An attempt at making the best use of my time here.

One of the things I am beginning to regret in my time here in Edinburgh is precisely my time here in Edinburgh. Through a combination of poverty, inertia and an occasionally less than managable workload, I haven't been travelling as much as I would like and had planned. The thing about being in Europe, you see, is that everything seems so tantalizingly close--Scotland is only about the size of West Virginia, and the whole of Western Europe could be covered in about the same area as some Americans are willing to travel to tailgate. But there's all those hidden extras: travel time to the airport, flight time (a big consideration when the cheaper your ticket, the longer your layover--I've seen flights from here to Germany that last anywhere from four to fourteen hours), the fact that RyanAir keeps their costs down in part by building giant passenger silos an hour outside of any place you actually want to visit.

So I haven't gone anywhere. And I feel really bad about that, wasting this whole once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunity experience. Though, if I only feel the obligation because of the relative proximity, I'm forced to wonder why I didn't spend more time in Delaware growing up. And then I remember it's Delaware.

Anyway, in a halfhearted attempt to calm my own sense of rapidly wasting chances, I decided to travel over the weekend. Destination: Glasgow!

Ok, so Glasgow may have a little bit of an unfair reputation among us nambly-pambly, tea-sipping Edinburghers. Just to be clear, I was no beaten, knifed, shanked, curbed or otherwise assaulted in the course of my trip. Instead, I went to church.

The Cathedral in Glasgow is really beautiful, I think the only one that survived the Reformation largely intact, so it's got that going for it.

The graveyard on the hill just opposite the Cathedral is also really cool. It's called the Necropolis, or City of the Dead, and there's a very tall monument featuring John Knox eternally overlooking the Cathedral, so that both Catholics and Protestants can remain equally annoyed at one another (I didn't take a picture of that because it would have irked my flatmate/travel buddy, who has this slightly irrational thing about John Knox).

(If the picture looks weird it's because I took a panorama and also suck)

Then, being me, I needed to use the bathroom. We found the public restroom with relative ease (plus, finding public restrooms is like my own personal superpower) and I paid my 20p and the door whooshed open and in I went. Here's the thing about public restrooms in a lot of European cities: they are fully automated and programmed to lock down and disinfect themselves completely after fifteen minutes. This is reassuring when you are stepping into the antiseptic little cell, but less so as you sit and watch the seconds tick by until you risk being covered in burning blue liquid. It's also a little unsettling when you catch sight of this:

And when you realize that children are not allowed into the cell alone anymore because they were getting locked inside and hosed down (which, really, is that such a bad thing?). So that makes you pee a little faster.

And then, we couldn't really think of anything else to do. Glasgow is like other big cities, I think, where daytripping is really not a very good way to get a feel for the town as anything other than an anonymous, rushing mass. You need to spend more time in order to pick up a thread of the daily rhythm, and without that it is hard to really know what to do or see. I felt like more of a tourist than I have since arriving in Scotland, as in Edinburgh my attention was immediately on settling in for the longhaul. Still, it was a good way to spend a Saturday. And I feel a little better about not having done any proper travelling yet.

Do you know where I really want to go? Thailand.

Damn it.

Virginia may be for lovers, but Valentine's Day is for sulking into a giant box of supermarket chocolate

Praise Jesus and pass the toffee ripple, Valentine's Day in Scotland is not the 48-hour guilt- and glut-fest that it is in the States. If I'd wanted to, I could have completely avoided Cupid's trappings in the run-up to modern society's most loaded holiday and, for once in my life, been spared Hallmark's annual victory in the battle against human decency and true emotion. But--who am I kidding? I love feeling bad about things! And, after all, it's all about the love.

I suppose this year I technically have less ground on which to complain, since I'm with someone emotionally, if not physically. And I'm very happy.

Where my Beauty and the Beast fans at? It's like the West Wing up in here.

But if ever a holiday was devoted to the physical, the tangible, the purchasable, it's Valentine's Day, and so playing off the less than fully satisfying aspect of an essentially spiritual connection did not appeal. I'll save that consummate martyr attitude for Easter, thank you.

So, reasons for continued sulking addressed, on to the dripping red heart of the matter: the flatmate and I had ourselves an anti-VD celebration (always a good idea) last night, and holy cow, please remind me to never, ever eat anything with sugar in it ever again. We raided the local grocery store for pizza, wine and candy, rented the anti-loviest movie we could find (about mounting domestic abuse, triple homicide and the angry ghosts of the deceased! Yay!) and proceeded to get good and sloshed. Go ahead and stick THAT in your card press, Hallmark.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to sell this much sugar in one box

The best part is that it came with an identification key! Yay for no strawberry cream surprises!

This was a terrible movie, but it served its purpose.

The movie ended...and so did I. It was approximately 8:45pm.

It was a great night, a perfect object lesson for the oft-repeated phrase, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with," as well as its little-known second instruction, "and then get piss-drunk on plonk and nougat with them." Ah, romance.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

The sun came out tomorrow

While not entirely ready to abandon my tone of hopeless pessimism, as that would only confuse my friends and family and lead to suspicions of a traumatic head injury, I am ready to admit that this week has been rather...good.

Today especially was heartening--opening my shrunken, mole-blind eyes this morning, what did I behold but the SUN, Phoebus' orb, sending forth its rays over the good people of Edinburgh.

As such a weather event is unlikely to recur for some time, I decided to take full advantage, and spent the morning exploring Calton Hill. The site is lovely, but honestly, I could have walked happily through a landfill, so long as the sun was shining.

On a less literal front, my life has been lighted and lightened this week by the deposal of the Pedant King! Through the machinations of a group of dedicated plotters, this scholastic scoundrel has been driven from Clio's hallowed halls. No more shall learning be boxed in by the confines of a narrow mind; no more soaring thoughts be lightly judged (as an aside, I've been reading Wordsworth and Scott this week and really can't be held accountable for my overblown language. I'm simply STEEPED in it. And I like it). What really happened is that a friend of mine, she of the cream sauces, made a formal complaint to the school, which was not unaware of the issues, and as a result, my classmates and I will no longer be forced to sit through lectures that pose as seminars, listening to unsophisticated dogmatism that is disguised as academic inquiry. My small part in this revolution, and my personal friendship with its principle sans culotte, has earned the two of us a nickname of which I am (perhaps inordinately) quite proud: we are, quoth a favored Professah, the Axis of Contempt.

Which makes me think of this:


I'm the one on the right.

Uhmerica's game

Guess what yesterday was?! If you said Super Bowl Sunday...well, then you're an idiot. I live in Scotland now. It was just Sunday here, and a cold and wet one at that.

HOWEVER. What I have learned in the course of my studies, as well as in various conversations with people from different cultures and societies, is that being an American gives me not just the right, but the duty to inflict my peculiar beliefs and pastimes on other countries. Thus, SUPER BOWL SUNDAY REIGNS IN SCOTLAND!

Or at least, we did the best we could. The flatmate and I participated in the traditional eating of the snack foods:

What else do you need in life? Maybe ice cream...

It's classy because we have straws.

QUESOOOOOOO

We then engaged in the half-hearted picking of the teams. She went Green Bay, because...dairy products? I'm not sure what the reasoning was, we drank a lot of tequila. I went with whichever team didn't run the ball like a bunch of girls (aka, Pittsburgh for the first seven minutes of play, then switched over to Green Bay. Fair-weather-fan me and die).

A pub near the university was showing the game, and offering £2,50 Coors Light. The decision at that point is clear...teetotaler. Nah, I'm joshing. It's Coors. Tap the Rockies, man. Or whatever.

The best picture I could surreptitiously get because, really, what kind of weirdo takes pictures in a bar?

Frost-brewed cat piss. Rocky Mountain high, indeed.

We only stayed until the beginning of the second quarter, because I had class the next day and because...well, to  be honest it was a little depressing watching a football games surrounded by people who were really just there to make a point: America! Fuck yeah! Pass the Coors, the mountains are blue! Also, I'd spent the morning reading about the concussion debate in the NFL, so I couldn't help wondering how many of these gridiron heroes would be wearing diapers made of yesterday's newspapers someday...

Three heads are better than one? Only if each head has 1/3 its brain function

Still, a shadow of a slice of home. And not just because of the diapers. Also because of the Velveeta.

Nein developments

I met with my professor last week, you know, the one who is now singularly responsible for my future success or failure in life. And...turns out my "plan" going in was exactly the same as my plan coming out. Still going to try for the whole PhD thing, looking to break into the land of the nebbish, to teach new mini nebbishes how to research themselves into total obscurity. I do feel better about the whole prospect though, having had my ego stroked by yet another authority figure ("Of course I think you're capable of writing a wonderful dissertation"=nerd pillowtalk), as well as getting some insight into how the first few years might go if I manage to find someone silly enough to hire me. Apparently it's awful, but I actually flourish under complaint-worthy conditions; I'm kind of like the depressed version of Freddy Kruger that way, feeding on dissatisfaction instead of fear.

There's also the option of just starting a dissertation and never finishing it, thus allowing myself the loophole of perpetual studentdom. This will only work if I can convince myself to give up my natural fear-of-fail-derived work ethic and begin to see my life not as an opportunity for excellence, but rather as something to be held at arms' length. Turns out I'm in good company; check this out, from William Wordsworth's 8,000-line poetic monstrosity, "The Prelude":

"...many books

Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused.

But with no settled plan. I was detached

Internally from academic cares, 

From every hope of prowess and reward,

And wished to be a lodger in that house

Of letters, and no more."

And, I mean, that worked out for him, right? I'm suffering through the ego trip of a man who claims to have no goals other than pure communion with nature, so maybe by giving up on my material goals of professional success and acclaim, I too can live on to irritate unfortunate scholars 200 years from now. 

So that's the "plan." I am going to do just well enough to get into a PhD program of my choice and then squat a library carrel for the next forty or fifty years. Occasionally I will venture out for booze or cheese fries, but then, gopher-like, I shall scurry back to my den of books. Yay for professional development!