so the overnight bus to london was a success, overall, but i’m not sure i’d do it again. i didn’t go with the bus with extra leg room and leather seats after all, because it turned out you only got those for the last few hours, and in exchange you had to sit in birmingham for 45 minutes, change buses, and make more stops. for a while i thought that it would be better to be officially engaged in bus travel for a few more hours (and thus with full license to sleep on the bus) than it would be to get to london at 6:45 and be tired but self-conscious about sleeping in the bus station until a more reasonable hour, but then i wised up.

mostly, i remembered that Changing buses sucks because you have to worry about your bags, and the trip is broken up into stupid chunks of time that don’t lend themselves to very much other than vacant staring.

and then i realized that 6:45 is almost 7, and people are awake then.

so straight through it was.

i almost missed the bus, due to a dangerous cocktail of my tendency to not leave until the last possible second and my inability to really convince myself that it takes longer than i think it does to walk with all my bags. i got there just in the nick of time, and the bus turned out to be full, which surprised me a little bit. i had to get over it, though, and figure out where to sit, so at first i stopped for a minute in that front seat that always has a bag in it but never a person, so that i could survey the bus and choose who to annoy by squeezing in next to them just when it had seemed safe to relax.

this wasn’t a fun decision, and while i was standing there the bus driver came back on and said “that’s where the other drivers sit.” to which i replied, “oh, ok.” and kept trying to figure out where to go. i guess he was expecting me to scurry away immediately, though, because then he said, with some exasperation in his voice “you’ll have to move if someone else gets on!” and he grabbed the little bag on the seat, which apparently was his.

this was awesome, because it solved my problem And gave me my own seat, and while i would rather have not annoyed the driver, it was better than annoying the driver And annoying someone else who i was going to have to sit by for 8 hours, so it seemed best to just settle in and enjoy the extra leg room and the view. i consoled myself by promising to be a good sport about moving if necessity required it.

i got about half of the trip, which was nice, but it wasn’t until the other driver finally arrived that the full repercussions of my temporary reprieve sunk in, because then i had to pick one of the seats where someone had already made themselves comfortable, and that sucked. i hovered for a minute in one where the other person was actually asleep because it was one of the few where there was actually some room to sit (most people had their bags on the other seat or something), but then the bus started moving and i really hadn’t seen a better place so i just squeezed myself in and hoped that the woman wouldn’t freak out when she woke up with a stranger beside her. it turned out ok, but it was very cramped, and sleep did not come at all easily for the rest of the ride.

but enough about the bus trip, yeesh.

i’m in london!

when i arrived at victoria station, i wandered around looking for the place to leave my luggage and then headed out into the city with my daypack and the idea that i would just wander around and find somewhere to sit and eat the sandwich that i had brought along for breakfast. then maybe i could just head straight to brick lane and find a coffee shop until it was time to meet the guy from whom i am letting the room. his name is dominic, and i will call him that now, because it is shorter than “the guy from whom i am letting the room”, and more friendly.

i had no idea where i was when i emerged from the station, but i saw some little signs that seemed to want to help me discover the answer, so i approached them and one said “buckingham palace ->”

i was too tired to think of taking a picture for the purpose of annotating this story, so you will have to forgive me. here is a sign you may have missed from the scotland pics, though:

anyway, buckingham palace seemed like as good a suggestion as any, since it would start my tourist wanderings off on a solid foot, give me a place to walk, and isn’t there a park near there? perfect for sandwich eating.

it was a bit of a walk but the signs continued, and the fact that i was on “buckingham palace road” was a rather reassuring backup. there was no missing it once i arrived, though there weren’t many people there apart from the guy picking up trash, and he looked at the few tourist types with some bemusement. i’m sure that if he was not obliged to be out in the cold at 7 in the morning, he could think of several better things to be doing, so we probably seemed a bit silly, and i couldn’t really disagree.

there was an indian couple puttering around the fountain and they took my picture for me in exchange for me returning the favor, so there ya go. me in london. in case you thought i was making the whole thing up.

they apparently don’t guard the palace in the winter, so no guys with straight faces and funny hats, but that was ok. there was indeed a park right next door (or 3 parks, depending on how you look at it), so i wandered there. it had rained so the benches were wet, but i ate my sandwich anyway, and watched the joggers.

there was a funny monument kind of thing with water running across rock in that fashion that seemed to be quite popular for a while, and i stared at it for a bit before walking up and discovering that it is a monument to the canadians who served with the british in the world wars.

it is black slate with some maple leaves etched into it, and mother nature is helping at the moment because thousands of crisp golden maple leaves are scattered in the area and mingling in the waters of the fountain.

the maple trees must have been there before the monument (it was installed in the 90s), and i don’t know if they chose the spot for their companionship, but it did make the whole thing rather more striking than i think it would have been otherwise, as i couldn’t help but extend the fallen soldier metaphor to the fallen leaves, and that was kind of deep for 7 in the morning with no sleep.

my tentative plan at that point was to head back to the station and take the tube to my new neighborhood, because i didn’t really know where i was and it seemed more important to find my way to the flat and get my bags squared away than to give myself a navigation lesson. all of my bags are heavier than i wish they were, so even just the one i was carrying was something of a hindrance to full bore exploring, and i had accomplished my mission of greeting london and eating my breakfast.

on the way out, however, i looked at the little map by the gate, and learned enough from it to deduce that i was actually headed in the right general direction, so backtracking all the way to the station didn’t make much sense. i could wander a bit further along the edge of the park and end up at another tube station, and for some reason i thought i remembered that it was one of the stations that wasn’t that far from where i was going, so walking could make some sense after all.

long story shorter, i was wrong about the tube station being one that was close to where i was going, but it was still a nice walk, and by the time i took my book out, discovered where i was, hovered in line at the tube station long enough to realize that if i took the tube there and back and there again (to get my bags) it would cost £9 and that sucked because i really need to be spending as little as possible until i figure out a job, i ended up just deciding to walk the whole way. later i realized that i could have bought a day ticket for £5, but i was not aware of this at the time, so it didn’t matter.

the length of my walk seemed to impress dominic somewhat, when i finally found him, but all i can say is that i like walking in cities, and after i sat for a while in charing cross train station waiting for some bank machines to open and learning that i would fall asleep if i sat still for too long, it actually made more sense for my particular brand of tired self to just keep plodding along mindlessly than have to negotiate things like new transit systems and crowds of people and figuring out when i get to my stop.

so that was that.

the bonus was that it was free, and gave me a tour that included (apart from buckingham palace and st. james’s park, which is where i had started), scotland yard, trafalgar square, the strand, fleet street, st. paul’s church and quite a few theaters with big flashy signs. i definitely felt like i had arrived in london, and it was fun to have that feeling where a place that you have heard about all your life starts lining up with a place in your actual experience of reality.

so better than sitting a few more hours on the bus, that’s for sure. :)

unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries in trafalgar square, so if you want to see more pictures, they will have to be of things like this squirrel, who took my attention for a while because he was so very silvery grey.

i eventually made my way to brick lane, found coffee and the internet, met up with dominic, got my key, and was introduced to my new home, wherein in promptly slept like the dead for many hours.

more on the flat, and on other things i am discovering in london now that i am awake and without heavy luggage to hold me down, in the next edition.

i’m probably taking the bus to london tomorrow, and i might take the late night bus because then i don’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep when i get there, and besides, one of the late night buses has leather seats and extra leg room.

party.

there isn’t a special discounted “funfare” available for the bus i think i want, though, which is annoying, and i have been poking around looking for other options because it kind of annoys me to learn that, had i booked more in advance, i could ride the train for cheaper than the bus, and the train has wi-fi.

pout.

it’s also hard to swallow that it is possible to book a plane ticket to amsterdam or barcelona for less than a bus ticket to london.

whatever.

what i’m sayin’ is, i went to lastminute.com to see if they had any better offers, and there’s a link in the corner that says “boss is watching. look busy.” and do you know where it goes?

mission critical market analysis

heehee

i love this city.

today i went to church, because i learned they have a unitarian one here, and it seemed like fun to check out scottish unitarians.

turns out, they are rather like american unitarians, apart from the accents, and the fact that they drink instant coffee.

organic, fair trade instant coffee, mind you, but instant all the same.

i kid you not.

anyway, after church i talked with a few of the old people who came up to introduce themselves to me, and one of them has lived in indiana and still visits somewhat frequently. how random is that?

another guy talked about just getting back from a week at plum village, which is interesting because i’ve been thinking about figuring out how to wrangle the time and money to go there for a week or so while i’m here, so that was cool. he said i should come back to the church at lunchtime on tuesday because they have a meditation lunch – “we eat mindfully, and silently… but not for the whole time. at the end, we chat.”

unitarian, indeed. :)

anyway, it was a drop dead gorgeous day, so after church i wandered around town a while. i found out the movies aren’t that expensive, so i might go to one tomorrow or tuesday. i want to see james bond, and pan’s labyrinth, and hollywoodland, and there’s some kate winslet and jennifer connely movie at the arty theather that i haven’t heard of, so i’m sure something will sound good at some point. i’m also really excited to go ice skating in princes street gardens one day this week. they just set up the rink as a part of the little christmas fair that they have for december, and it costs £8.50 on the weekends but only £1.50 during the week, so score.

choices like these are quite thrilling after not even having a shop to go to for a couple of months, so i’m enjoying myself.

i wandered around past the part of town where i stayed this summer for convivio, and it’s crazy how a place can feel familiar and homey even when you only lived there for two weeks. i went into a little natural foods store that i had found back then but never visited because it was always closed when i remembered about it. i bought some chana dal (and yes, erik, it really was!) and a bag o’ spice and some rice, and from these i created 6 very filling platefuls of food. i ate one, gave one away, and put 4 in the fridges to sustain me for the week to come. £4 well spent, i’d say.

i’m keen on the whole thrifty living thing because i am about to give nearly all of my money to the chap in london from whom i am renting the flat i mentioned earlier, so this week is about hunkering down, eating cheaply, writing, and enjoying simply being in the city. i am excited about the chance to spend time in london (even though i have been through a good amount of stress about money as a result of the decision), but i am also really happy to have a bit more time in edinburgh, and a part of me wishes i was staying longer, because it just feels like a place i could really enjoy living for a while.

i think i will be here til friday, and i intend to work more on getting my website updated, and i also want to get out a draft of a short paper about our convivio work. much talk was made of writing something, and i think it could be a good short paper for CHI next year, and being back in edinburgh puts me in the mood that i need to reminisce and get the juices flowing.

or so i hope.

now i’m going to catch up on some podcasts, and figure out what else to do with my evening.

i just sent in the deposit for a short-term sublet in london that runs from 3 december – 20 january.

so i’m going to london next.

more specifically, i’m going to live in the borough of tower hamlets, right off brick lane, which used to be a jewish neighborhood, then a bangladeshi neighborhood, and is now a bangladeshi neighborhood with an increasing number of hipsters mixed in.

the sublet is a pretty good deal, but since it’s for 7 weeks, and most of the payment is due up front, it’s a larger chunk of money than i was initially expecting to part with right now. i am consoling myself by remembering that i am going to have to live Somewhere for that time period, and i don’t really want another live-in job right now, so better to have it paid for up front and just have to worry about finding peanut butter. i considered a couple ideas other than london, and a couple sublets that were a bit cheaper and/or shorter, but in the end i decided that hanging out in london for a while is my first choice for the next month or so, and this location sounds like fun, so here goes.

i will be looking for at least a part-time job, to get that peanut butter (and some of my new neighborhoods famous curries), and i hope to spend a large chunk of the rest of my time exploring london and catching up on some writing.

luckily for me, christmas is a great time to be looking for short-term work, so hopefully i’ll be able to do something fun.

now the only question is how well the remaining savings will stretch to cover the roadtrip and the journey southward.

we set off monday at noon, so it’s not long until the answers are revealed.

i am excited, and a little bit scared.

it’s sunday afternoon in kentallen, and for the first time i can remember while being here, it actually feels like a sunday – leisurely, time to catch up on odd jobs, some fluffy tv, cereal for lunch…

i don’t know if it’s the extra hour or the day off or the slowness of the hotel as the season starts to really wind down, but i approve.

i watched the repeat of last night’s x-factor, which was sweet, and i also watched some rugby, which is a funny, funny game. best i can deduce from what i saw, the rules are: run down the field and pass the ball until someone gets knocked down. everyone nearby grab the person and try to get them to drop the ball before they completely fall down. continue until the ref actually calls a tackle, which i think happens when the knees hit the ground, and then stand back for a second while the guy gets up (if he can) and tosses the ball to a teammate nearby. repeat up to 6 times, or until either a goal is made or a penalty is called, whichever comes first. if you make it through 5 tackles and don’t think you’ll reach the goal next time, kick the ball and try to intercept the kick so you can keep going. otherwise, your turn to try to tackle and steal the ball.

figuring out the rules by watching is pretty fun, actually, and my muscles were already warmed up because there’s been a snooker tournament on tv this week, and that shiznit is mysterious. i figured out that you sink all the red balls and then go for the colored balls, but i don’t quite get why you get to switch to the colored balls sometimes in the middle, and how you decide which colored ball you’re supposed to hit in which order.

but don’t tell me, and i’m not going to link to anything that might give the answer away, because it’s more fun this way, and the tournament can’t last forever so i can have a few more days with the puzzle. :)

then i’ll just have to find some cricket to watch, and i will be on my way to becoming a veritable encyclopedia of international sporting knowledge.

booyah.

anyway, this post is supposed to be an update, so i’d better let you in on the news that the hotel is closing two weeks from today, on sunday, 12 november, which is a full week earlier than expected.

we are excited about this development, particularly because it means that tania and i have more time for our road trip, which we were having a hard time condensing into the week we had previously allotted.

details still need to be finalized, but we are building around the following highlights:

• the most remote pub in mainland britain
• the isle of skye
• loch ness (and inverness proper)
• the moray firth
• as many speyside distilleries as will still be open (which might not be many… blah november!)
• glen coe and other parts of lochaber (the area around where we are now, referred to as “the outdoor capital of the UK”) that we haven’t been able to explore without a car
• stirling

and then we’re going to end up in glasgow, whereafter i think that tania is heading directly to england, and i am going to edinburgh for st. andrews day before crossing the border myself.

the trip leaves out two major regions that would currently be included on my ideal tour of scotland – orkney and islay – but time constraints, financial worries, and wintery weather make both of those difficult, so i will just have to return one day. one thing i can say about touring scotland is that it would be a great camping vacation in the summer. there are loads of cheap and interesting hostels if you need a night with a real bed and a shower, plenty of campgrounds, and a lot of people walking and biking.

so there’s something to think about for the future.

anyway, i started writing all of this much earlier today, but then i decided to go outside, and the day started living up to the title of this post. tania and i ended up riding bikes around the empty carpark like we were 10 years old and then sitting on the end of the pier until it got dark. we came back in for dinner and a bit of deal or no deal, but then we went out again and did some tipsy exploring in the rain, which was fun.

tonight is the first night of my employment at the hollytree where there are no guests in the hotel, and the sudden weirdness of it has made us a bit stir crazy. there were two people in the restaurant for dinner and tania accidentally shone the flashlight into the dining room and we think it scared them, because jane peeped out the window to try to see who was there, and we stood in the dark on the pier standing still and giggling like fools.

i anticipate tension in the ranks as jane tries to keep hold of her somewhat tenuous managerial authority as the days grow empty and closing comes nearer, but i will leave those stories for later dates, and sign off on a lovely scottish sunday.

the two week countdown begins… now.

the other day i was watching as jackie boiled two huge pots of water to cook the langoustines.

langoustines are like tiny lobsters. or gigantic prawns. it depends on who you ask. i just asked my friend wikipedia, and it says tiny lobsters are the winner. norway lobsters, actually. and, as the name may suggest (because i don’t think that “norway” is just being used as a euphemism for “tiny”), we don’t have them in north american waters, which explains why i have never encountered them before.

they remind me of salt-water crawdads, but wikipedia tells me that crawdads are further away from lobsters on the crustacean family tree, so i guess it’s the whole living in salt water thing that binds them.

wikipedia + blogging = crazy informed kynthia. sweet.

anyway, these langoustines come out of the loch next door, and when they arrive in the kitchen, they are alive.

kind of…

what i mean is, they are legally required to be alive when sold, but in this case that translates to: heaped on top of one another in big plastic crates without any water from which to derive oxygen. which basically means they are slowly dying, and i don’t really find “alive” to be a fair description of their situation.

but anyway, the other day i was watching as jackie boiled two huge pots of water to cook the langoustines, which is an activity that i have seen before and it makes me kind of sad. it’s worse when francis does it because he puts the pots on the back burners so they are out of the way, but the front burners are still on because the burners are always on while people are cooking so that they don’t have to light and relight them a bajillion times. this is unfortunate because sometimes the arrangement results in some of the barely alive langoustines falling into the fire, which is downright grotesque.

but that’s another story.

this time i just stood there watching jackie bustle around the kitchen, finding other things to do so as to allow the proverbial unwatched pots to boil, and i said: “jackie, why do the langoustines have to be kept alive for so long without water? why don’t they just boil them right away or something?” and she laughed and said they had to be kept alive, it was the way they do things, we shouldn’t ask questions like that.

this caught me a little off guard, because i was expecting simply: “it’s the only way to ensure that they are fresh.”

you see, people have dreams about these langoustines between visits, and i am not even joking. they are an integral part of some people’s relationship with the hotel, and cooking them seriously involves nothing more than boiling them and serving them with butter and garlic, so freshness is the key factor in their fame. the other day jackie and jane were arguing about how many to order (traffic is rather unpredictable at the moment because the season is winding to a close), and jane suggested we could freeze them if there were extras, so we should err on the side of too many. jackie got angry at this and simply would not hear of it, because apparently they had done that once before and they had not tasted at all the same and customers had complained.

so “freshness” is the motivation that i had come to understand, and i had been considering a position that respected that but was also not fully convinced by the whole “let them endure prolonged asphyxiation before being thrown into boiling water” bit, and that’s what i was intending to ask jackie for her opinion on. i mean, couldn’t we gas them or something so they go sleepy sleep between when they are caught and when they are cooked? or transport them in water even though it would be heavier?

these were the questions on the tip of my tongue, so i wasn’t prepared for the whole force of habit angle, but jackie was serious.

“why question the way they do it?” she said with a shrug.

i paused here for a second to check for cameras in case i had been unknowingly cast in an after school special.

“asking questions is good!” i replied.

“but this is so obvious…” she said. “why waste time asking questions about things that are so obvious?”

“the things that seem the most obvious are the things that it’s most important to question,” i said, playing my part, but also actually believing it, and marveling somewhat naively at the fact that this conversation was unspooling itself in the real world.

but jackie just laughed again, harder, and looked at me as she left the kitchen to take a break for her lunch.

“oh, kynthia,” she said with a sigh, “you really are american.”

i stood there for a minute in the kitchen by myself, deciding what to make of that.

in a move that would probably only prove the point more securely in jackie’s mind, i decided to take it as a compliment.

but a thought-provoking one.

so it’s the craptastic battery charger that is broken after all, which means i need to send away yet again before i am able to be a self-sustaining photographer here in the UK, and the bill for my absentmindedness in the orlando airport climbs.

the battery that has allowed me to take pictures for the last few days ran out of charge, and, with flagrant disregard for my chants of “please work! please work!”, the charger did nothing after several hours other than attempt to claim the battery as a hostage for its crappy manufacturing overlords (it seriously took me 5 minutes to extract the battery from its grip).

hopefully it did not fry the victim completely, but i don’t know yet, and i won’t know anything more until i am able to locate another charger that can be shipped to the UK (they don’t makey my camera over here, so it’s a bit of a hassle).

let’s hope this story ends after that, shall we?

one of the best parts of this hotel gig is that, even though we don’t get out much, there is a constant supply of people coming in, and they are fun to talk with.

since my accent gives me away as a non-local, one of the first questions people tend to ask me is where i’m from, followed pretty closely by how i ended up in scotland, and in such a remote hotel to boot.

i have learned that “where are you from?” is actually code for one of the following slightly more complicated questions:

• what part of the states are you from (because your accent is obviously american. what, do you think i’m daft?!)?
• we have a bet going at our table about whether you are canadian, australian, or american, and i want you to prove to my wife that i know what i’m talking about, so please say you’re canadian…

this makes answering the question (in it’s shorter, encoded form) a bit tricky, because saying “i’m from the united states (full stop)” tends to ilicit snorts from the first group, followed by “yes, but what part of the united states, pet?” (in a slower voice, as if i have just made it clear that i need to be treated as a being of reduced intelligence).

assuming that the whole american part is obvious makes the second group feel awkward, however, because they want to do a double take and say something like “oh, really? please don’t take it personally! your accent is really quite mild!”

i have decided that the best course of action is to say “i’m from the united states (comma)” so that i can move right into “i grew up in colorado, but i moved around a bit and have lived in indiana for the last five years” if that seems appropriate. that way the first group thinks that i am just giving the extended answer, and the second group can use the extra information to their advantage by saying things like “oh! my nephew went to colorado once!”, thereby moving the conversation forward.

there are a few people who just go ahead and take their analysis for granted, starting with “what part of the states are you from?” and i appreciate those people for putting themselves on the line. the approach can backfire, though, so i guess i understand why it is used somewhat sparingly. one man asked me outright “oz or kiwi?” and i had to say “um, american, actually…” and then he had to act all embarrassed.

which is too bad, really.

the truth is, it’s just flat out hard to hear the little differences, and despite the fact that i have heard countless stories about how scottish people get angry if you think they are english, and new zealanders hate being confused with australians, and canadians shudder to be seen as american, the vast majority of people whom i’ve met in my travels just laugh it off.

there’s this rather deeply rooted idea that it is arrogance that keeps us from being able to detect regional differences in cadence (because they’re obvious to us, right?!), when actually it’s just a lack of experience, and it doesn’t really make any sense to assume that everyone should just automatically understand the way that growing up in certain parts of the world causes you to modulate your vowels.

the only people who get offended when you make a mistake seem to be the people who haven’t really travelled themselves, so they’ve never been on the other side of the table, and i think there’s something important there, but i’m not sure i’m, um, saying it right.

;)

all reflection aside, though, it really does amuse me that so many people think that i’m canadian. no matter how much i can rationalize it, a part of me still goes “whoa, seriously?” and i get all curious about what they are using as evidence. i mean, do i just say aboot sometimes and not even know it?!

sometimes, i’m tempted to go all fargo on them in the middle of a sentence, just to see if they hear a difference.

but then i start walking around saying “you betcha!” under my breath, and chuckling to myself, and that’s a bit creepy, so i make myself stop.

whenever someone catches me on IM these days, they ask me how things are going with my travels, which is kind of them, and i say something like “good! [vague comment about settling into hotel, being in the middle of nowhere, etc.]… pause… [consider to self whether more detail is necessary… decide to talk about random subject x instead].”

sometimes i blogdrop myself, but that always makes me feel like a bit of an asshole, even though i try hard to use my just-a-friendly-reminder voice.

and then there’s the fact that i’m not really writing that much, and most of what i write isn’t really about how i am, so i can’t really expect people to know much even if they Are [nice/bored/OCD] enough to be checking in here on a regular basis.

so i hereby present a post that will hopefully help me to bust the cycle of my silly posting paralysis (which, i realize, could punnily be described as “post mortem,” but i’m not going to say that aloud).

ahem

Dear Mom, Dad, Wally, the Beav, Aunt Bea, Opie, and the blogosphere,

Things are pretty quiet here at Camp Hollytree, and I’m starting to get used to the pace even though we have rather unpredictable schedules. The two other in-house staff – Lauren and Tania (both from New Zealand) – are very nice, and we are doing our best to make our own fun in Kentallen and Ballachulish. Assisting us in this quest are the friendly locals who work in the hotel – Aisling, Lyn, David, Charlotte, Giem and Jack. Charlotte, Giem and Jack are underage, and Lyn has just left to go back to Uni, so Aisling and David are our principal guides for the moments, and it is definitely nice to have them.

No jumps in the loch yet, despite inspiration from a few Frenchmen who stayed here a week or so ago and did some skinnydipping on their lunch break, and from Erik, submitting from Colorado on his way out West. I am determined to get in the water before I leave, and it’s only going to get colder so I best act fast. The trouble is that everyone else considers the idea completely ridiculous, so I guess I’m just going to have to take the plunge by myself. When my C-card comes, I also hope to go for a dive, but swimming sans dry suit really is a wholly separate list item, so I think I will just have to do both.

Last week Tania and I finally made it to visit the fabled bungalow down the road that we were only recently told is an additional place where staff can live, if they so choose. It has it’s own kitchen (complete with dishwasher!), laundry facilities, and a bathroom with a tub, which is quite luxurious. It also has a pool table, a radio, and a view of the loch, which means that it is pretty much heaven, for all current intents and purposes.

Though I reckon heaven would probably be closer to a grocery store.

All in all, the adventure was a great success, and I am quite sure that we would move there in a second if the road were less scary, or the bikes were less crappy, or the weather wasn’t so frequently nasty, or we didn’t so often start at 8 and/or end at 11, or… well, that’s enough. Circumstances being as they are, however, I expect that we will continue to opt for the “just roll out of bed and walk down the stairs” option, though not without a bit of regret.

If we don’t get there on at least half of our days off, however, I will consider us slugs.

Speaking of days off, my next one is tomorrow, and Lauren has it off as well. We want to climb as much of Ben Nevis as we can manage, because it just seems like something that needs to be done while we’re here, and the weather ain’t gettin’ any warmer. But it looks as if it will rain tomorrow, and Lauren had an ominous dream involving a cliff of mussels, so we will most likely save it for next time.

Which, according to my formula, means that we should go play pool at the bungalow. Woohoo!

Friday we attempted to go to a Céilidh, which I was quite excited about, having missed 10 weekly contra dances now, and counting. I did a little bit of research into contra dancing over here, but the only regular dances I found are in London and Leeds, so no luck for the moment. A good local Céilidh would definitely suffice, though, and apparently they happen pretty often, so there is no excuse for not going to at least one while I’m here. This time, however, we showed up after work at about 11, and, after looking in the window, Aisling pronounced it boring on account of it being entirely composed of old people, none of whom were dancing, so we went across the street to the pub instead, with the plan of going back later. The last céilidh apparently lasted until 4 am, so it seemed like there was a good chance that it would pick up again after a bit. This did not end up happening, however, so we will simply have to try again next time.

I just realized that this letter is all about almost doing fun things, and then not doing them, for one reason or another…

That’s depressingly illuminating.

I will take it as a mission to actually accomplish something before next week, at which point I will write again, and hopefully the letter will be shorter, because there will be less catching up to do.

Until then, enjoy your cake!

Love, Kynthia

like having the chef plan our meals for us and do the shopping.

the live-in staff take turns cooking, so i will be up every 3-5 days (depending on how many more staff end up staying in the hotel), which is kind of fun. i like cooking, and planning a menu is some of the fun and a lot of the skill, but it’s nice not really having to think about it for a while, and it’s doubly nice having a professional do it for me.  it’s kind of like living in the dorms again and having a meal plan, except you’re allowed in the kitchen, you get to cook every once in a while, and the food is better.

score.

the menu at the hotel is mostly seafood, and rather fancy, but we eat simpler things, making use of the leftovers in clever ways. yesterday we had some really good fried shrimp, chips, and a salad, and today we had a chicken stew with naan. there is also breakfast every day – cereal, leftover pastries, and/or eggs and bacon cooked to order, and we can make our own sandwiches and fruit for lunch.

i’m going to eat better for these few months than i have in a while, and with not much effort and not much expense – they take £30 out of my pay each week for room and board. two nights at the hostel in edinburgh cost the same, and a week in the room that i passed up in matthew’s house would have been twice that. and neither of those included any food.

so yeah, that’s a perk.

as is being able to write a blog post ten minutes before i have to start working, because all i need to do is change clothes and walk downstairs.

i think i’ll be ok with this for a while. :)