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in memoriam
Sep. 11th, 2006 02:29 pmSeptember 11, 2001
I can't see New York
as I'm circling down
through white cloud
falling out
and
I know your lips
are warm
but I can't seem
to find my way
my way out
of your hunting ground
you again
It's you again
I can't see
I can't see
New York
from the other side
from the other side
--Tori Amos, I can't see New York
I can't see New York
as I'm circling down
through white cloud
falling out
and
I know your lips
are warm
but I can't seem
to find my way
my way out
of your hunting ground
you again
It's you again
I can't see
I can't see
New York
from the other side
from the other side
--Tori Amos, I can't see New York
Scotland and photos
Sep. 7th, 2006 11:47 amAs stated previously, yesterday I got back from a trip to St. Andrews, Scotland. It's rather ironic that I'd go, because it's Mecca for golfers, and I've never picked up a club in my life. The countryside was lovely, with rolling hills and hayfields everywhere, and badly kept small roads that aren't kidding around when the signs tell you to slow down. We did see one horrible accident where someone didn't.
The Good
Small, pretty, rambly seaside towns
High availability of alcohol (like, everywhere. You could get it on the train.)
Rugby
Pubs
Dependable, clean trains
Much nicer than NJ Transit, though I think everything is. Because I am a complete dork, I had to get something off the trolley, and I gushed to husband later that "it was just like Harry Potter!"
Tartans, and accompanying men in kilts playing bagpipes
The royal castle in Edinburgh
Ginger Beer from Schweppes! Also Scrumpy Jack, which our hosts thought was very funny, and I was afraid that drinking it was on a level with drinking PBR or Milwaulkee's Best.
The Bad
Breakfast at The Scores Hotel
I have NO idea how they made toast, sausage, and eggs so execrable, but it was nasty.
THE EXCHANGE RATE, HOLY SHIT.
Because everything that costs a dollar here costs a pound there, and it's easy to look at a price and say "huh, that's not bad," until you consider that you have to double every price you see. This is why I brought back very little.
Driving on the left
I didn't do any driving, but this freaked me out all the same.
The WTF
Separate hot and cold taps
This boggled me. Having hot and cold water come out of the same tap is hardly a new concept, and yet almost every single sink in Scotland had separate taps, even new sinks. So, either you burn your hands/face or freeze, and I've never been a big fan of filling the basin and washing my face in water that gets progressively soapier.
( On to the photos! )
The Good
Much nicer than NJ Transit, though I think everything is. Because I am a complete dork, I had to get something off the trolley, and I gushed to husband later that "it was just like Harry Potter!"
The Bad
I have NO idea how they made toast, sausage, and eggs so execrable, but it was nasty.
Because everything that costs a dollar here costs a pound there, and it's easy to look at a price and say "huh, that's not bad," until you consider that you have to double every price you see. This is why I brought back very little.
I didn't do any driving, but this freaked me out all the same.
The WTF
This boggled me. Having hot and cold water come out of the same tap is hardly a new concept, and yet almost every single sink in Scotland had separate taps, even new sinks. So, either you burn your hands/face or freeze, and I've never been a big fan of filling the basin and washing my face in water that gets progressively soapier.
( On to the photos! )
Back in the USA
Sep. 6th, 2006 01:41 pmGreetings to ya, bonnie lads and lassies, I'm back from Scotland. Flight back was uneventful, but seven hours on an airplane is way more than enough. Very nice trip, though yesterday was a bit more squirrely. Yay for a two-day workweek!
Pictures and stories to follow.
Pictures and stories to follow.
O HAY COSPLAY.COM PPL
Aug. 29th, 2006 05:31 pmDoes anyone on my list know how to add photos to a costume at Cosplay.com? I can't figure it out - is it something you can only do if you have a paid account? It's annoying to be stuck with a dinky 200x200 avatar.
Fank you!
Fank you!
Weekend update
Aug. 28th, 2006 11:23 amFinally, we're home for a weekend.
The weather was crappy, so I was able to sit home without guilt. It's nice when that happens, because then husband isn't a pest about going outside and doing things. We're starting to get a taste of fall with the weather - it's always sad to be reminded that summer is almost over. Never mind that it's starting to be dark when we wake up. :P
Friday night was the Giants game. Eli Manning did NOT look all that great, but he did manage to get his shit together enough for one touchdown drive. About halfway through the third quarter, they put in Jared Lorenzen, who throws like a cannon and is about the size of a tank. I don't know how this kid ever gets sacked, he's so big (but he did get sacked twice.) I'm very fond of this guy and I'd love to see him get the backup position.
Had some confusion on Sat. about the time of my haircut/color - thought it was at 1:30, and it was at 11:30. The salon is really close by, so I was able to scurry down there and be a redhead again. Good thing too, b/c there aren't any afternoons this week where they're open and I'm free, so it would have meant waiting until we get home from Scotland. That night, we went to my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary party. My parents were up from Florida for the occasion, and all I'm going to say about it is that I'm actually happier when I don't see them, because seeing them just reminds me of how hurt I still am over the whole move and how much I wish they hadn't gone and how much I miss them, and it is embarrassing to cry through the dessert end of the party.
We watched the F1 race on Sunday, and someone at Ferrari is going to get it, because a badly-timed call into the pits cost Schumacher second place (and by virtue of that, the lead, because Massa would have been under team orders to let him by.) Now he's two more points down rather than four points up. Later on I went out to Joann's to get material for Yoshi the Diva Bount's cosplay, and I had just about given up hope of finding a purple material I liked when there was some lovely sateen... for $8.99/yd. Oh well, thank goodness for coupons and gift cards. Husband made something like coq-au-vin for dinner, and it was much tasty, and I read the latest Bleach chapter and watched some Mushishi and it was a nice day.
Countdown to Scotland: four days.
The weather was crappy, so I was able to sit home without guilt. It's nice when that happens, because then husband isn't a pest about going outside and doing things. We're starting to get a taste of fall with the weather - it's always sad to be reminded that summer is almost over. Never mind that it's starting to be dark when we wake up. :P
Friday night was the Giants game. Eli Manning did NOT look all that great, but he did manage to get his shit together enough for one touchdown drive. About halfway through the third quarter, they put in Jared Lorenzen, who throws like a cannon and is about the size of a tank. I don't know how this kid ever gets sacked, he's so big (but he did get sacked twice.) I'm very fond of this guy and I'd love to see him get the backup position.
Had some confusion on Sat. about the time of my haircut/color - thought it was at 1:30, and it was at 11:30. The salon is really close by, so I was able to scurry down there and be a redhead again. Good thing too, b/c there aren't any afternoons this week where they're open and I'm free, so it would have meant waiting until we get home from Scotland. That night, we went to my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary party. My parents were up from Florida for the occasion, and all I'm going to say about it is that I'm actually happier when I don't see them, because seeing them just reminds me of how hurt I still am over the whole move and how much I wish they hadn't gone and how much I miss them, and it is embarrassing to cry through the dessert end of the party.
We watched the F1 race on Sunday, and someone at Ferrari is going to get it, because a badly-timed call into the pits cost Schumacher second place (and by virtue of that, the lead, because Massa would have been under team orders to let him by.) Now he's two more points down rather than four points up. Later on I went out to Joann's to get material for Yoshi the Diva Bount's cosplay, and I had just about given up hope of finding a purple material I liked when there was some lovely sateen... for $8.99/yd. Oh well, thank goodness for coupons and gift cards. Husband made something like coq-au-vin for dinner, and it was much tasty, and I read the latest Bleach chapter and watched some Mushishi and it was a nice day.
Countdown to Scotland: four days.
OKAY IT'S OFFICIAL
Aug. 26th, 2006 08:49 pmThe Giants STINK.
My mother and I have confirmed it.
SIT DOWN ELI, WE WANT JARED!
My mother and I have confirmed it.
SIT DOWN ELI, WE WANT JARED!
Fake because this meme isn't circulating right now, although I've seen ones like it.
Post a comment and I'll post a song that reminds me of you (well, if I can think of one.)
Responses will be posted tomorrow b/c uploading from home is a chore, and that's where my CD collection is.
Post a comment and I'll post a song that reminds me of you (well, if I can think of one.)
Responses will be posted tomorrow b/c uploading from home is a chore, and that's where my CD collection is.
If it's not Scottish...
Aug. 9th, 2006 11:11 am...IT'S CRAP!
I'm going to St. Andrews, Scotland over Labor Day weekend (Sept. 1 - 5)! Husband's work is having a conference with the R&A, so I'm going to go along with him for some sightseeing. If any of you UK folks are going to be in the area, let me know, because I'm going to be on my own for Monday and Tuesday.
It's silly, but the thing I'm looking forward to the most is being able to get a Schweppes ginger beer WHENEVER I WANT. That stuff is a little bit of heaven.
I'm going to St. Andrews, Scotland over Labor Day weekend (Sept. 1 - 5)! Husband's work is having a conference with the R&A, so I'm going to go along with him for some sightseeing. If any of you UK folks are going to be in the area, let me know, because I'm going to be on my own for Monday and Tuesday.
It's silly, but the thing I'm looking forward to the most is being able to get a Schweppes ginger beer WHENEVER I WANT. That stuff is a little bit of heaven.
The summer book review
Aug. 7th, 2006 08:39 pmEvery summer, I get a chance to catch up on my reading. Here are the book reviews, from my pile to yours, in no particular order.
The Memory-Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
I can honestly say that I bought this book in Maine for lack of anything else to read. It was being hailed as the "beach read of the summer," and if that isn't warning bells, I don't know what is. The story centers around a doctor and his wife (circa 1950) who have twins in the middle of a blizzard, and the girl twin has Down syndrome. The doctor tells his wife the
girl died, and the nurse is supposed to take the girl to a home, but she runs off with the baby instead. The book is a character piece, a dreamy slow work full of misty emotional passages about how this Affects Everyone, and I found myself terrifically bored after a while. Maybe you have to be a mother.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
This book is a cultural anthropological study of the Japanese post-WWII that was commissioned by the US government in order to better understand how to deal with the Japanese. The author writes without an agenda - there's no effort to rationalize how the Japanese behave, only "this is how it is." Particularly revealing are the sections on hierarchy and how the Japanese armies were absolutely boggled to find out that the people they were conquering weren't happy about it, and also the sections concerning the intricate and burdensome networks of obligations that the Japanese person must spend his/her life paying back - to one's parents, to one's peers, to one's teachers, to the emperor, etc (on, giri, gimu, ko, and so on.) I won't say we don't have similar feelings in the West, but they do not affect the American to nearly the same degree. It's pretty rare that my husband swipes a book from me, but he got his paws on this one before I was even done with it, and that says a lot.
Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
Since I enjoyed the Tamir trilogy by Flewelling, I thought I'd try this trilogy, which is set hundreds of years afterwards. There's some medieval skulduggery and a lot of magical hand-waving, but the main thrust of this trilogy seems to be the blossoming romance between Alec and Seregil. Flewelling isn't the best at writing romance, and I've been around the fandoms too long to really want to read three books' worth of gay men wibbling like teenyboppers over First Love. Misty Lackey didn't break me in to the whole notion of homosexuality by writing seme/uke stereotypes, so I didn't bother moving backwards in my perceptions, and I won't be finishing this one.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Heartbreaking. Written in the hardlined Asian tradition of taking no prisoners where tragedy is concerned. The passages about how young Chinese girls had their feet bound made me nauseated, and yet the "golden lilies" were a ticket to a better future. The protagonist rises, her friend falls, and it's hard to call the ending happy. You all watch anime, you know what I mean.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
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buttercup0222 introduced me to Neil Gaiman, and this book was supposed to be really really good, so I figured it'd make a good cruise read. All I can say is, FANTASTIC. Devoured this in three days, interspersed with my PADI manual. Intriguing concept: immigrants bring the ideas of their gods with them to America, and the gods manifest, but then the people believe in new things and stop believing in the old gods, and the old gods are left to make their own way. The book centers around a war between the old gods and the new gods (like media and electronics) and who's really driving the war and for what purpose. I'd say this was my recommended read of the summer, but I'd have to declare it a tie with the next entry.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
I'd understood that this book was a classic of the cyberpunk genre before picking it up, but I had no idea how revolutionary it was until I'd gotten about a quarter of the way through it and then checked the publication date - 1984. When the Internet was still a beepy thing that you might access with your phone line and boxy modem, if you had even heard of things like Prodigy. Neuromancer is complex and multilayered, and years ahead of its time, and you have to wonder how long it's going to be before people do start "jacking in" to the Internet the way the protagonist Case does. I'll probably have to reread the ending again because I don't quite understand the full relationship between 3Jane, Linda Lee, Molly, Wintermute, and Neuromancer, but it'll be a pleasure rather than a chore.
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
Anchee Min grew up in Communist China and wrote this autobiography after emigrating to the US. She starts out as an idealistic student who has memorized the propagandist operas of Comrade Jiang Ching and the sayings of Mao, and ends up finding the rot in the core of the regime. I was amazed by her descriptions of the people singing the highest praises of Chairman Mao even while his programs starved them to death - it was as if they'd traded one emperor for another. Some animals are more equal than others, as George Orwell wrote, and this book illustrates it in short, poignant, and often awkward prose.
Still have a couple books left to read, like Fateful Harvest, which my intern gave to me. I'm somewhat reluctant to read it because I'll probably feel like part of the problem afterwards, since I work for big chemical companies, but I feel like I should. Still, Fast Food Nation didn't do much for my appetite, so this might just further my current fantasy of selling it all and running a dive boat in the Caribbean. Ah well, they can't all be fun reads. :)
The Memory-Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
I can honestly say that I bought this book in Maine for lack of anything else to read. It was being hailed as the "beach read of the summer," and if that isn't warning bells, I don't know what is. The story centers around a doctor and his wife (circa 1950) who have twins in the middle of a blizzard, and the girl twin has Down syndrome. The doctor tells his wife the
girl died, and the nurse is supposed to take the girl to a home, but she runs off with the baby instead. The book is a character piece, a dreamy slow work full of misty emotional passages about how this Affects Everyone, and I found myself terrifically bored after a while. Maybe you have to be a mother.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
This book is a cultural anthropological study of the Japanese post-WWII that was commissioned by the US government in order to better understand how to deal with the Japanese. The author writes without an agenda - there's no effort to rationalize how the Japanese behave, only "this is how it is." Particularly revealing are the sections on hierarchy and how the Japanese armies were absolutely boggled to find out that the people they were conquering weren't happy about it, and also the sections concerning the intricate and burdensome networks of obligations that the Japanese person must spend his/her life paying back - to one's parents, to one's peers, to one's teachers, to the emperor, etc (on, giri, gimu, ko, and so on.) I won't say we don't have similar feelings in the West, but they do not affect the American to nearly the same degree. It's pretty rare that my husband swipes a book from me, but he got his paws on this one before I was even done with it, and that says a lot.
Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
Since I enjoyed the Tamir trilogy by Flewelling, I thought I'd try this trilogy, which is set hundreds of years afterwards. There's some medieval skulduggery and a lot of magical hand-waving, but the main thrust of this trilogy seems to be the blossoming romance between Alec and Seregil. Flewelling isn't the best at writing romance, and I've been around the fandoms too long to really want to read three books' worth of gay men wibbling like teenyboppers over First Love. Misty Lackey didn't break me in to the whole notion of homosexuality by writing seme/uke stereotypes, so I didn't bother moving backwards in my perceptions, and I won't be finishing this one.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Heartbreaking. Written in the hardlined Asian tradition of taking no prisoners where tragedy is concerned. The passages about how young Chinese girls had their feet bound made me nauseated, and yet the "golden lilies" were a ticket to a better future. The protagonist rises, her friend falls, and it's hard to call the ending happy. You all watch anime, you know what I mean.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
buttercup0222 introduced me to Neil Gaiman, and this book was supposed to be really really good, so I figured it'd make a good cruise read. All I can say is, FANTASTIC. Devoured this in three days, interspersed with my PADI manual. Intriguing concept: immigrants bring the ideas of their gods with them to America, and the gods manifest, but then the people believe in new things and stop believing in the old gods, and the old gods are left to make their own way. The book centers around a war between the old gods and the new gods (like media and electronics) and who's really driving the war and for what purpose. I'd say this was my recommended read of the summer, but I'd have to declare it a tie with the next entry.Neuromancer by William Gibson
I'd understood that this book was a classic of the cyberpunk genre before picking it up, but I had no idea how revolutionary it was until I'd gotten about a quarter of the way through it and then checked the publication date - 1984. When the Internet was still a beepy thing that you might access with your phone line and boxy modem, if you had even heard of things like Prodigy. Neuromancer is complex and multilayered, and years ahead of its time, and you have to wonder how long it's going to be before people do start "jacking in" to the Internet the way the protagonist Case does. I'll probably have to reread the ending again because I don't quite understand the full relationship between 3Jane, Linda Lee, Molly, Wintermute, and Neuromancer, but it'll be a pleasure rather than a chore.
Red Azalea by Anchee Min
Anchee Min grew up in Communist China and wrote this autobiography after emigrating to the US. She starts out as an idealistic student who has memorized the propagandist operas of Comrade Jiang Ching and the sayings of Mao, and ends up finding the rot in the core of the regime. I was amazed by her descriptions of the people singing the highest praises of Chairman Mao even while his programs starved them to death - it was as if they'd traded one emperor for another. Some animals are more equal than others, as George Orwell wrote, and this book illustrates it in short, poignant, and often awkward prose.
Still have a couple books left to read, like Fateful Harvest, which my intern gave to me. I'm somewhat reluctant to read it because I'll probably feel like part of the problem afterwards, since I work for big chemical companies, but I feel like I should. Still, Fast Food Nation didn't do much for my appetite, so this might just further my current fantasy of selling it all and running a dive boat in the Caribbean. Ah well, they can't all be fun reads. :)
The short version
Aug. 7th, 2006 05:32 pmCruise was very fun. We were supposed to visit St. Thomas, St. Maarten, San Juan, and Haiti, but thanks to Tropical Storm Chris, we were diverted after St. Maarten and went to Nassau, Bahamas instead. I was very disappointed to miss the last two ports, but whatcha gonna do. Five days at sea is way, way too many, though I do have a very nice tan now.
We got our most basic cert for scuba diving, w00t. Pity we didn't get into the Bahamas a tich earlier, b/c the staff had offered to complete our Open Water cert if the opportunity arose. Scuba is much fun and we are definitely going to do it again - we're already considering another cruise that hits better scuba areas like Cozumel and Belize. Sadly, we had our open water dive in St. Maarten, and the dive site there wasn't as good as the snorkeling site we went to in St. Thomas, where we saw a lot more fish and green sea turtles.
Shopping in St. Maarten rox0rs if you are a jewelry h0r like me. Got a pair of very nice tanzanite earrings for a rockbottom price, plus a full set of fire opals. My SIL and I bought liquor for prices that would make you cry - $11 for a liter of Tanqueray, $7 for a bottle of Malibu rum. We also bought some of the local poison, Guavaberry liqueur, since you can't get it in the States and it did make a nice colada.
Best drink of the trip: Frozen Banana Bailey's Colada (aka BBC.) Just sit me in the sun and bring me these all day long, and I will be happy.
Boat was huuuuuuuumungous, lots of places to go and see, but the flip side is that there were a LOT of people, and a startling number of the morbidly obese. The ship's pools resembled photos I've seen of public pools in Tokyo at about 1 PM on a hot day. We tended to take the water either early in the morning or at about 5 PM, when people seemed to wander off to get washed up for dinner.
We had the late seating at 8:30, which I would not do again. We were usually so deep in a food coma by the time we left (and our waiter Ismet kept bringing us extra food) that we rarely did much besides go to bed. The people at our table were very nice; there was a pair of honeymooners from Barcelona, Spain, and another pair from Delaware.
Our stateroom was very spacious. The Q's treated us to a balcony, which was nice for drinking champagne at sunset and for drying bathing suits and wet clothing at the end of the day. One cute touch was the appearance of towel animals on the bed when the attendant came to turn down the bed for the night - we got a stingray, a dog, a bunny, a monkey, and a manta ray. I learned to fold some of them on our last day.
Getting off the boat was relatively painless, though we had a short tussle with some of the customs staff (to sum it up, people are stupid, and stupid people like quoting rules at you just to see you try to deal with an impossible situation, like that you obviously cannot lift all the bags at your feet when your husband has just crossed the Line of No Return to find your SIL, and then you are told you can't leave your bags there, and you can't lift them all, and you can't leave your bags unattended to find a porter, but your husband Is Not Allowed to walk back ten feet to help you. Thankfully, one of the staff had a brain and escorted my husband back over No Man's Land to help me with the goddamned bags, and now we have learned a lesson.) We were home by 11 AM, and husband had two F1 races to watch, and soon we will go out for Japanese.
Looking forward to all the Otakon reports.
We got our most basic cert for scuba diving, w00t. Pity we didn't get into the Bahamas a tich earlier, b/c the staff had offered to complete our Open Water cert if the opportunity arose. Scuba is much fun and we are definitely going to do it again - we're already considering another cruise that hits better scuba areas like Cozumel and Belize. Sadly, we had our open water dive in St. Maarten, and the dive site there wasn't as good as the snorkeling site we went to in St. Thomas, where we saw a lot more fish and green sea turtles.
Shopping in St. Maarten rox0rs if you are a jewelry h0r like me. Got a pair of very nice tanzanite earrings for a rockbottom price, plus a full set of fire opals. My SIL and I bought liquor for prices that would make you cry - $11 for a liter of Tanqueray, $7 for a bottle of Malibu rum. We also bought some of the local poison, Guavaberry liqueur, since you can't get it in the States and it did make a nice colada.
Best drink of the trip: Frozen Banana Bailey's Colada (aka BBC.) Just sit me in the sun and bring me these all day long, and I will be happy.
Boat was huuuuuuuumungous, lots of places to go and see, but the flip side is that there were a LOT of people, and a startling number of the morbidly obese. The ship's pools resembled photos I've seen of public pools in Tokyo at about 1 PM on a hot day. We tended to take the water either early in the morning or at about 5 PM, when people seemed to wander off to get washed up for dinner.
We had the late seating at 8:30, which I would not do again. We were usually so deep in a food coma by the time we left (and our waiter Ismet kept bringing us extra food) that we rarely did much besides go to bed. The people at our table were very nice; there was a pair of honeymooners from Barcelona, Spain, and another pair from Delaware.
Our stateroom was very spacious. The Q's treated us to a balcony, which was nice for drinking champagne at sunset and for drying bathing suits and wet clothing at the end of the day. One cute touch was the appearance of towel animals on the bed when the attendant came to turn down the bed for the night - we got a stingray, a dog, a bunny, a monkey, and a manta ray. I learned to fold some of them on our last day.
Getting off the boat was relatively painless, though we had a short tussle with some of the customs staff (to sum it up, people are stupid, and stupid people like quoting rules at you just to see you try to deal with an impossible situation, like that you obviously cannot lift all the bags at your feet when your husband has just crossed the Line of No Return to find your SIL, and then you are told you can't leave your bags there, and you can't lift them all, and you can't leave your bags unattended to find a porter, but your husband Is Not Allowed to walk back ten feet to help you. Thankfully, one of the staff had a brain and escorted my husband back over No Man's Land to help me with the goddamned bags, and now we have learned a lesson.) We were home by 11 AM, and husband had two F1 races to watch, and soon we will go out for Japanese.
Looking forward to all the Otakon reports.
Fast update
Jul. 31st, 2006 09:44 pmI'm writing this entry from on board the Explorer of the Seas, a gargantuan cruise ship. Husband and I are on a 9-day cruise to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, San Juan, and then Haiti. We haven't actually arrived anywhere yet - it's a 2.5-day sail to the first port of call - but it's been fun so far! So, this is why I haven't been answering mails or commenting, not at $0.50/minute.
See you when I get back!
See you when I get back!
