Going on holiday

Well, this is it. Our flight leaves tomorrow morning from Glasgow, and by lunchtime, we'll be in (hopefully) sunny Malaga. Ian's dad, who probably approaches saint status for this, is driving us from Edinburgh to the airport at 4:45 AM. That's after the DST switch, meaning that it's going to feel lik 3:45 and I'm going to be sleepy/wired/cranky.

There will undoubtedly be caffeine consumption between then and lunch.

Hopefully I'll get to update a few times in the next week, but if not, have a good one! (And all you Yalies coming back after Spring Break...well, New Haven's slightly prettier this time of year, right?)

Whole lotta Mozart

Last night was the SCO's performance of Mozart's 39th, 40th, and 41st symphonies, back to back to back. Excellent concert, really well done, and even if, as Leigh said, the 40th suffered for its placement in the middle, the final movement of the 41st was spectacular.

Then again, I'm biased. I've been listening to "Jupiter" since I was nine, when I got my first boom box and used my birthday money to buy a four-disk Mozart set.

Even the weather cooperated last night - no downpours, no hurricane-force winds, no arctic blasts. The one down side to the evening was that the concert was at Usher Hall, near the intersection of Lothian Road and Princes Street, and if you walk there through the Grassmarket, it's kind of like hill walking in heels. We were taking it at a good clip as well, since we only had 45 minutes to get there. I love my heeled boots, but cobblestone-walking takes its toll. My feet are a little sore this morning, so the gym will be postponed.

Small price for three symphonies in a row.

Road rage

Here's the problem:

My friends and I are going to Spain on Sunday. I was slated to be one of the two drivers, the other being licensed but slightly unfamiliar with automatic, left-hand drive cars. Two weeks ago Monday, I rushed my application for an International Driving Permit to Florida, where AAA keeps its offices.

Cut to today. With less than 72 hours before departure, the IDP has yet to arrive, and I'm literally losing sleep.

Why do I need this stupid piece of paper? Depending on who you talk to, I don't - the rental car companies generally won't ask for it, and many sites say you can get by without it. AAA, of course, says that it's necessary, and the US government site about it strongly recommends it. Apparently, you can get by with only a US license in most parts of Europe, but Spain is one of those countries whose cops will get more than a little ticked off if you don't have an IDP.

What is it? From what I've gathered, it's a translation page. I sent copies of my license and passport-style photos, and AAA is supposed to send me this official copy for the benefit of non-English speakers. The big thing is the date format; my license (thanks again, DMV), is set to expire on May 3. By European dating convention, this looks like March 5.

Beyond the gray area of legality, my parents have stepped in and said I can't drive without it because I'm still on their insurance. Our rental car comes with CDW - it's usually required for drivers under 25 - but the problem is that if we are in a major wreck, the waiver won't cover everything, and we might be looking at several hundred to over a thousand dollars to pick up ourselves. I don't even know if the folks' insurance would do any good in that case, but they've spoken, and since they're still footing the bills, I'm stuck.

The panic started to set in yesterday, when my mailbox still hadn't yielded an Express Mail envelope. An alternative to the IDP, I noticed, is an official Spanish translation of the license, so I thought I could run down to the US Consulate in Edinburgh today and see if they might be able to help me out. Unfortunately, the Consulate is closed for renovations until the beginning of April, and my IDP doesn't exactly qualify as an emergency. More disconcertingly still, the checks I sent to Florida haven't cleared on my online account page yet.

So I'm at the mercy of Royal Mail, praying that something arrives out of the blue before Sunday morning. I'm out of options, our other driver is not amused, and frankly I don't know what to do. Suggestions are welcome.

Sweet 16

I'm going to be honest: I don't know jack about basketball.

I gleaned a vague understanding of how the game was played during my one-year stint as a cheerleader for the Advent Panthers (process of elimination is a marvelous thing), then watched the varsity team at Indian Springs (no mascot, really) get beaten on an almost annual basis. In college, my attention switched to football, which allowed me long, boring periods in which to read my course packets and cheer on the YPMB.

So now, since Facebook is doing this whole giant basketball pool thing, I decided to join a pool, pick teams, and see what happened.

At the end of round two, I was on top of my bracket. Statistically speaking, how the hell did that happen?!?

The Sweet 16 will happen soon, though, and I fear that my days of pool supremacy are over. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Language fun

Today was our last workshop, sadly enough, and though I wasn't presenting, I still managed to surprise Dilys.

After the Americans in the room compared the Scottish and American pronunciations of 'ghoulish' (gowl vs. gool), I told one of the presenters that I would nix a part of his piece.
"Lauren!" Dilys cried. "You said 'nix!'"
"Um...yes?" I replied, worried I had somehow said something offensive in Scottish English.
"I haven't heard anyone say that in years!" she continued. "I almost thought I'd made it up. Is it common?"
"Sure," our other American told her. "Like in Pig Latin. Ix-nay."
She seemed confused by this. Apparently, Pig Latin's not quite so universal as we think.

According to the OED, 'nix' as a verb isn't Greek, but American slang first recorded in 1903. Oh well.

Drinks after class were rather pleasant, however.

Surprises

Two things that surprised me today:

First, the weather. One moment it was sunny, the next, snowing. Yes, snowing. I don't know why. It happened several times throughout the morning before deciding that mid-March was a good time to be partly cloudy.

Secondly, when I checked my Facebook basketball pool this morning, I was on top. How did this happen? I don't know anything about college basketball! We'll see how long this lasts...

Chorally, just like old times

It was a little strange being a ten-year-old girl with an E below middle C. The only other person in my junior high choir with that note was an eighth grader, and somehow we ended up dropping below the boys for a treble rendition of Mozart's "Laudate Dominum." My mother, a definite soprano, was concerned. As I got older and became more of a fixture of the Ensemble's alto section (I distinctly remember us being addressed one day as "Lauren Simpson and the Doo-Wop Choir), I never had much of a chance to move up. We had boy sopranos who could hit the high F's and G's, so there was no need for a girl who, quite honestly, squeaked at best in her upper register to jump into the soprano section.

I'm not going to say it didn't annoy me. I wanted to sing soprano more than just about anything; I wanted to be able to perform the soaring decant lines and actually have the melody for once. My choirmaster knew better, thankfully, and instead I began to cultivate the sight-reading skills that have thus far served me much better than a silly descant line. That doesn't mean I don't sing them now, given the chance, and yes, there are far better soprano voices than mine, but since I've spent the better part of my amateur choral career on first or second alto, I can at least read the lines most of the time.

Of course, being an alto in a junior high/high school/college choir means that you don't just sing alto. If the second sopranos are weak, you move up. If the tenors can't hit the notes on helium, you move down. Sometimes, if the part's high enough, you get a rare moment on second tenor or baritone, but never first soprano. (The firsts never need alto assistance. It's the nature of the beast.) For the most part, however, you get the same basic lines that hover around the middle of the keyboard, and if you're doing Meredith Monk, you may hold one note for fifty measures. (Then again, the guys have it even worse.)

Cut to this morning: for various reasons, the choir was down to Norma on soprano, me on alto, and Bert on men. Given that I sight-read almost everything we do at Kirk o' Field, Roy was considerate enough to pull me aside and run an unfamiliar hymn before the service started. It was a distinctive little piece (and of the two tunes given with the words in the hymnal, neither corresponded to what the Baptists use), and the end chorus splits into male with female echo. I ran the alto line, which was largely three notes, and then Roy lamented that we don't have a strong male section. I offered to jump down. He looked at me rather strangely, but I do, in fact, still have a decent E below when I haven't been in the stratosphere for hours.

"You're the first person I've ever met who can sing soprano, alto, and tenor," he said after we ran it, and told me to make the jump. Fortunately, he wasn't expecting a bass line out of me.

That hymn was last in the program, and directly before it came one that we had practiced exactly once. I recognized the alto line, but Norma looked at me as we were prepping and whispered, "I don't know this one at all." When we stood to face Roy, he mouthed, "Sing soprano," so I did. Loudly. (Yeah, I know. Some things never change.)

Half an hour following that, it was definitely fun to drop two octaves, especially when the only strong male voice I could hear was the minister's.

So thanks, Mr. Phillips, for "Laudate Dominum." It's fun to surprise people.

St. Patrick's Day

Maybe there's a crazy street party going on over in Dublin, but Edinburgh has been pretty quiet today. Not a lot of green, no headbands with sparkly, wiggling shamrocks, no green beer, no one getting pinched. It's like no one seems to care about St. Patrick's Day except the North Americans, who miss the green drinks. Fortunately, Amber came to the rescue after dinner tonight.

On the other side of the pond, here's a look at how some folks from my home state celebrated the day in 2006...guys, the Mobile Leprechaun Hunt.

It's Friday again

Not much going on today...I did get my laundry done this afternoon, and since I was going to be up and down for two hours with that, I watched my free movie of the day, Flowers in the Attic, which is based on the V.C. Andrews book of the same name.

Now I know why I don't read V.C. Andrews.

Today was also Red Nose Day, which is the culmination of Comic Relief's big fundraising push. One of the clerks at Tesco this morning was wearing big red, plastic ears. Very stylish. Still, Comic Relief raises a lot of money for AIDS work, so if they want to sell red noses, they can.

Ridiculous item of the day

Special thanks to Jen for pointing this out to me:

Presenting the "Hamlet Mouse," one of the fine offerings of Paxton Gate, a San Francisco retailer that offers, among other things, taxidermy. This little guy, complete with mouse skull, will set you back $58.

Another fun item:

Jen's suggestion was to use this cute little couple as a wedding cake topper. For only $120, they can be yours.

Here's another of my favorites (sorry, Mary):

So wrong, and yet...

Need more? Visit www.paxtongate.com. If nothing else, they have a very cool site.

Taking care of business

Today's lesson was "channeling one's inner bitch."

I'm not a big fan of confrontation - I don't like annoying people - and yet, I had to be a thorn in someone's side today. Things were getting ridiculous with Accommodation, so I marched over there this morning, talked to some halfway incompetent staff, and finally got the rest of my rent paid off. Like I've been saying, three drunk monkeys could run Accommodation Services better than these people do. When I asked to speak with the person in charge of student accounts, for instance, the staff looked at each other blankly.

That's not a good sign.

After that, I came home, took 45 minutes, and wrote a detailed nastygram to the head of Welfare and Support regarding our building, our lack of good facilities, and the Specific Heat soundtrack (which is largely composed of power tools). We'll see if I get a response...

The highlight of the evening was Master Chef: the final is tomorrow, and tonight was a double-header. It's been fun watching for the last few weeks, and now, sadly, I'll no longer be able to watch Hannah create things involving - I'm not kidding - duck, saffron, lavender, and blueberry. Yeah. Apparently, it tasted alright.

Fun with technology

Well, I didn't get quite as far into Halloween as I would have liked last night, for technical reasons: the DVD is Region 2, and my machine is, of course, set for Region 1.

This wasn't a problem with the DVD I got over the weekend - it may have been Region 0 - but my computer started complaining. Either I couldn't watch the movie, or I had to set my DVD player to read Region 2.

Sounds easy enough, but to keep the restrictions in place, the player will only allow a limited number of changes. Once you exhaust them, that's it, and you're stuck in your last region, even if you reinstall Windows.

That seemed rather drastic, so I consulted good old Wikipedia, source of useless knowledge, and read up on region restrictions and how to get around them. (Thanks, External Links section!) One site gives codes for many home DVD players that convert them to Region 0, but I needed some software, and so I turned to VLC Media Player. It's free, and it reads anything.

Halloween, by the way, is incredibly hokey - there's a great shot about twenty minutes into it where you see the cameraman's sleeve. I'll finish it at some point, but in the meanwhile, there's Evil Dead to enjoy.

Monday

Ever have one of those nights where all you want for dinner is a tuna sandwich?

I fought the crowds to go to Tesco tonight at six, then headed for the aisle of canned meats, where my heart promptly sank. Tasting tuna already, I was confronted by a selection of sardines, mackerel, crabmeat, salmon, Spam, and cocktail weenies. I really didn't want to buy canned salmon - on top of everything else, it was roughly £3 a can - but then I found the tuna, tucked away on the aisle end. Thank God.

Incidentally, they sell frozen breaded Spam cutlets over here. If that's not gross, I don't know what is.

My plans for the evening include writing and a run though Bean Scene, but I'm tempted by the DVD on my desk. Having abandoned the Daily Mail's crap DVDs, I noticed that the Sun, which is terrible but only 15p, is doing horror "classics" this week. Today's selection was Halloween, which I've somehow never seen. Tomorrow is Evil Dead. Best of all, McColl's, where ones goes to pick these up, is just around the corner from me.

The only downside, of course, is that these DVDs are Region 2, meaning they won't work in a standard American DVD player. No worries; the computer can handle all.

I love technology. And tuna sandwiches with hard boiled eggs and light mayo.

Newspaper freebies...

...or how I get my daily walk to Princes Street, whether I like it or not:

Last week, the Daily Telegraph did its Jane Austen promotion, meaning that I got myself into a routine of visiting Tesco in the morning, picking up my paper, cutting out the voucher, and tramping down to Costa for my book. It's not a bad walk down to Costa - a little under a mile, all told - and it gave me a reason to get outside (and one to procrastinate, as if I needed it).

Having collected my books, I visited Tesco again this morning for a new promotion. Turns out the Daily Mail is running a series of fantasy DVDs for the next two weeks. Most look pretty lame, but the one this morning was the 1998 TV miniseries Merlin, which I liked back in the day and can laugh at now that I've read Malory. If I want any of the others, however, I'll have to cut out the coupons and go down to WH Smith, which is in Waverly Station, just next to Costa.

Well, it's exercise.

Friday

Today was filled with many good things, or at least things that were a marked improvement over the rest of the week:

-On my way to the gym this morning, I was honked at by two guys in a dump truck. Maybe it was the combination of running shorts and a North Face jacket. In any case, it made me laugh.

-Lunch with Ella at the Yum Yum HK Diner (seriously, that's the name) was fun and tasty, and relatively inexpensive.

-I have clean socks. Yay!

-I've finished collecting Jane Austen books in the Daily Telegraph giveaway, meaning I can suspend my daily walks to Costa.

-The jackhammer, mercifully, seems to have left for good. Fingers crossed...

-Ruth, as always, oboed well tonight. This was followed by a Favorit run, which is always a good thing.

Second verse, same as the first...

...a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

Jackhammer and saw, day four: when the cleaning ladies begin to comment about how bad the noise is, you know things are getting desperate.

Seminar today began with a gripe session by the residents of Richmond Place about our 9-to-5 asphalt cutting, the workman who likes to sing over his jackhammer, and the 11-to-6 scheduled water outage today, which was necessary to fix the problem created Monday. At least there was warning this time, and hopefully no one was caught in the shower, but the outage created at least one problem...

"Anyone know about the loo situation?" was asked in the kitchen this afternoon.
You got one flush, just enough to empty whatever was stored in the tank. After that, there was no loo activity until the water was turned back on, which meant potentially seven hours without functional toilets. Fortunately, the water came back by 3:30, but there was a bizarre form of rationing in the meantime, and several defected entirely.

Tonight, with the power tools silenced and the water restored, I relaxed to "Fame Academy," an Idol-esque show benefiting Comic Relief. Unlike the Idol clones, however, this show takes British celebrities of questionable fame and makes them sing. I laughed. I cried. I wanted to throw a plate at the television to make the warbling stop. The costumes were almost universally bad. But the nice thing was that suddenly I felt much better about my own voice.

Schadenfreude's theraputic at times, such as jackhammer days.

Minor annoyances

In Richmond Place's continuing struggle to make our lives as complicated as possible, this week is Drill Up The Sidewalk And Install Plumbing Week. Thus, we're treated to the sweet sounds of the jackhammer all day long. Even with the window closed, I can still hear them drilling, shoveling, and pushing the squeaky wheelbarrow right outside my window. And now one of the two jokers down there has decided it's karaoke day. Tomorrow should be fun - because of the little accident with the water main on Monday, they'll be shutting off the room water supply from 11 AM to 6 PM to fix the pipes. Supposedly we'll still have water in the kitchen, but one never knows...

My other minor annoyance of the day was this fellow at the gym this morning. Okay, I understand that people have different standards of what constitutes gym clothing. Tights or no tights, shorts or sweatpants, t-shirts or sweatshirts, the old dude with the bad legs who always ties a paper towel around his head like a sweatband...you see a spectrum of ensembles on weekday mornings, and it's fine. I'd even be alright with well-ripped men who wanted to go shirtless, as long as they used sweat towels on the weight machines. What's unacceptable is this middle-aged man who always wears the same outfit: too-short shorts and a matching midriff-baring shirt. I mean, this is the kind of outfit a teenaged girl might be able to pull off, but not this guy. Cut-off shirts on grown men are like male Speedos: never acceptable in public.

On a totally unrelated note, happy birthday to Cali!

DMV madness

Oh dear...

I sent off for my IDP yesterday, and hopefully, I'll have a shiny piece of paper in Spanish to explain to the nice Spanish rental car people that I'm road legal before I go to Spain. We leave at an ungodly hour on March 25, meaning that my application has 19 days to get to Florida and back to me. Let's just hope the extra $5.25 check - clearly marked for global express mail - helps the permit get back to me on time!

That's license number one.

My dad, bless his heart, spent three hours talking to the brain-dead incompetents who staff our local DMV, trying to figure out why my license, which I renewed in September, is set to expire in May on the same date as the old license. As it turns out, you're only allowed to renew your license within 60 days of its expiry, meaning that I was several months ahead of schedule. The moron woman who handled my license (see the September 5 entry) failed to mention this to me, and instead basically gave me a duplicate license. When I go home in September, I'll have to stand in the interminable DMV line yet again.

Why, Alabama DMV, do you let morons staff your offices?

Specific Heat must die

Let's just say that today isn't going to go on record as the best morning of my life.

I woke at 7, still a little sore from Saturday, but readied myself to go to the gym and was back to the room by 8:15, where my shower awaited. Or so I thought.

I'm one of those people who finds it difficult to move quickly in the shower, which is usually a bit of an annoyance to everyone around me. My shower sloth turned out to be a blessing this morning, as I was just reaching for the shampoo when the water suddenly cut off.

Not the hot water. The water.

Wet and pissed, I tried banging on the wall for a moment, then gave it up, noticed that the faucets were similarly non-functional, and dried off. Fine, I thought, I'll eat breakfast and give Specific Heat a moment to do whatever they're doing that necessitates turning off my water.

At 8:45, the water had yet to return, and so, now in a fine temper, I marched down to the office in my polo shirt and sandals to find out what the problem was. The supervisor explained that Specific Heat had accidentally cut the main.

"When's the water going to be back?" I asked, trying to control myself.
"They don't know. It was an accident."
"Did anyone bother to think that 8:30 AM is probably not the best time to be messing with the water supply?" I muttered through clenched teeth. "We've got class!"
"It was an accident," was all she could tell me, and so, thinking things about Specific Heat that my mother wouldn't approve of, I returned to the room and tried to decide what was to be done. Class at 10, hair wet but still dirty...then I hit upon it.

I knew that gym membership had to be good for something.

I returned to my room at 9:30, having showered and dried my hair at the gym, and made it to class in good time, where I knitted for a few minutes to lower my blood pressure. The knitting and the caffeine couldn't stave off the headache that developed, however, and I left at noon with a throbbing head and a list of errands to run.

About thirty dollars lighter, I finally escaped the post office queue minus my application for an International Driving Permit ($15 for the IDP, $5.25 for expedited return, and £5 for express mailing it to Florida). I returned to the building and checked my mail, where a note - delayed almost a month - from Accommodation awaited.

They've seen our petition. They haven't heard of any disturbances due to Specific Heat, so no, they're not going to reduce our rent.

I'd pound my head against the wall, but that wouldn't help my headache.

Excellent Saturday

Today was truly excellent.

The morning began with an 8 AM rise and a run/jog/walk around Arthur's Seat, the first in several months. Heck, it's cold out there.

After that, I bought the Daily Telegraph, which is running a Jane Austen special this week: just bring the coupon to a Costa coffee shop every day to claim a free book. Fair enough, but I spent three hours tracking down a Costa that would accept the coupon. In any case, the afternoon was mostly lovely, nearly 50 degrees and partly sunny, and I enjoyed the walk. I also did the Telegraph's giant five-grid Sudoku, which was a fine diversion.

Tonight was great fun: dinner and a movie. If you liked Shaun of the Dead or anything Will Ferrell has ever been in, find a cinema that's showing Hot Fuzz and see it already. It's hilarious. The script was quite obviously written by a couple of thirty-something British men who have seen far too many bad American cop movies and feel Britain would be much better off if everyone in the countryside had assault rifles. And a sea mine. And probably a few handguns, for good measure. The movie is over the top and the (theatrical) violence is gratuitous, but it's a great laugh.

To top it all off, we saw a lunar eclipse while walking home, and Cali reminded me of a particularly fun childhood pastime: pouring half a cup or so of sugar into a bowl of Rice Krispies, eating what little cereal there was, then scraping the milky sugar off the bottom of the bowl. Man, those were good times. No one tell my dentist, eh?

Behold, non-believers

To Sarah Snyder and all the others who doubt I actually possess any arts and crafts abilties, behold the proto-scarf:

Is it beautiful? No.

Is it large? No.

Is it particularly well made? No.

But come on, I just started learning on Monday! And if all else fails, Callie gets a lovely green chew toy this August.

Thursday

Please, God, let Reading Week end soon.

Schedule for the day:

7:30 Rise
7:35 Check e-mail, Facebook, MSN, McSweeney's, IvyGate, PhD, and anything else I can think of.
7:55 Gym
8:30 Shower
9:00 More computing in a vain effort to pass the time.
9:20 Breakfast
9:30 Knit
9:35 Fend off odd looks from others in the kitchen. Explain what the large ball of yarn in my lap is for. Explain that no one wants to wear anything I produce.
10:20 Check room, but room is being cleaned. Knit some more.
10:45 Return to room. Try to write.
11:00 Nice cleaning lady returns with fresh shower curtain. Consider going to Starbucks.
11:45 Count minutes until I can reasonably make lunch. Play Tetris.
12:15 Lunch and Bargain Hunt.
1:15 Try to write.
1:30 Look up recipes for stuffed peppers. Make a version of my own and go to Tesco.
2:15 Read.
2:45 Knit.
4:00 Try to write. Play FreeCell.
5:00 "Get a jump on making dinner."
5:45 Finish making peppers. Leave them to cool on counter. Nurse burned finger.
6:30 Figure mother isn't calling for a while. Leave to eat dinner.
6:45 Wonder why Hollyoaks is so bad.
6:50 Parents call. Weather sucks in Birmingham.
7:20 Try to write. Consider knitting.
7:25 Former boss e-mails with writing assignment. Take it.
9:45 Finish assignment. Knit.
10:00 Try to write. Hit 3,000 words and call it a night.
10:45 Blog.

Class from 2-4 tomorrow! Whoo-hoo!
Sad, ain't it?