Dear readers,
I ask your indulgence as I put the travel narrative on hold until Saturday.
Thank you for reading.
Lindsey
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
17 September: London.
It is impossible to close the door to the hostel room quietly; it's got one of those misbegotten spring-loaded things that prevents you from manually pushing it shut, but grabs it out of your hand at the last minute: CLANGK. The reading woman (the same one we tried so hard not to bother the day before) leaves her extremely bright reading light on most of the night. The girl sleeping in the bunk below me comes in late, tosses and turns and mumbles in her sleep, and packs up noisily to leave in the early a.m. She also has such strong body odor that, even three feet above her, I keep wondering if it's me.
Given all that, I sleep surprisingly well. We leave the hostel late in the morning and swing by a pastry shop for breakfast. I sample a hot cross bun, which is not at all hot but fairly tasty.
We wander around Notting Hill and the Portobello Market. It's pretty, and mostly pretty expensive. My favorite "shop" is an old man with a table full of antique clutter: old glass transparencies, miscellaneous keys. We don't buy much; the knowledge that we have to carry whatever we buy for the next ten days has blunted our acquisitive instincts.
The next step is to get back to the Underground. We've walked quite a distance already, so rather than backtrack, we get directions from the map posted at a nearby bus stop. After a while we check another bus stop map. Later we start asking people for directions. This is not immediately helpful. I privately wonder if we are close to the world record for longest series of navigational errors.
Our next destination, which we reach approximately two hundred years later, is the Tate Britain (the national museum of British art). Mitchey's friend JT works there, and he is delighted to see us. I'm puzzled; in my current state of surly fatigue, I certainly wouldn't be delighted to see me. JT treats us to lunch at the museum cafe and answers all our questions about his life since we last saw him in Iowa City. "I've traveled around the world and lived in half a dozen countries," he says, "but London is the most foreign place I've ever lived." Communication here involves subtleties and nuances and secret codes that he is only just beginning to glimpse, let alone comprehend. We nod sympathetically.
When we have eaten at leisure and talked at length, he asks, "What would you like to see?" I want to see stuff by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood; he leads the way. The Pre-Raphs are colorful and dreamy, for the most part. I like them because they are art that tells stories, which is about half a step away from illustration, which is really my favorite kind of art. Mitchey's favorite of the Pre-Raphs is The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, which exhibits a level of detail suggestive of utter barking madness. I have a soft spot for Burne-Jones, and am fascinated by the story JT tells about the giant, melodramatic "Death of Arthur" that occupies one wall. Apparently this sort of thing was looked on as quite gauche for some time; no British museum would take it. "And now it is considered to be representative of British culture," JT says, grinning.
Would we like to see one of JT's favorite exhibits? We would. JT is a fan of J.M.W. Turner, an extraordinarily prolific painter and printmaker whose work proves to be well worth our inspection. JT tells us about the process of making engravings from watercolors. There is an interactive area where you can try to copy one of his drawings by hand. I try the simplest one. It's a lot less simple than I thought it was when I started.
Meanwhile, JT is talking to Mitchey about the toxicity and decomposition rates of various pigments. JT is interning in the Department of Conservation Science, where he devises and tests ways to preserve great works of art. He is currently testing a sealed frame designed to protect art from further decay.
Now JT wants to take us to the Print Room. Oh, we say, to see thee prints? No, says JT, there are no prints in the Print Room. There are originals in the Print Room. You can hold them in your hands.
Really?
As we wash our hands, JT introduces us to Lucy, who works in the Print Room. Lucy is vivacious, quick-witted, and as eager to bestow large amounts of knowledge on us as JT. Lucy gets out a box of original Turner watercolors. We hold them by their protective mats and ooh and ahh over the richness of detail and color. After the Turners, JT recommends we look at something by William Blake. The Blakes are mostly illustrations for Dante's Inferno; they are dark and flaming and tortured, and they are right there on the table, the very same lines and colors laid down by Crazy Blake himself, with not even a pane of glass between us.
One more, says JT. How about Beatrix Potter? And this is better than the Pre-Raphs: Lucy brings us illustrations. She brings out a box of original art from The Tailor of Gloucester. The watercolors are barely bigger than the books we are used to seeing them in. Otherwise, they don't look all that similar. Oh, the teeny tiny brushstrokes on the mouse whiskers! Oh, the colors of the fine clothes! There are some pages from the book stored in the box with the watercolors, and they're appallingly dim and blurry next to the originals. Why hasn't anyone re-scanned and republished these books? Everyone would want to upgrade!
The part of this account I am not doing justice to is the sheer amount of time JT and Lucy spend just talking and talking. They are extremely entertaining, so Mitchey and I don't mind. We are learning about how great works of art are transported between museums, about book preservations and how most materials marketed as "archival" are a joke. By the time we finish admiring the Potters, they've agreed that the next thing they need to show us is the death mask of ol' Turner. It used to be on display, but some museum official was creeped out by it, so now it lives in storage.
We follow Lucy behind the Prints Desk into a back room. She pulls out a wooden box and removes from it a whole head in shiny white plaster, toothless, sunken-eyed. It is so incredibly morbid that we have to say irreverent things about it out of sheer discomfort. Still, we're thrilled: nobody else gets to see this.
JT and Lucy continue to talk and talk, revealing gaping holes in museum security, making dark allusions to museum politics, and I am seriously dying on my feet but I don't want to end this adventure. Finally JT tells Lucy, We'd better get going. To us he says, I'll have to show you out, because at this point you are locked into the Tate. And we say, Cooool.
JT has to go back to his lab to get his bicycle, so we get to see the oven and the freezer and a few of the trays of test tubes he uses for his research. He invites us to join his wife and him for dinner, but warns that it may be difficult to get back from his part of town after the Underground quits running. We decline, reluctantly; we're supposed to meet our host for dinner tonight.
Our host is delayed. There have been computer problems at work (he's a history professor at what we would call a high school), and tons of important data have been lost. He was supposed to get off work early today; instead, he spent hours and hours of his own time trying to reconstruct what was lost. We go back to Earl's Court, retrieve our stuff and a pub supper, and head for our host's place; by this time, he is finally home.
The Canuck is gone, so it's just the three of us here tonight. Our host apologizes for being unable to show us around. He seems eager to talk to us, and I start to feel like maybe that whole thing the other night wasn't personal after all. We ply him with questions about English culture and the things we saw today. As a history professor, he is well prepared for our interrogation. He tells us he is currently teaching a course on the American Civil Rights movement, about which he knows a heck of a lot more than we do. Apparently all the major players we learned about in school were just figureheads, while the real work went on in the background. Huh. I wonder if the same thing isn't true about pretty much all of American history.
Given all that, I sleep surprisingly well. We leave the hostel late in the morning and swing by a pastry shop for breakfast. I sample a hot cross bun, which is not at all hot but fairly tasty.
We wander around Notting Hill and the Portobello Market. It's pretty, and mostly pretty expensive. My favorite "shop" is an old man with a table full of antique clutter: old glass transparencies, miscellaneous keys. We don't buy much; the knowledge that we have to carry whatever we buy for the next ten days has blunted our acquisitive instincts.
The next step is to get back to the Underground. We've walked quite a distance already, so rather than backtrack, we get directions from the map posted at a nearby bus stop. After a while we check another bus stop map. Later we start asking people for directions. This is not immediately helpful. I privately wonder if we are close to the world record for longest series of navigational errors.
Our next destination, which we reach approximately two hundred years later, is the Tate Britain (the national museum of British art). Mitchey's friend JT works there, and he is delighted to see us. I'm puzzled; in my current state of surly fatigue, I certainly wouldn't be delighted to see me. JT treats us to lunch at the museum cafe and answers all our questions about his life since we last saw him in Iowa City. "I've traveled around the world and lived in half a dozen countries," he says, "but London is the most foreign place I've ever lived." Communication here involves subtleties and nuances and secret codes that he is only just beginning to glimpse, let alone comprehend. We nod sympathetically.
When we have eaten at leisure and talked at length, he asks, "What would you like to see?" I want to see stuff by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood; he leads the way. The Pre-Raphs are colorful and dreamy, for the most part. I like them because they are art that tells stories, which is about half a step away from illustration, which is really my favorite kind of art. Mitchey's favorite of the Pre-Raphs is The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, which exhibits a level of detail suggestive of utter barking madness. I have a soft spot for Burne-Jones, and am fascinated by the story JT tells about the giant, melodramatic "Death of Arthur" that occupies one wall. Apparently this sort of thing was looked on as quite gauche for some time; no British museum would take it. "And now it is considered to be representative of British culture," JT says, grinning.
Would we like to see one of JT's favorite exhibits? We would. JT is a fan of J.M.W. Turner, an extraordinarily prolific painter and printmaker whose work proves to be well worth our inspection. JT tells us about the process of making engravings from watercolors. There is an interactive area where you can try to copy one of his drawings by hand. I try the simplest one. It's a lot less simple than I thought it was when I started.
Meanwhile, JT is talking to Mitchey about the toxicity and decomposition rates of various pigments. JT is interning in the Department of Conservation Science, where he devises and tests ways to preserve great works of art. He is currently testing a sealed frame designed to protect art from further decay.
Now JT wants to take us to the Print Room. Oh, we say, to see thee prints? No, says JT, there are no prints in the Print Room. There are originals in the Print Room. You can hold them in your hands.
Really?
As we wash our hands, JT introduces us to Lucy, who works in the Print Room. Lucy is vivacious, quick-witted, and as eager to bestow large amounts of knowledge on us as JT. Lucy gets out a box of original Turner watercolors. We hold them by their protective mats and ooh and ahh over the richness of detail and color. After the Turners, JT recommends we look at something by William Blake. The Blakes are mostly illustrations for Dante's Inferno; they are dark and flaming and tortured, and they are right there on the table, the very same lines and colors laid down by Crazy Blake himself, with not even a pane of glass between us.
One more, says JT. How about Beatrix Potter? And this is better than the Pre-Raphs: Lucy brings us illustrations. She brings out a box of original art from The Tailor of Gloucester. The watercolors are barely bigger than the books we are used to seeing them in. Otherwise, they don't look all that similar. Oh, the teeny tiny brushstrokes on the mouse whiskers! Oh, the colors of the fine clothes! There are some pages from the book stored in the box with the watercolors, and they're appallingly dim and blurry next to the originals. Why hasn't anyone re-scanned and republished these books? Everyone would want to upgrade!
The part of this account I am not doing justice to is the sheer amount of time JT and Lucy spend just talking and talking. They are extremely entertaining, so Mitchey and I don't mind. We are learning about how great works of art are transported between museums, about book preservations and how most materials marketed as "archival" are a joke. By the time we finish admiring the Potters, they've agreed that the next thing they need to show us is the death mask of ol' Turner. It used to be on display, but some museum official was creeped out by it, so now it lives in storage.
We follow Lucy behind the Prints Desk into a back room. She pulls out a wooden box and removes from it a whole head in shiny white plaster, toothless, sunken-eyed. It is so incredibly morbid that we have to say irreverent things about it out of sheer discomfort. Still, we're thrilled: nobody else gets to see this.
JT and Lucy continue to talk and talk, revealing gaping holes in museum security, making dark allusions to museum politics, and I am seriously dying on my feet but I don't want to end this adventure. Finally JT tells Lucy, We'd better get going. To us he says, I'll have to show you out, because at this point you are locked into the Tate. And we say, Cooool.
JT has to go back to his lab to get his bicycle, so we get to see the oven and the freezer and a few of the trays of test tubes he uses for his research. He invites us to join his wife and him for dinner, but warns that it may be difficult to get back from his part of town after the Underground quits running. We decline, reluctantly; we're supposed to meet our host for dinner tonight.
Our host is delayed. There have been computer problems at work (he's a history professor at what we would call a high school), and tons of important data have been lost. He was supposed to get off work early today; instead, he spent hours and hours of his own time trying to reconstruct what was lost. We go back to Earl's Court, retrieve our stuff and a pub supper, and head for our host's place; by this time, he is finally home.
The Canuck is gone, so it's just the three of us here tonight. Our host apologizes for being unable to show us around. He seems eager to talk to us, and I start to feel like maybe that whole thing the other night wasn't personal after all. We ply him with questions about English culture and the things we saw today. As a history professor, he is well prepared for our interrogation. He tells us he is currently teaching a course on the American Civil Rights movement, about which he knows a heck of a lot more than we do. Apparently all the major players we learned about in school were just figureheads, while the real work went on in the background. Huh. I wonder if the same thing isn't true about pretty much all of American history.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
16 September: London.
It's noon. I am lying on my back staring at my watch, trying to comprehend where and when I am, when the Canuck taps at the living room door (he slept on our host's bedroom floor last night). "Come in," I hiss, so as not to bother Mitchey, who is still inert. "I just woke up."
"Me too," he mouths.
"I'm awake," mumbles Mitchey. We are awake, it is noon, we are in England. We had plans to do a bit of sightseeing with the Canuck today, but he has some prep to do for his presentation tomorrow, and we have a hostel to locate. So, given the hour, we agree to part ways. Our host offered to let us leave some of our stuff at his place, so we cram overnight essentials into Mitchey's pack and head for the station.
Mitchey secures us two beds in a hostel via pay phone. Then we find a cafe which serves a decent Traditional English Breakfast. Have I mentioned what a brilliant meal this is? The other amazing thing is tea served English style. It is the nectar of the gods. What does America think it's doing, playing around with bags of Lipton in tepid water? Bah!
The hostel is in Earl's Court, a lot closer to London than where we've been staying. We check in and secure the pack in a locker. I like the hostel; it has a good vibe, looks clean, and the lady at the counter is patient with our one million questions. Our room has six beds; a woman is lying in one of them, reading. We whisper so as not to bother her.
Now it's time to See London, quickly, before we run out of daylight. We've been told that Bus #11 will take us past most of the major sights of downtown London. We take a bus to a very confusing bus depot, where the 11 is supposed to stop. There's a man in a kiosk who appears to be there for the purpose of assisting people. Mitchey approaches him and starts to ask a question, but before she can finish, another man pops up in the booth and says, "I'd like roast beef on rye. And a diet drink."
"Wha...?" says Mitchey.
The man points to her shirt. It's hot pink and has a dinosaur on it. The dinosaur is saying MAKE ME A SAND WICH. Ohhh, right. He and his co-worker proceed to dizzy us with hilarious banter for the next four minutes, while simultaneously answering all our directional questions. There is a lag between the moment they say something and the moment we comprehend their obscure, heavily accented wit, so we must come across as fairly dense. This only makes the whole thing more entertaining for everyone involved. We'd probably stand there being confused by them all day if it weren't for other people wandering up with questions of their own.
So we get on the 11, and we get off at Westminster, which has closed for the day. We take pictures. I take pictures of people taking pictures. It's late enough in the day that mine mostly come out dim and blurry. I want Mitchey to see the stuff she wants to see, but I'm pretty apathetic about The Sights, about photographing things that are photographed thousands of times a day. I follow her over a bridge, which is scenic and probably famous, and from which we have a nice view of the London Eye, Big Ben, and some really pretty stone lions. I realize I'm apathetic because I didn't research any of this beforehand, so I don't know what I'm looking at or why it's important. This is probably terrible, because I know that everything here is important and historic and laden with weighty meaning. But right now, I'm really just along for the ride. Been here, done this.
Mitchey wants to see Trafalgar Square. The first time she mentioned it, she called it Traffle-gar, and I thought it was so cute I almost didn't correct her. It's pretty dark by the time we get there, so we take underlit pictures of fountains and statuary. Mitchey's camera is better at this than mine, fortunately. Kids are climbing on the big lions at the base of the monument; we want to do this too, but we're daunted by their sleek shiny sides. It's just an awful long way to fall.
Neither of us really know what this whole Trafalgar thing is all about, to be honest. Having consulted her guidebook, Mitchey informs me that's Lord Nelson at the top of the giant column. Oh, I say, I've heard of him. What did he do? Mitchey asks. I wrack my brains. I guess he won the battle of Trafalgar, I finally reply. Mostly what I know is that Russell Crowe spoke of him reverently in "Master and Commander." Note to self: skim a few Wikipedia articles when I get home.
We go back to Earl's Court, get dinner at a little Indian place and drinks at a pub that closes just as we're emptying our glasses. I'm glad we're staying at Earl's Court; it has all the resources we need within a few blocks, and it feels good to be self-sufficient tonight.
"Me too," he mouths.
"I'm awake," mumbles Mitchey. We are awake, it is noon, we are in England. We had plans to do a bit of sightseeing with the Canuck today, but he has some prep to do for his presentation tomorrow, and we have a hostel to locate. So, given the hour, we agree to part ways. Our host offered to let us leave some of our stuff at his place, so we cram overnight essentials into Mitchey's pack and head for the station.
Mitchey secures us two beds in a hostel via pay phone. Then we find a cafe which serves a decent Traditional English Breakfast. Have I mentioned what a brilliant meal this is? The other amazing thing is tea served English style. It is the nectar of the gods. What does America think it's doing, playing around with bags of Lipton in tepid water? Bah!
The hostel is in Earl's Court, a lot closer to London than where we've been staying. We check in and secure the pack in a locker. I like the hostel; it has a good vibe, looks clean, and the lady at the counter is patient with our one million questions. Our room has six beds; a woman is lying in one of them, reading. We whisper so as not to bother her.
Now it's time to See London, quickly, before we run out of daylight. We've been told that Bus #11 will take us past most of the major sights of downtown London. We take a bus to a very confusing bus depot, where the 11 is supposed to stop. There's a man in a kiosk who appears to be there for the purpose of assisting people. Mitchey approaches him and starts to ask a question, but before she can finish, another man pops up in the booth and says, "I'd like roast beef on rye. And a diet drink."
"Wha...?" says Mitchey.
The man points to her shirt. It's hot pink and has a dinosaur on it. The dinosaur is saying MAKE ME A SAND WICH. Ohhh, right. He and his co-worker proceed to dizzy us with hilarious banter for the next four minutes, while simultaneously answering all our directional questions. There is a lag between the moment they say something and the moment we comprehend their obscure, heavily accented wit, so we must come across as fairly dense. This only makes the whole thing more entertaining for everyone involved. We'd probably stand there being confused by them all day if it weren't for other people wandering up with questions of their own.
So we get on the 11, and we get off at Westminster, which has closed for the day. We take pictures. I take pictures of people taking pictures. It's late enough in the day that mine mostly come out dim and blurry. I want Mitchey to see the stuff she wants to see, but I'm pretty apathetic about The Sights, about photographing things that are photographed thousands of times a day. I follow her over a bridge, which is scenic and probably famous, and from which we have a nice view of the London Eye, Big Ben, and some really pretty stone lions. I realize I'm apathetic because I didn't research any of this beforehand, so I don't know what I'm looking at or why it's important. This is probably terrible, because I know that everything here is important and historic and laden with weighty meaning. But right now, I'm really just along for the ride. Been here, done this.
Mitchey wants to see Trafalgar Square. The first time she mentioned it, she called it Traffle-gar, and I thought it was so cute I almost didn't correct her. It's pretty dark by the time we get there, so we take underlit pictures of fountains and statuary. Mitchey's camera is better at this than mine, fortunately. Kids are climbing on the big lions at the base of the monument; we want to do this too, but we're daunted by their sleek shiny sides. It's just an awful long way to fall.
Neither of us really know what this whole Trafalgar thing is all about, to be honest. Having consulted her guidebook, Mitchey informs me that's Lord Nelson at the top of the giant column. Oh, I say, I've heard of him. What did he do? Mitchey asks. I wrack my brains. I guess he won the battle of Trafalgar, I finally reply. Mostly what I know is that Russell Crowe spoke of him reverently in "Master and Commander." Note to self: skim a few Wikipedia articles when I get home.
We go back to Earl's Court, get dinner at a little Indian place and drinks at a pub that closes just as we're emptying our glasses. I'm glad we're staying at Earl's Court; it has all the resources we need within a few blocks, and it feels good to be self-sufficient tonight.
Monday, October 20, 2008
15 September: Manchester to London.
It' s my birthday. I'm really confused about when it started being my birthday, because I'm on an airplane. The airplane arrives in Manchester at 8am. Mitchey and I know we're in England because, first thing off the plane, we find ourselves in a queue.
It's only the queue where they check your passport and ask you questions about what you're doing there. You may argue that the same thing would happen if we were flying into the US. But no, if we were in the US, we'd be standing in a line.
I am always paranoid about this part, when they ask you point-blank why you're here and where you're going, but they don't lock us up for further interrogation, just say "Cheers" and wave us on. We get ourselves some pounds sterling and go looking for a way into town. There's an airport bus to the bus stop, and then it takes us a long time to figure out which bus to take, and how to get on it, to get to the town center where our third bus will be. Fortunately, we have planned our schedule to allow for this. We elicit help from a couple of police officers who are loitering around the bus terminal. One of them stares at the departures screen for a while, then grabs an employee who has walked past us several times, blind to our confused and helpless expressions. Information is exchanged, and we finally get on the bus to the town center.
The route winds through picturesque residential neighborhoods, tidy little streets and brick row houses and big old trees. I sort of thought Manchester would be grubbier, but I'm not sorry. The bus drops us in the general vicinity of our next connection, and we go in search of food.
The pub we settle on is shiny-new, spacious, and mostly empty. We're confused about how the ordering works here, and we sit in our window booth for quite a while before Mitchey goes up to the counter. That, it turns out, is how ordering works here: you go to the counter. At least we don't need to leave a tip when we order that way. We know this because we just looked it up in Mitchey's travel book.
I order a Traditional English Breakfast. I'd hate to eat it first thing on waking up, but it is pretty much the best lunch ever: fried egg, sausage, "bacon" (prepared like a slice of ham in the US), mushrooms, baked beans, toast, and a grilled or stewed toe-mah-toe. So basically what you have here is some protein with protein and a side of protein. And a couple of really happy Americans.
We kill the rest of the time waiting for the bus by people-watching. We observe that a neo-'80s look is the fashion here right now; that various kinds of dressy boots are the footwear of choice for women; that English people of African descent dress and behave nothing at all like African-Americans. Mitchey thinks we kind of blend in here because we're white (most of her overseas travel has been in Asia). I think we stand out because a) she's wearing a very colorful outfit, and people here all wear neutrals with maybe one color if they're feeling adventurous, and b) I'm wearing hiking boots, and no one else here is wearing any kind of outdoor adventure-type shoes. Also, we have bulky backpacks and fresh-off-the-plane expressions.
Our bus driver to London is in a foul mood. He storms out of the bus and opens the luggage compartments, yelling something we don't understand in an accent we don't recognize. People stand around looking confused. Some of them put their luggage into the compartments. He yells some more, takes them back out and shakes his head. One guy who sounds like he's from India mutters, "Well what the **** am I supposed to do then?" The driver overhears this and gets in a shouting match with the guy. Nobody is happy about it. Two guys behind me are muttering about racism.
Finally the driver gets over himself and lets us all board. The bus is full and quiet. I prop my head against my inflatable neck pillow and sleep most of the way to London. I know you're not supposed to do that, take naps while jetlagged, but I'm just too darn tired to care.
I'll never be a huge fan of London, but I find on this second visit that I don't hate it anymore. Perhaps that's because my luggage doesn't get rifled through, nor my camera stolen, nor am I locked out of a hotel room with no one to let me in. Perhaps it's because I'm not there with a group of college students from Oklahoma. Still, this city stresses me out. It's full of people who are in a hurry to get to someplace they don't look at all happy about reaching.
Mitch and I agree that our wisest course for this first day would be to just find our way to our host's neighborhood, so we can meet him there when he gets off work. He lives a good distance southwest of London. We take the underground and the train to his station, then call him, and after a little while he pops up smiling. He smiles a lot. At first we think he's really happy to see us. While that may well be the case, we realize later that it's his reflexive response to everything.
Our host's home is a tiny one-bedroom flat, which we will share with a fourth person that night, a Canuck who's in town for a conference in French Literature. He arrives shortly after we do. We three travelers are very hungry, but our host is recovering from a bout of food poisoning. He tells us where to find restaurants and we leave him in peace.
It's my birthday, so I get to pick. Unfortunately, the options we're aware of are all in a shopping center. We were hoping for a quaint little pub or something, but the closest analogue seems to be... Tony Roma's? Oh, no no no. I pick sushi.
The sushi wasn't bad, I insist as we leave the restaurant; bad sushi is sushi that leaves you spending quality time with a toilet. It just wasn't good sushi. Nor was it cheap sushi. But hey, it's okay. We're in London, and we have a place to stay and a couple of new friends, sort of, maybe.
The Canuck is a cutie; we're both a little crestfallen when he mentions his girlfriend. (Not like anything would happen; it just, you know, removes a variable from the equation, so that you can't pretend you don't know what the answer is anymore.) When pressed, he tells us about the presentation he is making for the conference, which I think has something to do with narrators who refuse to narrate, or who say things by not saying them. He is extremely polite and a little tense. We like him, but we don't really click with him. At the time I think it's culture clash (we're doing it all wrong, we're too American); looking back later, it seems to me it has more to do with travel fatigue than anything.
Our host is happy to sit and talk with us when we return. He has hosted over 200 people in the past three years. I press him for stories about terrible guests. His best one involves a huge Icelander who sat around watching TV all day, and was grumpy because the host didn't have time to show him around the city. The host loaned him keys to the house and flat, which the Icelander put in the wrong lock and broke off, so that the main entry door to the house couldn't be opened at all. Then he banged on the window of the neighboring flat (in the same house). The neighbor lady opened it, and he tried to climb through. He got stuck. The fire department was called to extricate him. In the UK, you pay out of pocket for a visit from the fire department, so after that and the locksmith, this guy was quite a costly guest.
Then he went home and wrote a bad review for his host on the Couchsurfing site.
Mitchey and I are trying really really hard to be good guests. We are in kind of a spot, though. We had planned to stay somewhere else tomorrow night, then come back and stay with this host again. But our in-between host got confused and gave our spot away to someone else. We ask our present host if we can stay the following night as well. He won't answer directly. This obviously means "no," even though he's smiling for all he's worth. Okay, we say, we'll find ourselves a hostel, no problem, don't worry about it.
Later, we overhear him invite the Canuck to stay tomorrow night. We spend the rest of the evening trying to convince ourselves not to take it personally, while wondering what we did wrong. To be fair: three guests are obviously more stressful than one, and we have no right to expect more than the original hosting arrangement. But. It's all just very weird and uncomfortable. Or is it we who are weird and uncomfortable? We're probably making too big a deal out of this. Or aren't we? Are we? Aren't we?
We can't get to sleep. We toss and turn on the sofa cushions laid out on the floor, and they slide out from under us. The night drags on and on, but at some point I find myself blinking at my watch in a sunlit room, and it's not my birthday anymore, not anywhere in the world.
It's only the queue where they check your passport and ask you questions about what you're doing there. You may argue that the same thing would happen if we were flying into the US. But no, if we were in the US, we'd be standing in a line.
I am always paranoid about this part, when they ask you point-blank why you're here and where you're going, but they don't lock us up for further interrogation, just say "Cheers" and wave us on. We get ourselves some pounds sterling and go looking for a way into town. There's an airport bus to the bus stop, and then it takes us a long time to figure out which bus to take, and how to get on it, to get to the town center where our third bus will be. Fortunately, we have planned our schedule to allow for this. We elicit help from a couple of police officers who are loitering around the bus terminal. One of them stares at the departures screen for a while, then grabs an employee who has walked past us several times, blind to our confused and helpless expressions. Information is exchanged, and we finally get on the bus to the town center.
The route winds through picturesque residential neighborhoods, tidy little streets and brick row houses and big old trees. I sort of thought Manchester would be grubbier, but I'm not sorry. The bus drops us in the general vicinity of our next connection, and we go in search of food.
The pub we settle on is shiny-new, spacious, and mostly empty. We're confused about how the ordering works here, and we sit in our window booth for quite a while before Mitchey goes up to the counter. That, it turns out, is how ordering works here: you go to the counter. At least we don't need to leave a tip when we order that way. We know this because we just looked it up in Mitchey's travel book.
I order a Traditional English Breakfast. I'd hate to eat it first thing on waking up, but it is pretty much the best lunch ever: fried egg, sausage, "bacon" (prepared like a slice of ham in the US), mushrooms, baked beans, toast, and a grilled or stewed toe-mah-toe. So basically what you have here is some protein with protein and a side of protein. And a couple of really happy Americans.
We kill the rest of the time waiting for the bus by people-watching. We observe that a neo-'80s look is the fashion here right now; that various kinds of dressy boots are the footwear of choice for women; that English people of African descent dress and behave nothing at all like African-Americans. Mitchey thinks we kind of blend in here because we're white (most of her overseas travel has been in Asia). I think we stand out because a) she's wearing a very colorful outfit, and people here all wear neutrals with maybe one color if they're feeling adventurous, and b) I'm wearing hiking boots, and no one else here is wearing any kind of outdoor adventure-type shoes. Also, we have bulky backpacks and fresh-off-the-plane expressions.
Our bus driver to London is in a foul mood. He storms out of the bus and opens the luggage compartments, yelling something we don't understand in an accent we don't recognize. People stand around looking confused. Some of them put their luggage into the compartments. He yells some more, takes them back out and shakes his head. One guy who sounds like he's from India mutters, "Well what the **** am I supposed to do then?" The driver overhears this and gets in a shouting match with the guy. Nobody is happy about it. Two guys behind me are muttering about racism.
Finally the driver gets over himself and lets us all board. The bus is full and quiet. I prop my head against my inflatable neck pillow and sleep most of the way to London. I know you're not supposed to do that, take naps while jetlagged, but I'm just too darn tired to care.
I'll never be a huge fan of London, but I find on this second visit that I don't hate it anymore. Perhaps that's because my luggage doesn't get rifled through, nor my camera stolen, nor am I locked out of a hotel room with no one to let me in. Perhaps it's because I'm not there with a group of college students from Oklahoma. Still, this city stresses me out. It's full of people who are in a hurry to get to someplace they don't look at all happy about reaching.
Mitch and I agree that our wisest course for this first day would be to just find our way to our host's neighborhood, so we can meet him there when he gets off work. He lives a good distance southwest of London. We take the underground and the train to his station, then call him, and after a little while he pops up smiling. He smiles a lot. At first we think he's really happy to see us. While that may well be the case, we realize later that it's his reflexive response to everything.
Our host's home is a tiny one-bedroom flat, which we will share with a fourth person that night, a Canuck who's in town for a conference in French Literature. He arrives shortly after we do. We three travelers are very hungry, but our host is recovering from a bout of food poisoning. He tells us where to find restaurants and we leave him in peace.
It's my birthday, so I get to pick. Unfortunately, the options we're aware of are all in a shopping center. We were hoping for a quaint little pub or something, but the closest analogue seems to be... Tony Roma's? Oh, no no no. I pick sushi.
The sushi wasn't bad, I insist as we leave the restaurant; bad sushi is sushi that leaves you spending quality time with a toilet. It just wasn't good sushi. Nor was it cheap sushi. But hey, it's okay. We're in London, and we have a place to stay and a couple of new friends, sort of, maybe.
The Canuck is a cutie; we're both a little crestfallen when he mentions his girlfriend. (Not like anything would happen; it just, you know, removes a variable from the equation, so that you can't pretend you don't know what the answer is anymore.) When pressed, he tells us about the presentation he is making for the conference, which I think has something to do with narrators who refuse to narrate, or who say things by not saying them. He is extremely polite and a little tense. We like him, but we don't really click with him. At the time I think it's culture clash (we're doing it all wrong, we're too American); looking back later, it seems to me it has more to do with travel fatigue than anything.
Our host is happy to sit and talk with us when we return. He has hosted over 200 people in the past three years. I press him for stories about terrible guests. His best one involves a huge Icelander who sat around watching TV all day, and was grumpy because the host didn't have time to show him around the city. The host loaned him keys to the house and flat, which the Icelander put in the wrong lock and broke off, so that the main entry door to the house couldn't be opened at all. Then he banged on the window of the neighboring flat (in the same house). The neighbor lady opened it, and he tried to climb through. He got stuck. The fire department was called to extricate him. In the UK, you pay out of pocket for a visit from the fire department, so after that and the locksmith, this guy was quite a costly guest.
Then he went home and wrote a bad review for his host on the Couchsurfing site.
Mitchey and I are trying really really hard to be good guests. We are in kind of a spot, though. We had planned to stay somewhere else tomorrow night, then come back and stay with this host again. But our in-between host got confused and gave our spot away to someone else. We ask our present host if we can stay the following night as well. He won't answer directly. This obviously means "no," even though he's smiling for all he's worth. Okay, we say, we'll find ourselves a hostel, no problem, don't worry about it.
Later, we overhear him invite the Canuck to stay tomorrow night. We spend the rest of the evening trying to convince ourselves not to take it personally, while wondering what we did wrong. To be fair: three guests are obviously more stressful than one, and we have no right to expect more than the original hosting arrangement. But. It's all just very weird and uncomfortable. Or is it we who are weird and uncomfortable? We're probably making too big a deal out of this. Or aren't we? Are we? Aren't we?
We can't get to sleep. We toss and turn on the sofa cushions laid out on the floor, and they slide out from under us. The night drags on and on, but at some point I find myself blinking at my watch in a sunlit room, and it's not my birthday anymore, not anywhere in the world.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
New Start in the Old Place.
I am back in Portland now, as of yesterday. It feels good. The amazingly gorgeous weather that has followed me all the way from Maui to Chicago to the UK to Nashville continues to dog my steps. (I'm bracing myself for the backlash.)
So I've decided not to write a novel this November. I have a lot of catching up to do in pretty much every area of my life, including unpacking half my possessions from cardboard boxes, including starting a new job, including hanging out with you, if you live in Portland. Including books I want to read, events I want to attend, local places I want to visit, projects I want to resume. NaNoWriMo requires you to put your normal life on hold for a month, and I've had mine on hold for the past four. Right now, I just want to work out what the new normal is.
Chris Baty sent me an e-mail letting me know I'm letting down the entire human race, especially him, by not participating. I hate to disappoint the guy... but since I have pretty much sat on the past three completed manuscripts, I suspect my non-participation will dismay no one else except those who are participating in NaNo. To you, my friends, I apologize, and salute you.
I am currently in the process of writing up a day-by-day account of my trip to the UK, which I will publish here, starting tomorrow. Fair warning: if you're reading my blog on LJ, these posts will clutter up your friends page with giant blocks of text.
This week I also plan to begin catching up on blink twice (I'm still taking photos every single day, just not posting them), and also my regular ol' photo collection which resides on a popular photo hosting site. (If you don't know about the latter, e-mail me for the link; I'm still leery of putting it here.) It's kind of a big project. Heh. I do not miss the old days of being stingy with film at all.
Oh yeah, and comics, of course!
So I've decided not to write a novel this November. I have a lot of catching up to do in pretty much every area of my life, including unpacking half my possessions from cardboard boxes, including starting a new job, including hanging out with you, if you live in Portland. Including books I want to read, events I want to attend, local places I want to visit, projects I want to resume. NaNoWriMo requires you to put your normal life on hold for a month, and I've had mine on hold for the past four. Right now, I just want to work out what the new normal is.
Chris Baty sent me an e-mail letting me know I'm letting down the entire human race, especially him, by not participating. I hate to disappoint the guy... but since I have pretty much sat on the past three completed manuscripts, I suspect my non-participation will dismay no one else except those who are participating in NaNo. To you, my friends, I apologize, and salute you.
I am currently in the process of writing up a day-by-day account of my trip to the UK, which I will publish here, starting tomorrow. Fair warning: if you're reading my blog on LJ, these posts will clutter up your friends page with giant blocks of text.
This week I also plan to begin catching up on blink twice (I'm still taking photos every single day, just not posting them), and also my regular ol' photo collection which resides on a popular photo hosting site. (If you don't know about the latter, e-mail me for the link; I'm still leery of putting it here.) It's kind of a big project. Heh. I do not miss the old days of being stingy with film at all.
Oh yeah, and comics, of course!
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Nudge, Nudge.
I hope you don't think that just because I'm away having adventures, I forgot what tomorrow is.
I hope you don't think that just because I missed a month, I'm out of the game.
I hope you don't think that I'm going to let you off the hook.
Tomorrow, some things will happen to you, or maybe you will make some things happen. You need to record those things in words and images. You really do.
At least three of them.
And I will, too.
I hope you don't think that just because I missed a month, I'm out of the game.
I hope you don't think that I'm going to let you off the hook.
Tomorrow, some things will happen to you, or maybe you will make some things happen. You need to record those things in words and images. You really do.
At least three of them.
And I will, too.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Five Items and Two Lists.
Item the First.
I have returned from the UK. It was beyond awesome, and difficult to leave. I took several hundred pictures and a lot of notes, both of which I intend to share after some editing. I am now hanging out in Chicago and enjoying myself a good deal.
Item the Second.
I also took a lot of pictures at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon last weekend, which will also be shared in due time. I was expecting a sort of Renaissance Fair with pioneers and injuns, but it was about 78 times cooler than that. It is more authentic than SCA events and more relaxed than Civil War reenactments. I am really jealous that we don't have anything quite like it in the Pacific Northwest, because I would be So Into It.
Item the Third.
After the weekend, I got to witness two of my favorite sailors getting married to each other, and that was also extremely wonderful.
Item the Fourth.
So, remember that interview I kept mentioning? Today I found out that I got the job. As of October 21st, I'll be the Instruction and Electronic Services Librarian for Warner Pacific College. It's a position I was eyeing with envy way back when I was working for Cascade, and it is probably the only one that could have even motivated me to apply for a long-term library job at this point, so it's very gratifying to have actually landed it.
This means I'll be able to walk to work from my house. It also means a lot of other things, one of which is not being available for as much travel and crazy jobs and boat adventures, which is sad, but another of which is being present for a lot of wonderful Portland events that I've been missing out on, which is happy. For example, it probably means I'll be doing NaNoWriMo this November.
Item the Fifth.
I learned a lot from living out of a backpack for almost two weeks in the UK. I made some lists about packing, and I am putting them here mostly for my own reference, but perhaps also for your amusement.
Things I Wish I'd Brought:
- A more comfortable pack. Mine was plenty large and plenty sturdy, but the straps weren't padded enough for carrying it around all day, and my shoulders let me know about it. For some reason this bothered me a lot more than it did when I carried the same pack across Europe in '95.
- Chamois travel towel. I brought a thin, lightweight towel, but as we were staying in a different place almost every night, there were just too many times that towel got packed away wet. Near the end of my trip I invested in a synthetic chamois towel; it's tiny, effective, and wrings out nearly dry. Genius.
- Plastic shower shoes (flip-flops). I left them behind because I thought both flip-flops and Tevas would be overkill. But I don't dare use public (i.e. hostel) showers barefoot, because I pick up foot diseases way too easily. As a result, my Tevas were so funky by the time I got back to Chicago that, in my exhausted post-flight state, I convinced myself that putting them in the dryer would be a good idea. It wasn't. I am really missing those Tevas.
- One more t-shirt. I thought I'd buy thrift store clothes once we got there, but their thrift stores were really uninspiring. Lots of American labels, prices weren't great, and also the UK is going through this big 80s-retro phase right now. Ugh. So I spent more time than I wanted to in laundrettes (UK laundromats), when an extra shirt or two wouldn't have taken up all that much room in my pack.
- Google Maps printouts of all the towns we were going to. Easier to hand one of those to a local and ask them to point out your destination, rather than try to remember a rambling list of directions followed by the fateful phrase: "You can't miss it." Whenever we heard that, we knew we were doomed.
- Contact info for a couple of hostels in all of the cities/towns we went to, in case our host didn't work out. We had this for some places but not others. Once we were really glad we had it. Another time we really wished we had.
- Travel sized toiletries. A full sized toothbrush is just an awkward thing to have in a backpack. So is a half-empty full sized tube of toothpaste. Two tiny tubes would have been better.
- Melatonin pills. My travel buddy shared hers with me a couple of times, and it seemed to help with the jetlag, though it may be that I just like a good placebo now and then.
Things I'm Really Glad I Brought:
- A compression-type bag. Not the kind with the buckles and straps, but one that you can force all the air out of. I'm used to having less and less space in my luggage as laundry day approaches; with this thing, I actually had more.
- Inflatable neck pillow. I may never travel without one again.
- A book of short stories. Great for distracting myself from my immediate surroundings without getting lost in an extended narrative.
- Alarm clock. We didn't set it the first night in London, and we woke at noon sharp.
- Mom's iPod Shuffle. With its several limitations came the significant advantage of taking up basically no space at all. Thanks, Mom!
- Extra earplugs. Easy to lose, hard to sleep in strange places without.
- Extraordinarily compatible travel buddy. Have to admit I got really lucky there.
I have returned from the UK. It was beyond awesome, and difficult to leave. I took several hundred pictures and a lot of notes, both of which I intend to share after some editing. I am now hanging out in Chicago and enjoying myself a good deal.
Item the Second.
I also took a lot of pictures at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon last weekend, which will also be shared in due time. I was expecting a sort of Renaissance Fair with pioneers and injuns, but it was about 78 times cooler than that. It is more authentic than SCA events and more relaxed than Civil War reenactments. I am really jealous that we don't have anything quite like it in the Pacific Northwest, because I would be So Into It.
Item the Third.
After the weekend, I got to witness two of my favorite sailors getting married to each other, and that was also extremely wonderful.
Item the Fourth.
So, remember that interview I kept mentioning? Today I found out that I got the job. As of October 21st, I'll be the Instruction and Electronic Services Librarian for Warner Pacific College. It's a position I was eyeing with envy way back when I was working for Cascade, and it is probably the only one that could have even motivated me to apply for a long-term library job at this point, so it's very gratifying to have actually landed it.
This means I'll be able to walk to work from my house. It also means a lot of other things, one of which is not being available for as much travel and crazy jobs and boat adventures, which is sad, but another of which is being present for a lot of wonderful Portland events that I've been missing out on, which is happy. For example, it probably means I'll be doing NaNoWriMo this November.
Item the Fifth.
I learned a lot from living out of a backpack for almost two weeks in the UK. I made some lists about packing, and I am putting them here mostly for my own reference, but perhaps also for your amusement.
Things I Wish I'd Brought:
- A more comfortable pack. Mine was plenty large and plenty sturdy, but the straps weren't padded enough for carrying it around all day, and my shoulders let me know about it. For some reason this bothered me a lot more than it did when I carried the same pack across Europe in '95.
- Chamois travel towel. I brought a thin, lightweight towel, but as we were staying in a different place almost every night, there were just too many times that towel got packed away wet. Near the end of my trip I invested in a synthetic chamois towel; it's tiny, effective, and wrings out nearly dry. Genius.
- Plastic shower shoes (flip-flops). I left them behind because I thought both flip-flops and Tevas would be overkill. But I don't dare use public (i.e. hostel) showers barefoot, because I pick up foot diseases way too easily. As a result, my Tevas were so funky by the time I got back to Chicago that, in my exhausted post-flight state, I convinced myself that putting them in the dryer would be a good idea. It wasn't. I am really missing those Tevas.
- One more t-shirt. I thought I'd buy thrift store clothes once we got there, but their thrift stores were really uninspiring. Lots of American labels, prices weren't great, and also the UK is going through this big 80s-retro phase right now. Ugh. So I spent more time than I wanted to in laundrettes (UK laundromats), when an extra shirt or two wouldn't have taken up all that much room in my pack.
- Google Maps printouts of all the towns we were going to. Easier to hand one of those to a local and ask them to point out your destination, rather than try to remember a rambling list of directions followed by the fateful phrase: "You can't miss it." Whenever we heard that, we knew we were doomed.
- Contact info for a couple of hostels in all of the cities/towns we went to, in case our host didn't work out. We had this for some places but not others. Once we were really glad we had it. Another time we really wished we had.
- Travel sized toiletries. A full sized toothbrush is just an awkward thing to have in a backpack. So is a half-empty full sized tube of toothpaste. Two tiny tubes would have been better.
- Melatonin pills. My travel buddy shared hers with me a couple of times, and it seemed to help with the jetlag, though it may be that I just like a good placebo now and then.
Things I'm Really Glad I Brought:
- A compression-type bag. Not the kind with the buckles and straps, but one that you can force all the air out of. I'm used to having less and less space in my luggage as laundry day approaches; with this thing, I actually had more.
- Inflatable neck pillow. I may never travel without one again.
- A book of short stories. Great for distracting myself from my immediate surroundings without getting lost in an extended narrative.
- Alarm clock. We didn't set it the first night in London, and we woke at noon sharp.
- Mom's iPod Shuffle. With its several limitations came the significant advantage of taking up basically no space at all. Thanks, Mom!
- Extra earplugs. Easy to lose, hard to sleep in strange places without.
- Extraordinarily compatible travel buddy. Have to admit I got really lucky there.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
A Letter from Busyland.
Thank you to all of you who sent me screenshots of your feedreaders. I used several of those today in my presentation. They were the most effective and interesting part of it. I apologize to Mac users for assuming that screenshots were just one of those things all Mac people know about. But, really, come on, a little frolicking is never a bad idea.
The presentation was for an interview. The former wasn't really great, but I think the latter went all right anyway. However I am not too sure of anything right now because my brain is sort of cooked.
So, interview, check. Heating duct insulation, check, and boy am I glad to have that nightmare behind me. Now that I don't have to make myself crawl under the house anymore, I can come out and admit to myself that it was really, really horrible. Disgusting, and excruciating, and full of health hazards. The fact that I actually finished the job is evidence of my incredible stubbornness, if anybody needed that. (My parents didn't.)
The third task (aren't there always three?) remains unfinished: packing for the London/Chicago trip. So I am officially behind schedule now, because I had hoped to be in Eugene hanging out with the fam by this time. But, as I said before, my brain has already decided to call it a day. (Good thing brains aren't a requirement for blogging!) So I think the best I can do tonight is to find most of the stuff on my packing list and throw it on the floor in a big pile, and then throw myself on the bed in a little pile.
It has been really good to be back in Portland again for a little while, even though I spent way too much of that time rolling around in cobwebs and mouse poo. I am extremely grateful that staying with my renters, the Chainsaws, has not actually been at all awkward. "It should be, but it isn't," I told them, to which Mr. Chainsaw responded, "We'll have to work on that." See what I mean? So accommodating.
The presentation was for an interview. The former wasn't really great, but I think the latter went all right anyway. However I am not too sure of anything right now because my brain is sort of cooked.
So, interview, check. Heating duct insulation, check, and boy am I glad to have that nightmare behind me. Now that I don't have to make myself crawl under the house anymore, I can come out and admit to myself that it was really, really horrible. Disgusting, and excruciating, and full of health hazards. The fact that I actually finished the job is evidence of my incredible stubbornness, if anybody needed that. (My parents didn't.)
The third task (aren't there always three?) remains unfinished: packing for the London/Chicago trip. So I am officially behind schedule now, because I had hoped to be in Eugene hanging out with the fam by this time. But, as I said before, my brain has already decided to call it a day. (Good thing brains aren't a requirement for blogging!) So I think the best I can do tonight is to find most of the stuff on my packing list and throw it on the floor in a big pile, and then throw myself on the bed in a little pile.
It has been really good to be back in Portland again for a little while, even though I spent way too much of that time rolling around in cobwebs and mouse poo. I am extremely grateful that staying with my renters, the Chainsaws, has not actually been at all awkward. "It should be, but it isn't," I told them, to which Mr. Chainsaw responded, "We'll have to work on that." See what I mean? So accommodating.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Aggregators in Action!
An odd request: If you use a feedreader other than Bloglines (for example, Google Reader, or whatever else the kids are using these days), could you send me a screenshot of your aggregator doing its thing? Please make sure the active content is family-friendly and, er, preferably not my blog. The resulting image will be used for educational purposes, and you will remain anonymous unless you wish credit to be given.
How to take a screenshot (Windows):
1. Push the Print Scrn button. (On my laptop keyboard, you have to hold down Shift to activate it.)
2. Open Windows Paint.
3. Paste (Ctrl-V).
4. Save the file.
How to take a screenshot (Mac):*
1. Think happy thoughts.
2. Frolic.
3. Lick the screen.
4. Isn't life grand?
*All Mac users were born knowing how to take screenshots.
How to take a screenshot (handheld):
1. I have no idea, but if you do, that would be awesome. (Come to think of it, a photo would work, too.)
This request expires the morning of Wednesday, September 10th. Mahalo!
How to take a screenshot (Windows):
1. Push the Print Scrn button. (On my laptop keyboard, you have to hold down Shift to activate it.)
2. Open Windows Paint.
3. Paste (Ctrl-V).
4. Save the file.
How to take a screenshot (Mac):*
1. Think happy thoughts.
2. Frolic.
3. Lick the screen.
4. Isn't life grand?
*All Mac users were born knowing how to take screenshots.
How to take a screenshot (handheld):
1. I have no idea, but if you do, that would be awesome. (Come to think of it, a photo would work, too.)
This request expires the morning of Wednesday, September 10th. Mahalo!
Monday, September 01, 2008
Argust is Over, and On to September.
It's the first of September! Soon to be followed by the Third! (Hooray for airport comics!)
Today may or may not have been my last day of work, depending on whether or not we get a charter tomorrow. There are a few hours left, but... we probably won't. As last days of work go, this one (if it was indeed the last) was pretty nice. We had three passengers (you can see two of them on this page, yes, I'm serious) who were very mellow and pleasant to have on board. And they all caught some fish. Yay! And then they didn't want the fish, so I didn't have to clean them. Double yay! ...because the ride home was bumpy, and I am always a little skittish about using a sharp knife on a cutting board that keeps jumping around.
Also, Cousin K in his great mercy decided to forego the long-standing tradition of shoving harbor employees into the harbor on their last day of work. Good call, Cousin K.
Mitchey and I have been planning and planning for our UK trip. Our current itinerary looks something like this:
9/15-17 London (perhaps you've heard of it?)
9/18-19 Portsmouth (home of the HMS Victory)
9/20-21 Cardiff (capital of Wales)
9/22-24 Machynlleth (at the edge of Snowdonia National Park)
9/25-26 Manchester (where the relevant airport is)
We plan to stay in homes rather than hostels, which will allow us to connect with locals instead of just the backpacking subculture. We're setting most of that up through an international hospitality network called Couchsurfing, which seems almost too good to be true. (You didn't think we'd stay in hotels, did you? Pfff! That would be way too normal for us.)
In the meantime, my brief upcoming stay in Portland just got further congested by the addition of an all-day job interview. I am not going to say any more about that until I have something definite to tell you (but that doesn't mean you can't speculate).
Today may or may not have been my last day of work, depending on whether or not we get a charter tomorrow. There are a few hours left, but... we probably won't. As last days of work go, this one (if it was indeed the last) was pretty nice. We had three passengers (you can see two of them on this page, yes, I'm serious) who were very mellow and pleasant to have on board. And they all caught some fish. Yay! And then they didn't want the fish, so I didn't have to clean them. Double yay! ...because the ride home was bumpy, and I am always a little skittish about using a sharp knife on a cutting board that keeps jumping around.
Also, Cousin K in his great mercy decided to forego the long-standing tradition of shoving harbor employees into the harbor on their last day of work. Good call, Cousin K.
Mitchey and I have been planning and planning for our UK trip. Our current itinerary looks something like this:
9/15-17 London (perhaps you've heard of it?)
9/18-19 Portsmouth (home of the HMS Victory)
9/20-21 Cardiff (capital of Wales)
9/22-24 Machynlleth (at the edge of Snowdonia National Park)
9/25-26 Manchester (where the relevant airport is)
We plan to stay in homes rather than hostels, which will allow us to connect with locals instead of just the backpacking subculture. We're setting most of that up through an international hospitality network called Couchsurfing, which seems almost too good to be true. (You didn't think we'd stay in hotels, did you? Pfff! That would be way too normal for us.)
In the meantime, my brief upcoming stay in Portland just got further congested by the addition of an all-day job interview. I am not going to say any more about that until I have something definite to tell you (but that doesn't mean you can't speculate).
Monday, August 25, 2008
In the Future, Everything's Smaller.
I have been obsessed with an idea for half the summer.
Back in July, hhw mentioned that Jay Shafer, the designer of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, was passing through Oregon with his own tiny house. I clicked on the link and was mesmerized. I really wanted to see it! But the best I could do from Hawaii was to talk ah and colorfulveggies into going to see it for me. To their credit, they not only went, but documented the visit and even purchased books on my behalf (thank you so much!).
The initial appeal is obvious: It's sooo cute! And it's super efficient! And it goes places! I like to go places. I sought out and consumed as much information as I could about these houses. I looked at other tiny lodgings, too, and found that Tumbleweeds were my favorite by far. I was delighted and inspired by the story of tiny house dweller Dee Williams (video, article), even though her lifestyle is a little more stripped-down than I would want. But as much fun as this research was, I expected the charm of the daydream to fade after a week or two.
It didn't. I just kept thinking about it and thinking about it. What would living in a tiny house be like? How would it make my life better? What would I have to give up? Where would I want to park it? And: If I decide I'm serious about this, how could I make it happen?
That last question is the most vexing one. I lack both the funds to purchase a tiny house outright, and the skills to build one myself. I mean really, I am not even good with a hammer. I have a major asset in the form of a house, but I believe it would be unwise to sell it -- it's an unbelievably great investment, and the market is terrible right now anyway. Then again, I put an awful lot of money into it for the amount of time I've spent there in the past couple of years. And I'm not tired of traveling yet, oh no.
So... I haven't made any decisions. But I have mulled it over to the point where I'm pretty sure that, if I could find a way to acquire a Tumbleweed without selling my "big" house, I would. My reasons include:
- save money on cost of living
- save time/effort on housekeeping
- simplify and streamline my lifestyle
- be nicer to the planet
- can leave it empty for months at a time at no real loss
- can pick it up and move to other interesting places (and back again)
- can live in community with others, yet maintain personal space
- can move on-site to assist parents if they get all feeble on me someday
- still have room for guests, if guests aren't claustrophobic
It's just an idea. But that's where everything always starts. So don't say I didn't warn you.
And if you think you might be interested in renting out about 100 square feet of your yard for any period of time, let me know!
Back in July, hhw mentioned that Jay Shafer, the designer of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, was passing through Oregon with his own tiny house. I clicked on the link and was mesmerized. I really wanted to see it! But the best I could do from Hawaii was to talk ah and colorfulveggies into going to see it for me. To their credit, they not only went, but documented the visit and even purchased books on my behalf (thank you so much!).
The initial appeal is obvious: It's sooo cute! And it's super efficient! And it goes places! I like to go places. I sought out and consumed as much information as I could about these houses. I looked at other tiny lodgings, too, and found that Tumbleweeds were my favorite by far. I was delighted and inspired by the story of tiny house dweller Dee Williams (video, article), even though her lifestyle is a little more stripped-down than I would want. But as much fun as this research was, I expected the charm of the daydream to fade after a week or two.
It didn't. I just kept thinking about it and thinking about it. What would living in a tiny house be like? How would it make my life better? What would I have to give up? Where would I want to park it? And: If I decide I'm serious about this, how could I make it happen?
That last question is the most vexing one. I lack both the funds to purchase a tiny house outright, and the skills to build one myself. I mean really, I am not even good with a hammer. I have a major asset in the form of a house, but I believe it would be unwise to sell it -- it's an unbelievably great investment, and the market is terrible right now anyway. Then again, I put an awful lot of money into it for the amount of time I've spent there in the past couple of years. And I'm not tired of traveling yet, oh no.
So... I haven't made any decisions. But I have mulled it over to the point where I'm pretty sure that, if I could find a way to acquire a Tumbleweed without selling my "big" house, I would. My reasons include:
- save money on cost of living
- save time/effort on housekeeping
- simplify and streamline my lifestyle
- be nicer to the planet
- can leave it empty for months at a time at no real loss
- can pick it up and move to other interesting places (and back again)
- can live in community with others, yet maintain personal space
- can move on-site to assist parents if they get all feeble on me someday
- still have room for guests, if guests aren't claustrophobic
It's just an idea. But that's where everything always starts. So don't say I didn't warn you.
And if you think you might be interested in renting out about 100 square feet of your yard for any period of time, let me know!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Better Than a Day at the Office.
Bottom-fishing here works like this:
1. Position the boat juuust right.
2. Drop the lines (to depths of 180 feet or more).
3. Allow the current and/or wind to move the boat over the fish (visible on the depth-finder).
4. Wait for nibbles.
5. Reel-reel-reel the lines back up again.
6. GOTO: 1.
Today was about as nice as it gets out there. The waters were calm, and we got a couple peaceful hours in before the wind found us. The fish were biting slow but steady, maybe averaging one catch per drop (six passengers fishing). And they were nice and big. The state record for the blue line snapper (my old friend the taape) is about two pounds, and most of these were at least 3/4 of that. And there were several sizeable soldierfish, and a big pink goatfish, and a sizeable triggerfish (sorry, boot-boot).
The triggerfish is always a good thing to catch, because you can say "This is the guy who was stealing your bait" and show off the trick with the trigger. The trigger is a stout dorsal spine which the fish can lock into place; right behind it, there is a second spine which unlocks it. So the fish can lock itself into a hole in the rocks, and no other fish can pull it out. The trick is to show the passenger you can lower the first spine without letting him/her see you touch the second spine, and then ask them to push down the first one. Nobody can.
The passengers were decent, too, and that always helps. Sometimes you get people who are rude without meaning to be, and sometimes you get people who are rude on purpose. Sometimes you get guys who think that because they've fished for other fish in other places, they already know how to catch these fish in this place. (The real fishermen know that techniques are different for different fish and different waters.) Most people are pretty nice, like these were. They also followed directions well, and they seemed to enjoy themselves, which is really all you can ask for.
So, you know, not a bad way to spend an August day.
1. Position the boat juuust right.
2. Drop the lines (to depths of 180 feet or more).
3. Allow the current and/or wind to move the boat over the fish (visible on the depth-finder).
4. Wait for nibbles.
5. Reel-reel-reel the lines back up again.
6. GOTO: 1.
Today was about as nice as it gets out there. The waters were calm, and we got a couple peaceful hours in before the wind found us. The fish were biting slow but steady, maybe averaging one catch per drop (six passengers fishing). And they were nice and big. The state record for the blue line snapper (my old friend the taape) is about two pounds, and most of these were at least 3/4 of that. And there were several sizeable soldierfish, and a big pink goatfish, and a sizeable triggerfish (sorry, boot-boot).
The triggerfish is always a good thing to catch, because you can say "This is the guy who was stealing your bait" and show off the trick with the trigger. The trigger is a stout dorsal spine which the fish can lock into place; right behind it, there is a second spine which unlocks it. So the fish can lock itself into a hole in the rocks, and no other fish can pull it out. The trick is to show the passenger you can lower the first spine without letting him/her see you touch the second spine, and then ask them to push down the first one. Nobody can.
The passengers were decent, too, and that always helps. Sometimes you get people who are rude without meaning to be, and sometimes you get people who are rude on purpose. Sometimes you get guys who think that because they've fished for other fish in other places, they already know how to catch these fish in this place. (The real fishermen know that techniques are different for different fish and different waters.) Most people are pretty nice, like these were. They also followed directions well, and they seemed to enjoy themselves, which is really all you can ask for.
So, you know, not a bad way to spend an August day.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
A Birthday and a Tournament.
Today is Alfhild's birthday. In celebration of this event, I am finally getting around to posting the comics she e-mailed me, and I thought I'd share them with you here. They indicate (accurately) that she leads an Eventful Life.
July #1 & #2
July #3
August #1 & #2
She outsourced her third August comic to her cousin Hans. I sincerely hope it's fictional.
Last weekend was the Lanai Rendezvous fishing tournament. This is an annual event that draws sport fishermen from around the islands. My cousins compete every year, and place frequently, as did their father before them.
We set out before dawn on Friday, trolling lines out, heading on past Lahaina, past the farthest point I'd ever been on any charter. That first day was 12 hours of motoring, amazing scenery, amazingly smooth water... which still amounted to a bit of bouncing around.
We hooked a marlin that morning, our first this summer. I got to reel up the line while Cousin K sweated it, taking in and taking in whenever the fish gave him the opportunity. (That's legal in this tournament.)
Cousin M and Cousin K gaffed and clubbed the fish. When they smacked it in the head, its dark sides turned iridescent, instantly. The two of them hoisted it onto the swim step (a low platform behind the stern of the boat) and lashed it there. I stared at it for a long time. It had a strong smell that was nothing like what people mean when they describe something as "fishy-smelling." It smelled wild and salty and clean.
We went on, north and then west, around the east end of Molokai, looking for fish or indications of fish: birds or things floating on the water. Any sizeable piece of trash in those waters, say a broken styrofoam cooler, attracts microscopic sea life, which attracts larger sea life which, ultimately, attracts very large predators. We caught one more fish, an aku (skipjack tuna), that day.
The northeast shore of Molokai is steep and green. There is a tiny island there, a jagged rocky tooth sticking high out of the water, topped with a grove of a kind of palm tree found nowhere else in the world. There is a house perched high on a cliff that can only be reached by boat. There is a village called Kalaupapa, in a national park, which is inhabited by about 25 patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy), and about 25 park caretakers. Kalaupapa is accessible by air, by sea, or by steep mountain foot trails. It is off limits to anyone who is not a federal employee unless you have an invitation from a resident.
Could we use the mooring ball in the tiny harbor at Kalaupapa? With the gift of our one aku, and the proper name-dropping (sometimes I think my cousins are only two degrees of separation from anyone in the state), we could. It's not everywhere you can trade a fish for a parking space.
We didn't set foot on shore, but camped on the boat: Cousin M, Cousin K, Cousin K's girlfriend, and me. I lay on the afterdeck across from the marlin, which had been zipped into an insulative fish bag with a lot of ice. It was quiet on shore, but the wind and water and boat conspired to make little slappy and clunky noises all night. Half-aware of my surroundings, I dozed until I heard a splash and loud breathing next to the boat. We all jumped up to see what was going on: Had someone fallen overboard? Did we have a visitor from the shore? No, it was an inquisitive young monk seal: a rare sight.
Zooming away from shore as the sun came up, we continued west around Molokai, with a detour by the appealingly named O Buoy. The buoy has the same effect as a piece of floating trash: it attracts things, and other things that like to eat them. The waters around the buoy were rougher, but we caught several more aku and a couple of ahi (yellowfin tuna) there. Farther on, we caught a small mahi mahi. Now we had four out of the five fish recognized in the tournament, and we crossed our fingers for a clean sweep: all we needed was an ono (wahoo).
But time was short. We had to get the fish in and weighed by 5:00, and the ono felt no such pressure to take our lures. So we swung out around the west side of Lanai and pulled into Manele Bay, already crowded with other contestants, vessels rafted together, fishermen calling to one another. For many of them this is an annual reunion. Here we were met by Cousin M's girlfriend and by my Auntie, and by Cousin K's girlfriend's folks. After weighing the marlin (191 pounds, and not smelling so good anymore), K and M were lost in the crowd, greeting old friends and comparing stories. I walked down the road to the beach, where I scrubbed my crusty self under the cool trickle of a beach shower. Even with low pressure and limited privacy, it was one of those transformative showers, where you feel like a completely different person afterward. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.
Later there was a dinner, and awards. Our marlin, which I had been assured was not really that big for a marlin, turned out to be big enough to win second place. "The evening is just beginning," a stranger with a few beers in him told me, and I nodded politely. Then I picked my way back across the obstacle course of boats, unrolled my sleeping bag on the deck, inserted earplugs, and closed my eyes while the party shifted into high gear around me: fireworks, voices talking and shouting, competing stereos, bright lights, footsteps back and forth across the boat. In the morning we would get up and take the last leg of the journey home, but now, floating on the din, I set my consciousness adrift and was at peace.
July #1 & #2
July #3
August #1 & #2
She outsourced her third August comic to her cousin Hans. I sincerely hope it's fictional.
* * *
Last weekend was the Lanai Rendezvous fishing tournament. This is an annual event that draws sport fishermen from around the islands. My cousins compete every year, and place frequently, as did their father before them.
We set out before dawn on Friday, trolling lines out, heading on past Lahaina, past the farthest point I'd ever been on any charter. That first day was 12 hours of motoring, amazing scenery, amazingly smooth water... which still amounted to a bit of bouncing around.
We hooked a marlin that morning, our first this summer. I got to reel up the line while Cousin K sweated it, taking in and taking in whenever the fish gave him the opportunity. (That's legal in this tournament.)
Cousin M and Cousin K gaffed and clubbed the fish. When they smacked it in the head, its dark sides turned iridescent, instantly. The two of them hoisted it onto the swim step (a low platform behind the stern of the boat) and lashed it there. I stared at it for a long time. It had a strong smell that was nothing like what people mean when they describe something as "fishy-smelling." It smelled wild and salty and clean.
We went on, north and then west, around the east end of Molokai, looking for fish or indications of fish: birds or things floating on the water. Any sizeable piece of trash in those waters, say a broken styrofoam cooler, attracts microscopic sea life, which attracts larger sea life which, ultimately, attracts very large predators. We caught one more fish, an aku (skipjack tuna), that day.
The northeast shore of Molokai is steep and green. There is a tiny island there, a jagged rocky tooth sticking high out of the water, topped with a grove of a kind of palm tree found nowhere else in the world. There is a house perched high on a cliff that can only be reached by boat. There is a village called Kalaupapa, in a national park, which is inhabited by about 25 patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy), and about 25 park caretakers. Kalaupapa is accessible by air, by sea, or by steep mountain foot trails. It is off limits to anyone who is not a federal employee unless you have an invitation from a resident.
Could we use the mooring ball in the tiny harbor at Kalaupapa? With the gift of our one aku, and the proper name-dropping (sometimes I think my cousins are only two degrees of separation from anyone in the state), we could. It's not everywhere you can trade a fish for a parking space.
We didn't set foot on shore, but camped on the boat: Cousin M, Cousin K, Cousin K's girlfriend, and me. I lay on the afterdeck across from the marlin, which had been zipped into an insulative fish bag with a lot of ice. It was quiet on shore, but the wind and water and boat conspired to make little slappy and clunky noises all night. Half-aware of my surroundings, I dozed until I heard a splash and loud breathing next to the boat. We all jumped up to see what was going on: Had someone fallen overboard? Did we have a visitor from the shore? No, it was an inquisitive young monk seal: a rare sight.
Zooming away from shore as the sun came up, we continued west around Molokai, with a detour by the appealingly named O Buoy. The buoy has the same effect as a piece of floating trash: it attracts things, and other things that like to eat them. The waters around the buoy were rougher, but we caught several more aku and a couple of ahi (yellowfin tuna) there. Farther on, we caught a small mahi mahi. Now we had four out of the five fish recognized in the tournament, and we crossed our fingers for a clean sweep: all we needed was an ono (wahoo).
But time was short. We had to get the fish in and weighed by 5:00, and the ono felt no such pressure to take our lures. So we swung out around the west side of Lanai and pulled into Manele Bay, already crowded with other contestants, vessels rafted together, fishermen calling to one another. For many of them this is an annual reunion. Here we were met by Cousin M's girlfriend and by my Auntie, and by Cousin K's girlfriend's folks. After weighing the marlin (191 pounds, and not smelling so good anymore), K and M were lost in the crowd, greeting old friends and comparing stories. I walked down the road to the beach, where I scrubbed my crusty self under the cool trickle of a beach shower. Even with low pressure and limited privacy, it was one of those transformative showers, where you feel like a completely different person afterward. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.
Later there was a dinner, and awards. Our marlin, which I had been assured was not really that big for a marlin, turned out to be big enough to win second place. "The evening is just beginning," a stranger with a few beers in him told me, and I nodded politely. Then I picked my way back across the obstacle course of boats, unrolled my sleeping bag on the deck, inserted earplugs, and closed my eyes while the party shifted into high gear around me: fireworks, voices talking and shouting, competing stereos, bright lights, footsteps back and forth across the boat. In the morning we would get up and take the last leg of the journey home, but now, floating on the din, I set my consciousness adrift and was at peace.
Here It Is, It Is a Post.
oh man why did I say I was gonna post every day for... whatever, WHATEVER
Today was a day I thought I would have a lot of free time and it did not work out that way at all, and now it is late and I am tired. So instead of a long post telling you about the fishing tournament last weekend, I will give you my itinier... itineri... schedule for the next couple months:
- On September 3 I fly back into Eugene. That is really soon! 12 days to be exact.
- Then I will drive back to Portland for maybe almost a week. During that time, I plan to finish insulating my heating ducts while infringing on my renters' privacy. I am sorry that I will probably not have time to hang out with hardly any of you, Portland friends.
- Then I will drive back to Eugene (my parents are really good car-sitters, plus it's an excuse to see them) and fly from there to Chicago!
- Then I will fly from Chicago to England with my friend Mitch!
- We will be in England for almost two weeks, during which time we will see London, Portsmouth, Wales, and a lot of buses. Then we will fly back to Chicago.
- Then I think we will go to the Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Indiana. I have a friend who blacksmiths there every year.
- Then my friend who blacksmiths will marry my friend who left Starbucks for the sea.
- Then I will go to Nashville and spend a week with Nashvillainous types (the Bombadil family).
- Then I will go back to Chicago and hang out with Mitch and some other old friends.
- Then I will come back to Portland via Eugene. It will probably be the middle of October by that time.
- And then... I don't know. I might look for work in Portland, or I might try to get work picking cranberries near Gray's Harbor. *shrug* Right now I'm just happy to have this much planned out.
Today was a day I thought I would have a lot of free time and it did not work out that way at all, and now it is late and I am tired. So instead of a long post telling you about the fishing tournament last weekend, I will give you my itinier... itineri... schedule for the next couple months:
- On September 3 I fly back into Eugene. That is really soon! 12 days to be exact.
- Then I will drive back to Portland for maybe almost a week. During that time, I plan to finish insulating my heating ducts while infringing on my renters' privacy. I am sorry that I will probably not have time to hang out with hardly any of you, Portland friends.
- Then I will drive back to Eugene (my parents are really good car-sitters, plus it's an excuse to see them) and fly from there to Chicago!
- Then I will fly from Chicago to England with my friend Mitch!
- We will be in England for almost two weeks, during which time we will see London, Portsmouth, Wales, and a lot of buses. Then we will fly back to Chicago.
- Then I think we will go to the Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Indiana. I have a friend who blacksmiths there every year.
- Then my friend who blacksmiths will marry my friend who left Starbucks for the sea.
- Then I will go to Nashville and spend a week with Nashvillainous types (the Bombadil family).
- Then I will go back to Chicago and hang out with Mitch and some other old friends.
- Then I will come back to Portland via Eugene. It will probably be the middle of October by that time.
- And then... I don't know. I might look for work in Portland, or I might try to get work picking cranberries near Gray's Harbor. *shrug* Right now I'm just happy to have this much planned out.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Hawaiian Chieftain vs. Marjorie Ann.
HC: 65' square tops'l ketch (steel hull)
MA: 25' cabin cruiser (fiberglass hull)
HC: 8-17 crew, up to 42 passengers
MA: 2 crew, up to 6 passengers
HC: primary activity = sailing
MA: primary activity = fishing
HC: 3 hour trips
MA: 4 hour trips
HC: usually wishing for more wind
MA: usually wishing for less wind
HC: reveille at 7 or 8
MA: alarm clock at 5
HC: commute a few steps
MA: 1/2 hour commute
HC: shower every 1-3 days
MA: shower 1-3 times a day
HC: sleep in small bed in large compartment with other crew, on the boat
MA: sleep in large bed in spacious private room, off the boat
HC: heads are fixed, peeing over the side is discouraged (in daylight)
MA: head is removable, peeing over the side is encouraged
HC: very particular ways of doing things just so
MA: entirely different ways of doing things just so
HC: the one right way to do things changes with different officers
MA: the one right way to do things changes with different officers
HC: whistling on the boat is bad luck
MA: bananas on the boat are bad luck
HC: get paid less to work more hours than any other job I've had
MA: get paid more to work fewer hours than any other job I've had
MA: 25' cabin cruiser (fiberglass hull)
HC: 8-17 crew, up to 42 passengers
MA: 2 crew, up to 6 passengers
HC: primary activity = sailing
MA: primary activity = fishing
HC: 3 hour trips
MA: 4 hour trips
HC: usually wishing for more wind
MA: usually wishing for less wind
HC: reveille at 7 or 8
MA: alarm clock at 5
HC: commute a few steps
MA: 1/2 hour commute
HC: shower every 1-3 days
MA: shower 1-3 times a day
HC: sleep in small bed in large compartment with other crew, on the boat
MA: sleep in large bed in spacious private room, off the boat
HC: heads are fixed, peeing over the side is discouraged (in daylight)
MA: head is removable, peeing over the side is encouraged
HC: very particular ways of doing things just so
MA: entirely different ways of doing things just so
HC: the one right way to do things changes with different officers
MA: the one right way to do things changes with different officers
HC: whistling on the boat is bad luck
MA: bananas on the boat are bad luck
HC: get paid less to work more hours than any other job I've had
MA: get paid more to work fewer hours than any other job I've had
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Resolution.
I am going to post every day for the next four days. That's [counting on fingers] five days in a row.
No, really. I'm gonna!
No, really. I'm gonna!
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Three on the Third: Earlier Than July's!
I made some comics (and I even posted them before the 10th this time). See many more wonderful August 3rd comics at the Three on the Third Website, including (ohmygoodness) three brand-new talented artists!
Now that I've offloaded the Three on the Third info on another site, I should probably blog more about other things, like my life and stuff? Hmm.
Let me get back to you on that.
Now that I've offloaded the Three on the Third info on another site, I should probably blog more about other things, like my life and stuff? Hmm.
Let me get back to you on that.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Three on the Third: BIG SUPER-SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!
Have you been wishing there was one site you could go to, one URL you could link to for all the info about Three on the Third, and all the links to all the comics since the beginning? And have you also wished you could see the comics as soon as they're online, instead of waiting for me to get around to posting links to them? Man, me too. Totally.Well, guess what? POOF! Our wishes are granted!
Now there is an official Three on the Third site! You can add your own comic links as soon as they're ready, and see comics as soon as people post them! (Your existing comics are already linked there; let me know if that's a problem and I'll make them go away.) You can also help us improve the site, if you wanna, 'cause it's a wiki.
Guys, I'm excited. I think the site is pretty dang awesome. But I also think there is room to make it way more awesome. So please let us know what you think of the site (here or there, positive or negative)! And especially, tell us if you have any trouble posting your comic link on the 3rd. We want to make that as easy as possible.
Multitudinous thanks to Sanguinity, who did the heavy lifting in making this site a reality, and grateful pats on the back to those who gave us feedback in the early stages (you know who you are). Arigato also to Patchwork and Alissa for giving me permission to use their original artwork (above and on the wiki, respectively).
Oh, and if you've been waiting for the right month to participate in Three on the Third: THE TIME HAS COME.
BONUS MATERIAL: Here are three comics by Meep from June 3rd. She mailed them to me, and then I didn't get them until after July 3rd, and then I didn't post them UNTIL NOW. They are a paragon of simplicity and a clear demonstration of Murphy's Law at work!
MORE BONUS MATERIAL: Here is a diagram of a manual transmission, drawn for me by Cousin M. It is action-packed! (He is not dyslexic. He was trying to write the numbers upside down.) This might be the closest thing I get to comics out of him, so I thought I'd better post it. That's me in the driver's seat at the upper right. Maybe you had to be there?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Better Late Than Later.
It actually isn't the scanner that I'm having trouble with. It's the mouse that belongs to the computer with the scanner, which makes it really hard to do anything at all on it. And I didn't want to connect the scanner directly to my laptop, because then I would have yet another batch of clunky, annoying HP software on my hard drive (yicch).
But it turns out that you can't put attachments into your gmail using keystrokes alone. So then it took me another whole day to remember that I brought a thumb drive I could use to transfer files between the scanning computer and my laptop. Without a mouse, it was an exercise in patience. And tabbing. And then I got to edit the scans in MS Paint. But do you care about this? No, you do not care. You are all "Hurry up and get to the comics already!"
Fine. 1 2 3
The third one actually applies to several days following the Third as well. I am a bad example! Do not be like me.
I also updated the previous post to include patchwork and alissa's comics, in case you missed it.
But it turns out that you can't put attachments into your gmail using keystrokes alone. So then it took me another whole day to remember that I brought a thumb drive I could use to transfer files between the scanning computer and my laptop. Without a mouse, it was an exercise in patience. And tabbing. And then I got to edit the scans in MS Paint. But do you care about this? No, you do not care. You are all "Hurry up and get to the comics already!"
Fine. 1 2 3
The third one actually applies to several days following the Third as well. I am a bad example! Do not be like me.
I also updated the previous post to include patchwork and alissa's comics, in case you missed it.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Three on the Third: It Came!
I am not quite done with my comics but I can't wait to show you everyone else's! We had a lot of extra cool stuff happening this month that I can't keep to myself any longer.
Sanguinity warmed up with Two on the Second before drawing Three on the Third! Nice followthrough, Sang!
Recoveringmale fit four comics into one day, and also his comic blog is now sort of syndicated! Hooray Bu!
Upsidedown cat somehow managed to draw her comics while deep-cleaning and re-organizing her room. Clearly, she has superpowers.
Evannichols created an animated comic, and also a comic from Outer Space, and also one that outlines his entire day. It's sort of like a logbook comic!
Ashley made her comics all arty and summery at the same time. Ashley stop being so awesome it's not fairrr.
I also received some blurry cameraphone comics from Alfhild, but you can't really read them, and she promised me a better copy when she can get to a scanner. So I will post them later, and mine sooner. Okay?
EDIT: also! Patchwork and alissa did comics too! They just posted them a little bit later. (Alissa's website is not working right at this moment, much like the computer I'm trying to scan my comics with. Technology! Why must you toy with me so?)
Sanguinity warmed up with Two on the Second before drawing Three on the Third! Nice followthrough, Sang!
Recoveringmale fit four comics into one day, and also his comic blog is now sort of syndicated! Hooray Bu!
Upsidedown cat somehow managed to draw her comics while deep-cleaning and re-organizing her room. Clearly, she has superpowers.
Evannichols created an animated comic, and also a comic from Outer Space, and also one that outlines his entire day. It's sort of like a logbook comic!
Ashley made her comics all arty and summery at the same time. Ashley stop being so awesome it's not fairrr.
I also received some blurry cameraphone comics from Alfhild, but you can't really read them, and she promised me a better copy when she can get to a scanner. So I will post them later, and mine sooner. Okay?
EDIT: also! Patchwork and alissa did comics too! They just posted them a little bit later. (Alissa's website is not working right at this moment, much like the computer I'm trying to scan my comics with. Technology! Why must you toy with me so?)
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