competing pair were black on the front and bright pink/red (I think pink, Verena thinks red) sides and while I loved them I decided that on the whole they were a little less professional than the others that I loved pretty equally. So... glasses I will own by the end of the week!

There, now May can end, I am entirely up-to-date. =)

Isle of May

So, in sad news, my friend Jeremiah leaves next Monday. =( To be fair, his wife had to head back to the States nearly a month ago, so it's probably time for him to go... But this is the problem with life in academia -- it's always a transient community. He mentioned a while back, however, that one thing he'd really hoped to do before leaving was visit the Isle of May, an island 6 miles off the Fife coast. It was something that has remained on my "to-do" list as well over the past 4 years, so I agreed to go with him and, after some shuffling of dates (and fully booked ferries) we were booked in for Monday (yesterday). Now, Monday didn't dawn, it hobbled in grim and grey. I was concerned. I checked the weather forecast: 10am-cloudy, 12pm-cloudy, 2pm-rainy, 4pm-rainy, 6pm-cloudy. That was not cool, as our ferry left at 1pm and would dump us on the island all afternoon... Adding to my perplexity, my flatmate had told me to take her really nice digital SLR camera -- which I was super excited about -- but I was not excited about worrying about it all afternoon in the rain. So I finally opted not to take it: a decision I regretted all afternoon. As you can see, when we took off on the ferry, the day had gone stunning: blue skies, warm weather -- at one point in the afternoon we were downright hot! Unbelievable in Scotland! Of course, at another point in the afternoon we were freezing with all our layers on, but that's just to be expected! Anyway, over the course of the afternoon I took well over 100 pictures and have posted far too many here. But... so it goes. The Isle of May is a major site for sea-bird breeding and study, and I'll label the pictures as needed! Otherwise, enjoy the vacation!

Jeremiah on the boat

Our destination, when we were about half-way there.

Our first glimpse of a seal, bobbing in the water.

The terns had a massive colony right where we docked. You can see one with its v-shaped tail as it lands. I'm still amazed we made it through the whole day without being pooped on!

The ruins of the 12th century monastery destroyed by Vikings then rebuilt and variously inhabited by monks for the next few centuries.

Looking along the length of the island back to the Fife coast.

A Shag and its mate in the nest. ("shag" here is slang for sex, making this an immaturely funny bird-name to us all day)

Puffins! Just hanging out. They do a lot of that. Not really sure when they actually feed their young!

A closer shot of the Shag - they shimmer green in the sunlight - quite handsome!

Looking south to Bass Rock and the Lothian coast. I could watch them for evidence as the haar was building up, but it didn't affect us on the island.

Birds, mostly Guillemots, nest the entirety of the cliff face. Apparently their eggs spin when knocked, rather than rolling, thus making them (a bit) safer on the perilous edges!

You can see evidence all along the cliffs of where the birds are most prevalent (i.e., the white places!). Below is Pilgrim's Haven, but leading to it was a sign that said "for your safety, do not go to the beach" which amused us to no end -- not a very good haven, eh?

Puffins!

Puffins! (Classic shot with all the little fish hanging out its beak.)

Jeremiah had an amazing eye for spotting the female nesting Eider Ducks - which had a propensity for nesting right by the path. The females made a perfect brown circle on their nests and no matter how close we passed, never moved a muscle.

Jeremiah majestically pronouced these... "The Cliffs...of Crap!" And, well, they were. But amazingly covered in birds! Mostly the black and white Guillemots and some grey and white sea gulls, thus they blend in quite well.

Close up of some bravely situated Guillemots.

My favorite puffin shot!

The lighthouse (now automated) builted by Robert Stevenson, uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

Another Eider Duck. One reason we were so strictly commanded to Stay On The Paths!

The lone Loch on the Island - braced in on the far side, and filled with ducks quite noisily taking baths.

A male Eider Duck.

I'd been wanting to see a Razorbill, which looks quite like the Guillemot except for the white slash on its beak, but so far had not had any luck. Jeremiah spotted this one sitting right at the top of the cliff not 5 feet away from me!

Another Shag - I like all the different greens in this photo.

Greater Sea Gull (or something like that) with Puffins flapping wildly in the air. They are not the most air-worthy birds I've ever seen. They pretty much sound (and look) like a wind-up plastic toy, flapping their wings as hard as they can!

Puffin flying. It looks like it's soaring, but I just got in a luckily timed shot.

Puffins actually burrow for nests, hence the biggest reason they don't want people traipsing across the island freely! This was pretty much the only puffin I saw near a burrow the whole day, though.

Wildly flapping puffin on the left side of the photo.

Shots from the ferry on our return: Guillemots nesting even on the little bridge thing in the cave!

Looked at from this angle, they really just looked like penguins, especially since their droppings had turned the ledges white!

The dip to the dammed-up loch, east side of the island. The streaks of white on the volcanic rock are all from the birds.

A fat grey seal and a smaller (probably younger) grey seal - only ones we saw out of the water all day!

On the return journey I might have seen the back of a whale surfacing. Our boat driver also claimed to have seen a bunch of porpoises (a pod?), but no one else saw anything... But all told? A very, very cool day! Sorry for the sheer mass of photos, I really did try to narrow down a bit! =}

Puffins rock!

Sometimes...

...there's just nothing to say.

I looked back at the beginning of my blog recently and I was struck that once upon a time I wrote some of my (research) ideas here... weird... I think once they became more full of technical stuff -- or as the ideas became more complex (sort-of) and required more explaining and qualifying (definitely), I became wary of posting conclusions alone and being wrongly pigeonholed into all sorts of extremes I don't agree with. Realization no. 1 of late.

Blog realization no. 2 of late: Having a hard year moves one toward posting fun stuff and fun stuff alone. The stupid hurts are for me alone (and those I talk to on the phone or over coffee or where ever, just not for the anonymity of a public blog!). The obvious hurts are, well, obvious and I don't particularly like having them poked at, so I leave them alone as well. I like having a record of positive times amidst a hard year, using the blog as a bit of a track to remember good rather than ill... choosing to look at the positives in one's life or something. But sometimes it makes me feel a bit fake - there's a lot more going on behind the cheer sometimes... and yet--and yet--I am a genuinely cheerful person. One friend once labelled me a joy bringer, and it's not artificial or forced - I like people, I am genuinely a joyful person, I do consistently aim for contentment rather than bitterness... I suppose I just prefer to bring joy to others (because that brings me a great deal of joy) than to focus on what's (wrong) going on inside. Is it dishonest? I don't think so -- it's more a mindset of choosing freedom from the repetitive hamster wheels in my own head, I think! Plus, I prefer to choose gratitude for the good things God has given me, focusing on those, than to wallow in self-pity - I like myself better!

Realization no. 3 of late: Grieving stinks. And it doesn't get easier. It's just there and it just will be there, lurking and hijacking me at unexpected (or expected) times from here on in. Seven months and six days on from holding my father's hand while he left this life, if anything the grief is worse now than it was. Part of it is just the settling knowledge that this is my life now, and there's nothing I can do about it. Yep...

So anyway, it was just weird to look back and "see" how I've changed while I've been here, and yet also see how I've stayed the same. I always enjoy shared amusement, I generally tend toward understatement of personal stuff. I still do like my research and think it's incredibly important for the church more generally -- but then, don't all we theologian/researchers? Or else why do we do this? But I talk about it less publically. And sometimes when you look at my blog it looks like a long string of parties and travel -- but there's a lot of unseen slogging going on between times! It's just rather boring to blog about...

It's a good life. I am content with it.

Eurovision 2009

Saturday Verena and I hosted a Eurovision party. Now, I've watched some 3 Eurovisions now, meeting my first in Greece some 8 years ago. It is still something I utterly fail to understand. Well, maybe that's overstatement, but really... It's a massively hyped European song contest - each country has one entry with which they compete to make it to the final -- the big Eurovision night. The country that won the preceding year hosts the next context - this year Russia spent some absurd €3mil or so hosting. The UK came in dead last in 2008 (and they have a reputation for mocking the whole proceedings), so this year they took it seriously with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber writing a power ballad and hosting a whole competition to find the right singer - and they took a respectable 5th having convinced Europe they were actually serious this year (their 2007 essentially British Airways song didn't really win much popularity either!). Voting is by phone-in, and a country cannot vote for itself, so generally countries vote for their neighbors.

The best that can be said for Eurovision is a) it provides high comedy value and b) it launched Abba and Riverdance -- the latter wasn't even an official part of the competition, it was an intermission act when Ireland was hosting... Better on the comedy level, really!

This year Nina and Vicki whipped up scorecards for us (it can be hard to remember 25 separate bizarre acts), Verena made a European-Union flag cake, and I emptied the furnature out of our living room to host the party. At one point we had 27 people crammed into that poor room. Impressive, but a ton of fun! I just focused on inviting people I knew, while Verena focused on inviting people from as many European countries as she could find to represent. Ahh, the unifying power of Eurovision! (Last little factoid, apparently it was started post-war to bring together the various countries but also to provide a place for non-violent competition. There you go.)

Jeremiah, Melanie, Matt, Alissa and Kathleen on one side - Kathleen showing off her scorecard.

Tucked in the opposite corner, Ross, Nina, Vicki and Ryan.

The "rest" of the room...

Taking the cake to Verena - this picture is crazy: I am innocently showing off the cake, stabbing Brendan in the neck, AND growing a third hand from my waist. Nifty.

Verena, heading in to cut her cake.

A glimpse into the room from across the hall... Do you like the flags banner? 32feet worth of bunting with 27 European flags. Oh yeah, we do parties right....... ahem....

Is it really wise to enter into there? Actually, this being toward the end, there was more room in the middle than there had been at the beginning...

The run-away winner, Norway, with their cute but fake-violin-playing lead singer and crazy push-up-doing back-up dancers (highest score ever, though). I have to admit, I was rooting for Ukraine... It was the sheer randomness of their half-dressed centurion backup dancers in hamster wheels that won me... For sheer pop-power, Azerbaijan takes the cake, I think. Malta had one of the only singers who could actually sing, but Kurt--from Malta--noted that she was not your typical-tinsy-pop-star by saying "it'll all be over when the fat lady sings". Oh, and I nearly forgot Germany, featuring the most startling silver trousers on the swing-singing-singer and a stripper-who-was-not-allowed-to-strip-in-the-final-contest backup dancer. Genius.

There, your cultural education is complete.

-------

How could I have forgotten Greece, my initial country of choice to support?!?!?! I think after their 2002 entry, they've won my undying support... or something...

That's about right. . . .

So true -- the Arts degrees are not the winners in today's university funding games! PhD comics introduced a "humanities" character (the rest are all scientists of various sorts) just to round things out a bit, but apparently he's lost his funding!
Sad, but true.


And now, just to round out this Wednesday's funnies:

This might be why humanities has lost some of its credibility. . . .

I have several friends here who love nuns -- which just makes this even funnier to me. . . . Ahh, bad puns deserve . . . well, maybe not a fatal stabbing, but. . . .

And finally? Sudoku I can master! (from xkcd.com - since this one isn't acknowledged on itself)

"Busy, busy, dreadfully busy..."

So, I am actually insanely busy... My supervisor is taking my desire to submit seriously, I'm taking my desire to submit seriously, we've re-organized my entire thesis (yes, involving substantial rewriting, of course) -- but that is in the end a good thing I think... But busy. BUSY. Broke and busy. When I sit at my computer, basically I am either staring at it or, when I'm actually typing, I need/want it to be "work-related."

That's not to say blogging will cease, just that it will continue in its irregular behavior. Between now and September I have:

A week in Rome: Paper 1 (25 minutes, needs written still; end June)
A week in Cambridge: Paper 2 (45 minutes, needs expanding/rewriting; early July)
A week away for a friend's wedding in England (early August)
Half a week away for a friend's wedding in Florida followed by some time at home - intended as an intense editing week (yippee) (end of August)

An entire 80,000wd thesis (approx. 250 pgs) to rewrite and pull together and polish to perfection.

...So, a month away for various trips and most of June spent writing/rewriting the papers -- two months down out of the four between now and September... Did I mention I'm busy? But it's all good. Seriously! This is a good life that I've chosen. =)

Define "Free" for me

So the other day I had my eyes checked and had it proven to me that, indeed, being an academic is ruining my vision. Instead of the super-perfect vision I used to have, my distance vision is beginning to erode away as the need to always be reading (books and the computer screen) is taking over my eyesight. Glasses will be purchased soon for "wearing about". Oh dear... (The question at this point is really which friends here do I trust to take with me???)

But anyway, when I first decided I should get my eyes checked, I was out for coffee with emily. I though, hey, she's English, she might know how this all works here, I might as well ask her! So I progressed:

Me: "How do I go about getting my eyes checked. Do I need to do it through the health centre?"
E: "no, you just go to any of the places about town and make an appointment."
Me: "Is it expensive?"
E: "No, it's free."
Me: "Free?"
E: "Free."
Me: "Do I need my national insurance number or anything?"
E: "No, it's just free.
Me: "Really?"
E: "Yes. Eye exams aren't free in England, but they are in Scotland."
Me: "Really? I mean, I don't need to do anything or prove anything? Like that I live here?"
E: "No, it's free, you just go make an appointment."

And on it went....

Later, after lunch with Kathleen, I hijacked her into going with me to make an appointment at the place emily recommended.

Me: "emily says that eye exams are free......." (leading question)
K: "Yep, they are."
Me: "Really?"
K: "Yep. They didn't used to be, but that changed about 3 or 4 years ago in Scotland. Now they're free for anyone. Speaking of, maybe I should make an appointment..."
Me: "So... free? Like... I could make an appointment at ALL the eye places in town?"
K: "You could... if you really wanted to...."

And so on...

And again, at the eye place:

Receptionist: "Is this your first eye exam?"
Me: "No, I had one done several years ago in the States."
R: "Right... But this is the first one here since they've become free?"
Me: "Yes! (Free?)"
R: "Only in Scotland. England hasn't caught on yet."

Hey, in case you hadn't noticed, eye exams are free here! Of course, you still have to pay for the glasses (soon enough, soon enough), but... FREE! =D