Dear Temple University,
It is SO STUPID that I have to change my password every few months. No one is going to break into my account. If someone were, GO FOR IT. What is this possible perpetrator really going to do? Sign me up for the wrong health insurance? Well, great. SOMEBODY should be able to get into my account and sign me up for health insurance, because I certainly cannot as I am unable to remember my new password.
TALK TO YOU TOMORROW, CAN'T WAIT TO NAVIGATE YOUR IMPOSSIBLE PHONE SYSTEM.
Love,
Sara
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
a weekend in glasgow
A friend from my study abroad days wrote on my facebook wall the other day: Did you see 36 Hours in Glasgow in the NY Times this weekend? The slide show is pretty spot on.
And it is! I never thought I'd feel so homesick for a place where I never quite felt at home. It hits on all the right places.
The Botanic Gardens:
Oran Mor, that crazy church-turned-whisky-bar:
About Oran Mor the Times says Oran Mor is more than a bar; it’s a complex of multiple watering holes and restaurants, a beer garden, a nightclub and a performance space that features “A Play, a Pie and a Pint," a popular lunch series. I say, don't wander alone down the back stairs looking for the bathroom because you'll never find your way back to your friends and you'll spend two hours drinking Arran Malt with some cellist, who later proposes.
King Tut's Wah Wah Hut!
The Ubiquitous Chip, where I turned 21:
And Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, next to my house. I walked by this every day, and ran in the parks around it:
Inside:
Mentioned, also, are the Willow Tea Rooms, ceilidhs, Ashton lane! The picture for Ashton lane doesn't do it justice, I am not sure why the decision was made to photograph it during the day when it looks so beautiful at night.
This is the best picture I can find of it at night, but it's pretty disappointing. I miss you Ashton Lane, £1 cocktails, Belle & Sebastian DJs, that bartender who would set grasshoppers on fire.
The only things that are really missing from this list are the GFT, Glasgow Film Theatre, where the movie screen is covered by a curtain until the lights dim, and cobblestoned Otago Lane. The latter was, by far, my favorite part of the city. It is the home of the best little tea bar (Tchai-Ovna), a pretty decent record store (Mixed Up Records), and probably my two favorite second hand book shops ever. Voltaire & Rousseau was dimly lit and filled with piles of books, literally piles, with no real system of organization (philosophy in one corner, history in another, novels in a third). In a few places there were shelves placed directly in front of other shelves. I spent many hours on the floor there, sifting through books with a black and white spotted cat on my lap. The owner of the bookstore wore fingerless gloves, muttered to himself constantly, and kept his change in a little purse. There may have been a cash register but I never saw it, as it was (no exaggeration) impossible to reach the counter, there were so many books in front of it. I assume the cat belonged to him but, as he largely ignored both myself and my feline companion, perhaps its real owner had fallen victim to an encyclopedia avalanche and was rotting somewhere in a pile of textbooks.
I can't find any record of the other bookstore on Otago Lane and I've forgotten its name (if I ever knew it). It was the opposite of Voltaire & Rousseau, bright and clean, meticulously organized. The little old man who worked there and I became great friends. He wasn't the owner, he always told me, he was just a friend who was filling in for a few days. Still, he was there every time I visited. I helped him rearrange the poetry section once and he gave me a few books that no longer fit on the shelves, including a rare compilation of T.S. Eliot poems he had priced at £60.
And Tchai-Ovna! The most wonderful little tea shop in the world, with mismatched furnture, tiny nooks just my size, and a front porch where we'd wrap ourselves in layers of blankets and hot water bottles, braving even the coldest, wettest days for hookahs and Turkish Apple tea.
I wish I had better pictures from my time in Glasgow. I had a crappy camera and iPhoto resized everything into tiny, sad images. I guess I'll have to go back!
And it is! I never thought I'd feel so homesick for a place where I never quite felt at home. It hits on all the right places.
The Botanic Gardens:
Oran Mor, that crazy church-turned-whisky-bar:
About Oran Mor the Times says Oran Mor is more than a bar; it’s a complex of multiple watering holes and restaurants, a beer garden, a nightclub and a performance space that features “A Play, a Pie and a Pint," a popular lunch series. I say, don't wander alone down the back stairs looking for the bathroom because you'll never find your way back to your friends and you'll spend two hours drinking Arran Malt with some cellist, who later proposes.
King Tut's Wah Wah Hut!
The Ubiquitous Chip, where I turned 21:
And Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, next to my house. I walked by this every day, and ran in the parks around it:
Inside:
Mentioned, also, are the Willow Tea Rooms, ceilidhs, Ashton lane! The picture for Ashton lane doesn't do it justice, I am not sure why the decision was made to photograph it during the day when it looks so beautiful at night.
This is the best picture I can find of it at night, but it's pretty disappointing. I miss you Ashton Lane, £1 cocktails, Belle & Sebastian DJs, that bartender who would set grasshoppers on fire.
The only things that are really missing from this list are the GFT, Glasgow Film Theatre, where the movie screen is covered by a curtain until the lights dim, and cobblestoned Otago Lane. The latter was, by far, my favorite part of the city. It is the home of the best little tea bar (Tchai-Ovna), a pretty decent record store (Mixed Up Records), and probably my two favorite second hand book shops ever. Voltaire & Rousseau was dimly lit and filled with piles of books, literally piles, with no real system of organization (philosophy in one corner, history in another, novels in a third). In a few places there were shelves placed directly in front of other shelves. I spent many hours on the floor there, sifting through books with a black and white spotted cat on my lap. The owner of the bookstore wore fingerless gloves, muttered to himself constantly, and kept his change in a little purse. There may have been a cash register but I never saw it, as it was (no exaggeration) impossible to reach the counter, there were so many books in front of it. I assume the cat belonged to him but, as he largely ignored both myself and my feline companion, perhaps its real owner had fallen victim to an encyclopedia avalanche and was rotting somewhere in a pile of textbooks.
I can't find any record of the other bookstore on Otago Lane and I've forgotten its name (if I ever knew it). It was the opposite of Voltaire & Rousseau, bright and clean, meticulously organized. The little old man who worked there and I became great friends. He wasn't the owner, he always told me, he was just a friend who was filling in for a few days. Still, he was there every time I visited. I helped him rearrange the poetry section once and he gave me a few books that no longer fit on the shelves, including a rare compilation of T.S. Eliot poems he had priced at £60.
And Tchai-Ovna! The most wonderful little tea shop in the world, with mismatched furnture, tiny nooks just my size, and a front porch where we'd wrap ourselves in layers of blankets and hot water bottles, braving even the coldest, wettest days for hookahs and Turkish Apple tea.
I wish I had better pictures from my time in Glasgow. I had a crappy camera and iPhoto resized everything into tiny, sad images. I guess I'll have to go back!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
I made myself a twitter. I know, I know. Whatever. I thought it would be fun to update while we were on the road, but not before then (and hopefully not after). It's here if you want to follow it. Sigh.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
from "winter hours" by mary oliver
Another present for you, while I try to remember what it means to have a blog.
I.
I think a great deal about Shelley's boat, a little world sailing upon the greater world, to whose laws it must, of necessity, submit. As we know, it soon carried Shelley to his death, and his friend Edward Williams and the boy Charles Vivian as well. The details we do not know, whether it was the wind mainly or altogether, or the leafy waves, or the wind and the waves together, or a larger boat bearing down through the sudden storm. But this we do know. Before it happened, I mean when they left land and sailed away over the Aegean, in the clear summer air, on the untroubled sea, the boat must have looked like a white bird, a swan, floating so lightly and rapidly it was all but flying. And sailing in it must have seemed like entering, with justifiable exhilaration and total faith, an even larger, lovelier, statelier and steadier world than the manifest ocean. As, perhaps, it was.II.
There are as many worlds as there are imaginers. Down-shore there rests in the restless water a sailboat; one line holds it from leaping away. Little bell, little chain, little this and that, on it, taps and clanks in the wind. I stand and listen. Its bow, built of boards steamed to a sweet curve and join, like a bird's breast, tugs against the line. What is it it wants to be? Once, in Union, Maine, as we were passing a field, five white birch trees became five white ponies. Their feet shuffled in the long grass, their white faces shone. This is called: happiness. This is called: stay away from me with your inches, and your savings accounts, and your plums in a jar. Your definitive anything. And if life is so various, so shifting, what could we possibly say of death, that black leaf, that has in it any believable finality?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
"that's racist!"
Geeze louise.
Been busy visiting old friends, reading in the park, planning a journey west and throwing dinner parties for 22. Posting to resume soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
