don't walk around at night

Glasgow is pretty far north, more northerly than you'd think. Here's a map of Glasgow Vs Other Northern Places.

You will note that Glasgow is close to Iceland, Norway and Sweden and kind of on par with Canada. I'm from the Northeast of America, which is (relatively) much more southern. While this explains the fact that it's always cold - I had no idea that we were so far above the inhabitable parts of Canada - a side effect of being this for north, there is not a lot of sunlight during the winter months. Seriously, in December the sun set at like 3:30pm - you get maybe 7 hours of sunlight on a good day. If it's raining, which it might be, you might not get sunlight for days. It takes some getting used to! (I would not recommend having Seasonal Affective Disorder here.)
Okay! So what is the #1 piece of advice for living in a city? "Don't walk around at night."

As you can imagine, this isn't very helpful, because it means that you can never walk around after 4 pm. (Obviously there are places in a city - any city - you shouldn't walk alone in at night, and I know that.) This strikes me as being rather inefficient, especially as the places I would be going are safe/well lit - I live quite near the big shopping streets (the high streets, as they're called here) and if I'm coming from/going to another major part of the city I'll be on public transit, so I generally try to disregard this warning, but I've studied rape stats and all that long enough to not be a little bit wary sometimes.

Luckily, the sun's been setting at more reasonable times (4 pm) now that we're inching into springtime. However... this means that in the summer, the sun will stay out laaaate - like 10, 11 pm late. All this nighttime takes some getting used to; I imagine 10+ hours of daytime will take some adjustment too.

The cars were just lumps on the snow

Okay, listen up, Britain: THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY A LOT OF SNOW.

This is 48 cm (19 inches) of snow & counting; it's still snowing, too. I'm supposed to be flying back to Glasgow tomorrow night, so this will get interesting. At least if I get stranded again, I'm near home...

it's beginning to look a lot like a new england winter

it's snowing! (this is the view from my sitting room.)

Do you guys remember when London was in the news last year for days because it snowed and nobody could handle that? It's like that. Apparently it rarely snows in Glasgow, because it's never cold enough to snow, so it's very exciting. Nobody knows what to do with it though!

happy thanksgiving!

In solidarity, today I am eating a turkey sandwich for lunch (& looking fairly demonic, sorry about that).

Tonight I am going to a seminar over at Glasgow Uni and then I am going to my second Thanksgiving dinner with some international friends; I'm very excited. Thanksgiving is something I think everyone can get behind when you present it as "eat a lot and drink a lot until you think you will explode, take a nap, AND THEN EAT MORE."

I feel it in my bones

It is November and I am freezing already. I have many more months of this, and I understand it is only going to get worse.

You would think that after 22 years of bitter New England winters I would be prepared for Scottish winters. I thought I would be! I'm a pretty hardy New Englander. Being cold doesn't really bother me - I am prone to opening windows in February in New Hampshire. In fact I don't think I ever thought to myself "holy HELL, it is cold." In New England, it's a really windy sort of cold - the temperature will drop really low and you can feel the cold on your skin.

Glasgow shares a latitude line with Moscow. Which, by the way, is in Russia. But I was assured that we get a "nice Gulf Stream warm-up" from being so close to the Atlantic. This was a lie. Every day I think "Holy HELL, it is cold." (On paper it doesn't sound terribly cold here - the temperature's been hovering around 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't terrible. I would daresay that 45 is a pretty good temperature for the fall, especially this time of the fall.)

But it's not the same kind of cold. This whole country wears wool coats all the time, because it's the only way to keep warm(ish). By mid-October, I had to go out and buy a wool coat because my New England-Acceptable ski coat wasn't keeping me warm! It's not a windy sort of cold here - though we do have wind sometimes and then you just sort of want to die - it's more of a damp cold that seeps through your bones and into each individual muscle and you wonder if you will ever be warm again. Suddenly I understand the wool coat thing, they sort of act as insulation for your body.

In light of my blog slowly but surely becoming a food blog, this brings me back to soup. As you might know, I love soup. It's good for you and warms you up - what else can you ask for? Unfortunately, as I know all too well from my previous visit to the UK, the only sort of soup you can really get is Cream of Blank soup. Even straightforward things like minestrone soup is more like Cream of Minestrone soup. If you order chicken soup expecting chicken noodle soup you are going to be very disappointed, because you've actually got cream of chicken soup. Some cream of blank soups are delicious - cream of broccoli, for instance, is a magical thing. And then there are others that are just surprisingly lumpy in ways you don't want. (I imagine the Brits find American soups to be terribly weak.)

As a result of being cold all the time, I spend a lot of time around lunchtime thinking about how much I would like soup, but I would not like the cream form of it. (The last time I did this I got cream of lentil soup, which I would like to not eat ever again, thanks.) I would look around at the soup selections in the grocery stores, thinking, "This would be great if it was not going to be cream of blank." (I realize I could make soup myself, but that sounds difficult.) Imagine my surprise when I found pumpkin and coriander soup the other day!
yes, I do eat in my room rather than in the kitchen.

Pumpkin is not A Thing here - I saw a few of them for a hot second around Halloween, but they're not very popular, whereas you are all drowning in pumpkin flavored everythings. So naturally, this is all I have been eating for the past few days. Admittedly this is also a cream of pumpkin situation, but that is totally the correct way to do this. I am very pleased. All is right with the world again, or at least until they take this pumpkin soup out of the stores - it's a "limited release".

remember remember the fifth of november

Today is Guy Fawkes Day! (If you do not know who this is and you are reading my blog, I am going to need you to go obtain a copy of V for Vendetta - the film or the graphic novel are both acceptable - and check back in when you are done.)
Scotland is a very... nationalistic place, to say the least. Though it is part of the United Kingdom, it is very much it's own country: Scotland has its own parliament and Scots law is different than English law. Yes, it's technically English, but it is its own variety of English. (They even have their own dictionary.) Here in Scotland, we are SCOTTISH DAMMIT. Someone who is a native of Scotland would probably be very offended if you thought they were English.

(The closest analogy I can give you is that Scottish nationalism is much like Southern [American] Nationalism - it's as if Texas was the most liberal part of America and constantly threatening to leave as a result of the rest of the country being too conservative. Perhaps more accurately, Scotland is what would happen if Vermont got its act together and decided to become its own country once and for all.)

So naturally the Scots are very, very excited about Guy Fawkes Day. How could they not be? Dude tried to overthrow an entire government by blowing that shit up. I imagine if their Personal Life Hero role had not been already claimed by Robert Burns (more on this in January), Guy Fawkes would be a close contender for the position. People don't seem to really excited about going out for Guy Fawkes Day like we would for the 4th of July, though I have been promised many fireworks tonight. I assure you that my daily life is not full of bagpipers and kilted men - though this does happen, but mostly for weddings and other severely formal events - but I would not be surprised if they were out in full force today.

the dream of a common language

The Scottish accent is famously a pretty dense thing to decipher. It's a British English accent, but with more to it. I don't know how else to describe it - and on top of that, the Glasgow accent is like the Extra Super Mega Scottish Accent. It's like listening to Sean Connery talk every day. (Some people are less mumbly.) After living here for about 5 weeks I'm starting to not notice it anymore; it's starting to sound pretty normal to me. Ordinarily this would be a terrifying concept to not notice something as big as an accent, but I am generally taking it as a good sign - This is a vast improvement over my first few weeks here, when I understood about 45% of what was being said to me at any moment in time. Though I'm a native speaker of English, sometimes I may as well not be!

Here's a fairly accurate clip about the Scottish accent:


Anecdotally: the other day I was skyping with A, who is in South Korea, when a guy with a fairly standard Glaswegian accent came by to look at our shower and reported back to me that there was nothing especially wrong with it...and A was dying - "DOES EVERYONE SOUND LIKE THAT?!" Yes. The answer is yes.

You wouldn't think this, but American English and British English are more different than you'd expect. Scots English is different enough from British English (it even has its own dictionary: The Dictionary of the Scots Language) but from what I can tell it's close enough to British English for my general purposes.

There are still a lot of words I don't quite "get" yet, and I feel ridiculous saying almost all of these things. Here everyone would say "loads" where we would say "lots", and the word "wee" is liberally used here to describe something that is small. "What's on?" is equivalent to "What's happening?" or "What's going on?". I have to remember not to ask for "a bathroom", as I will be directed to a shower room; I need to ask for a toilet instead, and "loo" is often thrown around instead. Then there are the things I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around: I keep calling the kettle the teapot, and if I am looking for push pins, I am looking for "drawing pins", which go in a "notice board", not a cork board.

There's an interesting article floating around that discusses how language is directly influenced by the people speaking around you - I can guarantee this is is true. I am trying to let some Britishisms into my language though - I can hear myself trying to replicate the intonation patterns of native UKers, and I'm catching myself describe things as "quite _____", more so than I usually would. Especially in an international setting - where most people have learned British rather than American English - it's often easier to use Britishisms as common ground.

That said, I definitely can't replicate a Scottish accent at all. I sometimes still catch myself being very embarrassed when I speak, because my accent is so flat and boring and very, very American, while a good Glasgow accent is so sing-songy, and all the back vowels are dipthongized. (If you are not a linguisticky type person, this means that they actually have two vowel sounds smushed together. [iu] for /u/ sounds are the most noticable, though /o/ and /a/ have some pretty good ones too. I can't find you a page about this that doesn't involve a lot of knowledge of phonetic background information, but you can probably find something accessible on youtube.)

While I can use a lot of the lingo properly, I can't help but feel like I must sound like an idiot with my ridiculous American accent. (Thankfully, the phoneticists around me say I don't have much of a Boston accent but more of a Canadian accent - looks like Mom's Canadianness rubbed off on me more than I thought! I don't hate Boston accents, but now I am very glad to not have too strong of one.)

today in adventures in grocery shopping

YOU GUYS LOOK WHAT I FOUND. This really is A Thing here!
--
In the United Kingdom, most people go out for lunch, getting a sandwich/snack/drink combo for about £3, but for whatever reason, the UK is insistent that mayo must go on everything and that vegetables are a sort of rare event. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, so I bring a vegetable-filled mayo-free sandwich for lunch to my office instead. Since I essentially sit and read all day, I try to go for a walk around lunchtime down The Death Hill, just for a change of scenery. I usually just go to one of the corner grocery stores and pick up a yogurt. (UK food has a reputation for being pretty terrible - this is only 85% true; it took me about three weeks to find a vegetable that wasn't a potato here and I almost cried with happiness the first time I found a bag of spinach in a grocery store - but god damn this country can do yogurt well.) I am pleased to report that in this particular Sainsbury's, spotted dick lives comfortably next to the yogurt. I think this could be a fairly terrible accidental purchase.

I don't mind the weather, I've got scarves and caps and sweaters

I just wish I understood it.

The other day someone turned to me and said, "Oh, we're having a lovely fall!" It is sixty degrees and raining. Fall? I've been spoiled by beautiful New England autumns for the past 22 years. Living in a city often means "no trees", though. But as for the weather...


(image from thefuckingweather dot com)This is what my weather report has been telling me for the past week. Actually, this is all my weather report will tell me. (I imagine I could use a better weather website, but that takes the fun out of things.) Unfortunately, this is not the most helpful advice.

I've desperately been trying to figure out what Scotland's weather is like. Well, I mean, of course it rains; we are in the United Kingdom. But a lot of it is not intuitive. I also have rapidly figured out that I always need to have an umbrella on me - even if it has been sunny and beautiful all day, it is bound to rain at some point. It is also not uncommon for rain to happen while it is perfectly sunny - clear skies and rain (this happened repeatedly last week.)

A larger problem is that they insist on using Celsius here, which means that sometimes someone will say "It's so hot out - 22 degrees!" and I have a little heart attack for a second. (My idea of "hot" is American style 80+ F with humidity.) That said, we've been having a great few weeks in what I believe is the mid to high 60s. I have been informed that this is a "heat wave". Unfortunately this also means that sometimes it will be around 35-40 (F) and I will find people wearing just a t-shirt. I know I am not one to speak - I have questionable tastes of what is counts as hot vs cold - but even I know that 30 degrees is unreasonable for t-shirt weather.

I've also been told that winter here is "miserable", which to my New England brain translates to "wet, snowy, and cold as fucking hell." My office is on this gigantic mega-hill (as seen below, though I assure you, google maps will not do it justice, increase the incline by about 45% more. Today I saw three cars stall out while trying to park).
I asked the English department if I will need to buy ice picks for wintertime. They assured me that no, I will not need to do this. I don't see how this is possible.

I still love you, New York

One of the first questions people ask me when I open my mouth here is "Where in the States are you from?" I'm not particularly upset by this question - while I certainly don't sound like I could be remotely native to the United Kingdom or even any other part of Europe, maybe it means I am temporarily fooling them by looking kind of European, and I will accept that. (This is very unlikely, however; more to come on this topic, stay tuned.) I usually say Boston, and I either get a bit of a blank stare while they try to recall where that is, or an excited "Oh, BOSTON! My friend/sister (choose one) lives there, I was just there a few years ago!"

Often to counter this question, I ask people where they would like to visit in the States - not because I especially love America but I think it tells me a lot about what other people know about my (our) country. I think it also says a lot about the person I am talking to! I could ask them where in the UK or Europe they would want to go, but most of the time, they have already been everywhere they would have wanted to go, which sort of ruins the fun in that. At least the States are comparatively exotic and/or harder to get to!

Almost everyone I talk to wants to go to New York City and San Francisco. A lot of people seem be really interested in Las Vegas and Florida, too, though I am vehemently trying to talk them out of this, as I think both of these places are miserable. Texas is a pretty popular place, too.

It's really interesting to see that everyone sort of romanticizes the same parts of a country - how many people in the States dream of moving to NYC or San Fran? And everyone tells me that Las Vegas looks inviting because it is "so shiny and magical looking". (I still don't understand Florida.) Part of the draw, I've been told, is the intriguing vastness of American cities. European cities are so compact - I was so surprised to hear that I could walk from one side of Glasgow to the other in under an hour! Occasionally I get someone who says they want to see some nature - they want to see the Grand Canyon or the Rockies and the northeast in the fall, but even they want to see NYC. Washington DC may be the capital of the United States, but everyone loves New York.

a brief treatise on plugs OR, heather is a stupid american

[editor's note 1: once upon a time, specifically in 2008, i went to Cambridge University for a six-week study abroad program through the unh english department. today's post is edited and reblogged from my blog about that trip. if you are the curious type, you can read my old blog here.

editor's note 2: some friends of mine from college - wow that is weird to say - and i have just started a music blog, where we post playlists. check that out if you want some free music from us.]

---
Did you know that plugs are different abroad? I didn't until I was preparing to go to the UK the for the first time. I think it would be great if someone designed some sort of universal plug for every major part of the world; it would certainly make things easier.

I'm assuming we are all familiar with the American system of plugs: some have two prongs and others have three prongs. This (I think) has something to do with voltage; the three-prong plugs presumably use more volts than their two-pronged cousins. This system is also used in Canada.

However, the rest of the world uses different plug shapes. You can buy extensive kits! It's sort of exciting. To quote a plug-adapter seller,
"If you are planning to use electrical appliances in another country, you need to know which type of electrical voltage is used in that specific country and which type of plugs and outlets are using there. If the voltage is the same or you’re using a universal power supply, all you need is a plug adapter converter to change line voltage from one to another amount. Please note there are different types of adapters for the specific countries, please select the right one when you’re traveling (otherwise, the adapter will not work because this is not specific design for that country)."

Furthermore, "a 120-volt electrical appliance designed for use in North America or Japan will provide a nice fireworks display - complete with sparks and smoke - if plugged into a European socket."





Up there are a bunch of illustrations showing a variety of different plug types worldwide. The UK uses plug style H. The internet tells me so, and the internet is always right... I have a bunch of these adapters sitting around; I hope they work and don't make things go kaboom. [ed.: they were great. nothing blew up. always a plus in my book. they are coming back with me for round two.]

This whole system strikes me as vastly unproductive, or perhaps very lucrative, I'm not sure which. Either way, I think someone should get their act together and figure out a way to keep voltages pretty much equal or create some sort of consistent plug shape. I'm not saying everyone should adapt to American standards, but surely we can figure out how to consolidate electricity into one standard form. This system strikes me as being wildly ineffective.

The Dog Days Are Over

1. Happy September, blogotron readers! I am leaving for Scotland in two weeks. This is exciting! And terrifying! etc! I originally started this blog to write about grad school and my experiences living abroad and we are FINALLY GETTING THERE. In the meantime there are lots of feelings to process and many, many things to do. Soon there will be lots to blog about and probably not enough time to talk about it all. Thanks for sticking around even when things were boring. If you're new, welcome and thanks for dropping by!

2. I feel like I should mention this somewhere, but I can't figure out where else to put it. So - I guess I am putting it here. I have been to Scotland before, exactly once. In the summer of 2008, I went on a study abroad program through UNH at Cambridge University. It was a lot of fun, and one of the trips we could go on would bring us to Edinburgh for a weekend. While we were there, almost the entire group - myself included - had food poisoning, putting a bit of a damper on the whole experience. I distinctly remember feeling like hell but dragging myself down the Royal Mile, through a theatre festival, through The Scotch Whiskey Experience where we were given shots, through the Museum of Childhood, and trying to sleep on every available flat surface. (It was a strange time.) That was Day 1. (For the record, night #1 - prior to Day 1 - involved accidentally wandering into a Scottish punk club. It was awesome.)

By Day 2 I was feeling 100% better, and finally got to see the city - perhaps not in its entirety but significant portions of it. And I fell in love with Scotland. I felt like I was the only one who had fun, and I had completely forgotten about that until I revisited my diary from that trip. "You know how people talk about how they fall in love with a place the second they set foot there? That pretty accurately summarizes my feelings about Scotland. It was all so beautiful and so perfect; I could spend the rest of my life there. I was so immediately comfortable in a way I hadn't expected. I hope one day I get to go back."

GUESS WHAT, FORMER SELF. YOU ARE GOING BACK. Bet you didn't see that coming. This is going to be awesome.

quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

In case you were curious, the Tour De La Bibliothèques is still ongoing. Here is an illustrated guide to my life as a professional reader.

This is what I am researching, explained with dinosaurs and probably much more helpful than my previous post about it:
(from dinosaur comics by ryan north)


I go to Widener every week or so to get copies of articles to read. I look at an on-line catalog, request items, wait for them to arrive, make photocopies of them, return the items, and repeat. Here I am making sure I have all the pages of one article.
If I want to borrow a book, I have to get Dr. Green to sign it out for me. Then I bring all of this home with me.

During the rest of the week, I come to Wheaton College's library, where I sit in the basement with the history books to read and take notes on my computer. Today I am reading about lying.
Because I am super-nearsighted, I have to wear my glasses when I read. Even though I wear contacts in my daily life, my lenses hypercorrect for distance and then I can't read. As you can imagine, this is counterproductive.

That's it! This is what I do every day instead of having an actual job. There's not much to say about being a research assistant. I don't have to get dressed up or anything; I just sort of sit somewhere, listen to music, and read. It's pretty self-explanatory, but I figured it was time to talk about something other than mail fails.

Things I Do Not Have III: Revenge of the UPS Guy

(I am sure you are tired of this. I'm sorry. I know I am, especially because I am fairly certain this title series is not getting any funnier. But this blog is about grad school and all things related...and this is certainly related. So here we are. If, somehow, you are missing part 1 and 2, scroll down a bit and start there.)

1. My computer
You guys, I would like to introduce you to someone. I'm writing this on my new computer! It arrived yesterday, which was alarming on the basis that at least UPS can do something right. We got to play the Remember All Your Passwords game for a while, and then we set forth on the arduous task of moving stuff between computers.

It actually wasn't that bad - when we got Beverly back, the nice folks at the computer repair place had taken the liberty of putting my hard drive in an external hard drive casing, so I could access all my files without any difficulty. (Beverly, that dear old gal, was very opinionated. If she decided she did not like what I was doing she would shut down. I bet she would have been jealous of this whole situation.) Obviously I nicknamed that hard drive "Beverly". (For the record I have not named this new computer yet, and it most certainly is not going to be Beverly II. That's just unfairly dooming it.) But I was pleased when I got the following message:
I mean, this was just too good. Even from The Great Hard Drive In The Sky, Beverly managed to make things difficult.

(Yes, I just anthropomorphized my (old) computer and its assorted innards. And you loved it.)

2. My Visa
I mean, we knew this was coming, right? Like, what would be the most unreasonable thing that could happen?

At 9 am yesterday we called UPS for confirmation that transcript had been delivered. Of course if you know anything about situational irony and/or you follow my life very comprehensively, you know what happened: they didn't know where it was. Again.

I am not entirely certain they ever had any idea where it was in the first place - how do you lose a piece of mail TWICE? I called the UK consulate for a flat rate of 3 US dollars per minute and listened to a British robot inform me that "all of our agents are currently assisting other customers" and that "we will answer your call in a few moments" for half an hour. I then e-mailed them (again), and faxed them a letter with everything my emails have said.

So now we are fucked, because in the very eloquent words of the UK Consulate:
If these documents [my UNH transcript] are not received by 13 August 2010 your application will be refused. In addition, if you fail to provide the correct documents as described above, we will assess your application based on what you have provided.
It is now 17 August 2010, which is decidedly not 13 August 2010. Hmm. That's not quite right, is it? I took my extra transcript that I had ordered to keep on file, which was no longer in its sealed envelope because I wanted to make sure it was right before we submitted it - and went down to the post office to express mail it, because it's all we have. Because UPS fucking lost my official sealed transcript, and now I will probably have to reapply, get my transcripts (again, though at least I know for this time), get my biometrics taken again and then we just might be driving ourselves over to the UK consulate in NYC to personally hand all of this to them so it will be filed all before September 18, which is the date that I am moving into my flat in Scotland, come hell or high water. Or bureaucracy parades.


As I am sure you can imagine, I was very proud of myself for not punching the UPS guy in the face when he showed up to deliver my computer later in the day.

3. Plane Tickets
We are not discussing this.


I give up. Here's a picture of the saddest kitten in the world.

I understand, buddy.


EDIT 8/17 1:40 PM!
Guess what came today! That's right, my original UPS shipment from Thursday! Apparently they couldn't read my handwriting, so it was deemed undeliverable. Um. If you insist - this doesn't account for the part where you don't know where it went for three days. Either way I suppose this whole debacle is technically my fault. I know I have terrible handwriting, but this is absurd.

Things I Do Not Have, A List

1. My computer
I've had my computer for four years (or 438475 years in computer-years). I've had a couple problems with it - but I was also one of the macbook pro early adopters. Macbooks came out in 2006, which is when I was looking to buy a computer for college. So, I have an early model which probably doesn't have all the kinks ironed out. In the past six months, my mac would freeze or black out randomly in the middle of whatever I was doing. I nicknamed my computer Beverly, as she was old and crochety, with a mind of her own. (Plus it made me feel better to yell at something semi-animate: "God dammit, Beverly!") If she decided she didn't like what I was doing, she would shut down on me. It was frustrating, but something I could generally work around. I knew I had to get it fixed before I left for Scotland, but it's not the worst thing. I figured I had a video card problem, based on extensive Google searching.

Finally I took it in to get repaired a little over a week ago. Their solution was to give me a larger hard drive, because I had used too much of it. Too much of my hard drive? If you don't want me to use the space provided, don't give it to me! Anyway, they installed a bigger hard drive and left Beverly alone to her own devices over the weekend to copy my files over. Beverly did not like this and seized the opportunity to freeze again. So, now the computer repair people are trying to replicate the problem organically so they can fix it.

My well-documented hatred of handheld computer things - I barely use my cell phone, don't own an iPod touch and would never dream of owning a blackberry or iphone - means that I am really, really disconnected, more so than usual. I'm using my dad's computer in the meantime. It took me three days to figure out how New Word worked so I could write my column; I still haven't figured out how to save anything. I don't have any of my bookmarks, I don't have stumbleupon, and these computers don't have sound cards so I can't watch youtube. I don't even have wikipedia to look up stuff while I do my research! You guys, I don't know what to do! It is kind of like living in 2003, only with Windows 7. Come back to me, Beverly!

2. My Visa
I submitted a small forest of paper to the UK consulate in New York about two weeks ago, and was informed that there's a 15-day turnaround time for student visas. Last Friday I recieved an email telling me that I needed to submit my UNH transcript by 13 August 2010. This is reasonable, as it was how I got into Strathclyde in the first place. I can't actually get UNH to mail it to NY, because I have to mark a couple things on the envelope so it gets sent to the correct person. I requested my transcript that afternoon, and it has not arrived yet - usually mail to/from UNH takes about two days. It is now August 11th, and I need my transcript to be in their hands by Friday. SO! tomorrow I am driving up to UNH to pick up my transcripts directly from the registrar, overnighting them to NYC, driving back home and hoping this all goes through in time.

3. Plane Tickets
Without my visa, there's no point in searching for plane tickets. I'm not supposed to have tickets until I have my visa; part of the paper forest I had to submit was a proposed itinerary (this means my itinerary has to be approved by The Government.)

I LEAVE IN FIVE WEEKS.
Can you tell that I'm stressed about all of this?

Dear Linguistics, YOUR LOVE IS MY DRUG

1. So I went on that job interview. And I didn't fuck it up ... until they very end!
I talked to the ladies who currently are Administrative Assistants-slash-Grammatical Editors; they gave me a cup of coffee, an article to edit, and a red pen. It's like my dream job interview! And apparently nobody's ever done that well on their practice document before, so they were a little bit floored. Basically, they were like "We really like you, we'll let you know by Friday. Is there anything else you want us to know?"

And I was all, "Well, I'm sorry that you didn't get back to me earlier in the summer when I had full availability; I can only do this part-time right now - I've been working (will be starting to work, ahem, whatever) with a professor at BU and then I'm moving to Scotland for grad school."

Lady: (jaw drop)"Well, thanks for taking the time to come in."

And then I walked out. I haven't felt that badass in a while.


2. SPEAKING OF BADASS (this is relative, perhaps if you are not me, you will not feel the same way)
I heard back from another professor I e-mailed recently. He's been busy wrapping up this project which is essentially a corpus of Old English Poetics and language "to detect relationships between, and structures within, poetic texts in [the] Old English [corpus]". He had been away for a week, which means he just got my e-mail and apologized if he missed out on having me on board due to this fact.
But he also warned me that
a) they had run out of funding
b) they were nearly finished with it
c) I AM ACTUALLY OVERQUALIFIED TO DO THIS.


3. Oh, and Sarah Palin called herself Shakespeare and I wrote about it.

YOU GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME.

my blog is decidedly not a tumblr but I don't think it's too much to say that this is all I ever really want out of life.

paired with some nice folk music playing in the background.

It's feeling byzantine

Greetings from my town's public library (the first public library in the nation... aww yeah!) where I am hanging out with Victorian-clad (?) ladies, about an eighth of my high school's graduating class (we're all awkwardly smiling at each other to say hello but all actively pretending we don't know one another), and writing my latest column for The Examiner!

After five years and the left temple of my old glasses breaking not once but twice, I finally got new frames. I am very excited about them, mostly because five years is a long time for glasses, but I don't wear my glasses often. I hope as an early family-bonding exercise my parents took me premature glasses-shopping as a baby - Mom and Dad have awful eyesight too. I can't remember a time before corrective lenses. I've been wearing them since I was 7 - switching to contacts was amazing because it meant I got to wear sunglasses!

how to not get a job

step one: discover that you have your phone number incorrect on your resume. 8047, not 0843.

how did it get so late so soon?

Dear UNH,

I feel like I just arrived on your campus maybe two years ago. I'm about to go to my last day of classes in my undergraduate career. When did this happen?! Thanks for four years of academic excitement.

With love,
Heather