gripe gripe whine whine complain

Alas, I have spent a goodly portion of my precious free time these last couple weeks troubleshooting my computer (trying to fix the OS, installing a new version of the OS, trying to fix the new OS) before whittling it down to a hard drive issue. I have not dealt with many hard drive failures in my day (knock wood), which may have affected my slowness in figuring out the problem. Also, Linux has some really powerful diagnostic tools that give elaborate results that I have no clue how to interpret. But the experts at the Ubuntu-Eee boards have spoken: send it back to Asus and get it fixed. (I am so not used to having that option.)

So that's why, even though I drew my January 3 on the 3rd comics (admittedly a couple weeks late), I still have not posted them. Or blogged, or commented on your blog, or shared Google Reader posts. I have been over here in the corner, gnashing my teeth and feeling sorry for myself.

In related news, February 3rd is on the horizon. While gazing toward its noble silhouette, you may have overlooked February 1st, which is Hourly Comic Day. On Hourly Comic Day, everybody draws one (1) autobiographical comic for every hour they're awake. This inspires some really streamlined comicking; the veterans tend to whittle it down to a couple of frames with minimal dialogue, and make the most of mundanity. But still, I won't kid you: it's a lot of work. It really puts the whole 3 on the 3rd challenge into perspective.

Which is why I'm doing the Hourly Comic thing again this year. It's on a Sunday, so there will be no comics-on-the-sly at work. There will be some churchgoin' and some special out-of-town guests visitin', and some other things that will be a surprise to me too!

If you think I'm crazy for doing this, get a load of John Campbell, who does Hourly Comics all January long, as he has for years. Other people try this, but they mostly do not succeed. Here is my favorite attempt.

(I read a lot of John's hourlies before I figured out that his girlfriend (cleverly aliased as "Kate") is Kate Beaton who draws history comics! It makes me inexplicably happy to discover that one of my favorite obscure comic artists is dating another of my favorite obscure comic artists, even if they do live in different countries. Here are a couple portraits Kate did of the two of them last year. The second one is especially lovely.)

I think I accumulated a few more things to blog about over the course of this month, but I can't remember them anymore, so I'll just belatedly wish you a happy Year of the Ox and sign off.

2008 in Books.

As promised, here is a list of what I read last year. This time the re-reads are asterisked. Ratings are equally subjective, but I guess they're a little different for books. Hmm, maybe something like this:

(1) - It was an utter waste of time.
(2) - I can't in good conscience describe it as a "good book."
(3) - It was fun and/or useful to read.
(4) - It delighted and/or educated me.
(5) - It crawled inside my head and moved things around, or burrowed inside my heart and made a little nest there.

What I Read in 2008

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (5)
Lamott always challenges me: to dare to hope, grieve, trust, live harder, laugh louder, and be recklessly honest.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (5)
What would antebellum slavery look like firsthand to an African-American woman from the 1970s? A beautiful and painful book.

Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre (3)
A Mennonite compilation of ideas about how to make the world better in small, practical ways. Not as good as I was hoping.

Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Peter Dickinson & Robin McKinley (4)
Fun fantasy fiction. McKinley's stories are more accessible, Dickinson's more challenging, both plenty entertaining.

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories by A.S. Byatt (3.5)
Fairy tales by a modern author. Worth it for the fifth story alone, in which the djinn finally gets some love.

Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip vol. 2 (5)
I grew up re-reading Jansson's kid lit, but the comic strips are new to me, and I think they're pretty much the best thing since sliced fjords.

Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip vol. 1 (5) *
Had to reread after getting my hands on the second volume. Gorgeous, humbly brilliant, further adventures of old friends who haven't changed a bit.

Sorcerers & Secretaries vol. 1 by Amy Kim Ganter (4) *
Shamelessly mushy Ameri-manga. Shy business school student is distracted from secret fantasy fiction project by... a flirtatious boy!

Sorcerers & Secretaries vol. 2 by Amy Kim Ganter (3.5)
Not as good as the first one, but still cute.

Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier (4)
A remarkably readable exploration of the science, history, and anthropology of the female body.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (2.5)
First in the Gormenghast trilogy, and the wrong book to take to Hawaii with me. Really slow and wordy, and I didn't like the characters much.

Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned from Living in 140 Square Feet by Gregory Johnson (3)
Practical thoughts on simplifying your lifestyle: why and how. Not a lot new here.

Radical Simplicity: Creating an Authentic Life by Dan Price (4)
Entertainingly illustrated journal by a guy who's obsessed with living in tipis, tents, and hobbit-holes.

Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon by Chuck Palahniuk (4)
Made me want to explore my city more, and ask more questions. And document everything in a gossipy, sensationalistic tone.

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link (3.5)
Link is so weird. So weird. Sometimes in a really, really good way, and sometimes just in a weird way. Loved the one about the Snow Queen.

Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones (3)
Good goofy kid-fantasy fun. Well-done and (for me at least) forgettable.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Ugh. I am so not the target audience for this.

Heartland: Short Stories from North-Western Wales (3)
The ones translated from the Welsh just didn't work for me. Cultural storytelling conventions are apparently way different here.

Pirateology by Dugald A. Steer (2)
Again, I am really not the target audience. A special-effects book with text apparently designed to be ignored.

Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold by Alisa Kwitney (3.5)
Graphic novel. Decent Sandman spinoff about Pestilence, as in the rider of the apocalypse.

Perfect Example by John Porcellino (2.5)
Graphic novel. If Chris Ware says a book makes him happy, you know it's gonna be a downer.

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships by Harriet Lerner (4)
Not actually about anger so much as asserting yourself responsibly. Some good lessons here.

Action Philosophers! vol. 1, by Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey (3)
Graphic novel. Cute, wacky, irreverent, and educational!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 1, by Allan Moore (3) *
Graphic novel. I enjoyed it a little less on this second reading, but it's still Moore, which means it's still top-notch storytelling.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 2, by Allan Moore (3)
Of course, that also means parts of the story are going to be hard to stomach, and he saved most of those for v. 2. Eww.

And that's it, kids. I know, you'd think a librarian would average more than two books a month, but this is actually about on par for the last several years. I would like to have read more than 25 books by the end of 2009 (already got one under my belt: Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, short and sweet). But that's not a resolution, just sort of a vague inclination.

A Resolution, and a List.

The weather looks suspiciously similar to yesterday's, but I have it on good authority that this is an All New Year. That's kind of an exciting thought, isn't it?

Traditionally this is a time when people blog about their resolutions. I think resolutions are kind of like birthday candle wishes: the more you talk about them, the less likely they are to come true. However, there is one resolution I would like to make public. In just two days, I am going to return to the stoic discipline of Three on the Third.

Yes.

Another bloggy tradition for this time of year is end-of-the-year lists. I have actually compiled two of them for your amusement and mine, one for all the movies I watched in 2008, and one for all the books I read. I have also rated them in a completely subjective manner. Here is my rating system:

(1) - I hated it.
(2) - I'm not sure if I liked it.
(3) - I definitely liked it.
(4) - I loved it.
(5) - I'm sort of obsessed with it.

What I Watched in 2008
(italicized titles indicate movies I've seen before)
The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) (2)
The Water Horse (2007) (2)
Darjeeling Limited (2007) (4)
Across the Universe (2007) (3)
Paprika (2006) (3)
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) (3)
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) (3)
Horton Hears a Who (2008) (2)
In Bruges (2008) (3)
Juno (2007) (4)
I'm Reed Fish (2007) (2)
Hellboy (2004) (4)
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (2008) (3)
Once (2007) (3)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (5)
3:10 to Yuma (2007) (4)
Sex in the City (2008) (1)
Dan in Real Life (2007) (3)
Super Troopers (2001) (3)
27 Dresses (2008) (3)
Fool's Gold (2008) (2)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) (4)
War (2007) (2)
The Simpsons Movie (2007) (3)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) (3)
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008) (2)
The Fall (2008) (4)
Sweeney Todd (2007) (3)
Wu Ji (The Promise) (2005) (3)
Shi Mian Mai Fu (House of Flying Daggers) (4)
Cutthroat Island (1995) (2)
Whale Rider (5)
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (3)
Ravenous (4)

The above list accurately indicates that I'm a sucker for pretty pictures. Check in tomorrow for the somewhat underwhelming list of books I read in the past 365 days, which I have padded with annotations to disguise its shortness.

Party Alert: IMMINENT!

Now I am back (thanks to Amtrak and Tri-Met) and this thing is totally on.

Merry Christmess!

Christmas with my family is always an experiment in barely controlled chaos, what with four generations, the oldest of which can't hear anything and the youngest of which you can't hear anything over. There are a thousand possible pitfalls, gifts that may be triumphant or disastrous, offenses that may be unintentionally given, and treasured objects that may be destroyed when you put 4 children, 9 adults, and a dog together into a small space with a tree and a giant pile of presents and a CD of Christmas carols sung by a German boys' choir.

Yet somehow, with everybody pulling together (and with Mom, as usual, doing more than her share), it all worked gloriously. It always does, more or less, but this year was one of the better ones. We have spent a lot of time congratulating ourselves on this today, rehashing all the highlights and awkward moments while snacking on delicious food. And we have played games, taken naps, watched various things on various screens, and hugged each other.

And now we have used it all up, every last bit. There is no Christmas left.

Party Alert: Elevated.

[Written the 23rd in Portland but, due to Blogger balkiness, posted the 25th from Eugene]

Due to the Unusual Quantities of Solid Precipitation around these parts, I have been increasingly uneasy about the trip south to Familytown, originally scheduled for December 24. It's only a two-hour trip, and I'm told the latter half of it has no snow at all, but the first half -- especially the getting-out-of-Snowyville part -- well, I wasn't sure how that was going to work. It was just going to have to all melt today, was all.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen. No, my Christmas Miracle has taken another form, the form of a gleaming white snow-beast with high strength and agility stats, and also some magical powers. Yes, the Mighty Thor is taking me back to my hometown for Christmas, which is even better than hitching a ride in Santa's sleigh! No, really, look:

ADVANTAGES OF RIDING WITH THOR
- enclosed cab
- heater
- upholstered seats
- nice stereo system
- two hours of conversation with two good friends
- direct route, no stopping at every house along the way
- arrive early in the day instead of in the middle of the night

ADVANTAGES OF RIDING WITH SANTA
- reindeer-powered flight
- bragging rights
- ...

See? Really, the only down side to this is that I don't know exactly how I'm getting back to Portland. At this point it looks like I'll be able to hitch a ride back north with somebody else, and bus/train possibilities are also an option, at least until they sell out. But if this "snow" madness continues, well, who knows.

So the real reason for this post is to alert you, well in advance, that there is a faint possibility I may have to reschedule the party on Sunday. I really think I'll make it back in time, but if by chance I don't, you might not think to check my blog in the (possibly minimal) amount of time that I'd be able to give notice. So keep it on your calendar, but stay tuned for further updates.

Okay, This is a Tricky One.

What has two thumbs and...

...has another snow day off from work tomorrow?

...finished getting the living room ready for party guests today?

...turned the chairs toward the front window for more convenient watching of passers-by on skis, snowshoes, snowmobiles and snowboards?

...is looking forward to the end of the cold snap and the return to regularly scheduled rain, especially if that happens in time to get to Mom and Dad's for Christmas?

You got it. This girl.

Tracking.

To the pedestrian wearing large boots who, while passing northward on my street, paused late this afternoon to leave me a message, I offer the following reply: (o_O)

Of Winter Weather and Penguins.

You know how people from places with Real WinterTM tsk-tsk about how just the slightest amount of snowy/icy weather sets Portlandia on her bronze arse because she doesn't have the road-clearing equipment in place to deal with it?

I suspect she's doing it on purpose. Because sometimes it's not an entirely bad thing to have everything just -stop- for a day or two.

Sunday I broke out the heavy-duty winter gear (which, incidentally, was mostly also my watch gear on the Chieftain) and took the bus downtown and back. The wind was face-bitey cold. I growled at it as I waited and waited and waited for the delayed buses.

Monday I got the morning off, and then when nobody showed up to use the library and the furnace went all feeble, I also took half the afternoon off.

Tuesday was a full workday for me, but today was a false-alarm snow day. Storm warnings gave me the day off, but the weather warmed up this afternoon and melted a lot of this week's snowfall.

Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty spoiled. It's been one of those pajamas-all-day days, I have food in my fridge and a fully operational furnace (with insulated ducts!), most of my gift shopping is done, and there's plenty indoors to amuse me. Unpacking boxes of stuff from storage serves the triple purposes of entertainment, practicality, and reminding me of how thoroughly all my needs are met. Now I am sitting by my mouse-proofed heater vent, listening to StG Sean's Best Songs of 2008 on the Eee and drinking belly-warming ginger tea.

I wanted to follow up on that post where I said I hadn't used the Linux command line yet. Well, I have now. I'm a little deeper into the OS at this point, though not much; I've run up against some problems, and figured out how to fix most of them. So I can give you a more detailed review.

Linux, even Ubuntu Linux, is still not for everybody. If you're not interested in rolling up your sleeves and figuring some things out for yourself, your experience with it right now would be that it's kinda like having a PC, but without the nice software. You'd be keenly aware of the disadvantages, but completely oblivious to the advantages.

Someday in the not-too-distant future, Linux will be for everybody. Right now, however, it is very much for me. There are a number of things about it that still don't work the way I want them to, but when I muster up the discontent to fix something, by golly it gets fixed, and I learn a ton in the process. Finding answers in the uncharted maze of internet message boards, for someone in my ignorant state, requires dogged determination and internet-searching savvy. But the truth is out there. I find a kind of fierce joy in the hunt, and deep satisfaction when I've succeeded.

This is not much of a sales pitch for most of my readers, I know. Most people would rather interact with their operating system in much the same way I prefer to interact with my car: most of the time it works just fine, and on the rare occasion that it doesn't, I take it to some nice guys who know all about it and they make it work again. It's just that my early experience with computers was analogous to the kid who grows up tinkering with cars.

For me, the huge advantage of an open-source operating system running open-source software is that this car is continually being reinvented in better and better ways, by people who do it just because they love to invent and fix things. It's collaborative, not controlled by a commercial interest, so it's more chaotic but also richer. And while you may be on your own for the labor, the parts are free.

I still haven't explained the appeal very well. Maybe that's because it's bedtime now, or maybe it's because it's less about practicality and more about attitude, which is harder to translate into rational arguments. I recently saw a spoof of the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials with a perky female "I'm-a-Linux" added to the original duo. I won't link to it here because she didn't present any kind of compelling argument for Linux, objectively or subjectively (she was actually pretty annoying). If I were filming this kind of spoof, the Mac/PC guys would be joined by a big ol' emperor penguin, which would waddle up and just stand next to them and make penguiny noises, and they would look confused and slightly alarmed.

Any Excuse Will Do.

I know, I know. It's not news anymore that I'm back in Portland to stay. But it's not such old news that we can't use it as an excuse for Fun Times. Therefore:

This is your invitation to the Lindsey's-Back-In-Town Party!

When: Sunday, December 28, 1:30 to 9:00 p.m. Come when you like, leave when you're ready.
Where: My house. If you don't know where my house is, e-mail me. If you don't know what my e-mail is, leave a comment with yours.

SEE how barren my place is without the Chainsaw Famile (who recently moved into a house of their very own) !
MARVEL at the amazing midget computer !
MINGLE with other cool friends of mine !
GIVE me a deadline for getting my stuff out of cardboard boxes !

Here are some (optional) things you can bring to enhance the party fun:
- Tasty food or beverages to share.
- Your friends and relatives.
- A board or card game you've been wanting to play (sorry, no Risk).
- Unwanted women's clothing of any size. There will be a swap pile, and leftovers will be passed on to women in need.

Don't RSVP, just show up. See you there here!

Information = Love.

I haven't yet made the effort to locate a Linux driver for my scanner. So no comics tonight. However, I did discover some things on the internet that are currently blowing my mind, and I thought you might want to know about them:

1. Google Reader's shared items function. Are you using Google Reader? If so, did you know about this, how you can annotate blog posts you find worth passing on and make them available for friends to view? Because I have recently discovered that this is incredibly cool, and I'm surprised that only 4 of my friends have seen fit to share what they're reading with me.

2. Kiva.org, which works like this: you make a small loan (as little as $25) to a struggling third-world entrepreneur. S/he uses it to invest in, say, pigs for a farm, or supplies for a store, and then pays it back to you within a specified period. Then you can choose to either take your money back, or loan it to somebody else. The system is really well thought out and has a great track record. I don't know many people who can spare $25 right now, but when you have enough to share, here is a way to do it that is both worthwhile and fun.

3. Esau Mwamwaya's reinvention of the Vampire Weekend song "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", which I found here, and which might be the most purely joyful thing I experienced this whole craptastic week. The song is not for sale anywhere, so download it quickly before it goes away!

News Flash!

The Third of December is the last Third of 2008!

New Computer, New OS.

So I bought the tiny computer, and I installed Ubuntu Eee on it.

The computer is indeed cute. Combined with the cutest of the new Gmail Themes (Tea House, awww), it is almost criminally adorable. Overall, I am quite pleased with it. It is both more powerful and more portable than the laptop it replaces. Its only flaw, as far as I'm concerned, is the increased eyestrain I get from trying to read smaller fonts on its screen. I suspect there are ways around this, but that will take a bit of research and experimentation. In the meantime, I'm quickly losing what little love I had remaining for tiny-fonted websites like Yahoo! Mail and Bloglines (and am already making the transition to Google Reader, though I'm not ready to invite all the clutter at my Yahoo account over to Happy Gmail Land).

Figuring out how to install Ubuntu was a challenge -- not because of any flaw in the software, but because nobody mentioned that the default Windows CD-burning software won't burn you a bootable disk. Hmm. Wonder why Microsoft left that feature out? Also, Windows booted so dang fast on the thing that I kept missing my microsecond of opportunity to get into the BIOS. So my weekend went kind of like this*:
*highly abridged

ME: F2! F2 F2 F2!
WINDOWS: Hello!
ME: Look, I'm trying to boot to an external drive here, do you mind?
[REBOOT]
ME: F2 F2 F2 F2 F...
WINDOWS: Hello!
ME: What am I doing wrong here?
WINDOWS: Where would you like to go today?
ME: Hush, you. Maybe I was using a faulty CD?
[BURN NEW CD AND REBOOT]
ME: F2 F2 F2!
WINDOWS: Hello!
ME: Augh! Maybe the new burner I got is not working. I'll try burning this on the old laptop. Good thing its keyboard is miraculously working again!
[BURN NEW CD AND REBOOT]
ME: F2 F2 F2!
WINDOWS: Hello!
ME: Borscht! Frarble! I sure won't miss you when you're gone, Windows. But you seem awfully reluctant to say goodbye. Could it be that you are secretly foiling my attempts to burn a bootable disk? I wouldn't put it past you.
[TO GOOGLE] How do I burn an ISO disk?
GOOGLE: Different software you need. Here, free it is.
ME: Ha! Now we're talking. Take that, Windows!
[BURN NEW CD AND REBOOT]
ME: F2 F2 F2 EFFITY TWOOOOO it's not working why isn't it working aaaOH MY GOSH IT'S WORKING!
UBUNTU: Hi! I'm your new best friend!
[ANGELS SING]

And we all lived happily ever after.

Some of you might think I must be super geeky to be using Linux now, but I confess I have yet to use the command line. I haven't needed to yet at all. The graphic interface is super intuitive, and also, really pretty. So far, it's been a lot easier to use than Windows -- and it lets me call the shots, instead of getting all Gates knows best on me.

Granted, I'm still in the early exploratory phase, but the only sign of geekiness I've really encountered so far is the screen savers. Sooo many screen savers. There is one for almost every flavor of geek. There are 3D models of engines and gears for the engineering geeks, molecular structures for the chemistry geeks, Matrix-themed screensavers and flying toasters for the retro-geek-culture geeks. Fractals for the math geeks. Chess-themed screensavers, Moebius strips, galaxies spinning outward, cells that divide and die. Mesmerizing patterns with names like "3D Hypertorus" and "StonerView." I am particularly enamored of the one with the fireworks with colors that glint off the ground and overcast sky as the camera flies around and through them. Remember those first fireworks screensavers, the ones made of monochrome ASCII characters? Yeah. That's why it's so great.

Agh agh agh.

My stove is fixed, but my laptop is broken. I mean, more broken; not only does it run hot and slow and have a broken hinge that makes it hard to keep the screen upright, but the keyboard has mostly stopped working.

If anyone still needed confirmation that I was not meant to be writing a novel this month, well, there you go. At least it waited until I was employed to break!

At this point the top contender for replacement* is the ASUS Eee PC, which is very small and lightweight, and also not very expensive. I am currently evaluating different models, of which there are approximately one billion? (That part is a little confusing.)

One of the most appealing things about the Eee is that there's a version of Ubuntu custom-designed for it. I've been meaning to make the switch from Windows to Linux for years, and now seems like as good a time as any. I've never actually used Linux, but the command-line interface is an old friend of mine, and if I have to change my OS, I'd much rather go open-source than Vista. Much much much rather.

Of course, this will mean a few dramatic changes in the way I compute: using an external DVD/CD drive, relying more heavily on an external hard drive for media storage, giving up some software I'm used to. I'm trying to determine all these changes ahead of time so there aren't any unpleasant surprises. The Eee isn't as powerful as standard-sized machines, so I won't be doing any video editing, for example, or multi-track audio editing, or playing newer games. But I wasn't doing any of those things anyway, so it's only the potential that I'd be missing. And if I really get an itch to do that kind of computing, I could assemble a desktop with a minimum of expense, rather than trying to get a laptop that will do everything.

So this is where I confess that the real purpose of this post is to tap into the collective knowledge of my friend circle(s). Do you, gentle reader, know anything about the Eee PC? Any reviews, caveats, prophecies of delight or doom? Know anybody who's got one? Have any ideas I haven't considered? Tell meee [Invader Zim voice]. I want to collect as much information as possible before committing to anything.

_____
*Naw, I'm not going to buy the next-generation XO. They're super cool, but the computing needs of a third-world child are substantially different from those of a first-world adult.

I Fail at Internet. Also: My House Hates Me!

I am having some trouble readjusting to the 40-hour work week. How do you people get anything done? Actually, I know how I got things done in my last 40-hour-a-week job. I stayed up too late, and I ate a lot of instant food (which wasn't necessarily meeting my nutritional needs). Now I am trying not to do those things anymore, and between that and the 40 hours, my internet output has dwindled to zeroes (without any ones).

This bothers me. A lot. Besides the several things I have recently promised (and then neglected) to share with you here, there have been several events this week I have felt a dire urgency to write about. Having the desire to write, and then not writing, is really bad for someone who fancies herself a writer-type. It's like being in the mood to get some exercise, but not doing anything about it: you miss opportunities and discourage good habit-forming, and your muscles atrophy.

Also! I have not caught up on your blogs, comics, and other creative internet-based output. Still. So please, bear with me while I struggle with realigning my priorities. Time management has always been the hobgoblin of my little mind, and...

Stop the presses: my stove just up'n died. Which reminds me that the third of the month is the official day for things to break in my house (I'm serious, it's uncanny). So the stove is several hours ahead of the game. This makes me angry enough to give up my posture of penitent self-blame in favor of a rabid conspiracy theory involving not only all the appliances in my household, but also the U.S. Gummint (which has given me a big fat homework assignment due Tuesday).

Maybe I'll make a comic about it tomorrow. Because the third of the month is also the day for making comics. In case you forgot.

Intermission.

Dear readers,

I ask your indulgence as I put the travel narrative on hold until Saturday.

Thank you for reading.

Lindsey

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.

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.

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.

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!