Chichester, West Dean College

My friend Abby is now on a Post Grad course at West Dean College near Chichester. Since it is half term and since I haven't seen her since a year and a half ago when she came to interview at the school, I went to go visit. Oh my gosh you guys, I kept giggling the entire time I was there because it was so stunningly beautiful everywhere you turned that giggling was the only reaction I could have. It was either that or go light headed from gasping so much. May I suggest that you head over to her flickr site as soon as possible? Amazing photographs of gorgeousness.

Go.

Shoo.

This post will still be here when you come back.

Abby is there to study book conservation, but other people study ceramics, clocks, instruments, metals, furniture, and tapestries. It was like a post grad, English Interlochen. A tiny, gorgeous environment populated with creative, passionate people that you divide according to their majors. ("See that guy? Bet'ya he's ceramics...") Most of them live on campus in this idyllic country estate.

I went for a couple of walks (first by myself because Abby was in class) I wandered through sheep fields, alcoves made from trees, and corridors of autumn leaves. I took a short nap on a bench with the sun shining on my face and chortled to myself whenever I startled the pheasants. (Which was constantly as they are both abundant and easily startled.) Abby took me through the Victorian kitchen gardens and I kept delightedly clapping my hands and grinning. We ate apples from the orchard, went on an epic tromp to the trundle, ate delicious food (even if Abby's classmates complain that the cheeseboard has the same cheese every night. Whatever, the Stilton was lovely.) And fell asleep gossiping. The next morning I was allowed to watch their book binding class and was fascinated. What a delightful visit.

As a quick aside- West Dean College was founded by the estate of Edward James, who worked with Salvador Dali. When Abby took me on a quick tour through the main building we kept turning around innocuous corners and running into, you know, just random things. Like two of the lobster phones. And the original watercolour of the artichoke house. You know. Just things. (!)

Springtime Adventure

Linda came round today and we went trekking. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous spring day and I have the privilege of living nearby this massive set of parks. So we went to the corner shop and got provisioned with trail mix and juice boxes. (side note: corner stores in the UK are brilliant. Specifically for their selection of Rubicon juices in exotic and delicious flavors. I had mango and Linda had lychee. We skipped the guava and passion fruit that was also available. Yum.)

The trek was epic- we went through many of the parks and even wandered into a very cool nature preserve that, we later figured out, only has one entrance which is unfortunately located and the opposite end of where we wanted to get out. So we looked a some water birds through the wooden flaps in the viewing area, and we admired the giant mosaic of a grasshopper, and we read informative plaques about small and cute ponds before deciding that, really, since we could SEE the path we wanted to be on just over that fence- we might as well just hop it.

So we did. But first we had to find a place where there wasn't barbed wire and where it was low enough that we had a chance of being dexterous enough to get over. We ended up jumping down in front of this family of four with two small, blond, impressionable young boys that we were setting a very poor example for.

It was an excellent adventure.

Hair. Also, weirdness.

I got my hair cut, did I tell you that? I freaking love it and have been wanting bangs/fringe for ages so I dig having it now. In yellow nursery one of the assistants had the tykes tell me that they liked my hair yesterday and OH. I blushed so bad. Thanks, tykes.

On Sarah and Desh's last day in London we were down by St. Pauls and found these furry people. None of us have been able to figure out what on earth they were doing. There were about 30 of them on the steps of St. Pauls and they all refused to tell us when asked point blank on the day. Sarah described this guy as a "skunk who fell in some windex." Which I think is so. great. In any case, I don't have a good explanation for this photo- but look: Bangs! (Fringe!)

The faces pictures is just because.

Bright Colors/Busy and Social

I have been SO busy recently. I don't think I've been at home for an evening in two weeks- though of course, going to Scotland helped with that...So I want to tell you about some of what I've been up to.

That being said, the real reason I decided to start blogging right now is because of the incredibly bright colors I happen to be wearing- red hoodie, pink yoga pants, and my delightfully warm rainbow patterned knit socks from Andy and Nancy. I think I may be a little bit blinding in this outfit.

Last night I went to the Science Museum for one of their late night events-this is the second one I have been to and this time the theme was "music" which was, as you may have guessed, right up my alley. In addition to having their regular exhibits open (and free from small children, so you get to play with all the toys too!) they also have all sorts of special events to do with their theme. My favorites from last night were the silent disco where everyone is given a pair of wireless headphones and you choose from two competing DJs, KaraUke, and kazoo making with clothes pins and rubber bands.

Silent disco is hilarious to walk by because you can't hear anything anyone is listening to because it is all through headphones and half the group is bopping around to a completely different beat than the other half. It's especially great when the two DJs have chosen music that encourages very different styles of movement- like reggae on one channel and a Ramones remix on the other.

KaraUke is karaoke with a ukulele backing band. It was ridiculous and *awesome.* I am going to go to some more of their gigs because...well, do I really need a reason? My life will not be complete until I have sung Eye of the Tiger with them.

On Monday Ella and I went to the South Bank Centre for Hide and Seek: Sandpit which is a "monthly" pervasive gaming testing ground. It's getting to the point where I've now been to enough events like this that I am recognizing a lot of people. Am I turning into a groupie a little? Yes. In addition to playing an intense version of "Mafia" I also ran into my friends Emma and Will whom I haven't seen in six months since they left on a train trip through Russia and the rest of Europe and then moved to Bristol. What were they doing in London? Clearly they showed up for the express purpose of catching up with me...

On Tuesday I went to Gwen and Rob's friend's album launch which Rob was doing the sound for. Gwen and I also spent Tuesday afternoon talking to an accountant friend of hers about how to do taxes in the UK. He was incredibly generous with his time and we both feel both more relaxed about the whole tax situation and far more knowledgeable.

On Friday I took Meredith to a game run by Fire-Hazard called "Survivor Sports" which basically boils down to dodge ball in the dark with glow sticks. It was totally sweaty and fun.

Saturday was another Jezebel meet up followed by scrabble with Rob and Gwen. (I lost, not as badly as possible, but still. Gwen won. AND made cool words. Go Gwen!)

Sunday I went to the lamest Chinese New Year celebration ever with Linda, my tiny tykes co-worker. Man, they really needed a stage manager. The event was in Trafalgar square, and to be fair it had been raining, but really- don't have 5 minutes of down time followed by 15 minutes of random people painting the eyes of the dragon that no one in the audience can see, followed by really lame audience participation (clue- if the giant crowd isn't cheering for you and hasn't yet done so at all- don't heckle us. It doesn't create goodwill between the audience and you. It creates quite a lot of ill-will actually.) Linda and I were out in the rain for over an hour and they finally started doing a dragon dance for 2 minutes but cut that short to do another photo call, so we left. But we had a really nice time chatting! So it wasn't a total wash!

Sunday night we found out that Rob had finally gotten a job! So Gwen and Rob and I celebrated- which was bunches of fun. (Who finds out they've been hired on a Sunday? Isn't that weird?) We ended up at this delicious Belgian restaurant that I don't remember the name of. They had long, sort of communal tables, so we ended up talking to the guy next to us who is a buyer for some sort of knock off fashion house in America. He travels all the time and ended up buying us drinks because he felt so bad for us that eating at this restaurant was a treat rather than just a matter of course. He left his billfold on the table at one point and it was full of $100 bills. We were like "....right. Different world."

Scotland: All Done

Scotland: Number 4

We were on the tour bus for two days and then spent one more day in Edinburgh before hopping onto the Caledonian Sleeper at midnight that took us back to London. The sleeper train was a decently good idea- it was cheaper than other train times and it meant that we got to maximize our time in Scotland while minimizing the amount that we spent on hotels, but it was not the most comfortable sleep I've ever had. Ah well. Anyhow- on our Edinburgh tourist day we goaded the guide at the gate of the castle into taking a pictures with us, walked around the grounds, looked at a tartan mill, wandered through the writers museum, looked at stained glass windows in St. Giles' Cathedral, and were walking down towards the National Museum of Scotland to look at Pictish artifacts when museum walking caught up to us and we needed a break to rest our backs.

Fortunately Edinburgh is full of the best looking, most inviting, and characterful pubs I've ever seen. So we wandered off the main road and ended up in The Royal Oak. Man, were we lucky enough to wander in there. The pub is about the size of my parents' living room. Snug, inviting, and covered in "Best Folk Music Venue" awards. Being such a small place it was easy to get to chatting with the other folk there. Chief among the chatters were Mike- the 6'4" bartender from England and Alan- the bekilted genealogist who is from another branch of Wylder's clan. They had a wee tiff about being racist towards the English in Scotland which was settled quickly with a handshake and another beer.

Alan told us all about Sarah's clan and the connections between the various branches and then, upon being asked about a plaque we'd seen in St. Giles' called up a friend and reported back that the Bailey's came to Scotland with the Normans and were part of the Lamont clan? Or something like that? (I have to admit, I wasn't totally following his explanation.) We fully intended to come back that evening to listen to whatever music was playing that night, but when we announced our intention Mike jumped in and said that we needed to go two minutes down the road to The Green Mantle where his band was playing that evening. Which is how, that night, I ended up borrowing a bodhran for one song, singing "where have all the flowers gone" along with the rest of the pub, and trying to figure out if I liked the mandolin or the banjo solos better. Thanks, Mike.

Scotland: Number 2

Scotland is full of Lochs. (This is one of those "No duh" realizations I had on our quick trip. Other ones include "Scotch Broom is native to...Scotland") A less obvious realization is that Haggis is actually delicious. Okay, I don't eat mammals and I didn't have proper haggis, but we had Scottish breakfasts every morning we were there and to my delight I found that vegetarian haggis was a regular part of that. Desh even found a vegetarian haggis samosa- taking fusion food to its outer limits.

But back to the lochs- I have many, many photographs of beautiful Scottish lakes. I have no EARTHLY idea of which ones are which. I do know that we saw Loch Ness, and it was much bigger than I expected it to be. I've always had this mental picture that I created when reading a book called The Banshee in elementary school (which isn't even about Loch Ness, but hey) of a crumbling castle next to a dark lake- a lake that, while large enough to reasonably row a boat in, was still small enough to see all sides of from one point. Loch Ness IS dark, and there IS a crumbling castle, but it is most certainly not small.

Desh spent most of the trip taking pictures with his fancy schmancy camera. Mac would give us instructions like "don't go on the rocks, they'll be very slippy in this weather" and out Desh would head, to go set up his tripod on those rocks. Anyhow- the light on the above picture is not ideal- but it *is* of me on Loch Ness. So there ya go.

Scotland: Number 1

My friends Wylder and Desh are visiting from DC on their way to India. Since it is half-term for me we decided to spend a couple of days up in Scotland. We decided to take a two day, small bus tour into the Highlands with a tour company called Rabbies which is maybe not the nicest name ever, but they did a great job.

We had a 16 seater bus/van thing with 12 of us on the tour. With people from Spain, US, UK, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand, we were a very international group. Our tour guide was Mac Scott. I haven't decided yet if that could possibly be his real name- but we'll roll with it for now. He showed up all kilted out and proceeded to spend the next two days regaling us with dozens of stories of battles and heroes and the organization of various clans through his microphone. His accent would get thicker the deeper into a legend he got and then would abruptly drop back into a fairly normal Edinburgh accent whenever we needed to make a decision about where to go next or when we almost ran over a pheasant. He would also act out some parts of various stories using hand gestures and sound effects. The sound effects were fine (because life is better with sound effects) but the hand gestures were sometimes a little much- like when we would be careening through the snow and suddenly both hands are off. the. wheel. Yeah, that's lovely that you have to fold and fold and fold the Feileadh Mor but drive!

Not that I ever actually felt unsafe- we were in very good hands.

We didn't have the best of luck with weather while we were out there- heavy mist covered the city on our way out of Edinburgh and it snowed overnight when we were in Inverness- but had I not been told that we weren't following the original plan- I don't think I would have noticed.

We frequently left the bus to go look at and take pictures of stunning scenery and lochs. I fell massively in love with the "hairy ginger cows" (Highland Cattle) and would frequently squeal when they were visible outside the windows. They're just so cuddly and ginger and they can't see very well through all their hair! Cute.

I should probably point out that Scottish people do not, to my knowledge, refer to the Highland cattle as "wee 'airy ginge' coos" but MAN Sarah, Desh, I do.

Everything was stunningly gorgeous, and if we ended up in a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow trying to take pictures, well, at least I had 4 extra pairs of wool socks to change into.

Tom Kha Gai

Do you know when Chinese New Year is this year? On Sunday. Once I figured this out it explained to me why all of the Asian food stores that I passed (or went through trying to find galangal without asking anyone if they had it) were PACKED with people. Also dragon fruit. Anyhow. I was brave and finally picked my way through the largest shop I could find finding all of the ingredients for Tom Kha Gai. Gwen came over for dinner and we made elaborate food with fancy, fun, exotic ingredients. I have pictures. We also used her brand new mixer to make cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. Because we are just that cool.

Weekend of New People

On Saturday Ella finally took me down to her Dad's house in order to meet her baby sister! Naimh is now 8 months old exactly and she's pointing, starting to say recognizable syllables, and getting oh-so-close to crawling. She's pretty adorable. Holding her consisted more of bracing her while she squirmed than actual holding- she's a strong baby!

Ella got a car for her birthday (or something like that, I think it showed up this summer which is after her birthday, but whatever) so I sat in the passenger's seat and navigated while Ella drove through London. We were using the London A-Z and at one point (I'm not sure how this happened) we ended up a good 4 pages beyond where I thought we were...oops. I think we ended up going too far East and having to back track a bit, but we didn't do any "oh wait, that was the exit" or "turn around, turn around!" so points!

Mark, Ella's dad, was tired when we got there, but he kindly supplied us with assorted cheese and crackers and tea and we had a great time playing with the kittens and having a very involved discussion about pets until Naimh woke up from her nap.

It was a pretty great visit: cheese, kittens, and a baby! Do you really want anything more?

On Sunday I went to evensong with Sarah Titterington and her parents at St. Pauls (I'm getting to be an old hand at this whole evensong thing) turns out this week is the first week of advent so the Christmas trees were already up in the sanctuary and there was a giant advent wreathe in the corner. I tried sketching some of it to put in my sketch book/journal for the class I'm taking with Mical. Obviously I didn't get my paints out so I was writing detailed color notes on the sketch "silver grey blue" "silver grey blue, but darker because it's in the shadow" I realized as I wrote 'brown' and then crossed that out to 'grey' that just because I know what color that object is in the light (for instance: wood) doesn't mean that it is actually appearing that color right now.

After evensong we went to YO! Sushi (yes, that is actually the name of the restaurant) for a bit of tea and a snack. It is so nice to see all of them, they're lovely people. We had a good talk about things we might do in Kansas when everyone is there for the wedding in August. Kansas in August, who thinks that is a good idea temperature wise? Sarah and I keep joking that we should make sure all of the guys are in full morning suits (tails, waistcoat, cravat, top hat) since that is an English tradition.

Sunday evening (and here is where the new people come in again) I went to a meet up of blog readers from Jezebel.com which is a feminist leaning news and pop culture site. They were such lovely people! And none of them were musicians! We ended up at this bar right next to Tottenham Court Square that was *deserted* except for us (I guess Sunday early evening isn't a big time for bars?) so empty was it that we actually were hanging outside for a while convinced that it wasn't open until I asked (innocently and just covering our bases) "We did try the door, right?"

I think all told there were about 14 women there. I was on the younger side of things, but felt right at home anyway. Most people were ex-pats of one kind of another: Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and a couple of actual English people. They were lawyers, Women's rights activists, a recently published novelist (who I will tell you more about at Christmas since at least one of her books is becoming a gift), book store clerks, unemployed, and me. (I'm sure there were some other careers as well but there was such a flurry of talking that it was hard to keep everyone straight. I only caught about four names total.) Anyhow the evening was really lovely and I'm glad I had been brave enough to go show up at a random place in London to meet random people I knew very little about other than that we all enjoyed reading the same blog. Which, actually, it turns out is a fairly useful thing to know- there is a sort of baseline for assumptions you can make about that person.

Swine Flu

I knew I wasn't washing my hands around the tykes quite enough... It started on Friday with a bit of a sore throat before getting full blown enough that I was shivering and had a blinding headache by Saturday. Meredith brought over a thermometer today and I'm ranging between 37.5C and 38.6C usually hitting 38.1C.

Which, for those of you who know Fahrenheit better than Celsius, is a range of 99.5F to 101.5F, and usually hitting 100.6F.

Meredith is returning the Flu Buddy favor and getting me the Tamiflu this afternoon. Thanks to her I also now have some soup, toilet paper, and shampoo- all of which I had managed to run out of. So yay Meredith!

I feel the worst at night and wake up many, many times to blow my nose, both cover up more and kick the covers off, and just generally from muscle pain.

Then, during the day, I'm just bored. But I don't feel like standing up. I am drinking lots of fluids though, and though I haven't really been napping- I also definitely haven't been exerting myself.

So there you go- update for today.