Sunday

Amazingly, I made it through an entire day without losing consciousness on a major street. Huzzah!

This morning began with church (and a whopping four people in the choir). Roy and Ian were both back, meaning we had no guest leaders for the first time all summer. Afterwards, my parents and I did lunch at Wannaburger (really good milkshakes, incidentally), and then we started down towards Holyrood House. On the way, we just happened to wander into Hector Russell, and I just happened to find a lovely Harris Tweed blazer. While I thought it was a little pricey, my mother explained that it would be twice that price in the States, even with the pound as high as it is right now, so it was actually a bargain. I never thought I'd find a bargain in Scotland. Our clerk told us about going to Harris and visiting one of the weavers, who asked him to take the sweater she'd just finished. He protested that he couldn't afford it, and she said to just give her five quid for the wool. That is a bargain.

After that, we toured the palace, which isn't a bad little shack at all. I could use my own throne room. Dinner tonight was at The Witchery, which is truly lovely. Dark chocolate torte with lavender ice cream and a glass of Muscat...let's just say that I could do that again some time without needing much persuasion.

Not my greatest moment

Today was a lot of fun. My folks and I had breakfast at a cute little restaurant on the Royal Mile, toured the castle, did the pub lunch thing, and even hit up the Whisky Centre tour (which should be avoided like the plague). Though I developed a headache from my wee dram of Johnny Red - what can I say, I'm a lightweight - we had naptime, then dinner at Ciao Roma, always a good choice. That's when things got interesting...

Mom and Dad agreed to go with me on the City of the Dead tour. I did Auld Reekie's back at Easter and enjoyed myself, except for that bit about almost passing out in the torture museum. City of the Dead gets great reviews, I'd had fun chatting with the other tourists before we began, and, aside from the rain, all seemed to be going well. Our guide, amazing leather trench coat and all, walked us around the side of St. Giles, and then, before she took our money, she started telling us about witches.

I knew that getting pegged as a witch in Good Olde Edinburgh never did much for one's lifespan, and I'd already been told about dunking in the Nor' Loch, but when our guide began to go into the various tortures used on one convicted witch's husband and children, the world began to get fuzzy. About the time she finished talking about a rat and a cage (think 1984), my mental defense tactic - namely, trying to drown out her voice with a rousing chorus of staples from The Sound of Music - failed me.

I don't remember much of the next five minutes. Apparently, I collapsed, hitting the church wall with the back of my head on the way down, and convulsed on the pavement for a few minutes with my pupils completely dilated. My poor mother thought I was having some sort of a seizure, and she and my dad tried to get me to my feet. I collapsed three times - I couldn't stand on my own - and the next thing I really knew, Mom was holding me and praying, and the rest of the group was long gone. We didn't get to go on the tour, so I have no idea what the Greyfriars Kirk poltergeist got up to this evening, but I have a lovely souvenir lump on the back of my head, a sore jaw, and a few additional bruises (the sidewalk's unforgiving), and our tour guide now has one more fainter to add to her tally. Five minutes to the first faint has to be a record, though it's certainly not one of my personal best moments.

Suffice it to say that torture really doesn't do it for me, and I'll not be seeing Hostel II. Ever.

Fun with Finnish music

I managed to find a promo copy of one of Nightwish's upcoming singles online, and I'll say this for "Amaranth": I'm running out to the store on the day Dark Passion Play is released and will complain vociferously if Coconuts isn't stocking it. I was worried when I heard that Tarja was out of the band, but the new singer, Anette, while quite different, is also very good. She's the pop to Tarja's opera. In any case, I've had "Amaranth" on repeat for much of the afternoon. The only downside to the file I found is that, it being a promo copy and all, a curiously American announcer comes on twice during the track to tell me where the song is from and who's performing it. I knew this already, and it's distracting. Come on, September.

While doing the usual Wikipedia information gathering on the upcoming album, I happened upon another Finnish group, Lordi, who won Eurovision in 2006 with a little ditty entitled "Hard Rock Hallelujah". It's also awesome. I'm loving these Finns. Here's a band that performs in monster masks and refuses to be photographed without them, and the country is so happy over the Eurovision win that they're making a Lordi postage stamp and have produced "Lordi Cola". I haven't heard their Christmas song, but something tells me my mother wouldn't be amused...

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig...

...does whatever a Spider-Pig does. Can he swing from a web? No, he can't, he's a pig. Look out! He's a Spider-Pig!

I saw The Simpsons Movie tonight, and it was great. Moments of brilliance, moments of pathos, even a moment (mercifully brief) of full frontal nudity. On a skateboard. After a sequence of covering gags that Austin Powers could be proud of.

And now I have "Spider-Pig" stuck in my head. What's great is that there's a full choral version of this little ditty in the credits, and I have to wonder how many takes it took the choir to get through the song without cracking up. Lord knows the Glee Club wouldn't have made it; we had enough trouble with the Coronation Athems ("The King shall have pleasure", anyone?) In any case, I just downloaded it from iTunes...Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig...

Tuesday

The Good: I finished the last batch of transcriptions and took a twilight walk to the park (at 9:45 PM, mind you), where I saw a lovely rising moon, cloudy sunset, and general atmospheric prettiness.

The Bad: We just had an 11 PM fire alarm. It's now 11:22. If it goes off again, I'm putting on my iPod and staying in bed.

The Weird: My dissertation is due one month from today. An impetus to work, I suppose...

Camping for the Tattoo

Tickets for the Tattoo preview show went on sale at 10 AM. Besides the happy fact that they're half-price, these tickets are our only chance to see the Tattoo, as the real shows sold out within hours back in January. I had planned to camp in front of my computer and hope their system would be able to withstand the traffic, but last night I decided it would be safer to go down to the office instead and get my tickets in person.

Well, as it turned out, that wasn't going to happen. I made it down to the Tattoo office shortly after 9, and found a line stretching around the block. It could have been Harry Potter night all over again, except for the number of copies I passed as I tried to find the end of the queue. One girl at the front had brought a blanket; God only knows how long she'd been on the sidewalk. When I realized that a) the line extended halfway up Waverley Bridge, and b) there was no way I would make my 11 o'clock appointment with Alan if I waited, I decided to head back south and try my luck on the computer.

It was slow - the booking took at least 15 minutes - but I managed to get into the system right at 10 and secured what appear to be halfway decent seats. Bagpipes, here we come...

No spoilers

It's finished.

Twelve hours after I cracked Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I finally reached page 607 and the end of the series. That twelve hours began at 12:45 this morning, when I got home from Blackwell's Potter party, got comfortable, and cracked the book, and includes a five-hour break for sleep and half an hour out for a shower this morning. I got by with a piece of candy and a Coke Zero for breakfast, and quite happily made myself oatmeal around one.

It's rather surreal, having finished the series. I remember beginning it back in high school, sitting in the library every afternoon for a week, waiting for Jen to finish being a camp counselor. ISS had the first four books on hand, and I plowed through them in the little side space behind the shelves, hoping no one saw me with kids' books. It was the same space in which I read The Gunslinger, in which I stumbled upon my first taste of non-vampiric Anne Rice erotica (and didn't get much beyond the chapter, to be honest), in which I found enough forgotten galleys to keep me happy for a good while. It's a good table, and during the summer, the library was mercifully quiet and air conditioned, a real perk in June in Alabama. In the years that followed, I waited for books five through seven to be released, making sure to pick up my copy at midnight so I could get in on the fun.

Last night was my first actual release party - complete with trivia and Sorting - and while Warwick Davis pulled out at the last minute, the staff really got into it, especially the folks playing Rita Skeeter, Snape, and the Golden Snitch. I was wearing all black, and one girl thought I was part of the staff. The great part was that many of the people there weren't kids - while we waited to go inside, Ella and I stood between a mother and son who had been on the Harry Potter tour reported on the news this week, and a group of grad students from UT, half of whom were in costume.

Plot aside, the one thing that really surprised me about the book was the strength of the profanity. Maybe it's just a British thing, but somehow I didn't expect to see "effing" in a kids' book...

Greatest Jeremy Kyle moment ever

Concerning Aaron, who at 18 is the father of two children by two women...

JK: Let's talk to your stepfather, Carl. [Cuts to a young man in the audience with a popped collar and track pants.] How old are you, Carl?

Carl: 26.

JK: You're a grandfather at 26?

Carl: Yeah.

JK: I'm obviously losing the will to live.

I love morning television.

An open letter

Dear Edinburgh,

You may have noticed, but according to the calendar year, it's currently mid-July. Not even mid; today happens to be July 20, and while I and half the planet are celebrating the fact that we have less than 24 hours to go before the Deathly Hallows launch, I do have one complaint.

Edinburgh, we have to do something about this weather situation.

According to MSN, it's currently 52 degrees, with a predicted high of 60 and sprinkles. Tack on the wind, and let's just say that I'm enjoying the extra blankets on my bed.

Look, you know it's bad when you have to wear a sweater and rain jacket on a July afternoon.

You know it's bad when you go to the DHT shop for the first time in months and the nice clerk says, "You must be having a miserable summer!" Not because of dissertation, mind, but because he knows I'm from Alabama.

You know it's bad when you sit in your room in a fleece jacket and thick socks because the window's open on principle, and for circulation.

You know it's bad when you're almost as likely to see boots as summer shoes on a given excursion through the city.

You know it's bad when your sister in South Africa - which has a legitimate excuse to be cold in July - is having better weather than you are.

Edinburgh, while I certainly appreciate that you've kept my allergies at a record low this season and have given me a fuller understanding of 'summer leather', I could do with a little warmth and sunshine. Just a little. You know, in case my vitamin D-enriched tablets fail and I get rickets or something, which really isn't the souvenir I'd wanted to bring home with me.

Golden Wednesday

Last night featured another installation of The Golden Hour, albeit sans Ryan. Instead, we had an amazing guitarist, an MC who read a poem entitled "Catman" over the last few minutes of a horrible kung-fu movie, Ben's Scrabble poetry, a long-short story from Nick, and other goodness. There was, however, one ick part of the evening.

New Yorker. She'd been in Edinburgh for a few months, and she couldn't quite pronounce the city's name, but she decided to write a long, relatively ambitious poem about, among other things, haggis and Scots escaping to America. Our table - British, Irish, Canadian, American - couldn't decide whether she was being ironic or just plain condescending. On a side note, it's amazing how your ear tunes to different accents after months away; I've heard pleasant accents coming out of New England and New York, but hers wasn't one of them.

Wet Tuesday

There was supposed to be a picnic in the Meadows Tuesday. Alas, the weather gods of Scotland had other ideas.

The morning was lovely, sunny and relatively warm (as Ella put it, it's great if you don't think about which month it's supposed to be), and I hurried off to pull together lunch ingredients before one. We had a minor downpour around noon, but it was brief, and I thought there might be a rain contingency plan. At ten of one, however, when no information to the contrary had come through, I stupidly figured I'd go down to the Meadows and see if anyone was around.

The rain, which until then had slacked off, came back in full force. By the time I got to the park, my coat was dripping, and I sorely regretted leaving my little umbrella at home. At least my canvas bag dries quickly. Upon returning to my room, I caught the e-mail cancelling the event due to rain. You know, just as the sun was coming out.

After a long, dry afternoon, Ella and I took a walk last night, and made it about as far as Blockbuster when the heavens once again decided to spit upon us. Obviously, the weather gods want me to stay inside and preserve my winter pallor. It's overcast right now, so today could go either way.

In happier news, three days until HP7!!!

Monday again

Today was one of those mornings that begs for a lie-in: cold, overcast, and sporadically raining. Still, I sucked it up and made it to the gym, then came back and began planning a tentative itinerary for my parents' trip over here at the end of the month. So far, I think I can get us everywhere we want to go by bus or train, with the exception of Glencoe. I'm not thrilled about the prospect of my mother behind the wheel of a British car - not that I don't trust her driving aptitude, but it is the wrong side of the very winding road - but one day shouldn't kill us...

Having realized that Warwick Davis, aka Professor Flitwick, is also the actor who played Willow in the 1988 Spielberg film, I logged onto YouTube and found a copy of the movie. Well, all but forty minutes of it - the guy offered Part 1, then Parts 6-12. Still, I'm pretty sure I have the gist of what transpires in Willow, and yeah, it's a Hobbit knock-off. At least now, assuming we get into the Blackwell's party on Friday, I can look at Warwick Davis and know him as something other than a short wizard...like a short sorcerer...

Edinburgh in ten hours

I had a semi-surprise visit today from Johanny, one of my Davenport friends. As it turned out, she arrived in town at 11:15 this morning, having flown into Glasgow from Paris last night, and was leaving at 9:30 tonight on a grueling 10-hour bus trip to London. In the interim, there was Edinburgh to be seen.

Fortunately, the day felt like cooperating, so we had a quick lunch at Chocolate Soup, followed by a walk up and down the Royal Mile, taking in the castle (complete with Blondie bleachers), Parliament, and a bit of Holyrood Park before heading back to the National Museum. I hadn't yet been, but the museum's pretty neat, rather like a compressed version of the Smithsonian with a huge section on Scottish history tacked on for good measure, a couple of koi ponds in the lobby, and the freakish "Millennium Clock", which somehow manages to incorporate Death, the months, a pieta, and Hitler. And as if that weren't enough, it chimes every few hours, too. Huh.

After the museum, we were both pretty tuckered out, so we came back to my place and Johanny grabbed a pick-me-up nap before dinner. I had wanted to take her to Frankenstein's, but the bar level was packed, so we settled for Favorit nachos - which, I suppose, isn't really "settling", per se. We had a little time left to head back to the Royal Mile to track down souvenirs and whisky fudge, and then, sadly, her whirlwind trip was over and it was time to say goodbye. I do hope she has a chance to sleep between here and London...

Weekend!

I realize that the grad school summer lifestyle really makes little differentiation between the weekend and any other time of the week, but last night was Friday and the Forest was having a benefit concert at Octopus Diamond, and Ryan's a pretty cool guy, so I braved the rain and popped by.

I didn't know what to expect, but it was an excellent show. First up was Billy Liar, who Donna described as "a Sex Pistol". His appearance was a little on the punk side, but that was okay - it's not that far from Flogging Molly to honest punk. Next up was a guy named Jed, and our table swooned a little. Ryan claims he has a beautiful soul. Honestly, if he had just kept playing, I would have been quite content to watch...and, erm, listen.

Well, it was Friday...

Let the Potter mania begin

Today marked the UK opening of the fifth Harry Potter movie, which I managed to see this evening after hearing a glowing review this afternoon. All in all, it's not a bad flick, and certainly one of the better ones of the franchise. Perhaps not the best - nothing quite beats the charm of the first, really - but HP5 had a number of selling points:

-Harry is actually learning to act. He also PMSes much less in the film than he did in the book.
-Umbridge is amazing, and I will never look at pink suits the same way again.
-Snape manages to steal scenes with two words. There needed to be quite a bit more of him, but I assume he'll get ample face time in the next movie.
-Luna is also quite good. Apparently, she doesn't have to act...

On the down side, the whole thing does feel a bit rushed, but then again, the novel was thick and they had a lot of ground to cover. What you get, in essence, is a skimming of the plot and a whole lot of amazingly shiny CGI. Glass explodes. Fireballs appear. People vaporize and start rushing after each other around the room. Voldemort still lacks a substantial nose. There's a great scene with a paper bird early in the school year...

Tonight was only the beginning. Tomorrow, I'm off to reserve my copy for next Saturday...

Mindless fun

Facebook recently began adding optional applications to the profiles, some of them mildly interesting, but most useless. A few people I know have added this one called Pets recently, so I decided to give it a try.

Basically, Pets is what would happen if you combined (fluff)friends, Pokemon, and D&D. You choose one of several rabbity things, each with its own HP, gold, et cetera. You then sic it on various "monsters", mostly overgrown bugs, and each time you win a battle, you get more gold or scavenged items. Spend the gold, buy armor and weapons, and eventually move up the levels...

I'm currently sitting at Level 15. My pink rabbit is covered in this blue armor and wields some funky phoenix thing. Someday, we'll apparently be able to let our rabbits duel other rabbits, but that hasn't quite been worked out yet. In the meanwhile, I'll keep fighting mutant bugs so that I can finally buy that giant gun my rabbit's had his little eye on...

Being productive

I've been doing some more transcription work over the last three days, which always gives me a little something to gripe about - my headphones pinch after an hour or two - and after listening to several hours of conversations, I must admit that I'm surprised afresh at how normal, unscripted speech looks virtually nothing like written dialogue.

For starters, we talk in run-ons. Horribly long, convoluted run-ons that may change theme two or three times before they reach a logical end. We speak with no regard for commas or semicolons, we repeat ourselves, and we have a tendency to let our sentences trail off when we can't think of an appropriate conclusion. Also, it's amazing how much filler we put into our speech (um, you know, like, I guess, uh...yeah), regardless of our age or educational level. We're thinking on our feet, so we have to fill the air while we stall for time.

The other thing that struck me is how it's virtually impossible to convey the aural nuances of conversation in a typed document. Text reads as a horizonal line, but voices rise and fall, crescendo and decrescendo, pause, reapeat, and stutter, and the use of italics conveys only a fraction of this. In some respects, it might be more appropriate to score conversations, just get out the staff-ruled paper and have a go. The tempo changes might be a bit on the abrupt side, but hey, that's what the avant-garde is all about, isn't it? You know?

Weekend

So...Sunday night. And somehow two days have magically disappeared into the ether without anything exciting to show for them.

I've been doing a little transcription work, so that's eaten two afternoons already. Yay.

Other than that, I found a few episodes of Daria on Google Video, and have been reliving late 90s MTV. Still, nothing quite tops Live Earth's Spinal Tap reunion concert yesterday...I have a very special place in my heart for "Stonehenge" especially live, with little people.

Morning oddities

Two things made me smile as I left the gym in the pouring rain this morning:

1) I saw a girl in a "Branford 3:16" t-shirt, meaning I'm not the only person at the CSE whose workout apparel largely consists of Yale t-shirts.

2) As I came to the corner of West Richmond and the Pleasance, I was passed by a guy on a unicycle, holding an umbrella as he pedaled down the hill. Someone give that man a medal or something.

Fireworks in Scotland

Click to Play

See? It wasn't just a video of someone else's fireworks...

Independence Day

There's something vaguely perverse about celebrating the Fourth of July in the UK. No massive cookouts. No swimming. No hours of History Channel programming about the Revolutionary War that vilifies the British. No Law & Order marathon. No going to the American Village and trying to hang out in the air-conditioned press building. (Good times, that.)

No, we made do in the best possible fashion: we staged a "cook-in" (fearing rain), complete with meat, non-meat, potato salad, and entirely too much dessert (hurts so good, though), and watched Wimbledon, as Blockbuster has somehow neglected to purchase a copy of Independence Day. The festivities wrapped up around four, when many of us slunk away to nap off lunch, but we were roused two hours later by the promise of free food at our "Midsummer Pizza Party".

Come on, Warden, just call it what it is. It's okay. We won't tell anyone you want to celebrate our independence.

Anyway, after our first serving of rationed Papa John's, we began complaining that we were still stuffed from lunch, which was sad, as the pizza was good and, best of all, free. Some made the most of the situation by taking pizza for a later meal.

The highlight of the evening was the Three Sisters' Fourth of July bash, which was most definitely not like any I've ever seen. The Scottish "trucker" band in the courtyard played Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan covers, while the DJ inside played tracks that could be vaguely construed as American (including the inevitable "Sweet Home Alabama", joy and bane of my existence). Fortunately, the rain stayed away, and the bar put off about two minutes' worth of fireworks over their roof. Has to be one of the shortest displays on record, but hey, fireworks in Scotland? I'll take it. Any oasis in a desert...

Midnight surliness

In the cold light of morning, you have to feel almost sorry for the inhabitant of room 205. She has the most sensitive smoke or heat detector in the building, apparently, and whenever her shower gets too hot, the fire alarm goes off.

Closer to midnight last night, when her alarm went off for the second time in roughly half an hour, the crowd was feeling less sympathetic. The firemen called back for the second time in half an hour were certainly not happy campers. As for me, I'd just gone to bed after the first alarm, and had just gotten comfortable when the siren started again. Sadly, putting a pillow over my head and muttering curses at the ceiling proved an ineffective way of blocking the noise, and so I found myself outside with everyone once again, watching as an extremely apologetic girl accompanied the firemen back into the building.

On the plus side, it wasn't raining!

Waterlogged

Edinburgh may go through multiple seasons in a given day, but lately, all of them seem to be resembling November.

In any case, here are a few shots of our recent weather...

June 29: a mini-rainbow in the afternoon

July 1: the haar covers the mountain

July 2: the stormclouds mass during a break in the rain. A short break...

Sunrise

I honestly don't know what's wrong with me.

Sunday morning, for no good reason, I was awake at 6. This being a completely unacceptable time, I tried to roll over until 8, but managed only a half-doze for most of those two hours, and resorted to my traditional Sunday afternoon oh-look-it's-raining-I-can't-go-outside nap to prepare for going out Sunday night.

I was only at Three Sisters for three hours - I left at midnight, citing the aforementioned 6 AM wakeup and my planned trip to the gym this morning - but whether it was the afternoon nap or the two drinks I had, something happened to screw my head over last night.

I hadn't seen an Edinburgh sunrise since winter, but let me say now that the sky was still cloudy, albeit rosy, at 4 this morning.

Cut to the present. It's 7:40, I've been up for 10 minutes, I want to leave for the gym by 8, and I've been tossing and turning for the better part of the last three hours. It got to the point that I was having Big Brother-inspired dreams, and that's never a sign of good mental health. Something tells me that there's a nap in my future. That, or mega doses of caffeine...