Cold Kitten

You know that feeling when you're camping and its cold out? You know. When you're huddled in the sleeping bag or under the blankets with someone and affection is taking a distant second to sharing body warmth under the heading of why you're huddled so close? When the side of you not facing another person is still just a bit cold despite the three layers of blankets? When you finally get fairly toasty below the blankets but then you face the choice of whether to have a very cold nose or whether to pull your head under the blankets too where it's warm but stuffy? Yeah, picturing it now? That's what our flat is like with the heater on full blast.

Tis the Season for Panic

Aaahhh! Christmas is nearly here!!! I haven't mailed the Christmas cards yet!! They'll never make it to the States in time now! Aaahhh!!!!

*runs away, wild-eyed, out into the frosty Glaswegian morning*

Thought for the Morning

I know that waking at quarter to eight and making it out the door at last by quarter to nine should not feel like the crack of dawn. I am, however, not a morning person at all and have been free to sleep in recently and so it does. But it is an interesting (that's one word for it anyway) fact of living in the north in winter that walking out the door at quarter to nine is, more or less, dawn (though not the-crack-of). Pink sky blurring into peach into white into pale aqua-blue. Dawn. Even at nine-thirty the horizon still glowed with the remnants of peach, though most of the sky had given in and admitted it was solidly "day."

Another interesting thing. BBC Radio has a short "thought for the day" slot in its morning programme. We have a radio alarm clock so I usually listen to this in various states of wakefulness. I must add, for context, that most Brits I know consider America to be a far more "Christian nation" than Britain, despite the supposed separation of church and state in the US. But the "thought for the day" is invariably Christian in outlook; it might be directly about Christianity or it might be a Christian take on environmental stewardship or other such issues. But it's always Christian. On Sundays they broadcast a church service--moving the chosen church location all over Britain from Sunday to Sunday, though I assume it is always Church of England (Church of Scotland probably qualifies too). It's rather nice but distinctly odd living somewhere with an official state religion (well, nice because it's my religion. But it's certainly good it's not a required thing!). Well that was my thought for the day about the thought for the day.

It's Freezing Here!

Well, the water in the gutters and on the pavement is mostly all frozen so it's officially gone from "cold" to "freezing" here.

Last night the Flat of Rats (Molly & Johanna; though Johanna was off at French class) hosted a mulled wine and poker (well, poker and whist) night that was good fun. The grand prize was a bar of chocolate but due to a failure to work out exactly how to determine who the ultimate winner was, we ended up sharing the chocolate. I lost abysmally in the practice round while the two who knew what they were doing taught us all, while Doc apparently used up all his beginner's luck that round. During the "real" round I did well enough though. I still feel absolutely no urge to risk more than chocolate, however. I was tense enough just playing with little plastic chips that weren't worth anything. The best hand I won they reckoned I could have driven them all up way higher, but I'd been keeping my bets so low till then I figured they would know something was up.

Ron declined to play, thus earning no chocolate, but he enjoyed mulled wine and sitting nearby working on his newest role-playing background (since the internet was down, he claimed there was no way to job hunt anyway, and I suppose it would be unfair to expect him to work on cover letters while the rest of us played cards. Particularly as one of the card players is also job hunting in the same field).

Between travel prices being higher than expected, and the fact that, if we left, Johanna (whose family is in Sweden) would be all alone for Christmas, I think we've finally decided to stay in Glasgow for Christmas. It was Ron's mother who suggested it, being a practical sort, and we did see her just recently. I still feel a little guilty though, since who knows when we'll next be so close to her for Christmas. At least Jacky is going down. And hopefully once we both have "real" jobs, hopping a flight to the London area, even from the US, won't be such a problem. Of course, then there's all the question of fuel use and damage to the environment...

As a tangent, since I was teaching on this topic just last year, the UK general populous (ok, as judged from BBC radio and my over-educated friends) seem far more inclined to take anthropogenic global climate change as a fact. Annoyingly (from a selfish standpoint) the British law makers (though not my friends) seem inclined to target air travel first and foremost. I, however, think that cheap airtravel tends to make people more aware of how small a world it really is, which can only be useful in trying to get people to care about environmental changes in other places as well as overall. By that token, global travel should be one of the last things hit, not the first. Of course, I am quite biased.

Hear My Concert!

Hey guys! There is in fact a recording of O Greening Branch. The camera is on the audience but the sound is pretty good. Fast forward a ways past all the audience settling down (about 18 min. Watch for the lights dimming.) The solo starting off the second song is me!

mms://130.209.38.32/chapel/chapel_20071208.wmv

Hope you enjoy!

Mardigirls and other Adventures

O Greening Branch
The Mardrigirls concert (or music and readings for advent, if you'd rather) went beautifully.

It was very cold--it snowed earlier in the day--and it proved tricky for me to dress in enough layers not to freeze to death and still look like I was just in concert attire of black. (One pair of dying thermal underwear, one pair of socks, one pair of too-small hose cut off above the knee, one pair of garters snitched from Ron's kilt attire, one pair of too-small black shoes purchased that day in a charity shop, one long black skirt, one long-sleeve casual knit dark gray t-shirt, one black up corset, and one nice long sleeve black blouse later....Getting the top line of the corset not to show through the blouse was the trickiest bit. For anyone curious, pulling it up a bit works far better than pulling it down or other things up.) Anyway, I wasn't freezing, although I certainly was not at any time over-warm in all that.

My solo started the second song. Which was good--I didn't have to fret through half the concert before getting there. Everyone says it went beautifully. I'll believe them. It seems like I faded out a bit at one point but maybe that just seemed like a decrescendo and crescendo that weren't in fact in the music (it was, after all, plain chant; there aren't any dynamics markings at all). Anyway, everyone seemed genuinely impressed with the solo and the performance as a whole (some of my friends admitting they had expected something far more amature...but this was amazing). So, Yay!

And it was all great fun. It's been so long since I was a part of something like that. And even then, I don't think the music was ever so tailored to all be things I liked! Not all of it was medieval and Renaissance but the rest was in more or less the same style. We had a brand new piece. We were basically the sneak preview before the world premier a few days later! He came and heard us rehearse and said it sounded amazing (and stayed for the performance too, but I didn't talk to him after that). I was also grimly pleased that when the director asked him something about a crotchet note he replied that he didn't know all this English terminology! He's American too. I've been stumbling over "crotchets" and "quavers" and the like for months now! Oh, and the "Finnish-ish" Ave Maria that I mentioned in the blog earlier as being odd because it was in Latin, not Finnish? Johanna said it did sound Finnish in style!

It was an amazing experience and I'm very glad I did it. I think, if anything, the music was more fun than choir as a teenager. It had more of a sense of a group of colleagues putting together something beautiful. My choir directors as a kid--and even some of the church choir directors I have known--have had something of the feel of beleaguered artists trying to herd cats to do their bidding and create the effect they are looking for. Well, and as I said, it was the sort of music I would have picked. All that lovely Latin and Middle English.

Now I have to go back to California before I forget it all, and teach the other kittens the ones that can be done with three voices...

Aftermath
After the concert there was mulled wine. Yummy and welcome warmth. And birthday presents (cookies which Ron kept snitching; and a journal with a pointed demand that I finish my story about the water man.) My friends and I were dispatched to the Postgrad Club to grab tables for the Madrigirls to come over after cleanup. So we did, rather effectively too. Once the Madrigirls actually arrived, Ron and the rest cleared over to a table alone leaving the four tables together we had staked out for the choir and guests that had come to town especially. I hung out with the choir for a while, before rejoining friends. We really need a separate social night when we don't all have guests, though.

Then Monday, now that I'm safely through the performance, I've come down with my second cold of the season. Yuck. Not nearly as bad as the flu last month though.

Hogwarts Updates
Well, the day after the concert was the final installment in the Harry Potter game Molly's been running. Wow. Good finish. We even ended up in the Forbidden Forest at last, and solved, well, most of the mysteries set before us.

It is interesting, but I think Hetty Cowell is one of the most complex characters I have played. I always try to make complicated real-feeling characters, but 11 (well, 12 now) year old Hetty puts shame to most of them. From the very beginning the Sorting Hat had trouble placing her. It considered everything except Hufflepuff. Finally placed in Slytherin, she was wishing she was in Ravenclaw by the end of the second week. Even Gryffindore wouldn't be all that bad. She went so far as to ask Dumbledore if there was any chance of transferring houses, but he turned her down. Did I mention it was 1940-41? Well, but the end of the adventure, the only people in Slytherin still speaking to her are Edgar Sullins (another player character that Hetty does not at all trust, with good reason) and, wait for it, Tom Riddle. Oh, our GM fights dirty. Hetty has absolutely no reason to distrust soft-spoken Tom, so she's even been helping him with a "side project" of his. Meanwhile, by the end of the year, cowardly Hetty has managed to find herself swearing an Unbreakable Vow to protect an adventurous Ravenclaw while they're at Hogwarts (I really don't see how she's now going to survive Hogwarts). She's already given up a last swallow of Filix Filicitas to help Artemis rather than herself. Meanwhile Hetty is rather jeaulous of said Ravenclaw (Artemis) and her close friendship with the half-goblin she swore the Vow to (Flitwick, but not the one who will become a professor). Her own best friend is a Griffendore whose been disowned by his all-Slytherin family, but he occasionally falls back into bad habits and can be a bit mean while also distrusting her Slytherin smooth-talking ways. Oh the mess. With all the conflicting pulls, it really is rather uncertain what Hetty will do from one moment to the next. However, I think she may be the only player character to have gone the entire school year without a detention.

We've decided to all take turns GMing a year. Molly will take over one of the NPCs from our year, and will GM 7th year if we make it that far. I really doubt we will unless the subsequent years go much faster. Ron's got 2nd year and I've got 3rd. Third Year will be especially tricky since that's when the Chamber of Secrets will open and one PC is friends with Moaning Myrtle and two others are friends with Hagrid, so keeping them from solving that mystery will be tricky indeed. However, it will be useful having that be my year to GM since Hetty would be best placed to find out what Tom is up to, but will conveniently be an uninquisitive npc that year, more interested in acing all her classes than solving mysteries (and thank goodness the person she has to protect is "pureblood"!)

Random Thought for the Day

You know it's time to do laundry when...you decide that having one sock that it black with purple kittens and one sock that is off-white is fine to wear out the door, since you have little choice.

Published!

The QM's WiFi has not been working well lately so I'm falling back into coffee shop habits. Mmm, coffee. Actually, this place doesn't even serve plain coffee: espresso drinks only. Yum. It's a bad habit though. I don't think, however, they would be very pleased with me staying all day like I did in my Atlanta haunts.

Going back to the topic of the QM though, I have news. I've been published in their magazine QMunicate. Yes, that's right....
I AM IN PRINT!!!
Alright, alright, so it was co-authored and Molly actually deserves the lion's share of the credit. But it was fun writing together and fun seeing my name in print. It was just an article about GUGS. They only gave us one day's notice since they needed to fill a slot opened up by a flaky no-show. (Boy do I remember those!) So Molly hacked something out and I went through and poked, prodded, added, subtracted and then she went through again and then I went through again and then we threw up our hands and declared it good enough and out it went. The other gamers thought it was good, but we've still got no idea what non-gamers would think of it.

Gaming itself is very exciting this week. I am, more or less, in three games: Harry Potter which will have its final session this Sunday. My 11-year-old Slytherin, Hetty Cowell has been facing many moral dilemmas and frightening situations but hopefully will come out ok in the end. MI8, which is action-horror-spy stuff, is getting quite tense at present (ah! they're hunting us down! They know who we are!). And then there's a Black Jewels rpg on Witchfire (online) where Kharian Danza is being swept up into all sorts of adventures...and swept into the arms of a handsome young man (who's really lucky she doesn't put a knife through his ribs; she is an assassin after all. She seems pleased though. I know she's my character but I really didn't know what she would do till it happened.)

I don't know what, if anything, I'll do on my birthday. The British tradition of going out and getting pissed with friends would not be a good idea given my concert the next day. Maybe we'll go see The Golden Compass. Or maybe I'll spend a quiet night with Ron. Don't know. But I am looking forward to Saturday. La la la! And then we can party afterwards.

Recent Attempts and other Updates

My most recent attempts to be diurnal are meeting with mixed success.

My most recent attempts to be diligent and productive are meeting with even less success. I have, however, been making progress on the world building necessary to forge onwards with my writing.

My efforts to finish recovering from my flu/cold have plateaued. Hopefully I will not have a cough at my choral performance this Saturday. I am looking forward to it (the singing, not the coughing). I am practicing my wee titchy solo at random moments throughout the day, every day. I've also been faithfully plugging the performance, quite a feat for me since I'm usually too shy. But I mentioned it to a few people at church, told my whole weekend role playing group, announced it at International Cafe, and plan to announce it at GUGS tonight.

Ron and I's attempts to make any sort of definitive decisions about far flung future times such as oh say January are still meeting with dismal failure. As stated earlier, there is progress with his immigration proceedings. But not much.

Our attempts at a job search are meeting with mixed success in the applying part (and dismal failure in the getting a job part, but if that had happened there wouldn't be a job search any more, now would there?). Ron's applied for a number (all right, a fairly small number...sigh) of UK jobs. He is still volunteering at his old lab to keep his experience fresh but this of course takes time away from job hunting. This week's focus should be applying for US jobs though.

Recent attempts to deal with the usual theological crises that arise whenever I'm in Scotland are not going well. I miss BREAK@8. I miss BPC. I miss churches that light advent candles. I understand Sandyford Church's reasoning in not following an ecumenical calendar but you'd think they could make an exception for Christmas!

Dundee

We went up to Dundee this past weekend for Jacky's graduation. Not that we actually got to the graduation. And for once out lateness was not our fault. The train ride should have been and hour and 18 min. Rather than take the train that would have only given us an hour's leeway we took the one before that giving us a whole two hours to spare (and the train station is only 5 min walk from the building where the graduation was taking place.) This meant getting up at 6:30am, but we managed it. We got to the train station with time to spare even.

Then a train broke down outside of Perth.

To cut a long (and boring) story short it took FIVE HOURS!!! to get to Dundee.

We did, however, make it in time to get the formal pictures taken with Ron in his kilt (yay!) and Jacky in her PhD robes. And we stuck around to party and celebrate. Hurray for Jacky! She even had her picture on the front page of the paper! That was very cool.

Tickled

Tonight Ron seems to be experimenting with the premise that if he tickles me while I type, I won't monopolize his computer so long.

He's right.

Thanksgiving? Huh?

Ok, granted I was nearly delusional during my last post. It was, after all, my first time up and about after nearly a week home sick. But that's no excuse to have had no idea whatsoever that it was Thanksgiving! *sigh*

Having returned home (first surviving choir practice; they had to give me a chair since I nearly keeled over but I managed to avoid both swoons and coughing fits) I felt like something warm and festive and something other than tea (since I'd been drinking tea nonstop for days of course). Therefore I went in the kitchen to see what might be done and ended up making up a new mulling recipe.

Mulled Cranberry Juice
per person add
1 cup cranberry juice
2 tspn honey
1 chai teabag
pinch of "pie spice" (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, etc.)
Heat to just below boiling allowing to stew about 5 min. Remove teabags and serve. Yum.

It came out a lot like the medieval recipe for hot spiced pomegranate juice we tried out (the hard way, crushing all those pomegranate seeds!) at Red House a couple years ago. Like I said, yum. It's occurred to me that that recipe would be much easier to cheat with these days now that pomegranate juice is in vogue.

Anyway, since cranberries are a traditional part of Thanksgiving, that was my one (albeit accidental) nod to the holiday. I had already bought the makings of Pumpkin Pie, though, so I may have to make it for my birthday now. And turkey and the rest of it is all traditional for Christmas dinner hereabouts. So I'll just have all the elements strung out. Of course, I missed the most important part: the friends and family gathered 'round. But, just think, if you'd been around me I would have given you this blasted flu! So, I was thinking of y'all the next day even if I was too addle-brained to be thinking of you the day-of.

Cough, cough. Eck!

Well, my first (hopefully "only") illness of the winter has hit. Remembering last winter and all my relapses, I hid indoors for the past four days and I'm doing much better today. Although, I ventured out today (obviously I'm posting this!) and I seem to be declining a bit. It couldn't be avoided really though. I had to meet with my choir director to go over my solo. Luckily I've gotten my voice back already although it's a bit scratchy.

So, yes, I have a solo. Granted, it's only two words ("O Oriens," in case you wondered). But still, fun stuff. Plain chant, so nifty medieval stuff. Yay!

All this time home in bed gave me lots of time for reading. So I have now finished, at long long last, Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series. Wow! Ooh, ahh! Worth it. Go read it. This is a beautiful fantasy epic in a very alternate Europe. Great character studies. She does have billions of characters, though, so I'd recommend reading them all back to back (unlike me; the five year gap between the first four and the last three didn't help things, especially since there is no character guide!). Be prepared for a prolonged "wrap up" since the character sub plots can't possibly all finish up with the climax. The last page, for no reason I can quite explain, made me cry. Oh my, even thinking about it now, I'm getting teary.

I also read Stardust (Neil Gaiman) which is a fun romp in Faerie. There are things I liked better in the book and things I liked better in the movie, but to tell you which are which would give spoilers so I suppose I shall (mostly) refrain. I suppose it boils down to the book having more of the flavor of Faerie in all its wild dangerous and inexplicable glory whereas the movie had more humor. I liked the book's end with the witches better (though I can see why they changed it for Hollywood of course; but the book had the ending I guessed, the one that poetically felt right) but I liked the movie's epilogue better than the book's.

All at Once

Ever get the feeling that everything happens at once?

Ron's sister, who has been waiting for months for surgery, went in yesterday. It looks like we'll be heading to Dundee later today to visit her in the hospital.

US Immigration has finally sent us something. I'm awaiting further details as to it's exact nature but it seemed to indicate we have moved to the next stage in the process. Woohoo!

Ron finally has had a response from a potential employer. Just dialog about the post, but that's better than the black holes he's been launching most applications into.

I guess all that news trumps the usual daily trivia, so I'll leave you there.

Falling behind

Oh my, so much to post, so little time.

I carved pumpkins with Ron and Molly. They came out quite well and I'll see if I can get pictures up. My drunken grizzled old pirate pumpkin was, quite fittingly, the first to collapse.

I also made a pumpkin pie to bring to the Harry Potter game (all that talk of pumpkin pasties and pumpkin juice). However, I had some...dificulties. I couldn't find a pre-made crust. So I bought pre-made pie crust dough as the next best thing. The instructions told me to flour it and bake it "blind" for 10-12 min before adding the filling. Well, when I checked on it after 8 min it had puffed up in the middle, burnt at the top of the puffiness, and the sides had collapsed! Ah! Well, to make a long story short, I ended up putting away a finished pumpkin pie at 3am and everyone (except Allen who professed not to like pies in general) was very impressed. Yum. It was gone within hours.

A bunch of us went to see Stardust this weekend. Great fun. Quite funny. A bit annoying that while the boy learns swordplay, the girl learns piano despite the fact she knows people are trying to kill her. Sigh. And I hear there was a fighter-chick in the book that was cut (or rather, transformed) in the movie. Grr. People who read the book seem to have not liked the movie (isn't it always the way?) but there was some Neil Gaiman left shining through. I should read more of his books. Neverwhere was amazing but scared the heck out of me (which was my own fault; I was already afraid of the London underground; I was riding the London underground nearly every day and not long after the bombing there; and what do I do but read a fantasy-horror book that takes place in the London underground, while riding the underground!)

The adventures of a Glasgow bedsit continue: the bed collapsed while we were sitting on it. Ouch. I have a large colorful bruise in a location such that none but Ron will see it. We managed to put the bed back together again and have decided not to lean against the wall while sitting on the bed. More tales to tell the grandkids one day along side the one about walking uphill both ways to school every day through the snow all year. (grin)

Bonfire Night was last night. A couple of kids had perplexed me earlier in the week by begging on the streets saying "penny for the guy?" After the second time it dawned on me that they were raising money for fireworks/bonfires to through an effigy of Guy Fawkes on. I forgot to plan ahead so when dark fell and I started hearing booms and bangs going off in all directions, I didn't actually know of a specific display to go to. So I headed out to the front of the university that stands on a bluff. As I walked I could see fireworks in all directions, but I stuck to my plan. I half-expected the bluff to be covered with people, but there were only about a half-dozen of us up there. Aside from some fireworks set off at the Huntarian Museum just across the river (which went off at about eye-level) everything seemed quite small and far off. But it was still amazing looking down at the city with fireworks going off all over the place. There were scores of full-blown shows going on plus random fireworks that would go off when individuals set them off. And there was a huge bonfire off to one side. I could see flames licking up over the top of the two or three story building it was behind and the next building was aglow with orange from the reflected flames. I was quite worried that it had gotten out of hand and caught fire to a building. I can't imagine how a fire that big could be safe. It was quite incredible looking down at the city awash with fire and fireworks.

After that I walked to church to help with International Cafe and there were fireworks going off all around me. One came out of nowhere and went of a dozen yards from me. Finally, once I thought I'd come through it all, I rounded the bend to see a roaring bonfire in the tiny park (more of an empty lot with grass and trees) beside the church. When I say bonfire, I mean it. This was no camp fire. They had taken a desk and loaded fuel above and below it and lit the whole thing on fire. Just as I came into view the kids there had lit a whole bunch of fireworks which went up to explode above park and church. Beautiful. But it's all quite an alarming experience to someone California born and bred. That bonfire was right on the grass and the flames seemed to be tickling at the branches of the trees all around it. I had to remind myself that it's just not the same in rain-drenched Scotland.

Well, then in International Cafe, many of the international students wanted to know what Bonfire Night was celebrating. I seemed to know more about the history of it than most of the Brits, but we still couldn't give a completely satisfactory account of what Guy Fawkes was trying to achieve or why the British population was so determined to remember his failure. I was also the only one able to recite the whole "Remember, remember the 5th of November" rhyme despite three Brits at my table! Of course, while I learned about the Gunpowder Plot through its tangential relationship to Shakespeare, I learned the rhyme from V for Vendetta. It was still strange though that I should know it better than those who grew up here.

As a last funny aside on Bonfire Night, the morning BBC radio had instructed us all to try to be coordinated this year: for the yellow fireworks we were to say "Ooo" and for the red ones "Ahh" and for the blue ones we were supposed to shout "Antidisestablishmentarianism!" which I thought was hysterical.

Rocket launchers

Nerf rocket launchers that plug into your USB port. Imagine the possibilities.

Ron and I decided they were probably key pad operated, point and click firing. This alone would no doubt be fun. But even better would be combining it with motion detectors to fire on anyone coming in the room or maybe an alarm clock so if you didn't get up quick enough your computer would start launching rockets at you!

Why were we looking at a USB rocket launcher? Well because I'm trying to find a USB Wi-fi adapter that will work on Mac OS 8 of course. Harder than I thought. I know they exist. It says so online. But just try finding one in Glasgow. Ah, well, the quest continues.

Wet Kitten! Mew!

Mew!

Ok, impatience carries the day. If the photographer wants me to take it down I will, but the cuteness must be spread! Just look at the sulky outrage...yep, that's me when I named this blog. Annoyed by soggy adventures but hopefully still cute. :)

Anyway, the kitten's name is Discordia and I found her on parody.org in the author's photo journal. Is she not awesome?

No big news today so I'll leave you with cuteness.

Friday Night Musings

Have I mentioned Madrigirls is loads of fun? Well it is. It is so very wonderful to be singing lots again, and in beautiful harmony. The only thing that would make it better would having Meg and Manda there too (and then I would practice more too for we would surely wander around singing in parts!).

The Chivalric Dream Society starting up here is a bit odd (hopefully this won't get back to anyone that will invoke a lynching; the geek community is so small after all). It is sort of a cross between SCA and LARPing. Kinda. The SCA has historical personas who run around in a made-up set of kingdoms which, when you break it down that way, is already a bit weird. But the Chivalric Dream people have added a fictitious extra British Isle about the size of Ireland to the south west and locate their game-thing there. So you have people with suedo- Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Pictish, Spanish, etc. background as well as "native" people who need even less ties to the reality of European history. And everyone, yes everyone, is separated into one of ten ruling families. And everyone is noble and going for knighthood.

Now that I've heard more of their fighting rules, I don't think I'll be playing with them after all. The fencing teaching contradicted many basic things I'd been taught (in two kingdoms and for a few things even in foil fencing!) and the heavy weapons armor does not at all sound safe (Chainmail and helm and sturdy shoes. That's it. Did I mention this is for use with metal weapons? Yes, running away now.) Anyway, the first craft projects are supposed to be leatherworking and chainmail making so I might stick around for those days and then abandon them. They got a fun bunch of recruits. It makes me wish I had made a go at starting a branch of the SCA when I was here as a student. They got a good 25 people at the first meeting and about 16 or so came back for the second. We'd've killed for numbers like that at St. David's! I suppose it would be evil to seduce people away from them to the SCA now? Anyway, I am nominally signed up for the "Pictish" family, so perhaps I can inject a note of historical accuracy there at least before I abandon them all forever.

Tigery Kittens!!

So I was doing an image search on Kushiel because I wanted to see the Kushiel's Dart rose...and about one in ten images were of kittens! Kushiel Bengal kittens to be specific. They looked like tigers only domestic cat size! And then, the very next day Ron came home with a newspaper with a front page story (well, a front paged tease leading to the story) on Toygers! Once again, domestic kitties bred to look like Tigers. Wee!

Prayer

I hardly know where to begin. Prayer is hard and praying with people of subtly different beliefs is harder. That seems as good a starting place as any. There is little about the prayers offered up in Sandyford's prayer meetings that I can point to and say, "I don't agree with that." However, the sum of the songs, the bible studies and the prayers leaves me worn out, often angry, feeling isolated and lonely and frustrated. Often there are fairly specific things that make me mad. I thought that was bad. Last night was worse. Oh, sure, I disagreed slightly with the bible teaching but it was silly, more of a "I agree with your premise but not how you got there from Psalm 70 which doesn't say that at all" situation. But I felt weighted down in the actual prayer, restless and trapped. By the end I was sitting there quietly crying. I added nothing aloud; I just couldn't manage it. I added my silent prayers to theirs where I felt I could, altered them where I couldn't and at times just sat there.

Why am I doing this? Well, for one thing they keep saying piercing things about the importance of sticking with it and how hard it is. And until I know if that's just them or God speaking through them I can't manage to ignore it. For another, Ron goes. For a third, I did a church hunt when I was first in Glasgow and this was the best I found. So I quieted myself enough to show no traces at the end of prayer and left as quickly as possible--and then cried half the way home, much to Ron's dismay.

An interesting point within all this--I was desperately homesick for BREAK@8. I'd not have thought I would miss anything in Atlanta, but BREAK is people more than place I suppose. But I missed them terribly. In honor of them, and because it is one of my favorite prayers, I'm including the Franciscan Blessing we used to close our prayer groups this past year. I've certainly long been blessed (and cursed) with a restless discomfort about easy answers and half-truths, and it continues to plague me here more than ever. I prefer it, however, to the alternative.

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore.

AMEN.

Of Gaming and Other Things

Well, Glasgow is bidding fair to have a beautiful autumn. As much sun as clouds most days for more than a week now. And today I wore a T-shirt walking to the QM. At first it was a bit strange because everyone else I saw was still wearing coats and scarves. Just about the time I was beginning to doubt that the day was actually warmer and to wonder if I had simply acclimated at last, I saw a stream of about five people who, like me, were carrying coats or sweaters but were down to wearing short sleeves. So the earlier people must have just been going around in disbelief that it could possibly be short-sleeve weather in October in Glasgow. One of the folks at church, though, said that many people book their holidays for this time of year since the weather is often more reliable now than in summer.

I'm back in the same spot as last time...well one window over. This is actually and even nicer view since the Boyd Orr building is now completely blocked from view while the fine old eighteenth/nineteenth century tenement-houses-turned-faculty-offices have come into view down the lane. And the tower and the lovely autumn trees are still centrally framed.

I have mixed reviews of GUGS last night. As I predicted, Ron and I showed up just a little too late to hear the announcements and descriptions of the campaigns starting up. Since at this point everything is starting up fresh (do they never have campaigns carry over from year to year I wonder?) they at least had sign up sheets with brief descriptions. I'm not sure sign up sheet would be the best method for filling all types of games. As a GM I think I'd prefer some informal interview processes for some games with the chance to scare away anyone who seemed like they would be more disruptive than otherwise. Oh well, as I'm not ready to run my game, it was a moot point. However, this means most people inclined for a campaign will have one by the time I get going, so I probably won't have much choice in players either.

Anyway, it turned out that the game I signed up for the GM was not actually present yesterday. Nor does anyone seem to know him. This is discouraging. But his description sounded interesting and the only background that sounded more appealing was being run by a GM I can't stand (I shan't even hint at why, not knowing who will eventually read this). I wish I had heard the descriptions though as most of the written ones were just one liners or even just “Torg” or the like. I'm sure the GMs would have rambled a bit more in person.

Well, seeing as I had no game for the night, I demanded board games. Eventually the person with the GUGS locker key showed up. (I think it rather foolish that we have only one set of the keys. We are role players after all, and not renowned for...practical considerations. The very fact that I now have the keys rather than Johanna who got them from Alan just emphasises my point.) This meant that I got to go up to the GUGS locker for the very first time ever! Very exciting. It was in the laundry room which I never would have guessed, though it makes sense now that I think about it. Just about all the other rooms are subject to being completely monopolized by one group or another and if the lockers were in such a room you would have to forgo getting at your stuff all too often or else disturb some other group. The laundry room on the other hand is always open. So we went to the locker, which was cool enough, but when it came down to it, it appeared I had a choice of: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico or Gang of Four. Now this was a hard choice since all three are very subject to phenomenon whereby those who have played often can almost always win against newcomers who don't fully realize the full implications of the rules. Because of this, I chose the one I am most familiar with, Settlers, in the hopes that I would not be entirely slaughtered. I have played at Red House several times (though many of those games ended, if not quite in grief and recriminations, close enough) and in Glasgow maybe once which is at least better than my twice with Puerto Rico and one time with Gang of Four. Johanna and I did have fun playing around with a pair of nearly-useless Spiderman walkie-talkies on the way back down with my loot. Nearly-useless because their range is such that by the time you are out of normal earshot, the walkie-talkies are out of range too! Still, some minor hilarity ensued anyway.

However, on returning to the other folks whose campaigns were not starting that day, Settlers was met with an “oh, no, not Settlers” by one, and from Louise, “I've got one question for you, Erica: have you got wood for sheep.” The proper response may have been, “I haven't got any wood at all” but I contented myself with rolled eyes. I don't know about the rest of the world over where Settlers is played, but in Scotland that joke is very well worn by now.

Anyway, there was a good deal of sitting around doing nothing till at last Brian pulled out Fairy Tale, took half an hour convincing the other guys that their manhood would not be in any way impaired by playing such a girly-looking game and we finally played that—I did pretty well, but Louise won it hands down. After that I was dispatched to go bring down Puerto Rico. Louise tried to tell everyone she had never played before, but seeing as she had used this ploy back when I had never played before (and then proceeded to beat the rest of us into the ground) I exposed her and then was left with the job of explaining the game to those who actually hadn't played before and warned them all that the game was really gang-up-on-Louise. As such, we won. One of the first-timers did win, disproving my standing theory about these games, but I think this was at least partly because we were all concentrating on keeping Louise from carrying out her nefarious mechanations.

Well, I would get to work but the QMU wireless is still not working. Hmm. I did put in for life-time membership today. I guess it goes up before the board which only meets on the last Monday of every month, so I've got a bit of a wait.

Ooh! Breaking news! My thesis-article-thing is still in the book collection! The contract is still in negotiation. My but these things really do take a long time. But considering how long I took to finish up my contribution, that was all to the good.

Ooh! Look, a bird!

I still find it strange after all these years to see seagulls in Glasgow. Yes, it is known as a port town, but a river port not an ocean port. It's pretty far up the Clyde as the crow--or seagull--flies. Anyway, today I have a lovely view up University Gardens Ave. No gardens in sight, I'm afraid, despite the name, but there is a row of lovely trees all dressed up in Autumn colors--mostly gold with remnants of pale green and tinges of darker orange. And just beyond them is a lovely view of the main tower of the university. If I just mentally block out the sight of the pebbled concrete monstrosities on either side of my window (and thankfully I don't actually have to look at my beloved QMU building since I'm sitting in it) then it is an all-around lovely view. I do wish they had made an effort to keep to a more uniform (lovely) style when they added more buildings to the university. I remember Dublin University did it, carefully reviewing the plans of future buildings to make sure they would blend in with the others. So it is possible. But no. From Glasgow Uni to UCSC, we just have to add giant rectangular concrete slabs.

The picture is of the QMU, from wikipedia. I think this picture is from before the remodeling, but the essentials haven't changed. See the round red sign on the 2nd floor up (it says "The Food Factory" in case you can't make it out.) The sign is gone now or changed but I'm sitting a couple of windows to the right of there--pretty much the last full window you can see on that level. Yup, that one. (waves!)

Food and Games

Ron's old supervisor took us out to lunch today at a Chinese restaurant. It was funny how much he expected it to be very foreign to us--of course it somewhat was. He ordered in rapid Mandarin and there were only a few familiar items (I couldn't name any for you, except that some were Dim Sum dumpling type things and others were wide rice noodles). But I at least acquitted myself with chopsticks reasonably well. Manda, I can't even remember how to say "a cat" in Mandarin anymore! Sigh. Anyway, it was a nice chance to visit and to talk practical job stuff and the rest.

I'm writing from GUGS today. No games for me! Sigh. There's a Descent game but no room for me and the only other thing around is chess. I don't know why we don't have the rest of the games today. I did put up a post in Witchfire though. Things are going strangely but interestingly in my weird online rpg. My assassin just caught another assassin at the opera, my cook has just been visited by a queen, my warlord has won a battle and now he and his men are partying, and my queen is getting news that should lead to her actually claiming her throne at last. Great fun. Meanwhile at Hogwarts (as of yesterday), my poor little Slytherin is having crises of conscience that are only going to get worse as time goes on. She's trying to be nice to the Mud--er, Muggle-borns. But it's so hard (as well as politically inexpedient for a Slytherin). Other than the fact that her best friend is in Gryfindore (oh the shame!), things aren't going too bad for her though. The Gryfindores on the other hand are getting in lots and lots of trouble. Hehe.

La la la Mew!

I had my first madrigirls rehearsal last night. Leading up to it I suffered a few doubts, both wondering if I was up to the challenge as well as wondering why I was giving away yet another night of my week (I'm getting awfully booked up!) and all for one concert. All such doubts were banished by the end of warm ups, let alone rehearsal. Oh, man, how I've missed this! Not that I've ever done anything quite like it--and I think Madrigirls promises to be even better than most of the choirs I've been in. Such fun music (much of it medieval, yay!), such good singers, and friendly directors.

Afterwards a few of us went to the Post-Grad Lounge for drinks. That was fun. Turns out they all knew what role-playing was (Stop and marvel. Every single one knew what it was.) and several had tried it. They talked lots about local (and not so local) folk bands and singers and I wished I had a better memory for names; it'd be fun to try some of the music. But oh, well. I had skipped dinner so my one pint had me pretty sloshed and memorizing band names was therefore well beyond my capabilities. However, I learned the names of all three people there which for me is quite a feat.

Well, I have made a grand discovery. My old union, the Queen Margret Union, now has free wi-fi! Well, I'm sure I'm supposed to be a student or something, but surely "visiting scholar" is close enough. Anyway, this makes the internet issue easier as I am bound to have an easier time finding space and a power outlet here in the QM than I was having in the library, but I don't have to watch the minutes like in a cafe... although there is a cafe in here, should I want a coffee or mocha or something. Mmm, mocha.... Bye now!

Wanted: Mascot Kitten

I need a mascot for this blog I think. I've emailed someone about permission to use a shot from her photo journal--I hope she says yes because its a priceless picture of an wet kitten full of kittenly outrage at such an impairment of dignity. But anyway, I wondered if Megan or someone else had any good pictures for consideration. Even setting aside the question of finding copyright free pictures or getting permission to use one, it is strange how few pictures of wet kittens I could find. Almost all were of kittens getting baths covered in soap which is not quite the effect I was going for. I guess a cat lover's natural reaction to seeing a kitten in the rain is to bring it inside and dry it off rather than run for the camera, but you think of the web as having pictures of everything. I'd ask Ron to draw me one, but it would end up being a mutant battle kitten, soaking wet but wielding a bazooka. Hmm. On second though, maybe I will ask Ron. That could be fun.

A Back Post

02 October 2007

Blogging:

I have begun to find that, while walking or cooking or whatnot, I think up things to put in this blog, and then can't remember what has actually made it in. After all, I don't quite manage to make it to a library or cafe every day and even when I do, I am usually pressed to use my allotted wi-fi time as wisely as possible. Thus I end up typing up whatever comes to mind at that moment and hitting “post.” One day I got around to trying to post just two minutes too late; my internet had timed out and it would have cost another cup of coffee to post. This has at last led me to a rather obvious solution: I can type up a post in advance and simply post it when I next have a moment of wi-fi access!

It has also occurred to me as I try to write this blog, that audience becomes a very tricky thing. Between role-playing groups, SCA, prayer and church groups, friends from English or Medieval Studies, friends from other random sources, and various family members...well, many of you who may be reading this know only one or two sides of me. Some of the stuff I ramble on about here will seem quite strange—maybe in a, “oh, yeah, she mentioned she did that stuff” kind of way, and maybe in a, “what the heck is she talking about?” kind of way. And certainly I tremble wondering what my family may make of all this. But oh, well. I guess this is no reason not to try anyway. So I'll try to give a more or less even account of life in all its weirdness, though I've found myself writing to the folks at Red House (SCAers and role-players in California, the whole lot of them) as a sort of core target audience, probably because it was Amanda who got me to do this in the first place. So, whoever you are, welcome to my blog. If I don't know you, I don't know why you'd want to read any of this, but feel free. If you're friend or family, welcome to my ramblings and please don't get too concerned about the likelihood of my freezing to death. It's really quite low, honest.

Glasgow kitten weather report:

The weather here must have heard me talking earlier and rallied itself for one more push of lovely weather. For three whole days now we've had blue skies and sunshine. This has been tempered by cool to cold breezes and liberal amounts of clouds though I grant they have been of the white and fluffy variety even if they do compose more than half of the sky. The effect has been very pleasant over all and I've been seen out in nothing but a t-shirt and sweater. Ron persists in wearing sandals. Madness, I say. Still, since here it labels him as a crazy sandle-wearing hippy, I use it as proof he is well suited to relocation to sunny California should the opportunity ever (please!!) present itself.

Randomness:

It has begun to seem natural to me that the silverware and the toothbrushes are kept in the same drawer. After all, they all consist of long implements that you hold at one end and stick into your mouth. Right? Still, I thought I would comment while I still had some vague memory that this is an unusual practice. (My mother would probably be horrified simply at having all the silverware and can openers etc jumbled in one drawer without dividers or anything, let along with toothbrushes mixed in for good measure.) Why, you ask? Well, because the bathroom is scary of course. Scarier than a kitchen with the roof falling, you ask? Oh that. Well, hygienically, yes, much scarier. The bathroom is shared after all, and is usually quite disgusting. I've taken to washing my hands at the kitchen sink as well since sometimes just touching the bathroom sink will make my hands much worse off than they'd been before. Worse than any dorm I've lived in actually, but only just barely. I shower in flip-flops just like in the dorms, but I shower downstairs in the less scary bathroom anyway. It's just pointless to tromp all the way down there just to brush my teeth when there's a perfectly good kitchen sink at my disposal. It's just funny that what seemed a strange clash of the worlds of bathroom and kitchen to begin with has begun to make a certain kind of sense.

Craft projects:

Well, as most of you who know me know, I usually have some sort of craft project going or in planning. Sometimes this is as elaborate as tablet weaving or sewing garb for the SCA, sometimes it is as simple as luceting or a bit of cross-stitch. At present my craft plotting and scheming has taken a practical bent. I have two projects in the planning stages. Project Jeans involves a pair of jeans that I thought I had sufficiently mended over the summer. A first wearing over here, however, reopened most of the tears, proving me wrong. Since skirts are really only good for the rare dry days and I only have three other pairs of trousers (er, pants to the Americans) with me, it would be very nice to have that pair of jeans back in commission. Though stretchy enough to apparently fit fine, I have wondered if they are a bit too small. Along those lines I have wondered if I could simultaneously sew some supporting material along the inside of the seams that are going (inside the thighs) while letting out the seams that run along the outside of the leg, adding a strip of contrasting fabric or a wide ribbon to help let it out. I think it would look too weird to have the contrasting strip run the inside seam, but letting out the outside seams might take the pressure off the inside seams. However, if I'm wrong it would be a lot of time and a bit of material wasted. The other project, Project Sweatshirt, is less chancy but also less necessary. I got a free black sweatshirt during Fresher's Fair but I really don't like the picture. I'm not fond of the advertising slogans either, though I could certainly live with them. But it has occurred to me that perhaps I don't have to. If I can find a way to creatively decorate the sweatshirt I could cover up the offending picture and slogans. I'm working on a few ideas, most of which involve finding pretty remnants for much less money than I would spend buying another sweatshirt. I guess the question is whether to go for fabrics that won't fray and cut them out in cool patterns, or cut out squares of woven fabrics and fringe them and tack them on every which way for the patchwork look.

Life in general:

Went to Alan's birthday party last night. That was fun. There I finally tried Kopparberg which is one of several things advertised on the sweatshirt mentioned above, and it is actually quite tasty pear cider. Yum. Er, for those who don't know, Alan is one of my gaming society friends here, comes from France, and is playing Griffendore to my Slitherin in Molly's Harry Potter role playing game. Speaking of which, I made the Slitherin Quidditch team (as a first year no less) in the most Slitherin way possible: an exchange of political favors. That was quite fun. I am trying to play a non-evil Slitherin, but that doesn't mean she isn't above bending the rules now and again. I seem to be doing lots of kid-related role playing right now. The one-off I played in last week was suedo-Power Rangers and we were all teenagers. Now in Harry Potter I'm playing an eleven-year-old. I may need to intentionally seek out a game tonight in which I can play a full grown adult who knows what she is doing. If anyone is running such a game at the moment that is. People continue to ask when I'm going to run Serenity. I'm not ready yet, though, and I'm rather enjoying just being a player. Campaigns start for the term next Tuesday so I need to make some decisions this week about whether I'm going to try to run Serenity at Tuesday GUGS or whether I want to play in one of the other campaigns. Michael has offered to run a four-week campaign that could then give way to mine to give me more time (and a game to play in in the mean time). I'll have to give him an answer soon. It is very fun to be back in the midst of all this role-playing again.

It all plays off the fiction-writing impulses too. At the moment I am in the process of accessing what work would have to go into any given story to make it a novel. I plan to pick one or two (with two you can switch to the other whenever you get stuck on one) to work hard on. It looks like I have serious world-building to do on just about any of them before I can return to actual writing. I know some authors manage to write there stories without actually planning out their worlds. Ursula K. Le Guin talks about it as if she were exploring the worlds just far enough to write the story at hand. But while I certainly start writing novels that way, I seem to always hit hangups along the way, things that just don't quite make sense and I feel I have to resolve them now before they present bigger continuity issues later.

Madrigirl

Remember how back at the Fresher's Fair I signed up for stuff? Well, I ended up auditioning for one of the choral groups on campus, Madrigirls, an all female madrigals group. After eight years absence from this kind of high-commitment singing group, it was a bit nerve racking to audition (especially since I could hear the pair auditioning before me through the door). All went fairly well though. I think they were short on altos to begin with, but I can't have done too bad. So, I'm in! Huzzah! I chose Madrigirls over, say, the Choral Society or the Chapel Choir because the little info section on Madrigirls said they specialized in early music. I'm hoping this means I'll be expanding my repertoire of medieval and Renaissance music. Our performance this term is December 8--not that most of you reading this will be in Glasgow then, but just in case. ;)

Whee! Well, first rehearsal is this Thursday. Here goes. La la la la!

The Wonders of a Working Heater

Well, the heater more or less works. Huzzah! Leaving it on full blast (for the hours when it works at all), I am no longer cold when dressed in several layers. So I guess we won't freeze to death after all.

Whereas the heater does not always work when it should, the oven sometimes works when it shouldn't. I have to remember to turn the whole stove/oven off at the wall because otherwise the main oven works at some reasonably-low temperature full time even when set to "off." Disturbing. And did I mention yet that a 7'x2' section of the kitchen ceiling caved in? Yes, about a month and a half ago. And yes the landlord knows. He had the rubble cleared away but hasn't done anything about fixing the ceiling nor checking to make sure the rest of the ceiling isn't likely to follow it. I'm therefore a bit nervous about time spent in the kitchen, always alert for any sign that it's time to run. On the plus side, the hole revealed more window so there is now more natural light in the kitchen. (To clarify, the ceiling in the main room is not subject to the same fate. The building is one those old high-ceilinged tenement buildings that has been converted to be a set of sort-of bed-sits, that is, six or seven almost-studio-apartments except that everyone has to share the two bathrooms. Some just have kitchens worked into the one room; our kitchen is behind one of the bathrooms and is more of its own room. I guess they felt the high ceiling was weird in such a tiny closet-like space and they put in a false ceiling, less than an inch thick, at a more "normal" ceiling hight. That is what caved in.)

Winter in September

I remember LA, Santa Cruz, Altanta. I remember September being one of the "hot" months. In LA even October might well be so warm you would want to choose your Halloween costume by how light-weight and breezy it was.

Not here. I'm already wearing long-johns under my jeans and layering sweaters. And that's for inside. And I'm still cold. The winter coat, hat and gloves have come out already and I'm still cold outside unless I've been walking awhile. You know, I used to pride myself on my resistance to the cold. Not now. I think it was last winter that broke my nerve--because it is nerve as much as biology, I'm convinced. Now I don't want to wear down my resistance, my immune system. Because we're still in the same blasted building as last year. We tried to turn on the heat today, finally admitting the summer was long gone. Nothing happened. Then we remembered that the heat only works at certain times of day (and then, not well). At least the light it better in the new room. I remember huddling near the narrow basement window--the coldest point in the flat and farthest possible from the heater--wrapped in blankets and trying to read to get my mind off my flu.

It has occurred to me that it is somewhat suspicious that I don't have terribly fond memories of any of the books I read that winter. I remember them all fairly well since I read most of them twice having few to choose from and no energy to go out to shop for more. Diana Wynn Jones' Chrestomanci books are quite good, but there is a sort of horror in me at the thought of re-reading them. I read a David Gemmell book for the first time and while I have legitimate complaints--yet another story where the woman only shows up long enough to be a martyred love interest, her death providing the motivation for the hero to go on his relentless nothing-to-loose-now quest for victory...Braveheart anyone? Gladiator? You get the idea--and yet still I wonder if reading it during that miserable flu biased me against it. The Ropemaker similarly gets only a grumpy "pretty good, I guess" from me. The Wheel of the Infinite escapes the doom of the others I read simply because it was a re-read, having first read it the previous summer during the wedding madness.

Then again, I don't think I could hate anything Martha Wells wrote. I suppose Wheel of the Infinite is my, dare I say it, least favorite of her books. But that is only because the others are so incredibly awesome. The Fall of Ile-Rien series, my first introduction to Wells, was superb and I'm trying to figure out how to get my hands on the prequel short stories appearing in Black Gate (maybe they deliver to the UK? Oh yeah, need money. Keep forgetting that minor detail. Oh well, I'll figure it out somehow. I've already tortured myself by reading the clip they give you for free online and of course they cut away just as things are getting tense for our heroes.) But The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer are both fantastic as well. Maybe Wheel of the Infinite feels like the odd man out to me because it is the only one that doesn't belong to one of the two main worlds from The Fall of Ile-Rien? I'm still trying to get my hands on City of Bones which is out of print. Last year I tried ordering a used copy but it never came and the book seller did not respond to my emails. Very vexing. I have little hope of running across a copy here, but I'm keeping an eye peeled just in case.

Ron and I did go to an interesting "Book Fair" this weekend. We were rather skeptical seeing the sign on the entrance to the Botanical Gardens--we figured they had to either have the books outside which was just asking for soaked books, or they were inside the Botanical Gardens which was asking for damp books given the very high humidity in such places. Instead we followed little signs through quite a maze of back-buildings until we were sure they were luring people to be eaten by the carnivorous plants or something when finally we came to a non-descript back door which proved to have quite a good used book fair inside. Lots of Scottish history which was great. After much deliberation I limited myself to two: one for the great pictures of ancient sites and the other, on Queen Mary's Women, because it seemed like a good read and pertinent to a few of the books I'm writing (ok, mostly "Prophesy Girl" which still needs a new name). Ron, however, chose as one of his two a book he quite liked so that I could read it: Magician. I'm nearly half way and it is quite good (in fact, yesterday is the first time since I got here that I squandered almost an entire day reading, well, the day until I went to prayer meeting).

Speaking of which, prayer meeting is hard. Many of the prayers are for individuals I don't know. So while I can certainly join my energies in praying for health or safe travel or comfort during grief for these people, I can't really add any prayers up (and it's done in a "jump in" kind of way). And the larger issues they pray about...well I know my beliefs do not quite align with theirs (these are not followers of the Church of Find Your Own Way, not by any stretch) and so, well, it's awkward. Plus I have a low attention span and keep finding myself wanting to write. However, I find this to be more a reason to stick it out and try to learn to concentrate in prayer than a reason to give up on it. The funny thing is I prayed the whole way there. I know community is supposed to be important but really, it can be far easier to talk to God one on one than to try to filter what you say for an additional audience (which is why I end up mostly silent in prayer meetings). And they are lovely welcoming people...yet I feel more at home in the community of gamers in Glasgow. What does this say about me, I wonder?

I played in a very fun one-off on Tuesday. I forget what it was called, but it most certainly did not resemble the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in any way. Nope, nope. We played our 17-year-old selves, but all living in Elgin, Scotland (which took the most mental adjustments for me, I think) and talking 6th-year English together. I ended up Green Ranger with a mighty Pterodactyl robot and a big green axe. Rwaw! We beat the bad guys of course. Great fun.

People keep asking when I'm running my Serenity game so I guess I'd better finish preparing it, huh? It's rather scary in some ways. The not-PowerRangers game was the first I'd played in in many months (since Amanda's game at Easter I believe) and it's been years now since I played in regular week-to-week game, let alone tried to GM one. And I also remember how the last one I GMed fell apart, though I maintain that that was as much inter-player angst as my own GMing skills. Of course the one game I have been playing is Witchfire (which is not based on the Witchfire books but on the Black Jewels books. Long story.). That at least is going fairly well. (Kharian's queen up and left! With no warning! Now what on earth is she supposed to do, stuck in a foreign land with a title she doesn't really deserve at such a young age (not even 100 yet!) and an unknown enemy who tried to kill her a few months back? Agathar on the other hand has just conquered the neighboring province and named it a district within his own province. So I guess that counts as "doing well." His loyal advisor seems not to be posting right now though. I may have to prod her and see if she is still around. I quite like Kalian, I hope she's still playing.)

By the way, Ron mailed (or Ron prepaired and I mailed, more accurately) a real honest to goodness job application off on Monday. (rolls eyes) While this should not be such a monumental event, it is a good start. That one is for Cambridge and he has several in Dundee he's applying for. Did I mention it's COLD here? And that it's probably still relatively warm in California? Oh well, if we can get him settled in a good job and get me living at his side I'll be content...for a little while anyway. If there are plenty of blankets and sweaters around. I'll try to get him to apply for some California jobs too. I think he was looking at one in San Diego the other day. That's at least in California. I hear they're being rather bastardy about housing and some other things. I didn't get the whole story on that though, so I'll have to look into it myself if that begins to look like a likely location. As for Dundee, it seems I did not get to see the nice part of the city (I didn't even know the coast was nearby!) so perhaps I misjudged it. It would be nice to have a coast again even if I can't have the coast I want.

All right, I think that was sufficiently rambly, don't you?

A Break in the Clouds

I actually saw sunlight for a moment a minute ago. Very impressive. I can still see two very small patches of blue sky peaking out from the white and grey. Exciting.

I realized I hadn't yet mentioned my reasons for naming my very first blog "Adventures of a Soaked Kitten." It's simple really: impulse of the moment. My two best friends at UCSC and I were known collectively as "the three kittens" and this has led to many many side jokes. So this is yet another one. Here I am back in Glasgow, an incredibly rainy city, and one rainy day I finally got around to starting this blog (an idea given to me by one of the other kittens) and so as I sat in an iCafe soaking wet trying to name my new blog, well, what else would I call it?

Yesterday was fun, although I finally overloaded on social interaction. This past year I've spent most of my time buried in books and laptop finishing my thesis. Even my procrastination usually took book or computer form. Then, for the final stages, I moved "home" out to speck-ville, GA where for two months social interaction involved occasional insane but fascinating conversations with my step-father (What? It's true!) and weekly trips to the next county over to go to the live music at the farmer's market. (I'm not sure that's the really-o, truly-o farmer's market website but I found it by googling for "Everything's for Sale, except the Market Dog!" --hello, Hannah!!).

So, suddenly, from thesis-writing-world and rural South I find myself not only living in a big city again but talking to lots of people. First it was volunteering to work the Fresher's Fair. Then it was going to the GUGS Fresher's Meet in a local bar. Then it was catching up with all sorts of people including Janet (named because I've spent the most time at once catching up with her) and then getting to know a new friend better, once again by talking most of a day away (yesterday). Then, still yesterday, after talking for hours I grabbed a quick dinner before heading off to talk for hours more. Volunteering at the International Cafe at Sandyford Church was the final overload. Dozens of people. All from different parts of the globe. Almost none of them at all familiar. I don't do well in crowds anyway. Not that I actually had any problems last night. It was just exhausting. Sociability overload. Still, it was very fun meeting people from Australia, Germany, France, India, Japan, Poland, and some other places I can't recall just now.

And in twenty minutes I'll go to GUGS and meet and talk to yet more people...

Ah! More people!!

(Don't mind me. I'll just be over here hiding in the corner.)

Another Rainy Day in Glasgow

Well, today is a bank holiday but Ron doesn't have the day off. I'm meeting up with a new friend though so today will probably be unproductive again. I was going to go pick up my library card today, but they may actually have the day off over there. So we'll see.

I seem to have volunteered myself to help out fortnightly at the International Cafe at Sandyford Church (where Ron and I attend). It was funny last night. Someone asked me when I first came to Sandyford and I said "2001" and then stopped and marveled at how long ago that is! Of course I attend "on and off" where the "off" has often involved year or more long gaps where I'm in the US. But no matter. It's still a long time to be going back to the same church, at least for me.

A funny thing about Sandyford. I leave upset or angry about the sermon as often as not (perhaps more often than not) yet I still like going there. I suppose I'd rather be challenged to think than to be handed easy mush. The minister has a very careful, textual approach to biblical interpretation. But that doesn't mean I don't disagree with some of those interpretations. In this case though, my desire to learn Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic has been renewed since my only counterargument is based on hearsay about the translation of the Greek words in question and I have no information at all about the corresponding Hebrew words. The issue, in this case, is homosexual behavior. It's always something though.

They are all very nice, caring people though and, when I'm feeling up to it, they are very considerate and cordial in the ensuing theological debates. When I'm not feeling up to it, I keep my mouth shut, have a cup of tea and ask how they've been. I'm on the look out to meet and greet new students (when led into being drafted for the International Cafe where they have tea and coffee for the international students). It all comes full circle.

Sitting in Offshore

I suppose I should have started this as soon as I set foot on "shore" again, because already I have a lot to catch up on and I'm only just beginning!
In case you didn't hear or guess already, I arrived in Glasgow safe and sound back on Sept 10. No problems with border control, but I'm only here as a visitor which means I can't work. My return is scheduled for mid-January but in reality life is very up in the air right now so that is somewhat subject to change. The plan is to play housewife, help Ron get job apps out, keep immigration papers moving, try to get some academic publications and finally write some fiction of my own. Oh, and maybe volunteer with the Red Cross (long story, more later if I get that far). And maybe GM a short game of Serenity.
Highlights so far:
Ron. Oh my, actually being in the same place as my husband! Yay! Woohoo!!
Museum of Scotland. Ron and I took the train over to Edinburgh and, being a loving husband, he let me dominate the trip with exploring the ancient and medieval Scotland sections of the museum. They have a huge collection of Pictish stones including the Hilton of Cadboll stone which I've been trying to study through bad photos for years. It boasts the best (arguably only non-biblical) depiction (no pun intended) of a Pictish woman from the extant stones. I still don't have an answer to the puzzle of what the curve above her hands is, nor solved the debate of hair versus hair-covering, but it was still very exciting to see in person. I had no idea how huge that particular stone is; I could really have used a ladder to see the woman properly. Plus I now have two more potential-women to contemplate. And the museum curators seem to come down on the ogam debate translating "dttrr" as "daughter" which lends credence to the Norse-written-in-ogam theory and gives another possibly Pictish/Picto-Norse feminine name: Nectudadd or something along that line. The "Nectu-" certainly points to Pictish origin or influence but "dottir" or "daughter" would indicate a Norse/Germanic naming pattern...I'm getting carried away aren't I?
Glasgow Uni's Fresher's Fair. I got drafted to work the GUGS (gaming society) table in the Fresher's Fair for all three days (about 6 1/2 hours a day) and that was fun and exhausting. The third day was very slow and I wandered the other stalls a bit and signed up for a few things (including Red Cross volunteering). Among other things, I saw there is a new society this year: The Chivalric Dream Society. It turns out they are a sort of daughter society from a society that split off from the SCA. Their fighting style sounds closest to "sidesword" which has not been generally approved in the SCA yet (next closest would be fencing, but I'm worried I might learn bad "habits" from them, like slashing moves.) Anyway, I may check them out if I have time. At the very least it could be fun to hang out and learn some chainmail making and leather working (which they advertised). I was going to go on the Tower tour but, as usual, it was canceled due to bad weather. I've still never been up, and the tours are over for the year. So the questions remains: shall I ever climb Glasgow Uni's tower?
Friends! Yay! Friends! I've gotten to catch up with Johanna, Molly, Brian, Janet and many more wonderful residents of Glasgow, which has been grand. Molly's pulling me into her Harry Potter game which begins tomorrow. I'm playing an American pure-blood who has come overseas to Hogwarts because it is more snooty and prestigious. She'll be in Slitherin for sure. (Grin.)
Library. I sent a lengthy email detailing all the reasons it would be absolutely awesome if I could study in Glasgow's library as an independent scholar. And now they've said "yes"! Yay! Books! Lots and lots of Celtic and Medieval Studies books! Whee!
Well, my internet access consists of using Ron's laptop (thus denying him access) either in the limited hours of the public library or by paying for coffee drinks in one of the internet cafes. Today's method is the latter, and my beloved is with me and wants his turn, so I'll have to call it a day.