real time, gu library
Oct. 23rd, 2000 01:55 pmso what have i been doing? er... stuff. as far as i can remember.
yeeuw, it's raining really hard outside. maybe i won't get spaghetti squash today. although i really want some... ::sigh::
i went grocery shopping on thursday. it's weird, the exchange rate always throws me off. with normal goods, they cost enough more that it's pretty much the same number value as in dollars. but groceries are a little cheaper, enough so that i end up with a cart full of stuff and think it's going to cost me £50 or something, but it actually costs about $50, and only £30. very nice. however, right after i bought groceries, i got sick of eating pasta and soup, so i spend a lot of money eating out. ::sigh:: taste of punjab, right around the corner from the dorm, is cheap and good and diverse, though - you can get indian food, or fish&chips, or pizza. and a small pizza is £4, which is really good.
i went back to the women's library on friday, and realized when i was heading back home that i hadn't actually said i'd be in that day. oh, well, it was fun. they were actually closed, cause they were sorting all the donations. so i went up the lift, and got to the top, and the door was locked. it was rather distressing. but yeah, i got to sit around and sort oldold dusty books for two hours. great fun. :) i kept getting distracted. there were a bunch of useful (but for what?) books analyzing women in shakespeare. and i got a chocolate chocolate chip muffin. :) yum.
saturday was vicky's birthday, so we all took her out to dinner. it was a relatively nice place, and they put candles and a sparkler on the cake we'd brought, and turned out *all* the lights, and everyone sang. it was fun. :)
sunday i went to st andrews and met up with jeremy - he'd gone to heavy practice in edinburgh on saturday and had gotten a lift to st andrews, cause it was heavy sunday. (usually sunday's just fencing.) there was a really poor turnout of fencers, though, so i just fenced two people and stood around schmoozing and shivering the rest of the time. one of the people i fought with was a little rawer than i was, and kept using the same attack - she'd beat my blade to my right, and then lunge straight in and thrust at my torso. if i'd been any better, she would have died so much. i feel bad teaching her bad habits, cause i couldn't kill her when she kept doing the same thing. i learned how to escape the beat fairly quickly, although in a way that wouldn't have worked had someone better been doing the beat - she aimed for exactly the same place, so i could just drop my blade a few inches. it took a while after that before i got the hang of parrying *her* blade, or stepping around it. we double killed for a while before i figured that out. eventually i noticed that her stance left me an opening coming in from the outside - i could step to her right, and thrust between her blade and her body, through the crook of her arm, and get her almost every time. i'm sure that's an opening that will disappear once she corrects her stance, though.
the other woman who fenced had a stance that let me keep taking her arm. she was fighting left handed, even though she wasn't, which may have had something to do with it, but i got her right arm that way when she switched. basically she cocked her arm out so that i could see almost her entire forearm, which (well trained child that i am) practically drew my point towards it without me even thinking. granted, if i was fighting someone ranked, they'd probably be doing that on purpose, to draw a shot that they could then parry and kill me on the riposte. oh, well. i'm learning.
so after practice, jeremy and i got a ride back to leuchars from pete. nice guy, if he had a slavic accent he would be uncannily identical to pitr on userfriendly. jeremy and i got as far as haymarket on the train, but when we got off to change trains, he left his violin on the train heading to edinburgh. so he talked to the stationmaster, and got on the next train to edinburgh at the exact moment that the stationmaster announced that the violin would be put on the next train to glasgow. so i got on that train and watched the conductor hand the violin off to the stationmaster, while jeremy waited in glasgow to figure out where his violin was. he got home okay, if a bit frazzled.
i get to watch a tv adaptation of 'the cheviot, the stag, and the black, black oil'! it's pretty much the best known scottish political play. 7:84, the company, toured it mostly in the highlands. it was a music-hall/agitprop style history of the highlands, from culloden to the modern day. scottish history wasn't being taught in scottish schools at that point, so a lot of the play was actually stuff that people didn't know. it sounds like it'll be really cool. and on friday we're seeing 7:84's most recent play, which is about registered partnerships (probably the analog of the gay marriage issue in the states). and next monday, the director is going to come talk to us. i like 7:84. :)
ooh, rain's clearing. time to get squash. speaking of which, we get to have thanksgiving! we decided that it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive for the 25 of us to book a restaurant and tell them what to make us. so. yum.
yeeuw, it's raining really hard outside. maybe i won't get spaghetti squash today. although i really want some... ::sigh::
i went grocery shopping on thursday. it's weird, the exchange rate always throws me off. with normal goods, they cost enough more that it's pretty much the same number value as in dollars. but groceries are a little cheaper, enough so that i end up with a cart full of stuff and think it's going to cost me £50 or something, but it actually costs about $50, and only £30. very nice. however, right after i bought groceries, i got sick of eating pasta and soup, so i spend a lot of money eating out. ::sigh:: taste of punjab, right around the corner from the dorm, is cheap and good and diverse, though - you can get indian food, or fish&chips, or pizza. and a small pizza is £4, which is really good.
i went back to the women's library on friday, and realized when i was heading back home that i hadn't actually said i'd be in that day. oh, well, it was fun. they were actually closed, cause they were sorting all the donations. so i went up the lift, and got to the top, and the door was locked. it was rather distressing. but yeah, i got to sit around and sort oldold dusty books for two hours. great fun. :) i kept getting distracted. there were a bunch of useful (but for what?) books analyzing women in shakespeare. and i got a chocolate chocolate chip muffin. :) yum.
saturday was vicky's birthday, so we all took her out to dinner. it was a relatively nice place, and they put candles and a sparkler on the cake we'd brought, and turned out *all* the lights, and everyone sang. it was fun. :)
sunday i went to st andrews and met up with jeremy - he'd gone to heavy practice in edinburgh on saturday and had gotten a lift to st andrews, cause it was heavy sunday. (usually sunday's just fencing.) there was a really poor turnout of fencers, though, so i just fenced two people and stood around schmoozing and shivering the rest of the time. one of the people i fought with was a little rawer than i was, and kept using the same attack - she'd beat my blade to my right, and then lunge straight in and thrust at my torso. if i'd been any better, she would have died so much. i feel bad teaching her bad habits, cause i couldn't kill her when she kept doing the same thing. i learned how to escape the beat fairly quickly, although in a way that wouldn't have worked had someone better been doing the beat - she aimed for exactly the same place, so i could just drop my blade a few inches. it took a while after that before i got the hang of parrying *her* blade, or stepping around it. we double killed for a while before i figured that out. eventually i noticed that her stance left me an opening coming in from the outside - i could step to her right, and thrust between her blade and her body, through the crook of her arm, and get her almost every time. i'm sure that's an opening that will disappear once she corrects her stance, though.
the other woman who fenced had a stance that let me keep taking her arm. she was fighting left handed, even though she wasn't, which may have had something to do with it, but i got her right arm that way when she switched. basically she cocked her arm out so that i could see almost her entire forearm, which (well trained child that i am) practically drew my point towards it without me even thinking. granted, if i was fighting someone ranked, they'd probably be doing that on purpose, to draw a shot that they could then parry and kill me on the riposte. oh, well. i'm learning.
so after practice, jeremy and i got a ride back to leuchars from pete. nice guy, if he had a slavic accent he would be uncannily identical to pitr on userfriendly. jeremy and i got as far as haymarket on the train, but when we got off to change trains, he left his violin on the train heading to edinburgh. so he talked to the stationmaster, and got on the next train to edinburgh at the exact moment that the stationmaster announced that the violin would be put on the next train to glasgow. so i got on that train and watched the conductor hand the violin off to the stationmaster, while jeremy waited in glasgow to figure out where his violin was. he got home okay, if a bit frazzled.
i get to watch a tv adaptation of 'the cheviot, the stag, and the black, black oil'! it's pretty much the best known scottish political play. 7:84, the company, toured it mostly in the highlands. it was a music-hall/agitprop style history of the highlands, from culloden to the modern day. scottish history wasn't being taught in scottish schools at that point, so a lot of the play was actually stuff that people didn't know. it sounds like it'll be really cool. and on friday we're seeing 7:84's most recent play, which is about registered partnerships (probably the analog of the gay marriage issue in the states). and next monday, the director is going to come talk to us. i like 7:84. :)
ooh, rain's clearing. time to get squash. speaking of which, we get to have thanksgiving! we decided that it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive for the 25 of us to book a restaurant and tell them what to make us. so. yum.