The Backs of Things

All right, here are a few more pictures, this time from the National Museum of Scotland. I've now been to this museum twice--and I'm giving you one picture from each trip actually--and I think I've figured out something very important about me and museums containing nifty medieval things: I'd be much better off going alone. I adore Janet and I love Ron but neither can match my enthusiasm and, more problematic, both are prone to be bored stiff as I slow down to snap pictures and scribble down notes about things no matter how fast I try to be. The result is that it's too slow a trip for them to really have fun and too rushed a trip for me to be happy with the results. So I really need to be completely antisocial, catch a bus or train over to Edinburgh first thing in the morning well equipped with batteries and a notepad and then take careful non-blurry photographs with sufficient notes to tell me afterwards what I took pictures of.

Ok, enough ranting, now for the fun stuff. Well, one of the fun things about going to large museums is seeing the little things that aren't famous or anything, but reveal a lot about the material culture of the past. But one of the other fun things is seeing the really famous things but from other angles that never quite make it in the text books. So, here are two selections from the latter category: the backs of a few of the Lewis chessmen and the back of the Orkney hood. In both cases it was still hard to maneuver to the side of the case to get the shot--but it was well worth it.

I did get a few more interesting fabric related shots, for those of you crazy fellow geeks of medieval Scottish fiber arts as well as a couple other angles on the hood (the others have fingers or flashes etc; see above on going way too fast).

Archaeologists generally call the Orkney hood a "recycled" garment--made in part from left over or reused bits from another garment. One of the clues to this is in the back where you can see things don't all line up and hang as perfectly as in the front and the fringe doesn't quite reach all the way across.

As for those that label this a "child's" hood, though, I have to completely disagree--and the curator who arranged the hood seems to as well. It's sitting on a model of a full grown man's head and it fits just fine; I think this could easily be an adult hood.

Well, once I'm organized enough to figure out where to put pictures, I'll get some more up. Hope that will tide you over for now.

Broch and Roman Fort and Museum

Much archaeological fun was had the last few days!

I'll need to find a better forum for the bulk of the pictures but I'll give you a few highlights here...

Here we have an outside and inside view of a fairly well preserved midlands broch. These were round windowless fortresses built around 100BC - 100AD according to my handy book on ancient Scotland (it's a bit before my area of expertise!)

This particular broch is not owned by Historic Scotland and thus has no sign posts, no marked trail, no explanatory plaques. But Janet and I tracked it down and were very impressed. The walls of brochs are very thick--they're actually hollow for most of the broch with a stairway running inside and cells "hollowed" out of the parts where the spiral stair isn't. One story of the stair was left and on the opposite side one of the oval cells. And the entry lintal and the lintal leading to the stair were both still in place. Very cool!

Well, it turns out it's kicking out time in the cafe, so accounts of other adventures will have to wait! Stay tuned for more nifty archaeology!

Morning Travels and Trials

This morning I did something really impressive. I got up with my first alarm clock at 7am. Why? Because I wanted to go download drivers for my camera so I could pull the pictures off the memory stick so I would be able to take new pictures in Edinburgh today. So I got up at 7 all motivated, cooked breakfast (fed some to Ron who then went back to sleep for the half hour till he has to get up) and headed out to find an internet cafe...

First problem, Glasgow is *not* a city that never sleeps. And they don't seem to believe in having a cup a coffee to wake up before work either. I tried my closest regular haunts first which took me down to Great Western Rd, back across Bank St and then down Gibson St. Well, that took out five potential WiFi spots, but I had hope. I was sure iCafe and the Bay Tree Cafe both opened around 7 so back I went to trek further down Great Western. Neither Bay Tree nor iCafe were open. Most of these places don't actually post their hours but iCafe was nice enough to tell me I was a full hour early by this point since they open at 8:30. Well, since I was that far down Great Western I decided to slog onwards to check Bean Scene (the one by the M8 now being closer than the one on Ashton Ln I usually frequent. So, I hiked down Great Western to the M8...except Bean Scene, I recalled belatedly, isn't on Great Western, it's on Gibson St. Now for the non-Glasweigians in the audience, Great Western and Gibson St steadily diverge, so what was three blocks apart on my first zig and four apart on my next zag was now significantly more. And nor was there a single cross street leading from one to the other. So I cut down myriad little residential streets (discovering on the way the last remnents of what must have been a grand square in the 19th century...and one of the new buildings had some funny art I'd loved to have taken a picture of and posted here--if only I'd had a working camera!) until I finally rejoined Gibson St. At last I came to Bean Scene and--wow!--they were open.

So here I am...but, alas, Sony tells me my camera is incompatible with Vista.

That'll teach me to get up early!

April Snow?

If April showers bring May flowers than what does April snow and hail bring?

Yes, that's right, after a day and a half of glorious sunny spring weather, the tempature dropped suddenly on Satuday afternoon and that night it hailed and the next moring it snowed--enough to stick for a good while. Now today we're back to Glasgow's default weather--cold and overcast.

Ok, so for the more sober part of the blog. I had a bit of a self revelation on Sunday. I know I've stopped talking about it here, but some of you may remember me posting about my growing frustration at my church here in Glasgow. I had dropped out of the prayer group, but sunday sermons were still a weekly source of anger. It kept growing and growing till I'd be bracing myself before sermons or synically wondering what he would say to piss me off this time. Watching the all-male group of deacons distribute the bread and wine added a cynical edge even to communion (what? they really can't find even one woman worthy to be a deacon in the church? And people shrug it off as "a bit oldfashioned" but it's all of a piece!).

But I finally realized this Sunday that I'd fallen into the trap. I'd let my anger at the religious trappings interfear with my relationship with God. Where in the begining it had just driven me to prayer more--albeit often quiet rant-like prayers--I've hardly prayed at all recently. I haven't done any of the religious reading I meant to do. Spiritual contemplation doesn't even occur to me. So, it's time to take a deep breath and start repairing that relationship.

Blue Sky!!

Well, today was a much better day. A good day even.

Glasgow gave us a glorious sunny day. Warm enough not to wear a coat for the first time this spring. Beautiful blue sky with puffy white clouds and a bit of a cold breeze.

And Ron and I were even proactive. Went out--walked across town via the park (where the daffodils are blooming now) and got errands done.

And now our favorite cafe happens to have live music tonight. Wee!

Jobhunt Blues (Again)

Well, I began trying to jobhunt (again). I had spotted a job on craigslist that looked really cool. Fun, I was well qualified, it payed money, and best of all it was largely work at home except when they flew people in for meetings--and they're home base is in California. The problem? My resume was on the backup disks that went missing months and months ago and I found this while travelling anyway. So, I went back home and after a couple weeks of choas got around to digging through everything (again). I didn't turn up the disks. But I *did* find a hardcopy of a draft of an academic CV. Well, this made me feel better...like I wasn't starting from scratch, so I typed it back in. Now I had something to start from. I went back to the listing...not there. I checked the company's website...no listing. So, I was too slow (again).

So, I've downloaded some resume templates and have started trying to make a more work-oriented version of my resume so that when the *next* dream job comes my way, I'll be ready.