Notes for Friday

As I am getting ready for the all day session on 'How to Help Undergraduates Produce Higher Quality Written Assignments' (and Steffi and I are assuming this means without beating them for egregiously written tripe), the person on my street is coughing again. She coughs very loudly through an open window somewhere in short bursts of three -- HUH-huh-huh! -- at intervals of anywhere between ten seconds and two minutes. But even at the two minute rate, it makes me concerned for her health outside a tuberculosis ward and for my own health if I should happen upon any of the air that she has been breathing... ick.

Additionally, there is still a snail invader. The fish are obviously not fulfilling their duties on slug patrol. Although I have placed salt at the window frames and at the hole in my wall at the floor... (another rant at a later date), there is still a trail this morning and my beer trap does not seem to be anything more than a little beverage area. They are not drowning like they are supposed to. Perhaps I need a bigger bowl for the beer trap, as the beer is Leffe, that gorgeous concoction created by Belgian monks. AND... who knew that slugs eat paper on the floor???? ewww. And not the slug that is ammunition. hahahaha.

Here is a link to an alarming person who likes slugs. Dear me. This even includes instructions for petting them... well, touching them to notice remarkable biological things, but -- ick. This person had one as a pet and named it (wait for it) TRIGGER! hahahahah! Oooh! Here's something interesting: Slugs are hermaphrodites. Enough!!!! On to next items...

For informational reading today:
The Meatrix - (one of my favorite rants over the past few years, if you are a frequent recipient of my wisdom)
What is a Chav? - (a cultural icon of Britain)

These topics will be dicussed at length after I learn how to write today...

Is this normal?

Is there something wrong with me? (Be very, very careful how you answer this.) When I touch the input plug before plugging it into the computer so as to prepare to listen to Tim Curry read Lemony Snicket's The Ersatz Elevator, there is a tapping sound that comes through my external speakers... does this mean that I have an electric personality? Or that I am transmitting signals to aliens? Maybe I have too much caffeine dashing through my veins.

Perhaps I should have some tea. Some caffeine-free, herbal tea. In my new kitty tea pot courtesy of Steffi and Diana (shown to R), which was birthday substitute for the lack of real-life kitties being allowable in new domicile :)

Having a break in real, meaningful and directed activity (i.e., horrific amounts of assigned reading and writing) is good, but I am tending to kind of pointlessly meander between the kitchen and my room in attempt to look busy. I do lots of laundry and cleaning of stationary objects! Am thinking of making a schedule for myself for tomorrow. But, actually, will be working in CLCR for enrolment, so that does give me a function :) This morning, had interview to receive National Insurance number; that was thrilling.

Weekend was quite eventful and fun.
Friday -- went to Cardiff Blues v. Glasgow Warriors rugby game with E, Ciara (E's sister) and Mark (Ciara's boyfriend). The burger van at Cardiff Arms Park is delish! And, oh, so healthy :) And here's an annoyance -- not getting your top with your bottle of Coca-cola. The top was included two weeks ago at the last game... but NO MORE! I noticed they weren't giving them to people, so I asked specifically for mine and got a significantly suspicious glare and a bluntly negative answer. But then, perhaps since my eye didn't have a malicious shine, the lady kindly told me that they are no longer allowed to give them out. Apparently, they are a hazard or a nuisance as people throw them at players, and probably, stupid refs. Well, okay. But that does make it a bit challenging for a coordinationally challenged individual to walk whilst carrying a purse, a burger, napkins and a topless Coke.

(note: pictures will have to be linked to Flick now... grrrrrr.)

My understanding of rugby rules and things like a 'maul' are increasing. But only very slightly. One item of note is that the new player from Fiji runs extraordinarily fast. He scored his first try during this game. We were stood about ten feet from the pitch and it was fabulous. There is a lot of yelling at the referee. I would not want to be a referee.

The mascot of the team is Bruiser. He is a large bear (Do they have bears in Wales? I do not think so. A search on Google for Welsh bears turned up a disturbing site, and it is not my intention to disturb anyone. Today.). I thought he was like one of those dogs with a cute little spot over his eye, but I have been informed that this is meant to be a black eye (from the rugby, you know). Of course he is missing teeth (from the rugby, you know). His head is wrapped in a bandage (from the rugby, you know) and he appears to have a gut (from the ale, you know). (photo courtesy of E's new Walkman phone with all these fantabulous features meant to inspire technical envy in all who see it.)

One funny thing is at half time (if they call it that here) when the tiny people come out and play flag rugby. The referee or coach or whoever is out there looks like a cat herder. It is really amusing.

Saturday -- spent morning being industrious in moving furniture, fixing things, eating breakfast at Taste Buds (the City Road version of George's Grill), returning borrowed items to people, venturing to IKEA, getting a fourth sheer panel (which just happens to be 2 1/2 inches longer than the other panels of the same description...). To recover from such an absurd level of industrious behaviour, a spontaneous trip to the pebble beach at Cold Knap was decided upon. (There are pictures of Knap on this surfing site linked above. I did no surfing, opting instead to learn about sea snails and barnacles. I thought barnacles were tiny shell-ey things, but they are also these huge shells that look like a little pointed hat. If you touch one, it moves slightly, but when you touch it again, it has sucked down onto the rock or whatever and will not move in any sense at all. The reason it moves the first time is that they raise themselves just a little to let air in. Who knew?). The Knap is right next to Barry, which is about 20 minutes from downtown Cardiff, to the West. And a bit south.

The beach is made of big pebbles up at the top of the hill, but it is then sandy at the water. There is an inlet next to a rocky outcrop (which provides for adventuresome climbing), where seaweed washes up. This seaweed is the wierdest seaweed ever as it has odd little pustules (such an unfortunate word) at the ends of the leaves and on the stems. Of course, I had to take a shell and poke them. They burst. With a little 'puff' noise. It was gloriously icky! In the seaweed section of the beach -- by this point, my shoes had been abandoned -- we hunted for sea creatures in little rivulets and pools.

Planes leaving Rhoos Cardiff International Airport (hint, hint) fly through a little dip in the hills around the western side of the bay and over the Knap if the wind is right. The wind was right, so I have all these pictures of glorious beach with tons of blue sky and one tiny speck over the tree line. Yes, we are easily amused. There are cliffs on that end of the beach and that will be my next area of exploration. And a cool railway bridge that should make some excellent pictures. For someone with a clue of how to fully utilise their camera, that is.

On way back into Cardiff, E stopped at Castell Mynach for a snack of some mussels and a bloomer (which is just a big doughy bit of baked bliss) for dipping in the sauce. Yummy!

Then, met Mari for a goodbye coffee before heading to Dawny's going away party in Caerphilly at the Goodrich Pub. Steffi, Katharine, E and I rode up on the train together and much amusement was had by: a) the fact that I had my knitting with me -- from my coffee shop outing, i promise!; b) all of the coloured pens I own in my purse; c) my attempts to do coloured pen art on an envelope on a rocking train; and d) the fact that my student rail card was actually IN my purse amongst all the yarn instead of home on my desk and which I ought to have used to buy my ticket... grrrrrrrr.

Fun, fun, fun party. Dawn is moving to Huddersfield to pursue PhD in Linguistics (AND Patrick Stewart is the Chancellor! Who knew?!?). She is very brave and I cannot imagine trying to finish this dissertation whilst trying to sell house, having buyers back out on sale, preparing house for sale again and uprooting her life across country -- all within three months. The rest of the party included lots of 80s music (!yay!); talk of adoption for Katharine (to solve that tricky visa problem), critical theory discussion of The Rocky Horror Picture Show; horror at the fact that Amrie has never seen it; an 80s dancing demonstration by Eamonn that disturbingly resembled the Macarena, tight-shoe hobbling by Dawn; a shadily early departure by Matthew; and en masse Quiz Night assault planning.

Sunday -- lazy day, including incessant warting about the Ryder Cup. I will agree that it is quite annoying for US golfing fans to bellow out immediately upon the follow-through of a shot, 'IN the HOLE, Tigeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr!' That is vexing. It is also vexing to chant: 'U - S - A! U - S - A!' over and over and over again. Generic applause with perhaps an occasional discreet whistle would be quite sufficient.

Monday -- Final goodbye to Dawn over tea and cookies, with entertainment by someone doing a Rubix's Cube :( She also took her kitties to the Cat Protection agency, rendering it a really rough day. More furniture movement, thanks to E Taxi, Removal, Electronics Management and General Repair Service. Then we all watched Riverdance and The Matrix (odd combination, yes). We are having an attempt to watch the trilogy plus the Animatrix in order and in four days.

And here we are. Ready to go to the estate agents' to complain about some things, ask for some other things and barter for a reduction in this month's rent. Hmmm.
Sounds fun, no?
No.

One thing I have learnt today: potatoes CAN go bad. Very bad indeed. Bleeeech! (so that's what the smell in my cabinet was... I thought potatoes never went bad, they just grew little stems.)

note (partly to self): next submission will be to explain British phenomenon of Quiz Night more successfully.

Greetings, literate mammals.

Hello. Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are Carrot and Jasper (no relation to Jasper Carrot) and will be bringing you this update. You see, we are happy to be living in a place called the Gold House (despite a ridiculous person in the 19th century having carved above the outer door some nonsense about it being called 'Norbet House'), being as we ARE GOLDfish. Do not even think about indulging in specieist behaviour and denigrating Jasper for his pale hue. This makes him very upset and when he is upset, well, there could be dangerous consequences -- there is a distinct goldish tint above his upper lip. (do fish have lips?)

It has been brought to our attention that this blog has been neglected for quite a while due to the flitty behaviour of our human, and so we have decided to take matters into our own hands. Ahem, fins. ...now, would that be pectoral fins, dorsal fins, caudal fins or fat fins? Well anyhoo, we can't worry about such trivialities. On with the show.

It should be noted that the plants pictured in this picture have been thrown out with the rubbish as they were causing an alarming growth of algae, which made us have to gulp air all through the night, annoying our person and making her edgy. We now have a lovely plastic plant, with reddish highlights in the centre of the leaves. And we are learning that it is not a super idea to eat snails. Only one has stayed down in Jasper's tummy and the rest are getting a bit large for our mouths. Plus our person taps on the glass in reprimand when we try to pick on them. And that is no fun.

Our person seems to be in a much better humour now than on the Monday we first moved in (11 Sept). A human of Italian origin, named Fabiana, we think, brought us to Amrie, who transported us home dangling from the handlebars of a bike (boringly, she decided to walk the bike instead of riding it -- she obviously has no idea of our inherent bravery and sense of balance). She quite indecorously dumped us into our bowl with no flora or chicly coloured floor coverings, leaving us with nothing better to do for the next two days than watch her sit at her keyboard tapping madly away between bouts of phone calls, frantic Greeks and a large percentage of coffee production.

Finally, she began to smile and breathe evenly after a nice man brought a big stack of papers which had been 'printed' at an 'office'. She claims a 'word count' of nearly 16000, whatever that means. Calm finally descended on the room after our person took a trip to something called a 'bindery'. And then she was able to get around to taking care of our needs for suitable decor and playing us audio books and calming music.

Someone had a birthday party on 14 September; we think it was a Wirish person. Then our person went to the 'opera' at the Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru on the 16th as a pressie for the birthday person. She was rather in a swivet about reserving appropriate seating, but it all worked out fine. Upon her return, she reported to us that it was very well done (although she wasn't sure at first if she would approve of modern treatment of classical subject matter). Her impression was that of Dali meets Cabaret meets opera. Overall, she approved.

Sunday last, furniture was added to the decor of our reception room (which is also where our person sleeps at night. and watches movies. and knits.), which was obtained from Dawn/Dave, a person who lives currently in Treharris on the other side of Caerphilly Mountain. This is a mad person who, after finishing an MA in Language and Communication Research, has decided to move to Huddersfield in pursuit of a PhD.

On Tuesday, something important seems to have occurred, although our person kept tut-tutting that there was no need for such fuss. The phone kept croaking and there was a lot of laughing. This was a good thing. A lot of emails were coming through, which made her chuckle. Someone kept calling and asking if she was still at home and if she would be home at different times through the day; at first, she thought it was because people were coming to eat lunch or have tea, but then a HUGE cluster of flowers appeared, along with a vase, a balloon and a pink bear! (note: pictures being testy on Blogger, so links go to flickr pics)

Later that evening, a lot of people milled about in the Gold House, talking rather loudly. It was a good thing they were mostly in the kitchen in the back of the house, so our sensitive ears could get back to listening to the snails in our bowl. Apparently, this ruckus was part of a large food production process. Muffins were made by Steffi. Eamonn made pate stuffed mushrooms for starters and pork steaks, marinated in balsamic, garlic, and, oh, lots of stuff plus veggies for mains and homemade garlic butter bread. A lot of garlic was consumed in this event, which carried the celebration into the next day. And expensive vino. Other notes are that the birthday girl was unable to refrain from Obsessive Compulsion. Diana took pictures and, therefore, managed to avoid being photographed. This shall soon be remedied. Diana was, however, introduced to Little Britain, before she escaped to late night Salsa dancing.

Thursday, our person went to a class on Small Group Teaching at Cardiff University. She seems to be under some delusion that interacting with undergraduates in a classroom setting will be fun.

Tonight, she plans to go to 'the rugby' with some Welsh people. We are quite happy to stay at home, as we don't think that the Cardiff Blues burger van contains appropriate food for us.

Overall, we have had a very good week. We have had our water changed three times (with person's emotional battle with algae), gotten a new plant, and have eaten and vomited some snails, all whilst keeping an eye on the goings on in the Gold House and environs. We saw Diana's bike get stolen outside our window the other afternoon, but we can't figure out how to tell on the slimy scum. Our people don't seem to understand fin-based semaphore. Any suggestions will be welcome.

This week, we have seen:
another American, who likes coffee, yarn and Jasper (favouritism -- just because he has that little gold bit on his lip. Cute isn't everything you know, and just because he is trying to flirt...);
a German, who seems to live in the next room and bakes muffins;
a Columbian, who lives down the hall;
two episodes of the first season of 24;
some knitting techniques;
our person hang some sheer curtains;
someone get a parking ticket;
The Merchant of Venice;
and evidence of the presence of a creature (shown to R) who seems to live in a box on the patio. The Wirish person tells us this is called a 'flea-bag' but our person considers this slanderous and vociferously protests. All we can say is that we are happy not to have such an ugly furred beast peering through our window or stalking around our reception area, no matter how cosily it is furnished.

End of fishy communique.

Philosophical and psychological inquiry

For participation and comment by all.

Eamonn would like to submit for discussion the following question:

'If there is a noticeable increase in obsessive compulsive behaviour over a certain period of time, does this constitute OCDeification?'

One year ago today

...I arrived in the UK and hauled 140 lbs. of luggage via rail to Cardiff from Gatwick airport.

WOW!

Today, I have taken mine and Georgia's dissertations to the bindery and dropped that monkey off my back. Hoorah! Then rode bike back to JC's Cafe and enjoyed delectable breakfast with Katharine (who ridded herself of her monkey on Monday).

Katharine is taking a Welsh class. Welsh is an amusing language :) I have made up a compound word of my own from my observation of various signage recently: popty theithio. This means 'bakery rideshare' and indicates a carpooling to the bakery, I suppose. K has added to the amusing word list with:
smwddio (pronounced smooth-ee-o), verb meaning 'to iron'
popity ping (pronounced as it looks), noun meaning 'microwave'

hahahahaha!

We are now being taken on an excursion to WHAT! and to PetSmart in celebration of our temporary freedom and lack of responsibility. hoorah!

Chrome

If the whole dissertation thing somehow goes awry, my plan is to go into the chrome business. Specifically, the chic chrome kitchen shelf with clever pot hooks business.

It seems that just a couple of years ago, Martha Stewart et al. had inspired a new retro kind of sparse kitchen design and one would think that perhaps the idea of a simple chrome shelf would be a little easier to remedy than it seems to be. This is why I found myself online at 11.43 pm last night (with the newly established internet, which I managed to install on my computer myself -- hoorah!) searching fruitlessly for a decorative yet functional addition to the kitchen, and which will allow more counter space to exist. Hmmm. Well, actually, there IS one out there... it is just $700. I suppose we could make do with the $580 one, but, you know... it just wouldn't be the same.

WHO spends $700 on a shelf made out of some chrome pipes and some clever hanging pot hooks? And why are they wasting our air?

Have also discovered that the UK version of The Container Store is The Holding Company.

As readers may at this point be aware, have moved into new habitat and am having lovely procrastinatory time with new surfaces to clean instead of typing and new furnishing ideas for nest. Hoorah for cleaning products and people who let one borrow their steam cleaner! At this point, am very close to 14000-word required threshold for dissertation. Just can't seem to stop ganglion in wrist from making arm numb (Eamonn seems to be of the opinion that answer to this is to smash the ganglion with a book or something heavy after this paper is finished. Am starting to believe him today. We shall see.). And am also terribly weary of looking at my data and trying to think of anything else clever to say about it.

Anyhoo, Georgia and Eamonn and I moved everything on Thursday evening, then E transformed G's data and made clever graphs, and then we had food!

New house is fabulous. Have front bedroom with bay window, which has space, space, space! Hoorah for space! Rearranged furniture completely and then rearranged it again (with addition over several days of much furniture from E's storage unit, so that now room is homey and cozy and should be good place to write brilliant words of intellectual promise). My housemates are: Steffi (my friend who is a PhD student from Centre for Language and Communication Research and who took classes with us last year) and Diana (a new international MBA student at Cardiff University, who has just arrived from Columbia).

Have a lovely garden, which will be brilliant for barbeques. There is a large paved area and our garden is separated from the next door neighbors's by a short rock wall with ivy. There is a tree in the middle of the grassy area, bordered at the back by tall fir hedges. Out the kitchen window is a view of the church steeple and tower around the corner. And we have windows that actually OPEN instead of just barely pretending to open for safety reasons (and, yes, I know. Must be careful with this, for safety reasons). It is just lovely! Will take pictures and organise them very soon...

Additionally, by Friday, the memo seemed to have been circulated and I was located by my new kitty friend (yet another benefit of having a garden)! He is a youngish tabby with bow legs; he walks like a pirate and I have named him Skimbleshanks. He enjoys sitting in the kitchen window. He does not appear to be related to a railway in any way. And this is just random. They do not, however, seem to have a reasonably priced chrome kitchen shelf for sale. Hmmmm.

Must get back to work... or some semblance thereof.