Thursday, August 31, 2006
Backup
When I took my lone creative writing course in high school, the teacher started by telling us the difference between a journal and a diary. What most high school students think of as a diary is actually a journal & vice versa. A diary is where the events of the day are recorded. "Today I had a fight with my mom cause she said I couldn't go to the movies with Michelle. That sux." Journals are when you actually get to hear the persons thoughts on the situation. "Today I had a fight with my mother. She and I haven't been getting along lately. Sure, the magazines say it's teen angst, but really I prefer to think it as philosophical differences." Journals tell how you feel. Diaries tell what you did. We were to start Journalling.
I've had a backup of blog ideas rolling around in my head for the past few days. There is so much going on, but I've felt the compulsive need to continue on with this honeymoon thing, but those are so exhausting to write. Picture heavy, (pictures are not easy to upload on this blog program, plus I hate editing them) with little to no creativity. I still feel that need, but I'm going to stop with the incessant slideshow routine. "Our 'round the world tour started in Skipton...where we booked the tickets...here is a picture of the tickets." No one enjoys that. Instead, I'm adopting a "moment of Scotland" routine. Every entry, one picture of the trip and a one sentence (or two) description. Mmmkay. This way, those of you who want to can just skip to the end for the travelog.
In order to make this transition smooth, we'll mix the honeymoon in with the purpose of the blog: Needlecraft! Some of you may be wondering (ok, so it's just the voices in my head, but hear me out) what a young bride takes along to knit on her honeymoon. No, not that. (Sorry, Dad. The joke was there. I had to use it.)
Tricky choice this trip was. I wasn't sure how much I was going to be driving. I assumed I'd be driving the whole way. But Justin likes driving, even when our vehicle is a big cargo van, so after we left the big city, he ended up driving the rest of the way. I took one mindless project for sight-seeing in the car, and one difficult project for the plane to help me forget about the stomach-dropping turbulence and other airline woes.
I believe this is actually the first time you've all met Magnum Opus. Magnum Opus, meet the blog. It's been difficult to blog about this particular project, even though I've been working on it off and on for at least 6 months now. Two rows is an accomplishment, 5 rows is an entire ball of yarn, and that sort of progress can't be shown in photographic evidence. This is St. Ciaran from Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting. No, I won't tell you how I got the book. It was luck, it was skill, it was creative thinking. That's all I'll say. Of this pattern, Starmore says, "Some of my knotwork ideas are too large to incorporate into sweaters...." This is a shawl. A giant, unending, shawl. I went on a weekend of estate sales and picked up a bag of acrylic yarn for a buck that also included the actual reason for purchase: some vintage patterns, a pair of size 8's and a circular size 11. This project will be in a bag at the estate sale my family will have after I die. If they don't bury me with it, that is. Hopefully the person who picks it up will appreciate the $350.00 book that sits with it and not just say, "ooh!! Size 7 circulars!" Six months, one pattern repeat of chart C. I need to do 12. There are 3 other pattern charts. Lots of post-it notes and a very chewed cable needle (I stick it in my mouth when I'm not using it). Is it worth it? Absolutely. Justin said he thinks the reason it's taking so long is that I have to admire my work for 10 minutes after every row. God, I pray I don't run out of yarn. Mission Falls 1824 wool. I believe the color is Putty. It's a very deep plum purple, but taken in the bluish early morning light it comes out quite differently.
Yum.
And now, your moment in the Highlands.
Me doing my best impersonation of the cover of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting. As our luggage was still lost at this point (day four, if you're counting), I had no Aran sweater, only my cheesy London Tube Map souvenier t-shirt that I bought in London. Along the B851 outside of Fort Augustus.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
I've taken the trouble of going for you!
Where were we? Ah, yes. We were dreamily making our way north to Aberdeen the Caledonian Sleeper. Aberdeen was a significant stop on our tour. So significant, there is no pictoral evidence of it. If you would like to see pictures, I would direct you here, but that's a whole day's reading in and of itself.
Aberdeen was where I spent a semester during college. DH and I were dating at the time, and we had always planned on visiting Scotland to show him around if'n we ever got married. We spent the day wandering around the campus, showing him all of my old haunts. Most importantly, this was a city in which I had a day-to-day existence! I wasn't just a tourist here. Which meant...I knew where to find socks and underwear, now in short supply. Yes, I knew where the mall was. We bought more clothing, spent a night at a B&B, checked up on our luggage and felt fairly confident that it would meet us at our next stop in Invermoriston.
The basic plan for the Highlands portion of our trip was rent a car, make our way from B&B to B&B, stopping whenever we feel like there might be something we'd like to see. First let me introduce you to the trusty, automatic transmission Ford Focus coupe I ordered from Avis (yes, they have Avis over there).
Yup. Things are just bigger over there on the Island. When we arrived at the Aberdeen airport (by bus) to pick up our Ford Focus, we were told the transport for the day had not arrived. Because nothing can go right, because it's our honeymoon! "The only automatic we have right now is a Renault Espace." "What's that?" "You'll be fine." "Yes, but I've never heard of a Ren-oh Es-pass. What is it?" "Oh! It's a people-mover. You'll be fine." "What's a people mover? Never mind. I'll be fine." She hands me a credit card instead of a key (because I have been in England before, it's assumed that things being on the left will come back to me, making driving easier), and sent us off. Considering that I was imagining an airport shuttle bus waiting for us in the carpark, this was a pleasant surprise.
Off we set. Our first stop was a little south of Aberdeen in a fishing village called Stonehaven. Outside of town was the most dramatic castle we saw. By far our favorite, Dunnotaur Castle. A note on Scottish pronounciation. The second syllable gets the emphasis in 99% of names. Any following syllables get mumbled over. For example, Duh-NOT-er Castle. Aberdeen is the exception. Ab-er-DEEN.
This was my third trip to Dunnotaur. (But you knew that if you read the other page already. ;-) ) It's heart stopping every time. The castle is absolutely inaccessible to anyone unwilling to hike down (and back up) about 500 steps down into the gorge and back up into the castle. Uphill, both ways, wearing nothing but barbed wire around my feet for traction. Gorgeous day. Incredibly romantic. See? I told you we'd start having fun. :-)
We also stopped at Kildrummy Castle, (Kil-DROOM-ee)
Glenbuchat (Glen-BOOOOK-it) Castle (built for one of Andrew Carnegie's ancestors to live in when she got married...guess they didn't register anywhere),
The Glenlivet (how would you pronounce that one?) Whisky Distillery, where I tried to escape with a barrel,
drove around the southern end of Loch Ness and arrived at our next B&B in the hamlet of Invermoriston.
We spent the evening dangling our toes in the very chilly water of the Loch, waiting for Nessie to come nibble our toes.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Rank
Critter kill count in the house since last week: 1 bat, 2 mice, about a bagillion teeny tiny ants.
When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had checked into their London hotel after a harrowing and eventful day of seeing nothing of major interest in the city.
The next day we woke up pretty late and headed off to see...well...to see the stuff you see in London.
With the Tube somewhat back up to working capacity, we set off for the meagre second place to the Abbey Road Studios: The London Beatles Shoppe. Justin bought a shirt which you will be seeing a lot of as we move along in our Honeymoon Extravaganza. See if you can count how many days in a row I had to put up with it. Down a block was the Sherlock Holmes Museum and (you guessed it) Gift Shoppe. Almost talked Justin into one of those hats, but he said it clashed with his new Beatles shirt.
Hopped on the Tube again and ascended to a horde of people gathered around everybody's favorite accident victim, Big Ben. There's not much to actually DO at Big Ben. You can't get into the houses of Parliament. Basically, you walk around trying to get the best vantage point, snap a few pictures, and then move on across the bridge to the London Eye, or head towards Westminster Abbey. The odd thing was, people were just standing there on the street. Hundreds of tourists not taking pictures, just standing there with cameras out, not milling around, not trying to find the best position, just...standing there. We took a few, wondered what everyone was doing, then headed off to Westminster Abbey.
Suddenly, as if with clanging bells and crashing cymbals, we understood what everyone was waiting for.
Big Ben was striking 12. The world stopped.
Other stops on the tour for the day were Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the British Museum before everything closed and we had to go back to our hotel.
Of those, the best was the Abbey, hands down. It's both a horrible shame and a blessing that you can't take pictures in the Abbey. The poet's corner was like returning to AP European Lit., Newton's monument (for you DaVinci Code folks), and the oldest part of the Abbey, the Chapter House were all wonderful. But first and foremost, the Abbey is a church and a burial place. I think that giving it that level of respect is cool, even if it means you have to but $20 worth of postcards if you want to have any pictures of what you saw. (Btw: the gift shop is in a separate building, also very cool. Don't get me started on gift shops in churches.) We did get some nice ones of the outside, though.
After the British Museum, we returned to the hotel. Our little information sheet about our lost luggage told us to call a toll-free number sometime between 10AM and 8PM if we had questions about our luggage. I kid you not, the number was 0800 012345678 (or however numbers there are in British phone numbers). This should have been our first clue that USAirways may not be the best at customer service as this number looks suspiciously phoney, as if to just give some poor saps any phone number and a false sense of "we're there if you need us." I think 1-800-scru you would have been more effective.
We returned to our hotel at 7, figuring that we would have an hour to call and rant and rave, better ascertain where our luggage was should our bags not be at the hotel as USAIR said they would be. No bags yet, but this was not unexpected. We borrow the front desk phone and attempt the 12345 number only to get the British version of "we're sorry, your number cannot be completed as dialed." It goes something like this, "You mean you actually thought a number like that would work? Silly sod, Hehehehe!!" I started to lose it. The concierge recognized that it would be bad business to have the same woman freaking out in his lobby twice in two days, so he quickly volunteered to help. He called the number and got the same result. Then he called the airline and talked to a human being. "That office is open from 10 til 5 and the number shuts down after then." "But the information sheet says that it is open until 8." "That sheet is mistaken. I'm sorry. Goodbye." No news on where our baggage was. All we knew was that we had a train to catch at 9.
We told the concierge that if our baggage arrives before tomorrow night, send it on to our Loch Ness accomodations. That's two days ahead of us, and it's also the last place where they would be able to reach us in any reasonable amount of time. The concierge thought that was a good plan, and if it were to turn up after tomorrow night, he was to send it back to America. We left him our upcoming telephone numbers and headed to our train station.
Second night's lodging: The Caledonian Sleeper. Can you say, "I'm having fun on my honeymoon"?
Up next: We begin to have fun.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
All this and a little bag of peanuts too!
While I should follow the wedding post (thank you for the comments. :-) ) with a glut o' pics from either the wedding or the honeymoon, I've been sifting through the wedding for the past 3 hours, eliminating a mere 36 pictures from our potential album pics. I'm a bit sick of the photograpic world.
Instead I offer a story right before the work day ends. Some of you may remember that my experiences with travelling are less than wonderful. But a wise blogger once wrote that life is just more interesting when things aren't going well. If the following had not happened, I would be able to write that "our flight to London was uneventful. Our trip from London to Gatwick was flawless and comfortable. Then we checked into our hotel without problem." Big deal. Where's the spice in that???
What really happened is far more interesting. Being the good international travellers that we are, we arrived at airport 2 hours early and proceeded through baggage check-in and security in 15 minutes. Thus began the wait. We perused the little-used airmall, followed Justin's pre-flight tradition of a bottle of water and pastry from au bon pain, and settled into our gate 45 minutes before boarding time. It was then that we discovered that our flight to Philadelphia would be delayed 90 minutes. The plane is running late. Hmm...not good. This would give us a scant amount of time to make our major flight to London. Ten minutes later, that wait was reduced to half an hour. The plane had arrived, way ahead of schedule. Thank God!
Another 10 minutes go by and the screen changes to reflect the 90 minute delay again. What's the deal? Finally, enough unruly would-be passengers question the change that an announcement must be made. Well, when the plane was going to be late, SOMEONE (no one will take credit) called and told the crew that there was no reason to be here until 7:30, 90 minutes after the flight was scheduled to depart. And despite the fact that the plane is now on time, that order cannot be rescinded. The plane? Here. The crew? Still running 90 minutes late. Why? Well, because we told them to be 90 minutes late. Can't you tell them to get their butts in gear? No.
The gate crew start calling out Philadelphia flights. No one flies to Philadelphia. It's easier and cheaper to drive. It takes the same amount of time as flying. That means literally everyone on our flight was connecting to somewhere. "Munich? You will be missing your flight. Lisbon? You will not make your connection. Boston? If you proceed to gate 3, there is a flight to Denver that will get you to Boston by midnight. Las Vegas? Ok. Athens? Ok." Strange silence about Gatwick. No news about Gatwick. We know we're on the bubble. We'll have 15 minutes to make our flight IF we land in Philadelphia at the newly scheduled "on time." The other bad news is that should we fly to Philadelphia and MISS our flight, Philadelphia does not pay to put you up in a hotel because our delay was caused by weather (the "late" plane) and not by the airline (which told the crew not to show up on time and wait like the rest of us for a damn plane).
After 90 minutes of no news and entertaining ourselves by watching the people trying to "work the system" by running around the airport trying to get onto any flight to east coast by flying standby, we are finally allowed to board. At some point, I receive a call from my dad telling us that the London flight is also delayed 90 minutes, so we should be fine. As we board, I hold my ticket to my chest and say, "You've said nothing about London Gatwick. Are we going to make our flight?" "London Gatwick is fine." Mmmmkay.
We deboard in Philadelphia, and I immediately check the departing flight screen, which says our flight is due to take off on time...in 15 minutes. We take off running down the terminal and love that the Philadelphia airport places its international flights a mile closer to the Atlantic than the rest of the airport to allow for shorter flight times. Thank you, Philadelphia! At some point I start gasping to Justin, a good 10 yards ahead, that there's no point in running. If it's on time, we've missed it. No point in running, in popping a lung. But we both feel the need to keep on running, so running is what we do. Finally, the international terminal comes into view. It is clear that something is not quite right here. The flatscreen monitors that usually have flight info on them are all blank. The television screens that normally display the departure time and flight number for individual flights are in some sort of rest mode from what I can tell. It's hard to see as each screen has a piece of printer paper taped to the screen: "Athens" "London" Hmm...the McDonalds employees are all rubbing sticks together to heat the grill. What could this mean? I hesitantly approach the "LONDON" desk and ask a rather sweaty and harried young man if we've missed our flight. "Nope, London is still here." Then he gets on the intercom and says that the plane that should have departed for London a half an hour ago has JUST arrived and that it will be about 2 hours to get it cleaned and prepared for our departure. We were the only happy people in that terminal.
The flight to London was rather uneventful, but I can tell you that sleeping pills don't work. At least not the OTC ones. We arrive at Gatwick two hours late (how do planes get back on time after a delay like this? Is it possible??) and get our passports stamped with our carry-ons in tow. I think you can all guess what happened when we went to retrieve our luggage? That's right. It didn't make it. We meet up with our belligerent friends from Pittsburgh who have made the trek with us because, you see, their luggage didn't make it either. And an entire group of Girl Scouts from Texas with nothing but bookbags full of chocolate and I-Pods, so much for being prepared. We hopped into the "disgruntled" line and I produced a 4 page itinerary for us (and our baggage), explaining to the man that we needed our bags by tomorrow evening, as we were leaving London and headed to Scotland, where we will be moving faster than the parcel service.
Wait, perhaps a visual, tracing our progress over the next 5 days.
As you can see, after we leave London, we'll be travelling the entire length of the country in one night and then the entire width of the country over the two days after that. The entire western half of Scotland (that far north) is composed of single lane roads (one lane to be shared by traffic going in BOTH directions) with passing places. "Riiiight, well, we'll do what we can, Love, but I wouldn't plan on anything until at least 6 PM tomorrow." "But our train leaves at 9PM. Can you have them there by 8:30?" "Riiiight, nothing before 6."
Defeated, we hop on a train to leaving Gatwick that will drop us off at the southern end of the London Tube. Another map may be in order. It's a biggie.
Things look simple enough. We are dropped by our train at the train station labeled with the green arrow. Our hotel is within a block of the station labeled with the red arrow. Easy! Get on the black line, sorry, the Northern Line, and head...North. We get to three stations away from our destination, and the engineer of our little subway train tells us that "due to a power outage," both our station and King's Cross St. Pancras (the biggest station in London) are closed and we will not be stopping there.
Should you want to transfer, this is the stop to do it. Off the train we get to regroup and establish our options. Let's work the system. There are more than a dozen train lines in this system, one of them should work. We ride the Tube for an hour or two, trying in vain to get ever closer to our station. But it's Sunday. Half the system is closed due to engineering, in a handful of stations, some poor sap has left a backpack on a bench leading to the closure of the entire station, and then there's this power outage.
Getting nowhere, I say "screw it! We're getting a cab!" After standing in the street with arms in the air for a half an hour, I remember that there was a guy in the subway station who seemed to know what he was doing. He may have even worked for the Tube in some capacity. People seemed to have been flocking to him like pigeons looking for direction, for some purpose in their lives. Maybe HE knows how to hail a bloody cab! I went back to ask. He was still surrounded by people in the middle of the station, hurriedly answering their questions. Yes! He knows the answers!! "Paddington Station? Right, take the Bakerloo Line to Elephant & Castle. Get off there and a derigible will fly you across the Thames to your destination." And on to the next person. Wait! I was the next person! "Right now I'm willing cut my losses and take a cab." "Right, you'll want to stand out there on the street, but good luck finding one on a Sunday, let alone a Sunday like today. You'll have better luck if you walk up to nvciwlcsie street." And my audience was over. No chance to say, "What was that street again??" I went out with no new information.
Luckily, and really, luck was all there was to it, Justin finally succeeded in hailing a cab within the next 10 minutes. "Hilton London - Euston. Please." "Where?" "The Hilton. Near Euston Station." "I don't know where that one is." "There's not a Hilton near Euston Station?" "Not that I know of, Love." Well, take us to the train station. We'll figure it out from there. After circling around the train station, in order to help us out, I'd imagine, we're finally ejected from the cab. Yes, at this point I was thankful we only had our weekender suitcases. Yes, I've thought about that. Yes, I've thanked God every day. Yes, yes. Clouds, silver linings. I know! But four hours. FOUR HOURS to get from Gatwick airport to our hotel. No wait! We're not even at the hotel yet!
We get the information we need from the very informational information lady, and walk the half block to our hotel, drag our luggage up the steps (no elevators or ramps), and proceed to the front desk...
to find that the hotel is completely without power. No one can check in. Rooms haven't been cleaned; they have no way of knowing if there is any sort of room they could just let us use to shower. "But we can take your bags and check them in our room back here." Justin was remiss. We only had underwear for 3 days. And you want us to give THAT up too??? I talked him into it, saying that our luggage would not be leaving the building.
We set out to see, as I put it, "SOMEthing, dammit," and started to walk. We found Regent's Park and took pictures of flowers.
And those were the first two days of our marriage.
Did we get our bags back? Did we ever see anything else in London? Are we still married???
You'll just have to wait and see. :-)
Monday, August 14, 2006
I didn't want to post about the wedding until I had some pictures, any pictures, to show.
To get the legal stuff out of the way, all of the photographs of the wedding are courtesy of our photographer, Melody Farrin. Absolutely everything we ever wanted in a photographer. Fly on the wall. Brilliant. Just wonderful. And 2e should know. This as our fifth wedding this summer.
God, I don't even know how to start. The pressure to be quirky and funny is overwhelming.
Everyone who has commented on our wedding to me has had the same thing to say. There was a lot of emotion in the room when we got married. It was palpable. More, people told me, than any other wedding they'd been to. You could feel it everywhere. I absolutely loved our ceremony. I loved that I had the training to plan it and that we had a friend who would listen be willing to marry us. She gave us free reign to write the prayers, pick the hymns, pick the scriptures, design the service.
We through poor Dot a curveball, though, by asking her to preach on the Good Samaritan. We wanted a scripture that would communicate something to the congregation: God is love, radical love that crosses boundaries, breaks rules, and requires sacrifice. That's the love we have for each other. And that's the love we want to show the world.
When all was said and done, the flowers were perfect, the catering was wonderful, the bridesmaids dresses were beautiful, the kids were adorable. But it was the words that were important to us. It was the words that were absolutely divine.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Mundane Life
I've determined that blogging is best accomplished in the mundane moments of life. During those times, you have time to find the humor in things, you have time to explore the philosophical implications of baking a cake, knitting a sock, getting stuck in an elevator.
When things just hit you, bam bam bam, one after the other, it makes for bad blogging as all you have to time to process, let alone write about, is the laundry list of shit that has gone down. In my one creative writing class in high school, we discussed the differences between diaries and journals. Diaries are lists of what happened: My mom yelled at me, I was pissed, I went to bed. Journals take the time to explore the whys and the hows in addition to the whats and the whens.
Alas, my life has only warranted time for a diary today as life refuses to be mundane and if I try to process or meditate on any of the events in my recent past, my head will just explode.
In the past WEEK:
We've flown in from London (yes, we're thankful we're home. VERY thankful. Scary to think I WAS THERE a week ago.)
We've picked up a very injured dog from the kennel. Calvin chewed a third of his tail, half of his butt and all of his paws bloody. Is the kennel at fault? I refuse to waste my energy thinking about it. As soon as they noticed the problem, they took him to the vet who gave him one of those collars.
We've spent 4 sleepless nights with him, took him to our vet, to the emergency room twice, each time the prognosis getting more long term, more dire, more tragic, and more expensive.
We had to put Calvin to sleep. Please don't think I'm cold and callus by not writing what an amazing dog he was. Because it would just break my heart to think about it too much. He was the most wonderful dog and the most intelligent dog I've ever had. This dog would drop a bouncy ball from his mouth and on the bounce would tap it with his nose in your direction. That, my friends, is amazing. He made the DH into a dog person, a miracle in and of itself. And our last five days with him were some of the worst of my life. He couldn't stand or walk without letting out the most heart-cutting, bone-chilling, blood-curdling screams I've ever heard, and I've had dogs in my life since I was 6. Which means he couldn't urinate without urinating all over himself. He also threw up several times, a symptom that couldn't be reconciled with skin allergies, suggesting some sort of auto-immune disease that was attacking him from the inside out.
I have to tell you, I've switched schools, I've left volunteer programs, I've drastically changed careers. The decision to put Calvin down, to end his life (I hate the euphemisms), was the most difficult I've ever EVER had to make. I'm proud to say that we were both there for it, his head was on my knee, and that our touch was one of his last sensations. Forget about fighting with vets for what you know is best for YOUR companion, friend, family member. There's no room to go into that.
Calvin was in my life less than a year, but the impact he made...
That was Monday.
Tuesday morning, we come downstairs to find that one of the peaches I bought and left to ripen had a huge chunk bitten out of it. I also noticed that an entire bowl of Calvin's dog food has disappeared, and he hadn't eaten anything since Wednesday. Mice? Rats?
Wednesday, the exterminator says mice. We can handle that.
Wednesday night we think the exterminator might be wrong or at least incomplete in his diagnosis. As we're preparing for bed, I'm in the bathroom and DH screams and starts swearing. Not a high pitched scream, but a long sustained bellow. "Is it a mouse?" I yell from the toilet. "No!!! IT'S A BAT!!!" After about a half an hour of brainstorming, fretting, etc. Justin was sent back into the fray with a sponge mop, then a broom, and finally a baseball bat. What do you use to get bat blood off the carpet?
Ok, so in the two weeks we've actually LIVED in this house, we've had raw sewage backing up into the basement, mice, and now bats. Oh yeah, and a wedding.
Homeowners, what constitutes a "normal" day? I'm just wondering at this point. Did my parents just not tell me about the problems that went on with the house on a daily basis?
Calvin AKA: Calveen, The Great Calvino, Calvino, Birth Control, Cal Poochino
We're gonna miss you so much, buddy.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
All Done
The Move: Done, technically...the aftermath of the move is still in high gear.
The Wedding: Done
The Honeymoon: Done
Knitting projects done: None.
C'mon, do you blame me?
I've spent the morning catching up on a month of blog entries from various favorite sights.
There aren't any wedding pictures available yet, and the 900 (yes, 900) pics of Sheepville Scotland uploaded all out of order. Workin on it. :-)
Looking forward to posting again. I missed you guys.
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