Mom went to the cancer center today. The doctor told her that he wants to do surgery to remove the cancer and then light chemo to make sure it is gone.

My brother reports that the chemo won't make her lose her hair, which made her happy.

The doctor also said that they might remove part of her stomach depending on what they find. This made my mom upset because she said she'd lose weight then. My dad told her that people pay thousands of dollars extra for that sort of thing.

The surgery will take place after Christmas, and she will be in the hospital for at least a week.

I got an email from my dad today with the worst news you can get.

My mom has pancreatic cancer.

So, I bought a ticket to Glasgow to go visit Colin on Saturday. The bus company I had wanted to use sold out for the time that I wanted, so I used National Express, mostly because I got an email with a discount code that subsequently failed to work because when I registered for the site, it didn't give me a login and password, just the code. And also the code applies to students 26 and under.

Whatever.

Have my ticket and am at the bus station. National Express leaves from Stand 2. I see Stand 4. An unnumbered one next to it that I can only assume is 3. And further up the side of the building, a #1 displayed in the lobby window near where a bus is parked.

Excellent.

I ask inside and they say that Stand 2 is by #1. (...) Ok, fine. Standing near the #1 and this boy comes up to me, "Are you waiting for the National Express bus?" "Yes." "Yeah, we have to go take a taxi."

"What?" *expression of disbelief at random person telling me I have to go take a taxi*

Boy calls National Express and hands me his phone. Dude at the bus company explains that our bus never got from Dundee to Aberdeen. Therefore, we must take a taxi to Aberdeen to get the bus. Also, there are 4 people scheduled, so we need to find them, because Boy is the only person whose contact info they have.

So we start looking for the other people. I saw an old woman with the same ticket I had, so we collect her and tell her that the bus company has hired us a taxi. She decides to go yell at the people at the bus station anyway, who actually have no idea what's going on or that the bus never showed up.

Eventually, Boy and I go look around the mall to find out where the taxi is waiting. Once we find it, I go back to get the old lady, and on our way back, Boy says he's going to try once more to find the rest of the people. He comes back to the taxi with one additional person. The taxi driver was told he was going to have 5 not 4, but we tell him to go anyway.

So....

We're taking a taxi from Aberdeen to Dundee. This is not close. And the taxi driver doesn't actually know where the bus station is in Dundee.

Total cost of taxi ride: 200GBP
That's about: $400!

For people whose tickets cost maybe 50GBP combined.

They actually would have saved themselves a lot of money if they'd bought train tickets and tossed us on ScotRail.

I will never have such an expensive taxi ride again. And they DID get us to the bus in Dundee. Guess how many people were on that bus!

5.

And we made it to Glasgow not really all that late.

OMG, people.

I don't have much in the way of steampunk gear because almost no one makes anything in my size. One of the things I noticeably lack is a coat. In fact, when I went into town yesterday, I did so without a jacket of any kind because it would have ruined the look, and it should be noted that the shirt I had on was sleeveless. In Scotland in the fall. (Though this probably contributed to the nice comments I got.) At any rate...

coats! Coats that are so incredibly awesome and I could only afford as a christmas present!

cgi.ebay.com/UNIQUE-STEAMPUNK-GOTHIC-LONG-LEATHER-GREEN-COAT_W0QQitemZ130340270904QQcmdZViewItemQQptZWomen_s_Clothing

cgi.ebay.com/STEAMPUNK-GOTHIC-IMPERO-FINE-LEATHER-PURPLE-COAT-NEW_W0QQitemZ130340833266QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_WC_Outerwear

Look at this coat. It's leather and yet ruffled like a dress would be. It looks like a freaking dress on its own!

cgi.ebay.com/IMPERO-LONDON-ARISTOCRAT-STEAMPUNK-LEATHER-TAIL-COAT_W0QQitemZ130340782810QQcmdZViewItemQQptZWomen_s_Clothing

And this is just too perfect for words. The most versatile one they have. If I got one steampunk coat only ever, that'd be the one.

*swoon*

Pretty much, I watch this show because of Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. Hotter than Clark and ten times more interesting.

Unfortunately for the showmakers, Lois and Oliver have considerably more chemistry than Lois and Clark. But given the obvious constraints, the writers can't just follow where the actors are leading them. Which ends up meaning that Ollie gets kicked in the teeth.

Very sad. :(

I do, however, much appreciate the rule they apparently have in place wherein Oliver must appear without a shirt once an episode.

Find your name!

( Meme Results )

Go the The Royal Bank of Scotland for my appointment to open an account.
Add 10 sterling to my cell phone so it works

Be here when FedEx tries to deliver my stuff (whenever that is)
Write up notes or something for Thursday, find book quotations.

Attend first Gaelic class

Miss Peatbog Faeries concert because I am attending Gaelic class

Write part or all of chapter 4 (which is already outlined, so this should not be difficult, me! get with it.)

Work on Nationalism.

Why is it that people ask me for directions, regardless of what city I am in and how long I've been there?

I'd almost like to track someone who's asked down and ask them. Is it how I walk? The way I glance around while walking? Is there something about my face that translates as nonthreatening? Am I somewhere just right on the ugly<->pretty scale that people don't feel the need to avoid me, but I'm not pretty enough to be intimidating?

Clearly it's me, though. Because it happens all the time and everywhere.

I wonder if it's at all related to how from the first day I got here my roommates decided that I was responsible for fixing things and making the appliances work. I mean, really? All they knew was my name, and yet it's my job to keep the flat in working order?

What do people do with the hours at school in which they are not working?

Because I only have 4 classes, and 3 of them are on Wed and Thu. That's a whole lot of unused week!

The flights over were actually quite nice. I flew SAS. They gave me gluten-free food for a more pleasant flight experience. For dinner, this meant baked salmon on long grain and wild rice with rice flour bread and some fruit. And a gluten-free raisin cake. Also had soda and wine, both free. After a lights out period where I was expected to sleep, they came around with hot towels to help you wake up.

Movies viewed: Wolverine, Star Trek, Night at the Museum 2

( Read more... )

The fic wins.

2k words.

Wonder how long this one will end up being. I imagine chapter 1 will come in at around 5k.

I don't have much time to read nowadays, but I've been reading Rebecca Solnit'sA Field Guide to Getting Lost, if for no other reason than that it seems fitting.

That is, after all, what I am about in the next short while. Getting lost. Meandering into unknown territory with only vague optimism and a set of tools that resemble a map to chart a course.

Part of the point is to get lost. Actions and encounters are random. Life progresses on a truly unpredictable course. Even as someone who hasn't done many unpredictable things, the chains of events I've been a part of make it clear that there is only chaos. Not a malicious chaos. Just chaos. And if you want something new, turn up the heat, make the molecules move, and everything will jostle around faster, and there's no choice BUT to start a new and unpredictable chain of events.

You can't choose the outcome. You can only choose to flip a coin, knowing that any result is different from none at all.


So...A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The most amazing thing to me is that Solnit speaks of place, of geography, as a part of the Self in a way that I understand, even if I don't often feel able to articulate. I think people often experience the phenomenon without really noticing it. Or without thinking much about it.

They go away on vacation, and they act a little different. Maybe a little freer. Maybe a little sillier. Maybe a little more romantic. But different. Not the same self who goes to the same job, stops at the same place for coffee, shops in the same stores.

Or they go to visit family, back to the old house, and maybe feel a little less like an adult. Maybe a little more apt to do what they're told. Less likely to be loud. Less likely to speak their mind. Somehow more cowed and controlled being back in the house of someone else rules.

I noticed it at college. I was a little different, walking my streets in my new town. Passing by the tree outside my row house. Being someone who could walk to a 7-Eleven. Or the supermarket. Because geography made it so.

Solnit's essay blends the feelings that a place evokes by virtue of its physicality to the emotions that linger in a location charged with specific memory in a way that I think best puts this geopsychological self in terms that others can understand. It's somewhat comforting to see someone else have this notion. Relieving to be able to show it to others and say "this is what I mean."

Pages 113-126

Got an email today from my professor at Aberdeen with course listings and a form to choose electives.

It looks like I'm going to make my master's concentration on Scottish lit. One class on Walter Scott for historical and then second semester on modern Scottish lit. Hopefully I can have something interesting to say about that. At least what I'm hoping is that there's something distinctive in Scottish literature that I can spin out into a broader discussion of the purpose of storytelling, the psychological impact of being represented in stories, and the kind of collective beliefs that stories impart.

I know the Irish are pretty peculiar, which makes them interesting to talk about. So we'll see.

My professor also told me that I can, indeed, take classes in Scottish Gaelic. The Language Center offers night courses to anyone willing to pay the fee. So I can give that a go without it affecting my GPA.

What's another 120GBP when I'm already spending so  much?

The elevator pitch for this show sounds like the setup for a joke. A vampire, and werewolf, and ghost share a flat somewhere in the UK.

But the interesting thing of it is that this is a show with a clearly supernatural basis that isn't, strictly speaking, -about- the supernatural. It's not a case-based show. There's no detecting going on. There's no monster of the week. Most supernatural shows follow that pattern. MoW is causing trouble somewhere. Heroes set out in search of MoW and destroy/stop it, with some myth-arc happenings along the way. See: Supernatural, The X-Files, Buffy, Angel.

But in this instance, the main characters basically ARE the monsters of the week. And the plots aren't about finding or stopping some threat. It's smaller scale than that and more intimate than that. The plots are about the ghost finding out how she died. Or the werewolf trying to deal with the fact that once a month he becomes a deadly murderous thing that he has no control over. And that he wants a girlfriend but is afraid that he'll hurt her. Or how the vampire tries to get on with regular people without drinking blood or being driven to murder. How all he wants is to be normal and accepted, but that simple goal is fraught with problems.

I'm not sure what other show to compare it to, really. Because it's mostly a character drama. And I don't watch any/many shows that don't revolve around the MoW premise.

I think it's even possible that people who don't like scifi could like this show. Because here the fantasy aspect is just a method for giving the main characters obstacles to overcome. It's a way to make them different and other in a way that in the past might have been done with race or class.

Also, they don't shy away from the tough stuff. And I have to give them credit for that.

So... Being Human. Give it a shot. Cause it's different.

Now this is just cool.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html

They have recordings of people from all over Britain and helpful explanations of what the unique aspects of the accent are.

Useful resource! :D

 I have seen precisely one episode of this show. But follow me on this:

The main character is Geoffrey Tennant. He is played by Paul Gross.

Paul Gross once did a production of Hamlet in Stratford Festival, Canada that was supposed to be incandescent. (This is the exact phrase I used in talking to my aunt.) (There are no recordings of this performance. I did not find out that it existed until after the run was over, and I lament not being to see what was a revolutionary interpretation for the people whose reports I read.)

The character Geoffrey Tennant once did a production of Hamlet that was, as said in the show not five minutes after my comment, incandescent. (There were only 3 performances.)

Ok, so then there's the OTHER production of Hamlet that I wasn't able to see. Who did that star? David Tennant. Which was also supposed to be amazingly life-altering. 


Next I'll find out that David's middle name is Geoffrey and my world will be completely self-referential.

The loan officers from my credit union called to inform me that I was approved for a student loan for not enough money to cover the cost of school. By $10k not enough.

What, pray tell, is the point of that?

Why would you approve a sum not high enough to actually do me any good? If my Dad didn't have money he could dip in to, I wouldn't be able to go.

So apparently I can't get a student loan without having someone cosign for it.

In a way, this makes sense. I haven't had a job in a year. How could I ever hope to pay that kind of money back? Except that I have great credit and have been paying my car loan on time during that time, so I should have a pretty trustworthy record.

I guess I just don't like making this someone else's problem. I don't want someone else to be responsible for what may be a very ill-conceived plan on my part.