the advent of spring

I was really proud of myself when I saw the last post, thinking, “Oh, I’m only a month and a half behind!” (Which isn’t actually that great, but anyway.) Of course, then I read the post, and realized that the content only ran through the end of January…so there’s still a lot of catching up to do. I’ve become a very lazy correspondent, it seems.

So, February! Oh boy. The first notable thing I can remember is also the most obvious – Valentine’s Day. Ryan’s not super into commercial holidays, so we just had a nice evening in. I cooked, the first major culinary undertaking I’d done in a while. (If you really want to know, I made spicy teriyaki pork, with garlic rosemary mashed potatoes and a sweet apple and cranberry coleslaw. Oh, and orange chocolate chip cookies. All from scratch!) I also gave Ryan a book of short stories, and he brought me some beautiful flowers. A bunch of peachy pink carnations, plus one red rose!

The next weekend we went to see a play at the Tron, called “Small Town.” It was a super ridiculous local comedy, about tainted water having dire effects in three different towns across western Scotland. It was in three acts – the first about sudden death to tourists, the second about randy teenagers literally turning into animals, and the third about zombies in a fast food restaurant. At the end we the audience had to vote for which town to save, and thus, which ending to see. I wanted more zombies, but instead we saved the first town, the storyline of which ended pretty epically with a boxing kangaroo. No, I’m not joking.

On the 24^th there was a literature reading in the university’s anatomy museum, which was pretty interesting. The museum itself is a sight to see. There are plenty of glass cases full of weird skeletons, and the entire décor is somehow reminiscent of the Victorian age. The readings were also pretty good, though afterwards, the only one anyone could talk about was the last guy, who’d read a short story about a funeral that was funny but also pretty racy and shocking. I won’t go into detail here, but there was some creepy American Beauty style stuff going on.

Somewhere around this time, I also started playing 5-a-side football (soccer) with a bunch of ladies in the South Side. Seriously! Amy, an awesome lady from my course, took me along. It was a lot of fun, so I’ve been going almost every Wednesday. It’s just a laugh, of course, nothing serious – though a couple of the girls took place in a mini-tournament, and were immediately outclassed by two of the four teams. To be fair, though, those two teams were made up of semi-professionals, and what were they doing in an amateur tournament anyway?!

March 17th was, of course, St. Patties Day. Me and some buddies from school went to a nice bar on Ashton Lane, which is a great place for nice bars in the West End. We all drew shamrocks on our faces with eye makeup, and were remarkably civilized for a bunch of students on St. Patrick's.

I went with Ryan and Chris from the Tron to see the film "Norwegian Wood," an adaptation of the Haruki Murakami novel. We were all super looking forward to it, because we all like Murakami. The end result was aesthetically beautiful, but horrendously paced. It made us all sort of crazy. When one character -- spoiler! -- finally dies, any feeling of sorrow was overwhelmed by relief that the end was in sight.

Ryan and I have also gone back up to Edinburgh a few times, and accomplished more sightseeing. (Also, I accidentally met the Japanese consul in an art gallery. We talked about Sean Connery.)

The National Museum: This is a ridiculously jam-packed museum. It's got a little natural history, and a whoooole lot of Scottish artifacts. We've gone back twice, and still only covered about three out of sevenish floors. After the third one, we were so mentally exhausted that we had to go hang out in the kids section, with all the cool science games. There was a robot that spelled out words with alphabet blocks; Ryan made it spell "Hearts Anna." :)

Scottish Parliament: I was interested to discover during this tour that the Scottish Parliament has only existed since 1998. The building they're housed in was built in 2004, and it is pretty cool. Very edgy architecture, with a lot of windows and a lot of light woods. It seems very airy, and I bet it's a pleasant place to work. That said, it disgruntled a lot of tax payers; the cost estimates were between 10 and 40 million pounds. It ended up over 400. That's 10x or 40x more! OMG, I'd be disgruntled, too.

Next time tune in for the rest of spring term, goodbye to friends, hello to parents, and maybe even Sweden!