[UK]ateness

Offers over

2007-04-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

We've been house-hunting.

Flat-hunting, anyway.

The housing market in Edinburgh, as anywhere, is brutal. Most properties are listed as 'offers over' a certain price. It seems that the actual selling prices have been anywhere from 25 to 50% over those 'offers over' prices lately. And I'm sure it's only getting worse. So, in short, we've been house-hunting and failing.

I'm sure we'll succeed eventually, though. Then I'll be painting all summer.

In the meantime, I've been told I can stay at my job until May 11th, which is when I leave for Spain and my work permit ends. This is excellent news. One, because my job is fairly sweet for something that initially wasn't supposed to last long, and two because I won't have to look for a shitty job to replace it in three weeks I would have had left. This takes some stress off of life. The $900 I'm going to have to pay for airfare plus the $170 or so for a student visa in September does not, however, take stress off anything. Money is simply not my friend. I'm about to triple my debt while I'm at it. Starting grad school with zilch in the way of savings makes me more than a tad nervous. On the flipside, in another year and with any luck, I'll be gainfully employed and paying back loans that were taken out in US dollars with money I'm earning in pounds. If the current trend of ass-poor exchange rates continue, this will be highly beneficial for me. Minimum wage in this country equates to over $11.50 at the moment, which doesn't mean I'm living like I would be if I made $11.50 and hour while in the US, but it does help when I'm trying to pay loans.

I don't have much else to say. Kurt Vonnegut died. He was a good guy and a damn good writer. I can't say I'm devastated he died though. Once you're that old, there just comes a time. It's just unfortunate that it came about because of something like a fall. Perhaps I'll get my ass in gear with the reading and pick up another one of his books.

Saving and Travelling the World

2007-03-26T12:52:00.000-04:00

I have plans! I suppose you might more accurately call them ambitions since I haven't actually paid for anything or typed up an itinerary yet. I like to call them plans because I intend to go through with them.

I've given myself until I'm 28 to do the Trans-Siberian railway. That's Edinburgh all the way to either Vladivostok or Beijing or somewhere on the far side of Asia completely overland by train. I want to do it slow so I can stop in all sorts of places including Europe on the way. I'm super excited about the prospect of a vacation that takes place largely in Russia and Mongolia though. I'm giving myself 5 years because it'll leave me plenty of time to finish school, get a job, and save up enough money to take a career break. I was thinking of making this the first leg of a round the world trip, but I think it might be better to make it a Europe/Asia/Oceania/Africa trip and do North and South America (and Antarctica?!) some other time. I definitely want to go to Australia and New Zealand at some point, but I could always just move there someday or something.

I'm not a huge fan of flying so not only is the overland thing good for that, it's much better for the environment. Call me a cheeseball, but I finally managed to see An Inconvenient Truth. I did know most of that stuff already, but when it's put up in front of you in pictures and graphs and Matt Groening cartoons, it kind of makes you go 'Holy Shit'. But what makes you go 'Holy Shit' even more is the degree of idiocy in the American government. Al Gore is one cool cat. If I were him, I'd've punched some congressmen by now. How eternally frustrating can it be to back up the same warning with concrete evidence for years and years and years only to have people look you straight in the face and say it's bullshit? I sort of want to give the man a hug. Way to go, Al Gore.

In any case, I like to do my part. I enjoy the planet and I'd like to continue living on it. Perhaps my generation of Captain Planet watchers will do their best to turn it around. Maybe they should bring that show back. I mean, come on! Captain Planet! Who didn't love that?

I went to the Edinburgh Farmers' Market this weekend, which I would have done anyway because food excites me, but the idea that buying fresh, multi-coloured eggs from a Scottish farmer lady might improve carbon emissions made me feel all warm and gooey inside. Sort of like a melty chocolate bar. Or the Porridge Bar at which I ate Cranachan porridge of JOY. I swear the people in this country are geniuses. I do miss my Chipotle, but I doubt you'd ever see a Porridge Bar in the US, so, there are trade-offs.

In other world-saving news, I donated a chunk of money to Comic Relief on Red Nose Day. That also made me quite happy. The UK is all about their charities, so I figured I'd be all about some charities too. After all, I had to stop my HRC monthly donations when I left the US because I couldn't be sure of a steady bank account, so I have to give money to someone. I'd sort of like to work for a charity someday, or maybe just do something charitable with my own business. Take it from me, helping people is super cool. I also got a red nose to play with out of it, so, BONUS. Anyway, it's not like I couldn't use some extra cash myself, but it's also not like I'm not well fed and watered, so I'm sure someone can use some of what I make better than I can. Spread the love, people!

You can see through them, but they still take up a ton of space.

2007-03-19T14:37:00.000-04:00

The fellow that owns our apartment and no longer lives here left a considerable amount of his crap behind. Seeing as how he apparently has no intention of moving back to Edinburgh anytime soon, this seems more than a little odd to me. However, in this case, let's just say that's par for the course.

We managed to move most of the extra, taking-up-space sort of stuff like piles of VHS tapes and random decorative tchotchke into the closet in the other bedroom, which was fine when no one else was living in it. Now that Scott's best friend is in there, I feel a little bad about it. But honestly, there's nowhere else for it to go. With any luck, we'll be out of here in a month or so and said friend can move into our old room, thus leaving the closet o crap behind.

The bigger issue, to me at least, is the fact that we have full use of about 1/3-1/2 of our total kitchen cabinet space. We do have a fairly enormous kitchen considering we live in the middle of a city where the kitchen space is at a premium, so it's not as big a problem as it could be, but the fact that this guy left behind a MOUNTAIN of glassware that, I'm fairly certain, hasn't been used more than once or twice, is supremely irritating. Again, not quite as much of a problem when it was just me and Scott, but now that we've got someone else needing cabinet space, well, it sucks.

I've tried to maneuver it as best I could. I've re-arranged the stuff once or twice trying to get it to take up less space, but god forbid I break one piece. He might notice the next time he sees the inside of the place months, or years, from now.

Now, I have my own obsession with various kitchenware, and I do like a nice set of glasses, but this is insane. We have four cabinets, FOUR, full of glasses no one ever uses. Plus another cabinet full of the ones we do use. I might understand this if it bought into some sort of collector mentality. Or, being a pack-rat myself, the inability to let things go because of sentimental value. I've claimed the latter on things as minute and insignificant as half-used pads of paper, so I'm no stranger. However, I cannot forgive, under any circumstance, the ownership of over 30 identical martini glasses, barring that you might be someone like Elton John with the use for such immense quantities of guest drink receptacles. And that's only the start of it (and one whole cabinet). In all of this, there isn't even a well rounded collection. there's a bunch of random beer and cocktail glasses, but no champagne or wine glasses to be seen. And it's not like they're nifty glasses either, they're mostly just branded with halfway decent vodka and such.

Honestly, I don't mind that he wants to keep these things. I keep weird shit myself. To each his own and all that. But for the Christ, take it home! Friends won't always be renting out your apartment, and when they're not, the next person is not going to put up with living in an overpriced storage facility.

Wednesday is Prime Banana Day

2007-03-14T14:34:00.000-04:00

Prime Banana Day was a concept invented by one of my high school friends. Basically, if you buy a bunch of bananas at the beginning of the week, assuming they're green, the best one you eat will be on Wednesday. I'm a semi-unripe banana girl myself, so I always figured Tuesday might be the day of joy, but today confirmed that Prime Banana Day stretches beyond bananas.

Not only did I have quite a lovely banana this morning, but I found out so many other wonderful things. My job is keeping me for another month because they, and I, rock. I finally got accepted by a global health insurance company after months of insurance hunting headaches (My parents' coverage runs out at the end of this month. You try shopping for insurance from another country and see if you don't want to throw things out the window, especially when you can't afford to spend billions of dollars). If that wasn't enough, my dad then told me he'd pay for it (it's fairly low cost because of the sky-high deductible, but as Tesco says, every little helps), which is great because it means I can put more of that money towards my loans and avoid deferring payment during my MSc program. And THEN I got a job at the Fringe. Not sure exactly what my position title will be yet, but dammit, I got something.

On top of all this, I bought some noses and a pin for Comic Relief, which makes me happy inside. I also got strawberries and chocolate for dessert fondue tomorrow night after Scott and I go out to dinner for our anniversary.

I'm almost scared to be happy about all these things on the chance something horrible happens.

In any case, I read another article about the 100 dollar laptop today. That thing is so amazing. I'm all for making books available to the whole world in whatever way possible, and they're trying to digitize all the books in the public domain so kids in poorer countries can get them on this laptop. It's fantastic.

Missin' the hitchins

2007-02-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

Today began a new era: the one where I get invited to weddings I can't attend because of the Atlantic Ocean and my very tiny bank account.

Lauren's getting married in April and I got a gorgeous invitation today. The first of many to come, I'm sure. They make that terrible, long journey across the Atlantic, tossed and turned all the live long way, probably get the addresses smudged by customs folk or whoever it is these days that handles and rehandles all the mail, only to have the reply card sadly sent back with a 'Sorry, but no.'

This is really frustrating for me because I feel like I'm missing out on some big things. Screw Birthday Ball, I'd much rather see my friends get happily married before they go bouncing off to LA and I'll rarely see them again. Not only that, but every college-friend wedding I miss is another mini-reunion I miss. There's bound to be a handful of people I used to see on a daily basis and now haven't seen since May '06 at these things, and they'll be partying their booties off like fools. I hate missing an opportunity like that.

Unfortunately, cool Scottish wedding presents will have to make up for my own presence. Much as Scottish things rock, I'd much rather be there myself. But I do hope people keep inviting me to their weddings and such, because if I happen to be stateside for any of them, I will most certainly go out of my way to attend. I just wish I could do the same for Lauren.

Good news only

2007-02-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

I've decided, spurred by a recent post by Volansky about the seemingly constant state of doom the universe appears to be in lately, to only comment on good news, or at the very least, stories that are strange or different or, well, not full of doom. There are plenty of bloggers who comment on wars and terrorism, and most of them can do it better than I ever could simply because they're more well-informed about politics or whatever. So I'll leave it to them while I cover the rest of life.

Today I managed to hear the one o'clock gun which, after living here for three months, you'd think I'd have heard plenty. It's not every city that shoots a cannon off from the honking huge castle sitting smack at the middle of it every day at the same time, so one would imagine it would be a noticeable event, at least for a while. Surprisingly enough, I don't even recall hearing it when I was working right outside the gates of the castle for a week. Now I just live far enough away where it must fade into the background city din. But today I managed to walk out the door for lunch about 30 seconds before 1pm, and there was a resounding boom. It seems so odd to me that being conscious of such a thing took so long.

One of the BBC's top read articles today was about the fact that Prince Harry will be going to the front lines in Iraq. Much as I oppose the war and sending anyone into it, I have to say I thought this was, in a certain way, good news. Not that the royal family is equatable with the prime minister or anything, but the fact that such a prominent figure who, from an American's point of view, seems almost sacred simply because of his bloodline is willingly going to such a pointless, destructive war is like a wad of spit in the face of George W Bush's idiocy and unwillingness to see the situation for what it is. My point being that I bet there's no way in hell Bush would allow his daughters to go to Iraq, nor would any of his lackeys be sending their kids. Yet they have no issue sending a bunch of people they don't know and will never really care about. For a kid who, not long ago, was doing nothing but partying and making an ass of himself, as teenagers are wont to do, I have to say I have a lot of respect for Harry. He's got his shit together and he's not messing around. Best of all, he's doing something that makes his country look a lot better, not in regards to war, but in regards to putting himself out there.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now.

Oh, Life

2007-02-21T18:12:00.000-05:00

I've decided to delete my previous posts and start over. At the beginning of this year, I decided I haven't been writing enough. I know I'll never write like any one of my creative writing teachers might have hoped I would, but I do enjoy rolling out some well-formed sentences now and then, and I like to think my writing is fairly decent compared to most people's. However, in order to keep it that way, I should really do it more often.

I can no longer use the 'post-college burnout' excuse for not writing, as we're coming up on a year since I've graduated. I'm not sure I've gotten over the initial weirdness of not being in school, but I have grown accustomed to the perks and inconveniences of life outside an institution of learning, and I can't complain too much. So I guess I can keep track of what's becoming my own version of normal in here.

I've been in Scotland for about three and a half months now and I finally managed to land myself a job at a small publishing company. It started as temporary, and it still technically is, but they've asked me to stay another month, so I'm hoping things will continue in that vein. I've been working in the Sales and Marketing department doing all sorts of random things. A lot of InDesign work, which I love, and a fair bit of administrative stuff. It's a varied position, which is what I really like about it. I couldn't be bothered doing a job that never changed. (The summer hell of data entry all day long? Never again, I hope.)

When I'm not at work, I'm sifting through many, many backup plans for attaining permanent jobs that include work permits. I've also applied to Napier University and the University of Edinburgh for one-year master's programs. I will stay in this country, come hell or high water. It's home, and home is where I like to be.

Scott and I do lots of nerdy things to fill free time. We see movies when we feel like it, play Wii, paint, read, cook, play board games, take walks. We tried curling, which was pretty much everything I expected it to be: a whole hell of a lot of fun. I'd love to do it regularly, but it seems at this point I'll have to wait for the next season for beginners courses and the like to start up again. I'd love to take an art class--something different like jewelery making or printmaking or stained glass--but that has to wait until I have some kind of more permanent employment situation.

So that's the basis of what's happening in my brain. I've found I have a lot to comment on lately since I started reading the newspaper at weekends. Hopefully from now on I'll be able to find some motivation to post regularly.