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First Report from England

The trip started off with a two-hour delay (thank you United Airlines), which didn't leave a lot of time for my one hour layover in Chicago. In fact, it left no time, and I spent the entire flight biting my nails and wondering if I'd even make it to England that night. (Although it didn't keep me from noticing the beautiful sunset.)

My flight landed at 4:23, exactly 5 minutes after the flight to Heathrow was supposed to take off. But I got lucky. The flight to Heathrow was also delayed, and I got there just in time for the flight attendants to usher me quickly onto the plane minutes before it took off. This time, I spent 7 hours with a nagging worry that just perhaps my large suitcase didn't have time to make it on the plane. Luckily, I had the forethought to pack my most needed necessities in my carry-on. But things have a way of working out sometimes. I got the whole row to myself and spent the flight putting my two new purchases to good use. I tried to sleep for an hour, but I'm not one to sleep in public. I just can't bring myself to do it. Instead, I got a view of England waking up.

I landed at Heathrow and made my way through a very long customs line and then waited, impatiently, to see if my bag had arrived. The Trip Gods were smiling down one me because there it was, just waiting. I had about five minutes to catch the bus to Reading, which had a much more bustling station than I had expected and I searched around looking for my friend, Kris. Once again, the Trip Gods blessed me and we found each other quickly.

That afternoon, after I took a quick nap, we headed off to explore nearby Oxford. I took tons of pictures (which you can find here), but here's a brief tour of what we saw.

(I love that there are blossoms here already!)

We stopped at the University Church and went inside and climbed up the scariest, narrow set of spiral stairs, I've ever seen. Luckily, there's a rope you can hold onto.

But the view was entirely worth it.

Other than that, we basically wandered around for a while and sat in a little bookshop looking through guides to Paris before heading home for the evening.

The next day, we took off bright and early to visit Stonehenge and Salisbury. I kept taking pictures of the lovely green, English countryside.

I hadn't planned on going to Stonehenge when I was mapping out my trip. Our original plans to visit a quarterly antiques fair in the south of England didn't work out, so we decided to go there instead, and I'm so glad I did. It was a strange feeling to see something in person that we had seen so often in pictures. I always figured visiting Stonehenge would be lame because it'd be all fenced off with lots of people staring at it, and I had some notion of sitting amidst the ruins reading (or writing) poetry or something equally 19th Century romanticist. And I was right. There was a pathway for walking and we couldn't get anywhere really near the stones, so I could forget about whiling away the afternoon with book in hand. It was cold and windy anyway, so I wouldn't have wanted to linger too long, but Stonehenge was still incredible to visit.

The guidebooks told us that we'd see the spire of the nearby Salisbury Cathedral long before we entered the town. They were right.

The oldest existing working clock is located in the Salisbury Cathedral.

Here are some more interior shots:

Some school kids were going on a fieldtrip through the cathedral. We never went to cool places like that.

Since it was a ruins kind of day, we decided to stop by the Avebury ruins on our way home. We could see Stonehenge from the side of the road, and we thought how strange it would be to see something so famous every day on your way to work. It would become so casual.

The Avebury ruins, much less famous than Stonehenge, are a series of megaliths, some in semi-circular forms and others in a pathway. Apparently, the people of the 19th Century were a little suspicious of the stones and took pickaxes and other tools to them, so many are now missing. But those that remain are simply standing along the side of the road, and visitors can access them through a series of fences. No pathways blocking them, so I would've been free to read and write poetry to my heart's content, but I found I'd rather take photos. Funny how things work.

Well, that only took pretty much all day to write. Good thing it's a stormy day outside, and I've been perfectly content to relax in Kris's comfy living room for the day. Tomorrow, the adventures begin again, so blogging will be slow... but a ridiculous amount of pictures are (yes, another self-promotional plug) on my flickr.

My Bags Are Packed...

I leave in T-Minus 9 hours. I'll be taking my laptop with me, but I'm not sure how much down time I'll have for blogging (which always means editing, cropping, resizing photos, etc.), but I'll probably be uploading photos to my flickr for those whose curiosity must be satisfied. Otherwise, I'll be back in two weeks!

Justification

There are all sorts of things to do to prepare for a long trip. Not the least of these is how to entertain yourself for 16 hours on an airplane. This concern helped me justify some purchases I've been wanting to make for a while.

Some may say I'm "not practical with money." I just call it a fiscally responsible investment in my sanity.

starry, starry, starry

My friend Danny just posted this video of Joanna Newsom singing Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie, and it hit the spot. After watching it more than three times (and some of her other videos), I decided to post it here, too.

Danny also introduced me to this awesome site earlier today.

Happy President's Day

Here's to Washington (and Lincoln), although my place of employment obviously doesn't care enough about our country's heritage to give me the day off so I can celebrate properly by hitting up all the President's Day sales.

{Photos taken from this video, which I want to warn my readers has some eff words and other things they might find objectionable, but is pretty great.}

We Will Rock You

Ever since I found out Kristin had a game called Karaoke Revolution, I have been dying to test out my skillz. I mean, I'm nearly a professional singer after all. But finding nights when we were all free and ready to sing our hearts' out proved difficult. The stars (get it?) aligned on Friday night, but Karaoke Revolution was pushed aside for something even better, Rock Band!

If you think being seven months pregnant would keep Krick from setting the drums on fire, you are severely mistaken. And of course, K & J were in a band so of course, they had an advantage.

But still, rock band can be hard, especially when you're trying to rock a song you've never heard.

Luckily, I've had some practice. I've already played rock band twice before Friday, at Alene's house on Thursday nights before LOST. This made it possible for me to score 100% on the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Maps. But I'm going to attribute my success on Radiohead's Creep (where I got over 90% on the hardest level) to A LOT of time spent singing that song in the car.

TV

I have a habit of watching TV online while I fold my laundry or clean my room. Lately, I've been watching My So-Called Life. I used to love this show in high school. Back then, I identified more with Brian Krakow - the overachiever tormented by unrequited love- than anyone. Watching it again as an adult, though, I am constantly amazed at the details. At how the writers got so much about high school right. I didn't think so back then. I liked the show, and I identified with the characters, but it didn't really reflect my high school experience that much. I think it's because I was looking, then, at the surface level of it. My high school, in an affluent Salt Lake suberb, had about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. I never skipped class. We didn't have metal detectors. I think we had a cop who meandered the halls, but it seemed like he was there more to tell people to take off their baseball caps than anything else. The high school in My So-Called Life just felt more gritty, I guess. So those details were off. But the emotional details are spot on. All the complicated ways of trying to express yourself without actually having to say how you feel, all the looking and lingering in the halls, the circuitous ways to try and see someone, the disappointment when after all your trouble to go to the dance just to see someone and nothing significant happens.

Too bad the network was stupid and got rid of it. Just like they're trying to do to another of my favorite shows. I might have mentioned on here once or twice about how much I love Friday Night Lights. Apparently, NBC isn't feeling the love and is threatening to get rid of it. I, for one, am doing my part to keep quality shows on TV. Maybe you can help, too.

Happy Valentine's Day

If you were lucky enough to work with me, you could have one of these delicious cupcakes I made during the commercials while watching Project Runway tonight.

Since I've already shared the valentines from the Tippecanoe County Archives here and here, I thought I'd go a different route this year and post some designed by Brandon Bird.

I've never felt like Valentine's Day was just for lovers, which is good because otherwise I might be thoroughly depressed. Rather it's just a day to tell those you care about that you love and value them. With that in mind, I want to tell all ten of you that read this how much I love and care for you. It's a lot. Hope your day is a good one.

Fickle February

I spoke too soon. There's another foot of snow on the ground outside. Oh well, the birds this morning were lovely.

I decided...

that what this blog needs right now is some more Claire.

Here's a picture Claire art-directed herself.

Even better than pictures of Claire, though, is some video. Here she is playing with some sun-catcher animals.

I just can't resist taking pictures of the mountains lately. I guess I missed them when I was in Indiana.

And this is the other side of the freeway.

Sunny February

I didn't even have to wear a coat today. Too bad I'm stuck at work.

Bag Tag

Kris de facto tagged me to reveal the contents of my purse. Ok, so she didn't mention me specifically, but I have this compulsive desire to display my belongings. It's why I line all of my books up on shelves and just hope that people want to visit my room so they can read the titles of them, and it's why I continue to keep boxes full of CD cases because I just know that some day I will have space to also line them all up. That's why I not only took a picture of the contents of my purse, but I will now go to the effort of explaining to you what they are.

1. My lovely wallet that my sis gave me for graduation last May. I always feel so dainty pulling it out of my purse.
2. A snack I took to work with me but never ended up eating.
3. Hand lotion for my incredibly dry hands and my Burt's Bees, the one thing I will not leave home without.
4. iPod.
5. Cell phone that is much too quiet these days (hint, hint)
6. The relics of my cold I've had for two weeks: Fisherman's Friend cough drops and some Tiger Balm for the kink in my neck I've developed because of a hacking cough.
7. Gum (two packs because one is almost out, and I want to be prepared) and some mints I got from Sujey over a year ago when she interviewed me about Mormonism. She was buying all interviewees coffee as a thank you, but I got these instead.

One very important thing missing in this photo is my camera. I never go anywhere without it, but it was a little tricky to include it in the photo when I needed it to take the picture.

Feel free to consider yourself tagged because as much as I like to display my own belongings, I also like to see yours.

Pranks!

Spanke introduced these great videos to me last year, and I took advantage of the boss being out of the office today to share them with Alene (and now with all of you).

You can see more (and higher quality video) at the Prangstgrup website.

p.s. I recalled these videos after watching a great one on swissmiss called When Grand Central Station Stood Still.

Super Tuesday

I wasn't planning on voting today. Not because I'm not interested, but because I didn't know if I could. The last time I voted was the 2004 presidential election, and I had to vote before I left for Austria. That was up in Cache County. I didn't know if I was registered to vote in Salt Lake County, and my well-intentioned efforts to determine my eligibility never materialized. I decided on the way home from work, though, to just stop by the Presbyterian church I'm supposed to vote at and see if it was possible.

Let's take a brief interlude and look at what a beautiful evening it was, though, on my way home from work:

Obviously, based on the intro photo, I did vote. I found out I could do a provisional ballot, as long as I had some mail with my new address on it. So I quickly went around the block and found a letter from the student loan people who keep after me all the time about repaying them and returned to the church. The lady there seemed surprised to see me, as though once I left those doors my determination to participate in my civic duty would depart as well.

Since I didn't know I would be voting, my decision sneaked up on me. I hadn't firmly decided one way or the other which candidate I preferred. Over the past week, I've been reading this article from The New Yorker. It takes me a long time to get through an article because I only ready it while I'm blow drying my hair, so about five minutes tops. In the article, George Packer argues that the choice between Obama and Clinton really comes down to how each of them (and really how we as voters) view the presidency. He writes:

Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government. Clinton presents politics as the art the possible, with change coming incrementally through good governance . . . . This is the real meaning of the remark made during one of the New Hampshire debates: "Dr King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do - the President before had not even tried - but it took a President to get it done."

In other words, the rival viewpoints of the presidency is one who inspires the people and one who gets the job done. While I don't agree, and Packer doesn't really insist, that these two views are mutually exclusive, it spoke to my own concerns about each candidate and how I viewed their strengths and weaknesses and ultimately which perspective on the presidency I felt would be the most effective. Did I want someone I felt confident would inspire people to act, or did I want someone I felt confident had the means and knowledge to act? Practical or visionary?

In the voting booth, I had to come to a decision much quicker than I anticipated. I won't reveal here which oval I marked because I have this strange feeling that voting is like wishing on a star and if you tell someone else your secret, it won't come true. But I was happy to have voted.

I've Been Remiss

This blog has been neglected. It's the whining child in the back of my mind that I'm generally pretty successful at tuning out, but every once in a while, I think - I've got to find something to blog about. So far nothing has presented itself. There's the snow... yep, it's still snowing. There's my cold. I've been feeling like my head is caving in on me all week long. There's work, which I try to ignore as much as possible, and then there's saying goodbye to a dear friend who moved yesterday, which I've also been trying to ignore. Doesn't leave much for subject matter. But it's a new month and a new week tomorrow. I think the five boxes of tissues I've gone through this past week may have taken my cold with them... almost. I'm optimistic that things are looking up. If nothing else, I leave for England three weeks from tomorrow.