So I'm typing this using the new keyboard I got... only a true typing novelist would be geeking out over something like this. I'm enjoying it so much, though, that I figured I'd share it with all of you.
Currently it's sparking in a rainbow mode, and that makes me ridiculously happy. So, anyways, I'm probably going to update with real entries sometime later this weekend, after I've determined what I'm going to spend my Christmas mad money on and after I've given Justin his gifts. I already have some good ideas about what to spend my money on, but currently I have things to do... like eat Christmas cookies, play with my new keyboard (which will make editing my novel a much, much happier process), visit with my family, and finish a Christmas fanfic. (Also, apparently I have to babysit my dad while he plays his new Wii game and teach my mom how to use her DS. My parents are adorable sometimes.)
Hope your Christmas is as merry as mine appears to be going :)
- Jen -
25 December 2009
19 December 2009
Avatar
Yes, an entire blog entry. It was that cool. You see, I went to go see Avatar tonight. In IMAX 3D, no less. And it was amazing. Really.
First of all, the scenery was amazing. Second of all, it was nice to see someone who is differently abled as a hero, not just politically correctly speaking. It's never explained how Sully lost the use of his legs, but it's shown that he's just as capable with them as without them. Not only does he not ask for any help, but he refuses it when it's offered. And he doesn't need it. Third of all, the motion capture work showed, it really did. Facial expressions looked real, movements for all the animals were realistic (though I'm not quite sure how feasible it is for horse-like and wolf-like creatures to have six legs), and the crowds weren't just copy-pasted. Fourth of all, it was set up like a true epic. The plot was conventional (easily accessible) but still left room for variance.
I would say one of the few complaints I had about the movie was the excessive scenery porn. I mean, I appreciate that there was some detail put into the environments, but really, I don't think plants bioluminesce in anger when they're stepped on IRL. I also don't think some of those scenes needed to take as long as they did. We get it. They're doing whatever. Also, I found some of the characterization (well, most of it) to be subpar. There was no depth to the villains, and that disappointed me. I mean, it's an epic, so I understand that for the viewer to empathize with the heroes, the villains need to be hated and not understood, but for me, I appreciate a villain who's as sympathetic as the hero. YMMV, however.
Probably going to see it again this weekend in regular 2D just to compare. I don't mind throwing my money at this; it deserves it. Most fun I've had at a movie in a very long time. PSA to everyone: You will enjoy this movie.
- Jen -
First of all, the scenery was amazing. Second of all, it was nice to see someone who is differently abled as a hero, not just politically correctly speaking. It's never explained how Sully lost the use of his legs, but it's shown that he's just as capable with them as without them. Not only does he not ask for any help, but he refuses it when it's offered. And he doesn't need it. Third of all, the motion capture work showed, it really did. Facial expressions looked real, movements for all the animals were realistic (though I'm not quite sure how feasible it is for horse-like and wolf-like creatures to have six legs), and the crowds weren't just copy-pasted. Fourth of all, it was set up like a true epic. The plot was conventional (easily accessible) but still left room for variance.
I would say one of the few complaints I had about the movie was the excessive scenery porn. I mean, I appreciate that there was some detail put into the environments, but really, I don't think plants bioluminesce in anger when they're stepped on IRL. I also don't think some of those scenes needed to take as long as they did. We get it. They're doing whatever. Also, I found some of the characterization (well, most of it) to be subpar. There was no depth to the villains, and that disappointed me. I mean, it's an epic, so I understand that for the viewer to empathize with the heroes, the villains need to be hated and not understood, but for me, I appreciate a villain who's as sympathetic as the hero. YMMV, however.
Probably going to see it again this weekend in regular 2D just to compare. I don't mind throwing my money at this; it deserves it. Most fun I've had at a movie in a very long time. PSA to everyone: You will enjoy this movie.
- Jen -
12 December 2009
Wild blagoposts ahoy!
[This entry is kind of dedicated to Greg, who always gets frustrated when I update my blog since he gets behind. Also, check the next paragraph, IT'S YOUR FAULT.]
So, I haven't really been doing much, but in passing talking to a friend of mine yesterday, he mentioned QC and I couldn't resist looking it up. For those of you that don't know, it's a webcomic called Questionable Content. I'm deep in the archives now or I would link you all to the main page, but it's quickly become a favorite of mine and I'm only halfway 'up to date'. A perfect mix of sarcasm/irony, relationship issues, hipster/indie cred, and nerdiness... perfectly complements my already profound love for xkcd.
I finished packing for the most part today, bought my last real Christmas present from the UK, and have been reading QC since I woke up (and also munching on chocolate as I have done so). As a result, this entry is pretty boring, but I have a plan for what I'm going to post tomorrow. I might actually start planning out topics for blog posts now that NaNo is over... my life feels somewhat empty without so much writing in it.
- Jen -
ETA (which stands for Edited To Add, by the way, for those acronym challenged people like me):
I love Questionable Content. SO MUCH. Especially Marigold. It's kind of creepy how much I identify with her. Sleep!snuggling with her flatmate (I am a self-admitted snuggleslut, I create people-piles wherever I sit), the whole nerd look (hello, Hermione Granger hair and red plastic glasses), the weird RPG she's into (she's got WOW, I'll keep my Pokemon), the problem she has with being a shut-in (welcome to my entire November... in fact, most of the time I've been here)... I even just joined a fandom which kind of wears slash goggles all the time, which most of you would call YAOI. I mean, I have legitimate reasons for being on my computer all of the time (most of my dear friends and family are in the States, and I can contact them through e-mail and Skype), but even Hanners would admit that I'm being a little ridiculous and should get out more. [Also, that was a hella lot of parentheses for one paragraph. My bad.]
... and that's enough self-reflection for me. Seriously, I mix Dora's insecurities with most of Marigold's personality, it's kind of weird and awful when you think about it actually. And why am I trying to empathize with a webcomic so much? This is even worse than when I read overtones of my own life into New Moon. WHY. WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF. (It's not even a question at this point.)
Yeah, I did just spend the last... I don't know, about 13 hours straight today, plus 2 hours yesterday, catching up on the backlog. And I laughed out loud several times. Is funny.
So, I haven't really been doing much, but in passing talking to a friend of mine yesterday, he mentioned QC and I couldn't resist looking it up. For those of you that don't know, it's a webcomic called Questionable Content. I'm deep in the archives now or I would link you all to the main page, but it's quickly become a favorite of mine and I'm only halfway 'up to date'. A perfect mix of sarcasm/irony, relationship issues, hipster/indie cred, and nerdiness... perfectly complements my already profound love for xkcd.
I finished packing for the most part today, bought my last real Christmas present from the UK, and have been reading QC since I woke up (and also munching on chocolate as I have done so). As a result, this entry is pretty boring, but I have a plan for what I'm going to post tomorrow. I might actually start planning out topics for blog posts now that NaNo is over... my life feels somewhat empty without so much writing in it.
- Jen -
ETA (which stands for Edited To Add, by the way, for those acronym challenged people like me):
I love Questionable Content. SO MUCH. Especially Marigold. It's kind of creepy how much I identify with her. Sleep!snuggling with her flatmate (I am a self-admitted snuggleslut, I create people-piles wherever I sit), the whole nerd look (hello, Hermione Granger hair and red plastic glasses), the weird RPG she's into (she's got WOW, I'll keep my Pokemon), the problem she has with being a shut-in (welcome to my entire November... in fact, most of the time I've been here)... I even just joined a fandom which kind of wears slash goggles all the time, which most of you would call YAOI. I mean, I have legitimate reasons for being on my computer all of the time (most of my dear friends and family are in the States, and I can contact them through e-mail and Skype), but even Hanners would admit that I'm being a little ridiculous and should get out more. [Also, that was a hella lot of parentheses for one paragraph. My bad.]
... and that's enough self-reflection for me. Seriously, I mix Dora's insecurities with most of Marigold's personality, it's kind of weird and awful when you think about it actually. And why am I trying to empathize with a webcomic so much? This is even worse than when I read overtones of my own life into New Moon. WHY. WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF. (It's not even a question at this point.)
Yeah, I did just spend the last... I don't know, about 13 hours straight today, plus 2 hours yesterday, catching up on the backlog. And I laughed out loud several times. Is funny.
11 December 2009
London, Day 6 (Friday 11 December)
Highlights: Not many.
1. Bus back to Oxford
2. The rest of my day
-----
1. Bus back to Oxford
Pretty self-explanatory. After breakfast, I checked out and shipped out. Made my way to Victoria station and got on the bus to come home and I was back by noon. Spent a little while running errands (to make sure I could eat for the next few days) and grabbing lunch.
-----
2. The rest of my day
Has been spent blogging and on the Internet. I got to Skype with Justin just now, which was good. I get to see him in five days, which is exciting.
Right now, I have a few things to work on. I got an idea for a Christmas range of ficlets, so I need to start on those and appease the people at Shotgun's Lap. I also need to upload my pictures to Shutterfly (including the ones from before I went to London). I'm kicking myself about forgetting my battery charger!!!
Tomorrow: much the same, except I'm going to repack my suitcase, probably, and might visit either the Ashmolean or the Natural History Museum. Then again, probably not.
Sunday: my last full day in England of 2009. Much the same, really.
Monday: leaving early for Heathrow and getting into Columbus around 8 PM EST.
Catch y'all on the flip side. Might do another cute post in the next few days that's more Christmas related. I haven't been much in the Christmas spirit this year... I don't know if it's the foreign country bit or the family crisis bit. We'll see.
- Jen -
1. Bus back to Oxford
2. The rest of my day
-----
1. Bus back to Oxford
Pretty self-explanatory. After breakfast, I checked out and shipped out. Made my way to Victoria station and got on the bus to come home and I was back by noon. Spent a little while running errands (to make sure I could eat for the next few days) and grabbing lunch.
-----
2. The rest of my day
Has been spent blogging and on the Internet. I got to Skype with Justin just now, which was good. I get to see him in five days, which is exciting.
Right now, I have a few things to work on. I got an idea for a Christmas range of ficlets, so I need to start on those and appease the people at Shotgun's Lap. I also need to upload my pictures to Shutterfly (including the ones from before I went to London). I'm kicking myself about forgetting my battery charger!!!
Tomorrow: much the same, except I'm going to repack my suitcase, probably, and might visit either the Ashmolean or the Natural History Museum. Then again, probably not.
Sunday: my last full day in England of 2009. Much the same, really.
Monday: leaving early for Heathrow and getting into Columbus around 8 PM EST.
Catch y'all on the flip side. Might do another cute post in the next few days that's more Christmas related. I haven't been much in the Christmas spirit this year... I don't know if it's the foreign country bit or the family crisis bit. We'll see.
- Jen -
London, Day 5 (Thursday 10 December)
Highlights of my last full day in London:
1. Coffee with Georgie
2. Tate Modern
3. Globe Theatre performance
4. ND after-performance party
5. Last night in the hostel
-----
1. Coffee with Georgie
So, for once, I didn't head straight to the British Museum, but instead made my way to the Russell Square tube station to meet up with one of my British friends. I met Georgie Peters on Facebook about a year ago, and we got to be good friends. I promised her that when I came to England, I'd see her at least once.
She's studying at UCL, so we met at a Starbucks close to there and chatted for at least an hour. It was nice to meet up with a friend for once, instead of just standing silently in museums all day like I had been doing. Also, I love Starbucks, so it was nice to get a latte for once and just sit and stay off my feet.
Before I left to start my day for real, Georgie took me on a brief tour of the UCL campus that she's on, and she even showed me the nearest tube station before she went back to work in the library. Oh, those silly universities that are on the semester system while I'm on the funkiest trimesters ever.
-----
2. Tate Modern
I spent five hours at the Tate Modern getting very confused by modern art. Seriously, that's about the sum total of my experience in there.
Although, I must say, they had a copy of my favorite statue in there, and I squee'd like a fangirl when I saw it in person. So that was exciting. I also was able to do a little shopping for myself, so good on me.
-----
3. Globe Theatre performance
So, I had heard from my friend at ND, Mary Kearns, that she was going to be in a play at the Globe theatre. Naturally, I was eager to see her. (Somehow, I got lost on my way there, even though it's, like, RIGHT NEXT TO the Tate. This just goes to show you how helpless I am with compass-point directions.)
It was a brief performance of Othello, just basically the highlights, done in a very modern style. The staging was excellent, and there was even singing. But the best part was that it was in the Globe freaking theatre. The open air theater, preserved as it would have been in Shakespeare's time, with all of us ND people standing on the open floor where the rabble would have stood. It was kind of brilliant, actually, and I enjoyed it very much. Mary did her reading very well and it was nice to see her. I also ran into two of my roommates from freshman year, Danielle and Katherine, and managed to make a new 'friend' along the way.
-----
4. ND after-performance party
So, after the brief (30-minute, maybe) performance, there was a reception held in the first floor of the Globe for all of the ND people who had attended. I had to pay 5 pounds for a ticket but it was worth it for snacks and the opportunity to talk and visit with my friends. Ben LaPres managed to find me in a room full of people and waved me over to talk about NaNo, studying abroad, and whatnot for a while.
Then, abruptly, most people seemed to leave the party, and I met up with Mary today. She kind of made my day, actually. She walked me across the Millenium Bridge and we walked past St. Paul's Cathedral, which was lit up beautifully at night. We could see it across the river... just gorgeous. She walked me to the St. Paul's tube station and then she said goodbye... I hope exams go well for her.
-----
5. Last night in the hostel
So, during my last night, I actually got to know one of my new roommates. Most of my roommates, besides the guy in the bunk above me, changed in the five nights I was there. By the time of the last night, I was with two British (Australian? couldn't tell with the accent, but British is more likely) girls, the guy above me's friend, a few Asian guys, and then Scott. Scott's an American, in his 40s-ish, originally from Raleigh area, NC, but now working out of Birmingham by way of Washington DC. It was interesting talking to him, because he got his PhD from a British university so he knows how the system works a little bit.
I also needed to call home. For those of you who don't know, my grandmother passed away last Friday, and her funeral was yesterday, so I called home and offered what little condolences I could. I feel terrible about not being there, but there's literally nothing I could have done.
More journal-writing, and that was the end of my night.
- Jen -
1. Coffee with Georgie
2. Tate Modern
3. Globe Theatre performance
4. ND after-performance party
5. Last night in the hostel
-----
1. Coffee with Georgie
So, for once, I didn't head straight to the British Museum, but instead made my way to the Russell Square tube station to meet up with one of my British friends. I met Georgie Peters on Facebook about a year ago, and we got to be good friends. I promised her that when I came to England, I'd see her at least once.
She's studying at UCL, so we met at a Starbucks close to there and chatted for at least an hour. It was nice to meet up with a friend for once, instead of just standing silently in museums all day like I had been doing. Also, I love Starbucks, so it was nice to get a latte for once and just sit and stay off my feet.
Before I left to start my day for real, Georgie took me on a brief tour of the UCL campus that she's on, and she even showed me the nearest tube station before she went back to work in the library. Oh, those silly universities that are on the semester system while I'm on the funkiest trimesters ever.
-----
2. Tate Modern
I spent five hours at the Tate Modern getting very confused by modern art. Seriously, that's about the sum total of my experience in there.
Although, I must say, they had a copy of my favorite statue in there, and I squee'd like a fangirl when I saw it in person. So that was exciting. I also was able to do a little shopping for myself, so good on me.
-----
3. Globe Theatre performance
So, I had heard from my friend at ND, Mary Kearns, that she was going to be in a play at the Globe theatre. Naturally, I was eager to see her. (Somehow, I got lost on my way there, even though it's, like, RIGHT NEXT TO the Tate. This just goes to show you how helpless I am with compass-point directions.)
It was a brief performance of Othello, just basically the highlights, done in a very modern style. The staging was excellent, and there was even singing. But the best part was that it was in the Globe freaking theatre. The open air theater, preserved as it would have been in Shakespeare's time, with all of us ND people standing on the open floor where the rabble would have stood. It was kind of brilliant, actually, and I enjoyed it very much. Mary did her reading very well and it was nice to see her. I also ran into two of my roommates from freshman year, Danielle and Katherine, and managed to make a new 'friend' along the way.
-----
4. ND after-performance party
So, after the brief (30-minute, maybe) performance, there was a reception held in the first floor of the Globe for all of the ND people who had attended. I had to pay 5 pounds for a ticket but it was worth it for snacks and the opportunity to talk and visit with my friends. Ben LaPres managed to find me in a room full of people and waved me over to talk about NaNo, studying abroad, and whatnot for a while.
Then, abruptly, most people seemed to leave the party, and I met up with Mary today. She kind of made my day, actually. She walked me across the Millenium Bridge and we walked past St. Paul's Cathedral, which was lit up beautifully at night. We could see it across the river... just gorgeous. She walked me to the St. Paul's tube station and then she said goodbye... I hope exams go well for her.
-----
5. Last night in the hostel
So, during my last night, I actually got to know one of my new roommates. Most of my roommates, besides the guy in the bunk above me, changed in the five nights I was there. By the time of the last night, I was with two British (Australian? couldn't tell with the accent, but British is more likely) girls, the guy above me's friend, a few Asian guys, and then Scott. Scott's an American, in his 40s-ish, originally from Raleigh area, NC, but now working out of Birmingham by way of Washington DC. It was interesting talking to him, because he got his PhD from a British university so he knows how the system works a little bit.
I also needed to call home. For those of you who don't know, my grandmother passed away last Friday, and her funeral was yesterday, so I called home and offered what little condolences I could. I feel terrible about not being there, but there's literally nothing I could have done.
More journal-writing, and that was the end of my night.
- Jen -
London, Day 4 (Wednesday 9 December)
Highlights of my third full day in London:
1. British Museum, take two
2. Chelsea
3. Victoria and Albert Museum
4. Trafalgar Square
-----
1. British Museum, take two
So, since I had only visited the upper floor the last time I went to the British Museum, I decided to come back and tackle the ground floor for real. And I'm really glad I did. Their special exhibits were kind of jaw dropping.
In their Egypt room, not only did they have gigantic parts of statues and representations of kings, but they also had the Rosetta Stone. I learned later that some other museum is trying to get it away from the British Museum, but I'm not surprised. Wherever it was originally found probably wants it back. Still, I saw the actual Rosetta Stone. It's really not that interesting; it's more of a symbol of the power of language than anything awesome in itself.
The thing that I saw which was vastly more impressive was the series of Greek and Roman statues illustrating myths. Also, they had about half of the ruins of the Parthenon in the British Museum. It was exciting getting to see them, but it also made me sad, because that's probably the closest I'm ever going to get to Athens, ever. The other thing that was cool about those ruins in particular was the myths that were depicted between the ancient humanoid giant race and the centaurs. That's one of the ones you don't hear while you're at school, and seeing all of the panels was interesting. The capture of movement... the Greeks were geniuses at figuring out the ideal form and realizing it in marble. Just fantastic.
Grabbed lunch at the museum again and went back to the hostel to drop off a souvenir before I moved on with my day.
-----
2. Chelsea
So, I was on my way to the three-museum complex in a southern part of London. I took the Underground to the right stop and everything, but then I took a complete wrong turn once I got to ground level and got lost.
I didn't mind so much, really, because I got lost in Chelsea. So there I am, walking leisurely along the King's Road, looking into the windows of little local shops, and it reminded me of home yet again. There's a little suburb off of Columbus that has a main street just like the King's Road through Chelsea, and I got homesick again, because I used to go to choir rehearsal in that little town. It's really the little things that get to me.
Anyhow, I did eventually find my way back to the museums, after about a half-hour of being delightfully lost.
-----
3. Victoria and Albert Museum
Also just called the V&A. I was kind of ancient-ed out from so much time at the British Museum, so instead I headed to the medieval and Renaissance Europe rooms. I spent more than three hours wandering around there, taking in gilt iconography, altarpieces, diptychs, triptychs, bishops' vestments, restored stained glass windows... and that was just in the medieval section. You can really tell, by what has been preserved, what people were most interested in preserving at that time, and it was their Christian beliefs. Although now I'm attempting a blog post to be published around Christmas about the intersection of feminist beliefs with Christian ones... you'll see, hopefully, if I manage to write it well enough.
Then I went into the Renaissance section, and I was enraptured again by the Elizabethan section of the museum. They had preserved clothing. Clothing! From 400 years ago! It was amazing to see. Also of note was some of the armor I was able to see, as well as the decorative and also useful rifles, crossbows, and pistols. Certain of my gun-loving friends would have loved to see how well they were enameled. Also, seeing restorations of furniture, coats of arms, etc... just wow. I would have liked to explore more, but the museum closed and I was hungry, so I grabbed my dinner on the way down to the tube station.
-----
4. Trafalgar Square
Once I was on the tube, I headed to Trafalgar Square, because Kate had told me on Tuesday that there was usually caroling there. And I wasn't disappointed. They had a gigantic tree erected there, and groups were singing on a dais with microphones in the front. I sat through three different groups; one was, I think, for an environmental charity, one was from a school in the area singing to raise money to buy new instruments, and the last was the carolers from the Royal London Society for the Blind or something like that. I felt bad, but I really couldn't spare any change, or I would have run out of money much faster that I did otherwise.
It's so easy to overspend in England. Sometimes, I catch myself thinking that the pound is the same as the dollar, and it's definitely not. Ah well. I was frugal with food and I was buying Christmas presents, so it was kind of a one time thing.
After Trafalgar, I just made it back to the hostel and wrote again, blah blah blah, business as usual.
- Jen -
1. British Museum, take two
2. Chelsea
3. Victoria and Albert Museum
4. Trafalgar Square
-----
1. British Museum, take two
So, since I had only visited the upper floor the last time I went to the British Museum, I decided to come back and tackle the ground floor for real. And I'm really glad I did. Their special exhibits were kind of jaw dropping.
In their Egypt room, not only did they have gigantic parts of statues and representations of kings, but they also had the Rosetta Stone. I learned later that some other museum is trying to get it away from the British Museum, but I'm not surprised. Wherever it was originally found probably wants it back. Still, I saw the actual Rosetta Stone. It's really not that interesting; it's more of a symbol of the power of language than anything awesome in itself.
The thing that I saw which was vastly more impressive was the series of Greek and Roman statues illustrating myths. Also, they had about half of the ruins of the Parthenon in the British Museum. It was exciting getting to see them, but it also made me sad, because that's probably the closest I'm ever going to get to Athens, ever. The other thing that was cool about those ruins in particular was the myths that were depicted between the ancient humanoid giant race and the centaurs. That's one of the ones you don't hear while you're at school, and seeing all of the panels was interesting. The capture of movement... the Greeks were geniuses at figuring out the ideal form and realizing it in marble. Just fantastic.
Grabbed lunch at the museum again and went back to the hostel to drop off a souvenir before I moved on with my day.
-----
2. Chelsea
So, I was on my way to the three-museum complex in a southern part of London. I took the Underground to the right stop and everything, but then I took a complete wrong turn once I got to ground level and got lost.
I didn't mind so much, really, because I got lost in Chelsea. So there I am, walking leisurely along the King's Road, looking into the windows of little local shops, and it reminded me of home yet again. There's a little suburb off of Columbus that has a main street just like the King's Road through Chelsea, and I got homesick again, because I used to go to choir rehearsal in that little town. It's really the little things that get to me.
Anyhow, I did eventually find my way back to the museums, after about a half-hour of being delightfully lost.
-----
3. Victoria and Albert Museum
Also just called the V&A. I was kind of ancient-ed out from so much time at the British Museum, so instead I headed to the medieval and Renaissance Europe rooms. I spent more than three hours wandering around there, taking in gilt iconography, altarpieces, diptychs, triptychs, bishops' vestments, restored stained glass windows... and that was just in the medieval section. You can really tell, by what has been preserved, what people were most interested in preserving at that time, and it was their Christian beliefs. Although now I'm attempting a blog post to be published around Christmas about the intersection of feminist beliefs with Christian ones... you'll see, hopefully, if I manage to write it well enough.
Then I went into the Renaissance section, and I was enraptured again by the Elizabethan section of the museum. They had preserved clothing. Clothing! From 400 years ago! It was amazing to see. Also of note was some of the armor I was able to see, as well as the decorative and also useful rifles, crossbows, and pistols. Certain of my gun-loving friends would have loved to see how well they were enameled. Also, seeing restorations of furniture, coats of arms, etc... just wow. I would have liked to explore more, but the museum closed and I was hungry, so I grabbed my dinner on the way down to the tube station.
-----
4. Trafalgar Square
Once I was on the tube, I headed to Trafalgar Square, because Kate had told me on Tuesday that there was usually caroling there. And I wasn't disappointed. They had a gigantic tree erected there, and groups were singing on a dais with microphones in the front. I sat through three different groups; one was, I think, for an environmental charity, one was from a school in the area singing to raise money to buy new instruments, and the last was the carolers from the Royal London Society for the Blind or something like that. I felt bad, but I really couldn't spare any change, or I would have run out of money much faster that I did otherwise.
It's so easy to overspend in England. Sometimes, I catch myself thinking that the pound is the same as the dollar, and it's definitely not. Ah well. I was frugal with food and I was buying Christmas presents, so it was kind of a one time thing.
After Trafalgar, I just made it back to the hostel and wrote again, blah blah blah, business as usual.
- Jen -
London, Day 3 (Tuesday 8 December)
Highlights of my second full day in London:
1. Charles Dickens Museum
2. British Museum
3. Hyde Park, take two
4. Embassy Row
5. Harrod's
-----
1. Charles Dickens Museum
So, the hostel I was staying at was close to other places besides just King's Cross. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk away from the British Museum, and on the way was supposed to be the Charles Dickens Museum. I think it was supposed to be at the home of one of the places where he might have lived in London, because it was on a residential street. Anyways, I actually showed up a few minutes too early, and once again it charged for admissions, so I passed it by in favor of getting to the British Museum early. I did get a picture, though, and that has to count for something.
-----
2. The British Museum
It's a fantastic museum. They have two whole wings for Ancient Rome and Greece, two for Egypt, special exhibits... I could go on and on and on. On this day in particular, I stayed on the first floor (that's the second floor to you Americans) and wandered around what seemed to be their 'lifestyle' displays for the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, and Egyptians. I got to see the Sutton Hoo horde, which was COMPLETELY AWESOME. As a Beowulf fan, I couldn't pass it up. For those of you who don't know, the Sutton Hoo burial is supposed to be the closest replica to the Beowulf-style burial anyone has ever found. There was an entire ship buried with a horde of treasure that must have belonged to a great king. It was so cool being able to see it. (Can you tell I'm enough of a nerd?)
I kind of freaked myself out when I was in the Egypt rooms. There were mummies out on display, as well as a burial site from before mummification became common. That was cool enough, but then my brain just started thinking, what was in those mummies (and what had been the bones in that burial site) was once a living, breathing person. When you start to think about that for too long, it starts to freak you out and make you a little upset. Especially since there were various groups of schoolchildren (about elementary school age) wandering around and exploring. At that age, I was all, MUMMIES ARE COOL, but then I realized that they were Soylent Green (you know, they're people and all that) and my thinking changed drastically.
I remember being more caught up in the jewelry than anything else. Not only am I attracted to shiny things, but it was also interesting seeing the shapes of various things. If I'd see an earring, I'd wonder "how were ears pierced back then?" If I saw a bracelet, I would wonder "were wrists really that small back then?" You get the idea. I'm just fascinated by that. Any culture that's rich enough to have those sorts of artisans... it's just really cool to me. Maybe it's also that I'm a detail oriented person but I can't even understand how people put together jewelry in the ancient times. So delicate... so awesome to see. (Kind of makes you wonder what archaeologists 2000 years from now are going to think about our habits if all they find is our jewelry.)
I had a quick lunch at the museum and then went back to the hostel for a little while to take a short nap before I embarked on the next part of my day.
-----
3. Hyde Park, take two
Remember I said on Sunday that I had seen what looked like a fair from the entrance I had been at in Hyde Park? Well, on Tuesday, I actually got to visit it. I met up with Kate, the other girl at the Oxford program this year, at the entrance to what they called their Winter Wonderland, and we went ice skating.
It was an outdoor pond, which was kind of disconcerting seeing as it wasn't cold enough to freeze anything in the park, but it was neat. We got tickets for just as the sun was setting, so we watched the lights of the carnival rides get brighter and brighter against the sky. I remember we talked about tutorials, going home for Christmas, and Disney movies. I missed ice skating. It's not Christmas until there's some sort of skating. Maybe I'll go again with Justin once I get home... that would be nice.
So we spent an hour ice-skating before we were ushered off the rink, and then we wandered the wonderland. To give you an idea of what it was like, imagine Epcot Germany, and then add all of the quirkiness of the theme park from the movie Adventureland. It was wonderful. All of the food stalls were German themed, and so for dinner Kate and I got cinnamon-suger pretzels. Delicious and so totally worth it. I also looked for those stupid rassafrassing sour watermelon gummies that they have at the Huddle back at ND, but I haven't been able to find them anywhere since I had them back in April-May-ish. Makes me sad... I have some good memories with those candies.
-----
4. Embassy Row
So, Kate and I got a little lost between heading from Hyde Park to Harrods. As it turned out, we went in the complete wrong direction, but we actually got lost in a very charming area of town: where all of the foreign embassies are. We must have seen at least fifty different kinds of flags waving from the columned porches. Especially after the very international Winter Wonderland we had just been at, it was really cool. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died just before I got into Hyde Park, so I don't have any pictures of ANYTHING after that. (Though I did find my charger, which I thought I had lost, but it makes everything MORE ANNOYING because I could have taken more pictures!!!!!)
-----
5. Harrods
It's big. It has everything. Everything luxury, that is.
Kate and I just kind of gaped our way through. I swear our eyes were bugging out of our skulls. I could give you a floor by floor account, but it's really something you have to be there for. I did see a pair of gloves for 295 pounds, a champagne bar, a chocolate bar, a Lebanese restaurant (yes, these things were INSIDE the store), a Tiffany and Co counter (yes, INSIDE the store), dolls made in Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart's images for Twilight/New Moon (gross), and a lot more that I had written down. I was kind of afraid to even breathe the wrong way, because everything in that store was so expensive. I did manage to get a souvenir, though. Kind of a creepy place to be, though, if you're not super rich.
That took me until about 9 at night, at which point I packed up and made my way back to the hostel to journal about it all and call home. Much like any other night in London, really.
- Jen -
1. Charles Dickens Museum
2. British Museum
3. Hyde Park, take two
4. Embassy Row
5. Harrod's
-----
1. Charles Dickens Museum
So, the hostel I was staying at was close to other places besides just King's Cross. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk away from the British Museum, and on the way was supposed to be the Charles Dickens Museum. I think it was supposed to be at the home of one of the places where he might have lived in London, because it was on a residential street. Anyways, I actually showed up a few minutes too early, and once again it charged for admissions, so I passed it by in favor of getting to the British Museum early. I did get a picture, though, and that has to count for something.
-----
2. The British Museum
It's a fantastic museum. They have two whole wings for Ancient Rome and Greece, two for Egypt, special exhibits... I could go on and on and on. On this day in particular, I stayed on the first floor (that's the second floor to you Americans) and wandered around what seemed to be their 'lifestyle' displays for the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, and Egyptians. I got to see the Sutton Hoo horde, which was COMPLETELY AWESOME. As a Beowulf fan, I couldn't pass it up. For those of you who don't know, the Sutton Hoo burial is supposed to be the closest replica to the Beowulf-style burial anyone has ever found. There was an entire ship buried with a horde of treasure that must have belonged to a great king. It was so cool being able to see it. (Can you tell I'm enough of a nerd?)
I kind of freaked myself out when I was in the Egypt rooms. There were mummies out on display, as well as a burial site from before mummification became common. That was cool enough, but then my brain just started thinking, what was in those mummies (and what had been the bones in that burial site) was once a living, breathing person. When you start to think about that for too long, it starts to freak you out and make you a little upset. Especially since there were various groups of schoolchildren (about elementary school age) wandering around and exploring. At that age, I was all, MUMMIES ARE COOL, but then I realized that they were Soylent Green (you know, they're people and all that) and my thinking changed drastically.
I remember being more caught up in the jewelry than anything else. Not only am I attracted to shiny things, but it was also interesting seeing the shapes of various things. If I'd see an earring, I'd wonder "how were ears pierced back then?" If I saw a bracelet, I would wonder "were wrists really that small back then?" You get the idea. I'm just fascinated by that. Any culture that's rich enough to have those sorts of artisans... it's just really cool to me. Maybe it's also that I'm a detail oriented person but I can't even understand how people put together jewelry in the ancient times. So delicate... so awesome to see. (Kind of makes you wonder what archaeologists 2000 years from now are going to think about our habits if all they find is our jewelry.)
I had a quick lunch at the museum and then went back to the hostel for a little while to take a short nap before I embarked on the next part of my day.
-----
3. Hyde Park, take two
Remember I said on Sunday that I had seen what looked like a fair from the entrance I had been at in Hyde Park? Well, on Tuesday, I actually got to visit it. I met up with Kate, the other girl at the Oxford program this year, at the entrance to what they called their Winter Wonderland, and we went ice skating.
It was an outdoor pond, which was kind of disconcerting seeing as it wasn't cold enough to freeze anything in the park, but it was neat. We got tickets for just as the sun was setting, so we watched the lights of the carnival rides get brighter and brighter against the sky. I remember we talked about tutorials, going home for Christmas, and Disney movies. I missed ice skating. It's not Christmas until there's some sort of skating. Maybe I'll go again with Justin once I get home... that would be nice.
So we spent an hour ice-skating before we were ushered off the rink, and then we wandered the wonderland. To give you an idea of what it was like, imagine Epcot Germany, and then add all of the quirkiness of the theme park from the movie Adventureland. It was wonderful. All of the food stalls were German themed, and so for dinner Kate and I got cinnamon-suger pretzels. Delicious and so totally worth it. I also looked for those stupid rassafrassing sour watermelon gummies that they have at the Huddle back at ND, but I haven't been able to find them anywhere since I had them back in April-May-ish. Makes me sad... I have some good memories with those candies.
-----
4. Embassy Row
So, Kate and I got a little lost between heading from Hyde Park to Harrods. As it turned out, we went in the complete wrong direction, but we actually got lost in a very charming area of town: where all of the foreign embassies are. We must have seen at least fifty different kinds of flags waving from the columned porches. Especially after the very international Winter Wonderland we had just been at, it was really cool. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died just before I got into Hyde Park, so I don't have any pictures of ANYTHING after that. (Though I did find my charger, which I thought I had lost, but it makes everything MORE ANNOYING because I could have taken more pictures!!!!!)
-----
5. Harrods
It's big. It has everything. Everything luxury, that is.
Kate and I just kind of gaped our way through. I swear our eyes were bugging out of our skulls. I could give you a floor by floor account, but it's really something you have to be there for. I did see a pair of gloves for 295 pounds, a champagne bar, a chocolate bar, a Lebanese restaurant (yes, these things were INSIDE the store), a Tiffany and Co counter (yes, INSIDE the store), dolls made in Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart's images for Twilight/New Moon (gross), and a lot more that I had written down. I was kind of afraid to even breathe the wrong way, because everything in that store was so expensive. I did manage to get a souvenir, though. Kind of a creepy place to be, though, if you're not super rich.
That took me until about 9 at night, at which point I packed up and made my way back to the hostel to journal about it all and call home. Much like any other night in London, really.
- Jen -
London, Day 2 (Monday 7 December)
Highlights of my first full day in London:
1. King's Cross Station
2. Madame Tussauds
3. Sherlock Holmes Museum
4. Regent's Park
5. London Zoo
6. British Library
7. The Blue Lion
-----
1. King's Cross Station
My first order of business after I had the hostel-sponsored breakfast was to visit King's Cross Station, because I heard from other friends that they had a fake brick barrier set up between platforms 9 and 10 that acted as a photography point for Platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately, there's been construction at King's Cross, and I couldn't reach platforms 9-11, so that photo opportunity was lost. On a side note, though, I no longer wonder where Peter Jackson got the idea for what the nazgul's cry from Lord of the Rings should sound like. Just listen to the whistling of the brakes and gears of electric trains and you'll get the idea. The high-pitched electric squealing sounded so much like that special effect that I actually got a chill down my spine. (Who knows? That might have actually been what they used.)
-----
2. Madame Tussauds
So, I did kind of a dumb thing and again walked everywhere. It wasn't such a big deal as Sunday, because I wasn't wearing my backpack any more, but it was still quite a lot of walking. I walked about three tube stops before I reached my first touristy place of the day, Madame Tussauds. The line wasn't that long to get in when I was there, because I got there about when it opened, but it was very expensive to get in. To anyone traveling there in the future, I really wouldn't recommend it unless (1) you're a fan of celebrities or (2) you have children that would really like to take pictures with the wax models. Sure, I was fascinated by everything, and I even have a rather dashing photograph of the Daniel Craig picture, but there was still something missing from the experience because I didn't get to photograph anyone I was with along with the models (or, you know, have pictures of myself with them).
A few strange things before I leave off with here. Their sports room in the UK was filled with rugby, football (read: soccer), and cricket models and only a few other sports figures that I recognized. I got pretty exciting when I saw a cycling plaque on the wall and thought I might see a figure of Lance Armstrong or something, but of course not.
Also, they had a wax figure of Shrek. Not quite sure how that one's supposed to work, since he's not real. I walked around the figure to see the back of the vest, which supposedly was supposed to have been stamped with the imprint of ND's golden dome (since the creators were from ND), but the done wasn't there, so I was disappointed. Not sure whether that's an error on the part of the modelers or wishful thinking on the part of Shrek fans.
The third really strange thing was that they had a short ride at the end of it that reminded me of the inside of the Epcot ball at Disney. It was a ride that supposedly took a visitor through a brief history of London, but it was just freaky. Kind of like a mixture of "It's a Small World" (which even I think is creepy) and the weirdest parts of London's history, like fires and the surrealism of Beatles songs. I really don't know how else to describe it. It kind of really unsettled me, a little, the way the cars would jerk around on the track and force you to stare at whatever.
-----
3. Sherlock Holmes Museum
So, as you nerds may or may not know, the address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (a creation of Arthur Conan Doyle) is at 221a Baker Street. It wasn't too far from Madame Tussauds so I figured I'd make a visit. I didn't count on there being a price for admission to the house, so I actually skipped it, but the gift shop in and of itself was worth a few minutes. The staff were dressed in period clothes and actually used the handpiece of an old-fashioned telephone to make their calls.
After I visited the museum, I went back and caught some of the souvenir shops on the main street outside before I headed north.
-----
4. Regent's Park
I don't think I originally planned to spend as much time as I did at Regent's Park, but it was a fine day and I still had plenty of spring in my step. It was right in the same area of town anyways, so I figured while I was out there I might as well pay it a visit. I got many, many pictures, most of which will be on Shutterfly shortly, but for those who can't see the pictures right now, a brief run-through will suffice.
There's an Inner Circle and a Broadwalk that make up most of the walking areas in the park, but I spent most of my time at Inner Circle. It was some kind of garden that was maintained for Queen Anne, I think, and it showed. Around the perimeter, there were at least seventy kinds of roses, and a few were still clinging to life even in December. I also got some wonderful photographs of willow trees and ducks which were not mallards. I also saw a pair of black swans!
I also walked up the main broadwalk and saw a bandstand there, but that's of almost no consequence. What is, though, was the cute sausage stand I found to eat lunch at. It was like a hot dog stand, but inside this cute cottage in the middle of the park. So it made a good lunch, and I enjoyed the few minutes of sitting time while I had it.
While I was walking, I noticed on the map of Regent's Park that the London Zoo was actually embedded in the park, so I figured, why not go to the zoo since I'm here anyways?
-----
5. London Zoo
So I went to the zoo. Another exorbitant fee for admission, but I spent a few good hours there, so it was worth it to me. Their aquarium was impressive. They had one tank devoted to fish they had saved from negligent owners. Apparently, when those types of fish were young, they were smaller and more attractive, so people wanted to keep them as pets. Now, they're about the size of my torso and probably just as heavy, and they need a huge tank to survive. It was sad to think that those fishes had been taken care of by idiots, but at least they were rescued now. I also saw quite a few tanks of amusing tropical fish and even a tank of fish that are either near extinction or actually extinct in Madagascar, so that was cool.
After the aquarium, I hit the reptile house. For once in my life, I actually saw the reptiles moving when I was in there! One of the basilisks was so dumb he tried to climb the glass wall separating me from him, as if he were showing off for me. I watched snakes climb up trees and turtles scurry and swim. I got freaked out at one point because they had put projections onto the floor of reptiles crawling around, but once I realized it wasn't real I remembered how to breathe again. Interestingly, inside the reptile house, they actually have a plaque commemorating the fact that Harry Potter was fictionally there. (And I think they also wanted to remind visitors that the only way a snake can get loose is by an act of magic.) Side note: How was that python supposed to have gotten to Burma anyways? Wouldn't it, like, have to cross an ocean and stuff? Just wondering.
I also got to pet a snake! I don't remember what kind it was, but it felt smooth, like plastic almost, not rough like other reptiles I've touched. Kind of cool.
They had most of the other normal kinds of animals, like zebras, giraffes, warthogs (CHUPATHINGY!), tigers, gorillas, white-faced monkeys, boars, camels, llamas, etc., but the next thing that really stuck out to me was that they had a human-sized model of a termite colony constructed by artists who were trying to study the industrious habits of termites. Needless to say, this confused me. I was also amused endlessly by the family of otters that the zoo had. I spent about 45 minutes just letting them lead me back and forth across their cage, listening to their cries (somewhere between birds and cats, like squeaky babies or something), and watching them play with pebbles. I have a 40-second video of one particular otter batting a pebble against the glass as if that would impress me, it has to be seen to be believed.
Overall... I hate to say this, but I was kind of disappointed. I mean, I've also got ridiculously high expectations, because Columbus Zoo is ranked #1 in the country right now, but still, I was disappointed. It also made me rather homesick. At this time of year, the zoo at home has ZooLights, where they put up about six hundred thousand (LED) Christmas lights all around the place. It's very romantic and Justin and I usually go on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Well, obviously we didn't get to go yet this year. Hopefully we can go once I get home, but... zoos remind me of Christmas at home, that's all.
-----
6. British Library
The zoo closed around sunset, which in London right now is around 4 PM. Once I got shooed out, it started to rain a little, and I was generally grumpy, cold, and wet until I saw the British Library on my way back to the hostel. I stopped in, even though I'd only have about an hour and a half until the exhibits close (everything in the world closes at 6, I swear!), but it was worth it. Free admission, and I saw two of the coolest exhibits ever.
The first exhibit was any photography nerd's dream. It was about the early history of photography and how it was used in sociological contexts (like ethnography and in cases of class division, composition, etc.). I learned about calotypes, daguerrotypes, and silver nitrate (more than I expected) and some of the photographs on display were almost haunting. Thankfully I picked up a brochure, because I obviously wasn't allowed to take photos of the exhibition.
Then upstairs was the British Library's main collection. They split off from the British Museum as the Museum got to be too full, or something like that, I don't exactly remember the story, but anyways, the Library got to keep all of the rare manuscripts and everything like that. So, the main collection was a series of really rare and valuable pieces of literature. I saw pages of the Gospels with gold leaf on them, but they didn't just have Christian religious texts, they had rare items from other religions too. They had an original copy of the Magna Carta enshrined in its own room. (It's a big deal for Brits, just like the Declaration of Independence is important to us.)
Some of the other neat things that they had included some of the drafts and work done while Samuel Johnson was compiling his dictionary, a case devoted to the Bard (I saw a folio that might contain one of his very early 'lost' plays, even something that's been generally decided to be in his handwriting), manuscripts written by a Bronte, the original edition of Alice in Wonderland with illustrations by Lewis Carroll, part of a handwritten lecture made by Freud, a letter detailing how computer programming might be useful in the future... what was probably the coolest, to me, though, was Ravel's first manuscript copy of his Bolero. It was SO COOL to stand there and hum along to the main melody as I read along to something that was in his handwriting... but I might just be a nerd like that.
-----
7. The Blue Lion
So I left the British Library around six, but I didn't want to go back to the hostel just yet, so instead, I dropped off my souvenirs, grabbed my journal, and headed to a pub for dinner and a warm place to sit and write. I went to a pub called The Blue Lion, which had a great atmosphere and background music. I ordered the closest thing they had to fish and chips, which was salmon and haddock breaded cake things with chips and salad, and washed it down with a pint of Amstel while I wrote about my day. I must have stayed there for at least three hours, just sipping at my pint and scribbling away. One of the gentlemen there even asked me "How's the novel going?" I had to admit that it wasn't my novel... but I had that small, secret smile, because I knew, even though he didn't, that I had in fact just written a novel.
That's pretty much my whole day again.
- Jen -
1. King's Cross Station
2. Madame Tussauds
3. Sherlock Holmes Museum
4. Regent's Park
5. London Zoo
6. British Library
7. The Blue Lion
-----
1. King's Cross Station
My first order of business after I had the hostel-sponsored breakfast was to visit King's Cross Station, because I heard from other friends that they had a fake brick barrier set up between platforms 9 and 10 that acted as a photography point for Platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately, there's been construction at King's Cross, and I couldn't reach platforms 9-11, so that photo opportunity was lost. On a side note, though, I no longer wonder where Peter Jackson got the idea for what the nazgul's cry from Lord of the Rings should sound like. Just listen to the whistling of the brakes and gears of electric trains and you'll get the idea. The high-pitched electric squealing sounded so much like that special effect that I actually got a chill down my spine. (Who knows? That might have actually been what they used.)
-----
2. Madame Tussauds
So, I did kind of a dumb thing and again walked everywhere. It wasn't such a big deal as Sunday, because I wasn't wearing my backpack any more, but it was still quite a lot of walking. I walked about three tube stops before I reached my first touristy place of the day, Madame Tussauds. The line wasn't that long to get in when I was there, because I got there about when it opened, but it was very expensive to get in. To anyone traveling there in the future, I really wouldn't recommend it unless (1) you're a fan of celebrities or (2) you have children that would really like to take pictures with the wax models. Sure, I was fascinated by everything, and I even have a rather dashing photograph of the Daniel Craig picture, but there was still something missing from the experience because I didn't get to photograph anyone I was with along with the models (or, you know, have pictures of myself with them).
A few strange things before I leave off with here. Their sports room in the UK was filled with rugby, football (read: soccer), and cricket models and only a few other sports figures that I recognized. I got pretty exciting when I saw a cycling plaque on the wall and thought I might see a figure of Lance Armstrong or something, but of course not.
Also, they had a wax figure of Shrek. Not quite sure how that one's supposed to work, since he's not real. I walked around the figure to see the back of the vest, which supposedly was supposed to have been stamped with the imprint of ND's golden dome (since the creators were from ND), but the done wasn't there, so I was disappointed. Not sure whether that's an error on the part of the modelers or wishful thinking on the part of Shrek fans.
The third really strange thing was that they had a short ride at the end of it that reminded me of the inside of the Epcot ball at Disney. It was a ride that supposedly took a visitor through a brief history of London, but it was just freaky. Kind of like a mixture of "It's a Small World" (which even I think is creepy) and the weirdest parts of London's history, like fires and the surrealism of Beatles songs. I really don't know how else to describe it. It kind of really unsettled me, a little, the way the cars would jerk around on the track and force you to stare at whatever.
-----
3. Sherlock Holmes Museum
So, as you nerds may or may not know, the address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (a creation of Arthur Conan Doyle) is at 221a Baker Street. It wasn't too far from Madame Tussauds so I figured I'd make a visit. I didn't count on there being a price for admission to the house, so I actually skipped it, but the gift shop in and of itself was worth a few minutes. The staff were dressed in period clothes and actually used the handpiece of an old-fashioned telephone to make their calls.
After I visited the museum, I went back and caught some of the souvenir shops on the main street outside before I headed north.
-----
4. Regent's Park
I don't think I originally planned to spend as much time as I did at Regent's Park, but it was a fine day and I still had plenty of spring in my step. It was right in the same area of town anyways, so I figured while I was out there I might as well pay it a visit. I got many, many pictures, most of which will be on Shutterfly shortly, but for those who can't see the pictures right now, a brief run-through will suffice.
There's an Inner Circle and a Broadwalk that make up most of the walking areas in the park, but I spent most of my time at Inner Circle. It was some kind of garden that was maintained for Queen Anne, I think, and it showed. Around the perimeter, there were at least seventy kinds of roses, and a few were still clinging to life even in December. I also got some wonderful photographs of willow trees and ducks which were not mallards. I also saw a pair of black swans!
I also walked up the main broadwalk and saw a bandstand there, but that's of almost no consequence. What is, though, was the cute sausage stand I found to eat lunch at. It was like a hot dog stand, but inside this cute cottage in the middle of the park. So it made a good lunch, and I enjoyed the few minutes of sitting time while I had it.
While I was walking, I noticed on the map of Regent's Park that the London Zoo was actually embedded in the park, so I figured, why not go to the zoo since I'm here anyways?
-----
5. London Zoo
So I went to the zoo. Another exorbitant fee for admission, but I spent a few good hours there, so it was worth it to me. Their aquarium was impressive. They had one tank devoted to fish they had saved from negligent owners. Apparently, when those types of fish were young, they were smaller and more attractive, so people wanted to keep them as pets. Now, they're about the size of my torso and probably just as heavy, and they need a huge tank to survive. It was sad to think that those fishes had been taken care of by idiots, but at least they were rescued now. I also saw quite a few tanks of amusing tropical fish and even a tank of fish that are either near extinction or actually extinct in Madagascar, so that was cool.
After the aquarium, I hit the reptile house. For once in my life, I actually saw the reptiles moving when I was in there! One of the basilisks was so dumb he tried to climb the glass wall separating me from him, as if he were showing off for me. I watched snakes climb up trees and turtles scurry and swim. I got freaked out at one point because they had put projections onto the floor of reptiles crawling around, but once I realized it wasn't real I remembered how to breathe again. Interestingly, inside the reptile house, they actually have a plaque commemorating the fact that Harry Potter was fictionally there. (And I think they also wanted to remind visitors that the only way a snake can get loose is by an act of magic.) Side note: How was that python supposed to have gotten to Burma anyways? Wouldn't it, like, have to cross an ocean and stuff? Just wondering.
I also got to pet a snake! I don't remember what kind it was, but it felt smooth, like plastic almost, not rough like other reptiles I've touched. Kind of cool.
They had most of the other normal kinds of animals, like zebras, giraffes, warthogs (CHUPATHINGY!), tigers, gorillas, white-faced monkeys, boars, camels, llamas, etc., but the next thing that really stuck out to me was that they had a human-sized model of a termite colony constructed by artists who were trying to study the industrious habits of termites. Needless to say, this confused me. I was also amused endlessly by the family of otters that the zoo had. I spent about 45 minutes just letting them lead me back and forth across their cage, listening to their cries (somewhere between birds and cats, like squeaky babies or something), and watching them play with pebbles. I have a 40-second video of one particular otter batting a pebble against the glass as if that would impress me, it has to be seen to be believed.
Overall... I hate to say this, but I was kind of disappointed. I mean, I've also got ridiculously high expectations, because Columbus Zoo is ranked #1 in the country right now, but still, I was disappointed. It also made me rather homesick. At this time of year, the zoo at home has ZooLights, where they put up about six hundred thousand (LED) Christmas lights all around the place. It's very romantic and Justin and I usually go on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Well, obviously we didn't get to go yet this year. Hopefully we can go once I get home, but... zoos remind me of Christmas at home, that's all.
-----
6. British Library
The zoo closed around sunset, which in London right now is around 4 PM. Once I got shooed out, it started to rain a little, and I was generally grumpy, cold, and wet until I saw the British Library on my way back to the hostel. I stopped in, even though I'd only have about an hour and a half until the exhibits close (everything in the world closes at 6, I swear!), but it was worth it. Free admission, and I saw two of the coolest exhibits ever.
The first exhibit was any photography nerd's dream. It was about the early history of photography and how it was used in sociological contexts (like ethnography and in cases of class division, composition, etc.). I learned about calotypes, daguerrotypes, and silver nitrate (more than I expected) and some of the photographs on display were almost haunting. Thankfully I picked up a brochure, because I obviously wasn't allowed to take photos of the exhibition.
Then upstairs was the British Library's main collection. They split off from the British Museum as the Museum got to be too full, or something like that, I don't exactly remember the story, but anyways, the Library got to keep all of the rare manuscripts and everything like that. So, the main collection was a series of really rare and valuable pieces of literature. I saw pages of the Gospels with gold leaf on them, but they didn't just have Christian religious texts, they had rare items from other religions too. They had an original copy of the Magna Carta enshrined in its own room. (It's a big deal for Brits, just like the Declaration of Independence is important to us.)
Some of the other neat things that they had included some of the drafts and work done while Samuel Johnson was compiling his dictionary, a case devoted to the Bard (I saw a folio that might contain one of his very early 'lost' plays, even something that's been generally decided to be in his handwriting), manuscripts written by a Bronte, the original edition of Alice in Wonderland with illustrations by Lewis Carroll, part of a handwritten lecture made by Freud, a letter detailing how computer programming might be useful in the future... what was probably the coolest, to me, though, was Ravel's first manuscript copy of his Bolero. It was SO COOL to stand there and hum along to the main melody as I read along to something that was in his handwriting... but I might just be a nerd like that.
-----
7. The Blue Lion
So I left the British Library around six, but I didn't want to go back to the hostel just yet, so instead, I dropped off my souvenirs, grabbed my journal, and headed to a pub for dinner and a warm place to sit and write. I went to a pub called The Blue Lion, which had a great atmosphere and background music. I ordered the closest thing they had to fish and chips, which was salmon and haddock breaded cake things with chips and salad, and washed it down with a pint of Amstel while I wrote about my day. I must have stayed there for at least three hours, just sipping at my pint and scribbling away. One of the gentlemen there even asked me "How's the novel going?" I had to admit that it wasn't my novel... but I had that small, secret smile, because I knew, even though he didn't, that I had in fact just written a novel.
That's pretty much my whole day again.
- Jen -
London, Day 1 (Sunday 6 December)
Highlights:
1. Bus journey
2. Hyde Park
3. Oxford Street
4. Hostel
-----
1. Bus journey
So, I took the Oxford Tube from Gloucester in Oxford to Marble Arch in London. For those of you who don't immediately know what I'm talking about, it was from one bus station to one of the corners of Hyde Park. It was an interesting journey because it was my first time on a bus since I had actually come to Oxford. It was also a double-decker, which was interesting and gave some nice views of the street. The journey itself only took about an hour, but while I was riding I was listening to Christmas music and getting ideas for Red vs. Blue ficlets, so we'll see how those materialize.
I ran errands until noon, caught the bus around 12:30, and made it to London with some daylight left, which allowed me to do a few nice things.
-----
2. Hyde Park
Just like I planned, I got to London with an hour or so of daylight left. I got off a few stops early so I could walk through Hyde Park for a while, and I got some nice pictures of sunset on the water. While I was at the park, I saw a group of mounted police or rangers or something, and I also saw what looked like a fair from far off (a Ferris wheel, scream tower, carnie rides, stuff like that). I also saw some kind of roller blading competition or get-together where skaters were trying to impress one another by skating through a series of cones... yeah, I don't really know how to describe it.
-----
3. Oxford Street
So, to get to my hostel from Hyde Park, I elected to walk. It was actually a very long walk, more than an hour, and I had a heavy backpack on my back, so it didn't make for a very happy me. But I walked through Oxford Street, which is one of the largest retailer streets in London. There are multiple H&Ms, River Islands, and other stores like that along the length. I got some entertaining pictures of some of the window displays, because they were set up like panto scenes (but garishly freaky ones). I'll put those up on Shutterfly soon, once I get the battery charged on my camera.
So anyways, I actually passed up multiple Tube stations because I figured it wouldn't be that long of a walk, but it was. By the time I got to the hostel, my shoulders and back were killing me.
-----
4. Hostel
I stayed at a hostel called Ashlee House, on Grays Inn Road. It wasn't more than five minutes from King's Cross (you know, the huge railway station that goes out of London to everywhere else ever). So, for traveling to other places in London, it was a good place to stay, because there was a Tube station there that connected to about five different lines.
Other than that... it was kind of crappy. I was in a room on the top floor with eight beds, but thankfully I got a bottom bunk, so I was happy with that. The walls of our room were painted lime green and the stairwell was a bright lavender color... not the best color scheme, but it was kind of cute and good for the crowd they're going for, I think. The whole place kind of smelled like band camp to me and so didn't exactly evoke the best memories, but I made do. It had a kitchen and a common space in the basement, but most of the time, the mostly German kids in the hotel would be drinking and listening to music down there, so most of the time I just hung out in my room.
The first night I was there, there were six other girls and one kind of creepy guy in the bunk above mine. Two of the girls were some kind of French or Swedish or something, two of the girls were German, and two were Americans. I got to know them all right. They were studying abroad in Turin and were taking the weekend off to go to Dublin and London. Like everyone else on the semester system, they still had class. It was interesting chatting to them, because they didn't exactly understand England. Like, at all. I had to explain to them that Oxford is both a town and a university, and that England, Great Britain, and the UK are not synonymous. I mean, I'm no rocket scientist and I understand it, but for them not to know... enh. I expect too much out of people.
Anyways, since I was pretty disoriented from everything, I pretty much spent the rest of the night writing in my journal. It's got all sorts of pretty colors in it now, I like the way I've been keeping it during my trip. It's also acting as a nice refresher, so I hope that years from now I can read my handwriting and see what I remembered and what I was thinking and feeling.
That's about all for Sunday. I really had a boring day that day and didn't do much besides Hyde Park and Oxford Street that anyone's going to care about.
- Jen -
1. Bus journey
2. Hyde Park
3. Oxford Street
4. Hostel
-----
1. Bus journey
So, I took the Oxford Tube from Gloucester in Oxford to Marble Arch in London. For those of you who don't immediately know what I'm talking about, it was from one bus station to one of the corners of Hyde Park. It was an interesting journey because it was my first time on a bus since I had actually come to Oxford. It was also a double-decker, which was interesting and gave some nice views of the street. The journey itself only took about an hour, but while I was riding I was listening to Christmas music and getting ideas for Red vs. Blue ficlets, so we'll see how those materialize.
I ran errands until noon, caught the bus around 12:30, and made it to London with some daylight left, which allowed me to do a few nice things.
-----
2. Hyde Park
Just like I planned, I got to London with an hour or so of daylight left. I got off a few stops early so I could walk through Hyde Park for a while, and I got some nice pictures of sunset on the water. While I was at the park, I saw a group of mounted police or rangers or something, and I also saw what looked like a fair from far off (a Ferris wheel, scream tower, carnie rides, stuff like that). I also saw some kind of roller blading competition or get-together where skaters were trying to impress one another by skating through a series of cones... yeah, I don't really know how to describe it.
-----
3. Oxford Street
So, to get to my hostel from Hyde Park, I elected to walk. It was actually a very long walk, more than an hour, and I had a heavy backpack on my back, so it didn't make for a very happy me. But I walked through Oxford Street, which is one of the largest retailer streets in London. There are multiple H&Ms, River Islands, and other stores like that along the length. I got some entertaining pictures of some of the window displays, because they were set up like panto scenes (but garishly freaky ones). I'll put those up on Shutterfly soon, once I get the battery charged on my camera.
So anyways, I actually passed up multiple Tube stations because I figured it wouldn't be that long of a walk, but it was. By the time I got to the hostel, my shoulders and back were killing me.
-----
4. Hostel
I stayed at a hostel called Ashlee House, on Grays Inn Road. It wasn't more than five minutes from King's Cross (you know, the huge railway station that goes out of London to everywhere else ever). So, for traveling to other places in London, it was a good place to stay, because there was a Tube station there that connected to about five different lines.
Other than that... it was kind of crappy. I was in a room on the top floor with eight beds, but thankfully I got a bottom bunk, so I was happy with that. The walls of our room were painted lime green and the stairwell was a bright lavender color... not the best color scheme, but it was kind of cute and good for the crowd they're going for, I think. The whole place kind of smelled like band camp to me and so didn't exactly evoke the best memories, but I made do. It had a kitchen and a common space in the basement, but most of the time, the mostly German kids in the hotel would be drinking and listening to music down there, so most of the time I just hung out in my room.
The first night I was there, there were six other girls and one kind of creepy guy in the bunk above mine. Two of the girls were some kind of French or Swedish or something, two of the girls were German, and two were Americans. I got to know them all right. They were studying abroad in Turin and were taking the weekend off to go to Dublin and London. Like everyone else on the semester system, they still had class. It was interesting chatting to them, because they didn't exactly understand England. Like, at all. I had to explain to them that Oxford is both a town and a university, and that England, Great Britain, and the UK are not synonymous. I mean, I'm no rocket scientist and I understand it, but for them not to know... enh. I expect too much out of people.
Anyways, since I was pretty disoriented from everything, I pretty much spent the rest of the night writing in my journal. It's got all sorts of pretty colors in it now, I like the way I've been keeping it during my trip. It's also acting as a nice refresher, so I hope that years from now I can read my handwriting and see what I remembered and what I was thinking and feeling.
That's about all for Sunday. I really had a boring day that day and didn't do much besides Hyde Park and Oxford Street that anyone's going to care about.
- Jen -
03 December 2009
End of term goodness
So, I just finished my last essay for Michaelmas term, and I feel... strange. Liberated, I guess. I downloaded the Fight Club soundtrack, and that doesn't really have anything to do with the above sentences except that I'm listening to it right now. So, so, so good.
So, I'm booking a trip to London right now. Complicated, especially since I don't have a printer. I want to print maps! I guess I'll just be hanging out in the computer lab all day tomorrow until my last tutorial at 2 PM, printing off of Google Maps and creating a last-minute itinerary of things I want to do here in Oxford and in London while I'm there.
I'm excited, but also kind of scared. I've never travelled (ha, British spelling) alone before, but I think I'll live. I'm capable of doing this, it just freaks me out because I've never done it before. It'll be nice to have a little freedom for once, just doing what I want to do. And of course I'll take a billionty-two pictures while I'm in London and put them up on Shutterfly, so check that out.
I made the conscious decision to come back and stay in Oxford before leaving again, just so I would be able to pack my suitcase and all that great stuff. Maybe I'll also sneak in a Harry Potter tour, a main-colleges tour, a visit to the Ashmolean, and a visit to the Natural History Museum (and who knows, maybe even the Bod!), but I won't push myself or anything. It's break, after all, and I'll have half a week before next term to pretty much do what I want around here or London, whichever.
Too busy with everything at the moment to give a good recap of how this term has gone so far, but I think about half of it was spent doing NaNo, if that gives everyone an idea of how stressful, yet fun, my time here has been. Also, Luke (another ND student here) circulated an e-mail of a comment from the Warden about how the ND students consistently perform well. I got my records today and they... weren't that bad, actually. I might have been able to do a little better but I'm still adjusting and I was doing some tutorials that were a little out of my comfort zone. Next two terms should be better. (Probably need to e-mail the philosophy faculty at some point to let them know how I'm doing... or something...)
Blah. Just trying to get a few things done between now and tomorrow afternoon, as past two I basically have my whole evening planned out. So, I may update between now and London but don't count on it!
- Jen -
So, I'm booking a trip to London right now. Complicated, especially since I don't have a printer. I want to print maps! I guess I'll just be hanging out in the computer lab all day tomorrow until my last tutorial at 2 PM, printing off of Google Maps and creating a last-minute itinerary of things I want to do here in Oxford and in London while I'm there.
I'm excited, but also kind of scared. I've never travelled (ha, British spelling) alone before, but I think I'll live. I'm capable of doing this, it just freaks me out because I've never done it before. It'll be nice to have a little freedom for once, just doing what I want to do. And of course I'll take a billionty-two pictures while I'm in London and put them up on Shutterfly, so check that out.
I made the conscious decision to come back and stay in Oxford before leaving again, just so I would be able to pack my suitcase and all that great stuff. Maybe I'll also sneak in a Harry Potter tour, a main-colleges tour, a visit to the Ashmolean, and a visit to the Natural History Museum (and who knows, maybe even the Bod!), but I won't push myself or anything. It's break, after all, and I'll have half a week before next term to pretty much do what I want around here or London, whichever.
Too busy with everything at the moment to give a good recap of how this term has gone so far, but I think about half of it was spent doing NaNo, if that gives everyone an idea of how stressful, yet fun, my time here has been. Also, Luke (another ND student here) circulated an e-mail of a comment from the Warden about how the ND students consistently perform well. I got my records today and they... weren't that bad, actually. I might have been able to do a little better but I'm still adjusting and I was doing some tutorials that were a little out of my comfort zone. Next two terms should be better. (Probably need to e-mail the philosophy faculty at some point to let them know how I'm doing... or something...)
Blah. Just trying to get a few things done between now and tomorrow afternoon, as past two I basically have my whole evening planned out. So, I may update between now and London but don't count on it!
- Jen -
02 December 2009
Big, Fun, Scary List
So, after NaNo every year, a lot of participants get together and make goals for themselves for the upcoming year. It's kind of like a pre-emptive New Year's resolution set, except you actually do a little planning to make the goals you put in place come true. So, I just wanted to share my BFS list with all of you, and I hope you come up with your own.
My big, fun, scary list, with annotations.
1. Edit my main novel for this year with the help of my beta reader/technical editor. [Big.]
2. Shop for publishing houses/agents and send out cover letters/summaries/first chapters. [Big.]
3. Characterize, plan, and write my massive fanfiction novel at the pace of about a chapter a week. [Big, fun.]
4. Do NaNoWriMo 2010. [Big, fun.]
5. Take creative writing classes once I get back to main campus. [Fun, scary.]
---
6. Travel alone, including Europe and my college friends' hometowns. [Fun, scary.]
7. Get a summer job that I'm happy with, or at least make a little money this summer. [Big.]
8. Start knitting/sewing again for something to do for a few hours every day. [Fun.]
9. Actually learn how to knit correctly. I've been teaching myself on and off but I keep dropping it. [Fun.]
10. Actually go out to a club. Can you believe I've been at Oxford for two months and I haven't yet made it out to a club? [Fun.]
11. Make it onto the ballroom competitive team once I get back to main campus. [Big, fun, scary.]
12. Along that line, start exercising, even if it is just walking the treadmill for a half-hour every day. [Big, fun.]
13. Learn how to cook, for real, and cook something every day. [Scary. If you don't think it's scary then you don't really know how awkward I am as a cook.]
I think thirteen things is a good goal for now.
[ETA: LEARN FRENCH. It's been on my BFS for years now.]
My big, fun, scary list, with annotations.
1. Edit my main novel for this year with the help of my beta reader/technical editor. [Big.]
2. Shop for publishing houses/agents and send out cover letters/summaries/first chapters. [Big.]
3. Characterize, plan, and write my massive fanfiction novel at the pace of about a chapter a week. [Big, fun.]
4. Do NaNoWriMo 2010. [Big, fun.]
5. Take creative writing classes once I get back to main campus. [Fun, scary.]
---
6. Travel alone, including Europe and my college friends' hometowns. [Fun, scary.]
7. Get a summer job that I'm happy with, or at least make a little money this summer. [Big.]
8. Start knitting/sewing again for something to do for a few hours every day. [Fun.]
9. Actually learn how to knit correctly. I've been teaching myself on and off but I keep dropping it. [Fun.]
10. Actually go out to a club. Can you believe I've been at Oxford for two months and I haven't yet made it out to a club? [Fun.]
11. Make it onto the ballroom competitive team once I get back to main campus. [Big, fun, scary.]
12. Along that line, start exercising, even if it is just walking the treadmill for a half-hour every day. [Big, fun.]
13. Learn how to cook, for real, and cook something every day. [Scary. If you don't think it's scary then you don't really know how awkward I am as a cook.]
I think thirteen things is a good goal for now.
[ETA: LEARN FRENCH. It's been on my BFS for years now.]
01 December 2009
It's... over.
Not much has happened since my last update. There was a failed Failed Novelists outing on Saturday (failed because it rained too much for us to head out to the nunnery we were going to go to, we couldn't find space in the first two pubs we tried and had to settle for an ice cream shop, and I was too worn out from noveling all day to be much fun), but I had a wonderful milkshake so that makes everything so, so much better. There was more noveling and more tutorializing and so on and so forth. I picked out my tutorials for the next two terms (I think) and confirmed that I don't need to take collections (I think), but otherwise school is winding down and it's a lot more calm now that it's 8th Week.
---
Yesterday, I had a small crisis. It was the 30th of November, and I still needed at least 5,000 words in order to get to my amended goal. Now, usually I bribe myself with chocolate every few thousand words/chapter so that I can keep on track and get going. It's a delicious system.
So, I showed up to eat chocolate and finish novels, and I was all outta chocolate. No, seriously. I was all outta chocolate. This necessitated a last-minute Sainsbury's trip after dinner last night to get the emergency rations. Never fear, though: I did make it through November with my sanity intact (mostly, though the Failed Novelists still seem to know me as 'that one girl with the unholy word count). I finished at 11:00PM GMT, and after a small panic with the validator on the NaNo site, settled in with my wonderful purple bar of awesome. Congrats, me.
I feel very strange now that November is over. The end of term is this Friday so it's a little weird to be finally caught up only to realize that there is no more catching up to do. I'm glad it's done, though, so I can enjoy the rest of this week:
- Last L+L lecture
- Last Ethics tutorial
- Formal Christmas dinner
- Last Ethics lecture
- Last L+L tutorial
- Failed Novelists Thank God It's Over get-together
- Formal guest dinner
- Christmas bop
Lots of stuff going on and I'm excited to be a part of it.
---
To reward myself for the end of NaNo, I went out shopping this morning. I bought myself a surprise that I'll show everyone over Christmas, as well as put a sweaterdress on hold. But I'm more excited for the things I bought online:
- Circular 16" and double-pointed size 10.5 bamboo needles (yeah, I'm a knitting nerd too)
- Lion brand Jiffy yarn, 2 skeins each of 3 colors (can't tell you what colors, they're needed for Christmas presents for my friends!)
- This (trust me, it will help my poor hands)
- This shirt (because if it's good enough for Jayne Cobb it's good enough for you)
I'm so excited to get home and see all the things I've ordered waiting for me! And trust me, I deserve them all.
---
Just to give you all an idea of how NaNoWriMo went for me this year, I'm going to put up some statistics that I think illustrate my point pretty well. (I came up with a little worksheet last night, but apparently Blogger doesn't support tables.)
Goal Word Count: 100,000 (set in October) / 175,000 (set in Week 2 of November)
(2007: 60,000 | 2008: 75,000)
Actual Word Count: 176,756 (in two novels, ten drabbles, and two short stories; that is, not including schoolwork like essays, forum posts, blog posts, etc.)
(2007: 61,761 in one novel | 2008: 88,306 in one novel)
[In case you're still keeping track, this means that I actually more than DOUBLED last year's total word count.]
Total Hours Writing: 78:03
(2007: n/a | 2008: 40:26)
Average Hours Per Day: 2:36
(2007: n/a | 2008: 1:21)
Average Words Per Hour: 2,206
(2007: n/a | 2008: 2,181)
Fastest Words Per Hour: 3,387 on November 30
(2007: n/a | 2008: 3,993 on November 17)
Average Words Per Day: 5,892
(2007: calculating | 2008: 2,944)
Most Words Per Day: 12,378 on November 13
(2007: 5,719 on November 1 | 2008: 10,016 on November 1)
Number of Five Digit Days (days with 10,000+ words): 3
(2007: 0 | 2008: 1)
Number of days not making personal daily goal: 3
(2007: 15 | 2008: 7)
Number of days not making NaNo daily goal: 0
(2007: 11 | 2008: 7)
Number of days with no writing: 0
(2007: 6 | 2008: 3)
Day passed NaNo overall goal: November 9
(2007: November 19 | 2008: November 14)
Day passed personal overall goal: November 18
(2007: November 26 | 2008: November 23)
As you can see, every year I've improved. I think part of that is discipline and part of that is circumstances. I'm at a place in my life where I easily structure my own days, without much that I have to do in the 'outside world.' At ND I would easily be in lecture until 4 in the afternoon and still have to do work that might take until 10 at night. Here, I got up early and instead of going to lecture (or on top of going to lecture), I would read for my tutorials and write my essays before dinner. Then I would go out and eat in hall and come back, sit down in front of the keyboard and either take a 1-2 hour break or finish my essays, then get cracking on writing around 8 PM. Of course, there are days where I wrote more or less, but I think these statistics say a lot. And I'm quite proud of how much I've improved this year.
I also appear to have picked up a technical editor as a matter of course. It's nice to have found a beta reader who really is my ideal reader (my AI novel was definitely targeted to the geeky audience and was meant to have a near-future scientific appeal, so good job on me for writing for my audience). I'm actually not embarrassed of Lucid Proxy and that's a change for me: I haven't liked any of my other NaNo novels I've produced so far.
NaNo does an offer for winners that they can create a free CreateSpace proof copy for their manuscripts, redeemable by 30 May. So, if I can get my novel cleaned up and into second draft mode, I'll definitely send it through and possibly put it up for order through Amazon.com (CreateSpace assigns ISBNs to all proof copies, apparently, and I can vanity-press it and get a portion of the proceeds from each copy sold). However, I don't think I'll put it up on Amazon if I do, because if I can clean it up enough and target a few publishing houses, I could really get this thing out there.
Also speaking of NaNo, it was interesting being on the forums last night. There have been two writers whose progress I've been following, Kateness and CrimsonBlood, who both made it to a million words during the month. Yes, it's possible. These two girls have ungodly typing speed and outlines ahoy, and they know how they work and they structure their days so that they can get their work done on their time. I know for sure that Kateness has been unemployed this month (not by her own volition) and so she had the time and energy to reach the 1mil, but I think Crim might still be in some kind of school; she talks about homework on the forums a lot. Anyways, if you think MY accomplishment was a big deal, check these people out. (Yes, they have actually validated, but the validator on the NaNo site only goes up to 999,999 in order not to collapse the universe.)
---
So... I do still have an Ethics tutorial tomorrow, and I haven't started the essay yet. However, I have the whole rest of the day (like, 10 hours, guys!) to finish two final chapters of reading and pound out 2,500 words on the concept of free will. This looks easy as pie compared to what I've been doing this month. It also helps that I love reading about things like this, and that I've been gobbling up the literature over the past two days.
Also, I have a 230g half-finished bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk (most delicious chocolate ever) on my desk (and "Super Freak" just started playing in iTunes). Life is good.
- Jen -
---
Yesterday, I had a small crisis. It was the 30th of November, and I still needed at least 5,000 words in order to get to my amended goal. Now, usually I bribe myself with chocolate every few thousand words/chapter so that I can keep on track and get going. It's a delicious system.
So, I showed up to eat chocolate and finish novels, and I was all outta chocolate. No, seriously. I was all outta chocolate. This necessitated a last-minute Sainsbury's trip after dinner last night to get the emergency rations. Never fear, though: I did make it through November with my sanity intact (mostly, though the Failed Novelists still seem to know me as 'that one girl with the unholy word count). I finished at 11:00PM GMT, and after a small panic with the validator on the NaNo site, settled in with my wonderful purple bar of awesome. Congrats, me.
I feel very strange now that November is over. The end of term is this Friday so it's a little weird to be finally caught up only to realize that there is no more catching up to do. I'm glad it's done, though, so I can enjoy the rest of this week:
- Last L+L lecture
- Last Ethics tutorial
- Formal Christmas dinner
- Last Ethics lecture
- Last L+L tutorial
- Failed Novelists Thank God It's Over get-together
- Formal guest dinner
- Christmas bop
Lots of stuff going on and I'm excited to be a part of it.
---
To reward myself for the end of NaNo, I went out shopping this morning. I bought myself a surprise that I'll show everyone over Christmas, as well as put a sweaterdress on hold. But I'm more excited for the things I bought online:
- Circular 16" and double-pointed size 10.5 bamboo needles (yeah, I'm a knitting nerd too)
- Lion brand Jiffy yarn, 2 skeins each of 3 colors (can't tell you what colors, they're needed for Christmas presents for my friends!)
- This (trust me, it will help my poor hands)
- This shirt (because if it's good enough for Jayne Cobb it's good enough for you)
I'm so excited to get home and see all the things I've ordered waiting for me! And trust me, I deserve them all.
---
Just to give you all an idea of how NaNoWriMo went for me this year, I'm going to put up some statistics that I think illustrate my point pretty well. (I came up with a little worksheet last night, but apparently Blogger doesn't support tables.)
Goal Word Count: 100,000 (set in October) / 175,000 (set in Week 2 of November)
(2007: 60,000 | 2008: 75,000)
Actual Word Count: 176,756 (in two novels, ten drabbles, and two short stories; that is, not including schoolwork like essays, forum posts, blog posts, etc.)
(2007: 61,761 in one novel | 2008: 88,306 in one novel)
[In case you're still keeping track, this means that I actually more than DOUBLED last year's total word count.]
Total Hours Writing: 78:03
(2007: n/a | 2008: 40:26)
Average Hours Per Day: 2:36
(2007: n/a | 2008: 1:21)
Average Words Per Hour: 2,206
(2007: n/a | 2008: 2,181)
Fastest Words Per Hour: 3,387 on November 30
(2007: n/a | 2008: 3,993 on November 17)
Average Words Per Day: 5,892
(2007: calculating | 2008: 2,944)
Most Words Per Day: 12,378 on November 13
(2007: 5,719 on November 1 | 2008: 10,016 on November 1)
Number of Five Digit Days (days with 10,000+ words): 3
(2007: 0 | 2008: 1)
Number of days not making personal daily goal: 3
(2007: 15 | 2008: 7)
Number of days not making NaNo daily goal: 0
(2007: 11 | 2008: 7)
Number of days with no writing: 0
(2007: 6 | 2008: 3)
Day passed NaNo overall goal: November 9
(2007: November 19 | 2008: November 14)
Day passed personal overall goal: November 18
(2007: November 26 | 2008: November 23)
As you can see, every year I've improved. I think part of that is discipline and part of that is circumstances. I'm at a place in my life where I easily structure my own days, without much that I have to do in the 'outside world.' At ND I would easily be in lecture until 4 in the afternoon and still have to do work that might take until 10 at night. Here, I got up early and instead of going to lecture (or on top of going to lecture), I would read for my tutorials and write my essays before dinner. Then I would go out and eat in hall and come back, sit down in front of the keyboard and either take a 1-2 hour break or finish my essays, then get cracking on writing around 8 PM. Of course, there are days where I wrote more or less, but I think these statistics say a lot. And I'm quite proud of how much I've improved this year.
I also appear to have picked up a technical editor as a matter of course. It's nice to have found a beta reader who really is my ideal reader (my AI novel was definitely targeted to the geeky audience and was meant to have a near-future scientific appeal, so good job on me for writing for my audience). I'm actually not embarrassed of Lucid Proxy and that's a change for me: I haven't liked any of my other NaNo novels I've produced so far.
NaNo does an offer for winners that they can create a free CreateSpace proof copy for their manuscripts, redeemable by 30 May. So, if I can get my novel cleaned up and into second draft mode, I'll definitely send it through and possibly put it up for order through Amazon.com (CreateSpace assigns ISBNs to all proof copies, apparently, and I can vanity-press it and get a portion of the proceeds from each copy sold). However, I don't think I'll put it up on Amazon if I do, because if I can clean it up enough and target a few publishing houses, I could really get this thing out there.
Also speaking of NaNo, it was interesting being on the forums last night. There have been two writers whose progress I've been following, Kateness and CrimsonBlood, who both made it to a million words during the month. Yes, it's possible. These two girls have ungodly typing speed and outlines ahoy, and they know how they work and they structure their days so that they can get their work done on their time. I know for sure that Kateness has been unemployed this month (not by her own volition) and so she had the time and energy to reach the 1mil, but I think Crim might still be in some kind of school; she talks about homework on the forums a lot. Anyways, if you think MY accomplishment was a big deal, check these people out. (Yes, they have actually validated, but the validator on the NaNo site only goes up to 999,999 in order not to collapse the universe.)
---
So... I do still have an Ethics tutorial tomorrow, and I haven't started the essay yet. However, I have the whole rest of the day (like, 10 hours, guys!) to finish two final chapters of reading and pound out 2,500 words on the concept of free will. This looks easy as pie compared to what I've been doing this month. It also helps that I love reading about things like this, and that I've been gobbling up the literature over the past two days.
Also, I have a 230g half-finished bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk (most delicious chocolate ever) on my desk (and "Super Freak" just started playing in iTunes). Life is good.
- Jen -
24 November 2009
I don't own enough pun-filled tee-shirts.
So, I donated to NaNo today, but I didn't know that I would also get a discount to ThinkGeek on top of it! It's $5 off an order of $25 or more, $10 off an order of $40 or more. So, I could get two tee shirts and something else and still get $10 off! Whee!
The thing is, I don't know what I want yet. And they have too many black shirts. So, if anyone was looking for any more things to get me for Christmas, here's a little list.
---
So, I'm 20k into my second novel. Happy fun times. Also found time today to not only write more fanfiction but to also write a somewhat coherent essay. I'm so tired right now. I don't even think tired begins to describe it. Also, I miss everyone in the states. It's hard to be away during Thanksgiving time.
We had lunch with the Warden today, and though I think we were all expecting it to be very fancy, it was not. We went in regular clothes and just chatted with the Warden for a while about how awesome Oxford and New College are. And about the States. Our warden is from Missouri by way of Illinois, or something, but he's a full British citizen. Really awesome guy, really down to earth but still seems like he knows what he's doing. It was also nice to get together with the few other visiting students we have here and enjoy some new British food (today's item: Cumberland sauce).
Okay, so my eyes are drooping from tired and my fingers feel like they might fall off (they are burning, I cannot make this sensation up), so I think this needs to be the end of my typing today.
- Jen -
The thing is, I don't know what I want yet. And they have too many black shirts. So, if anyone was looking for any more things to get me for Christmas, here's a little list.
- The "Games" shirt from Adventureland. I loved Kristen Stewart in that movie.
- Because Venn diagrams and letters are both awesome.
- I'm a word nerd, that's my only excuse for this one.
- Truth in television.
- Like the slogan, love the concept.
- The logician in me can't resist.
- This exactly describes NaNo.
- Also describes NaNo.
- Highly related to my love of terrible puns and of my future field.
- With how many shirts are on this list and how little money I have, you do the math.
---
So, I'm 20k into my second novel. Happy fun times. Also found time today to not only write more fanfiction but to also write a somewhat coherent essay. I'm so tired right now. I don't even think tired begins to describe it. Also, I miss everyone in the states. It's hard to be away during Thanksgiving time.
We had lunch with the Warden today, and though I think we were all expecting it to be very fancy, it was not. We went in regular clothes and just chatted with the Warden for a while about how awesome Oxford and New College are. And about the States. Our warden is from Missouri by way of Illinois, or something, but he's a full British citizen. Really awesome guy, really down to earth but still seems like he knows what he's doing. It was also nice to get together with the few other visiting students we have here and enjoy some new British food (today's item: Cumberland sauce).
Okay, so my eyes are drooping from tired and my fingers feel like they might fall off (they are burning, I cannot make this sensation up), so I think this needs to be the end of my typing today.
- Jen -
23 November 2009
This Beautiful Tuesday
[Cross-posted to Blogspot, Facebook, and LiveJournal.]
So, I have a request for all of the people that read this blog, and it comes from the bottom of my heart.
You know that thing I do every November where I basically ignore you for a month, talk and mumble to myself a whole lot, and never seem to be on time to anything? It's called National Novel Writing Month, and it's hosted through the lovely people at nanowrimo.org. The site was founded by Chris Baty back in 1999 in order to give those people who thought "one day, I'll write a novel" a chance to make it into a reality.
The site is free to use, the forums are loaded with information and yet still load really quickly (thanks to new cloud computing servers), and many many users (around 150,000 participants in total) have a place to come and hang out during November where they can get support in reaching a magnificent goal.
You guys have seen my success in the past three years with this. In 2007 I wrote a 61k novel, last year I wrote an 88k novel, and this year I've already completed a 113k novel, ten short stories, and working towards another completed 50k novel by the end of the month. The thing is, I would not have been able to do it had it not been for the amount of support I've had from other users on the forums. They also understand that it feels like the end of the world when your plot won't budge, and they also understand the joy of finally breaking through the writer's block and pulling out a piece of prose that might not even be so bad for a first draft.
The thing is, NaNoWriMo is built off of donations. These are donations from companies, from users, or from users that have been sponsored by their friends. Also, I believe a portion from the merchandising also goes towards fundraising. There's a problem with this: novelists aren't always able to give as much as they'd like. This year, NaNoWriMo has raised only 4.5% of their operating costs. This doesn't cover even just the NaNoWriMo side, let alone the Young Writer's Program, which helps kids in elementary and middle school to write, and Script Frenzy, which encourages participants to write a 100-page script during the month of... March? April? (Yeah, I don't do Screnzy, but it's important to mention it, since it's another invention of the Office of Letters and Light.)
So, in order to counter this, NaNoWriMo is having its largest fund drive ever this Tuesday. November 24, from 12:01 AM Pacific time to 11:59 PM Pacific time. (For you English types, that's 8:01 AM on November 24 to 7:59 AM on November 25; for you ND types, that's 3:01 AM on November 24 to 2:59 AM on November 25. Fun with time zones ahoy!) Their goal is to raise $100,000 in 24 hours. It's totally doable as long as people like me reach out to help. But to put this in perspective, the largest fundraising day NaNoWriMo has ever had landed in at $30,000.
So, I'm going to be doing my part. Since I've been using the forums for the past three years and $10 is the minimum donation that will get you a donor halo on your profile, I will be donating $30 to the cause. You can donate as much as you'd like, just please, please donate. I'm looking at you, you folks who forgot my birthday this year. You know what, I'd rather have a sizable donation going to NaNoWriMo this year from me anyways, since I'm doing my best ever and probably won't have the time to be this prolific ever again. So, whatever you'd normally spend on a friend's birthday ($20-$50, let's say), please, donate it to the site instead, it would mean much more to me.
Because the fact is, if we don't raise enough money... NaNoWriMo isn't coming back next year. There will be no forums for me to enjoy while I flesh out my novels, and without those forums I may not have the energy to do it alone. So, please. If you care about me, if you care about what I like, if you care that I've been pouring out my heart and soul this month into these novels of mine... please. Please donate. Or grab some merchandise from the store. (They have some pretty awesome posters, even for the non-novelists, and on my Blogspot blog I've even listed bits of merch I'd want for Christmas.)
There's an incentive for reaching the goal on Tuesday: Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, has promised to pen a song entitled "This Beautiful Tuesday" and perform it on video (with his other volunteers doing interpretive dance alongside him). It's enough of a reward that I definitely want to see it. So please, everyone. (Notice how many times I've said 'please' in this post? I really mean it.) Please donate. Please help me keep alive one of the things that I feel makes me who I am.
- Jen -
So, I have a request for all of the people that read this blog, and it comes from the bottom of my heart.
You know that thing I do every November where I basically ignore you for a month, talk and mumble to myself a whole lot, and never seem to be on time to anything? It's called National Novel Writing Month, and it's hosted through the lovely people at nanowrimo.org. The site was founded by Chris Baty back in 1999 in order to give those people who thought "one day, I'll write a novel" a chance to make it into a reality.
The site is free to use, the forums are loaded with information and yet still load really quickly (thanks to new cloud computing servers), and many many users (around 150,000 participants in total) have a place to come and hang out during November where they can get support in reaching a magnificent goal.
You guys have seen my success in the past three years with this. In 2007 I wrote a 61k novel, last year I wrote an 88k novel, and this year I've already completed a 113k novel, ten short stories, and working towards another completed 50k novel by the end of the month. The thing is, I would not have been able to do it had it not been for the amount of support I've had from other users on the forums. They also understand that it feels like the end of the world when your plot won't budge, and they also understand the joy of finally breaking through the writer's block and pulling out a piece of prose that might not even be so bad for a first draft.
The thing is, NaNoWriMo is built off of donations. These are donations from companies, from users, or from users that have been sponsored by their friends. Also, I believe a portion from the merchandising also goes towards fundraising. There's a problem with this: novelists aren't always able to give as much as they'd like. This year, NaNoWriMo has raised only 4.5% of their operating costs. This doesn't cover even just the NaNoWriMo side, let alone the Young Writer's Program, which helps kids in elementary and middle school to write, and Script Frenzy, which encourages participants to write a 100-page script during the month of... March? April? (Yeah, I don't do Screnzy, but it's important to mention it, since it's another invention of the Office of Letters and Light.)
So, in order to counter this, NaNoWriMo is having its largest fund drive ever this Tuesday. November 24, from 12:01 AM Pacific time to 11:59 PM Pacific time. (For you English types, that's 8:01 AM on November 24 to 7:59 AM on November 25; for you ND types, that's 3:01 AM on November 24 to 2:59 AM on November 25. Fun with time zones ahoy!) Their goal is to raise $100,000 in 24 hours. It's totally doable as long as people like me reach out to help. But to put this in perspective, the largest fundraising day NaNoWriMo has ever had landed in at $30,000.
So, I'm going to be doing my part. Since I've been using the forums for the past three years and $10 is the minimum donation that will get you a donor halo on your profile, I will be donating $30 to the cause. You can donate as much as you'd like, just please, please donate. I'm looking at you, you folks who forgot my birthday this year. You know what, I'd rather have a sizable donation going to NaNoWriMo this year from me anyways, since I'm doing my best ever and probably won't have the time to be this prolific ever again. So, whatever you'd normally spend on a friend's birthday ($20-$50, let's say), please, donate it to the site instead, it would mean much more to me.
Because the fact is, if we don't raise enough money... NaNoWriMo isn't coming back next year. There will be no forums for me to enjoy while I flesh out my novels, and without those forums I may not have the energy to do it alone. So, please. If you care about me, if you care about what I like, if you care that I've been pouring out my heart and soul this month into these novels of mine... please. Please donate. Or grab some merchandise from the store. (They have some pretty awesome posters, even for the non-novelists, and on my Blogspot blog I've even listed bits of merch I'd want for Christmas.)
There's an incentive for reaching the goal on Tuesday: Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, has promised to pen a song entitled "This Beautiful Tuesday" and perform it on video (with his other volunteers doing interpretive dance alongside him). It's enough of a reward that I definitely want to see it. So please, everyone. (Notice how many times I've said 'please' in this post? I really mean it.) Please donate. Please help me keep alive one of the things that I feel makes me who I am.
- Jen -
22 November 2009
More adventures in muddy fields.
So, for the second weekend in a row, my weekend was mostly awesome. We're not going to talk about ND's loss yesterday in favor of OSU handing Michigan their own head on a platter.
On Friday night, I actually got a ticket into guest dinner! That was really nice, because all of the ND people ended up getting a ticket, and we were all able to talk together and everything. AJ brought a friend, Katie, from Wooster, and it was nice to talk with another humanities person for a while. The dinner itself was all right, too, but it probably wasn't as much fun sober as it would have been tipsy. I should have hung out in the bar with Katie and AJ, but I realized while they were getting their drinks that I needed to finish my novel.
So, I went back to write. I got to talk to Greg for a while, and I got to see some of the pictures he had taken for his project. And he ended up bribing me to finish my chapters with parts of his project, most specifically pictures of Rory. Oh, stupid sexy Rory. But I did eventually finish my novel (at four minutes to midnight!), and it clocks in at 113,359 words... but I forgot to write "THE END" on it, so I actually get two more words out of it. This is also using Word 2007's word counter, which apparently uses a different algorithm from the one on the NaNo site. I really hope I don't lose too many words to the NaNo one... in fact I hope I gain some. :3
Also, on Thursday I joined a fandom. Yes, I joined a fandom, for real and all. I figured if I was going to make a novel-length fanfiction about Freelancers, then people might as well read it and appreciate it. And if it's good enough, maybe I can get it published with the blessings of Rooster Teeth and Bungie. This is a bad thing; I still need many many words during November on top of other reading and essay writing.
Yes, you read that right. Even though I finished my first novel this month, I'm going for a second. I'm on track, actually; I only need 5k a day through the 30th to make this one hit 50k, which is NaNo's requirement for the length of a novel. So, yeah. By the end of the month I will be the proud owner of two novels. My problem right now is, the novel I just started writing is ridiculous. It's abusing way too many tropes. Way too many. Seriously, I added zombies and a random werecat into what was supposed to be a deconstruction of high fantasy MMORPGs. Oops... at least I'll be having fun.
So last night there was another write-in with the Failed Novelists, this one at Wolfson College (which, I may note, is VERY FAR AWAY from New College). It's an all-grad-student hall, and it's so new that it still smells like IKEA (if that gives you any idea of how modern it looks). We wrote in their very comfortable MCR room (Middle Common Room - like a common space for the graduate-level students to hang out) before dropping our stuff off in Selena's room and tramping through muddy paths next to strawberry fields and the river to make it to yet another far-off pub.
This one was called The Victoria Arms, and I had my first glass of mulled British cider there. Absolutely delicious. And for some reason, the conversation revolved around organs you can possibly live without, suicide snuff films, and the possibility that the soul continues on after death as the literal 'ghost in the machine' in a parallel series of tubes. (We are a strange group.)
It rained as we were walking back to Wolfson, and of course I was not only wearing my glasses but had left my umbrella. Didn't matter; was still fun getting soaked because heck, I'm in Middle Earth/Harry Potter land, and that's what you do, right? I've never been more thankful for a good pair of rain boots and a nice trenchcoat. Anyways, we made it back mostly intact and hung out in the kitchen near Jed's room for a while, enjoying white wine, coffee, and talk about Firefly and vegetables. Then we got to see some of Jed's paintings, and geez. Lots of thought in their composition, I really liked them.
Jed and Selena tried to persuade the other five of us (hold on, I totally remember names: Vicky, Alex, Tom, and Joe) to stay and chat in the Wolfson bar (which is open until 2:30, ridiculously late compared to other places), but it was half-twelve and I was so ready to go home. So that was the second day that I crawled into bed around 2 in the morning and still couldn't sleep because I was so excited.
Yeah, so I totally love it here, just in case you haven't been able to tell by my blog entries. Perhaps later I can blog about what we discussed at hall last night (which included something like athletes, scholarships, and the growing burden of debt on the middle class). In the meantime, though, I need to do a lot of reading for Ethics still, and I need to finish by dinner ish so that I'll still have time to write my 5k today!!! So busy, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
- Jen -
On Friday night, I actually got a ticket into guest dinner! That was really nice, because all of the ND people ended up getting a ticket, and we were all able to talk together and everything. AJ brought a friend, Katie, from Wooster, and it was nice to talk with another humanities person for a while. The dinner itself was all right, too, but it probably wasn't as much fun sober as it would have been tipsy. I should have hung out in the bar with Katie and AJ, but I realized while they were getting their drinks that I needed to finish my novel.
So, I went back to write. I got to talk to Greg for a while, and I got to see some of the pictures he had taken for his project. And he ended up bribing me to finish my chapters with parts of his project, most specifically pictures of Rory. Oh, stupid sexy Rory. But I did eventually finish my novel (at four minutes to midnight!), and it clocks in at 113,359 words... but I forgot to write "THE END" on it, so I actually get two more words out of it. This is also using Word 2007's word counter, which apparently uses a different algorithm from the one on the NaNo site. I really hope I don't lose too many words to the NaNo one... in fact I hope I gain some. :3
Also, on Thursday I joined a fandom. Yes, I joined a fandom, for real and all. I figured if I was going to make a novel-length fanfiction about Freelancers, then people might as well read it and appreciate it. And if it's good enough, maybe I can get it published with the blessings of Rooster Teeth and Bungie. This is a bad thing; I still need many many words during November on top of other reading and essay writing.
Yes, you read that right. Even though I finished my first novel this month, I'm going for a second. I'm on track, actually; I only need 5k a day through the 30th to make this one hit 50k, which is NaNo's requirement for the length of a novel. So, yeah. By the end of the month I will be the proud owner of two novels. My problem right now is, the novel I just started writing is ridiculous. It's abusing way too many tropes. Way too many. Seriously, I added zombies and a random werecat into what was supposed to be a deconstruction of high fantasy MMORPGs. Oops... at least I'll be having fun.
So last night there was another write-in with the Failed Novelists, this one at Wolfson College (which, I may note, is VERY FAR AWAY from New College). It's an all-grad-student hall, and it's so new that it still smells like IKEA (if that gives you any idea of how modern it looks). We wrote in their very comfortable MCR room (Middle Common Room - like a common space for the graduate-level students to hang out) before dropping our stuff off in Selena's room and tramping through muddy paths next to strawberry fields and the river to make it to yet another far-off pub.
This one was called The Victoria Arms, and I had my first glass of mulled British cider there. Absolutely delicious. And for some reason, the conversation revolved around organs you can possibly live without, suicide snuff films, and the possibility that the soul continues on after death as the literal 'ghost in the machine' in a parallel series of tubes. (We are a strange group.)
It rained as we were walking back to Wolfson, and of course I was not only wearing my glasses but had left my umbrella. Didn't matter; was still fun getting soaked because heck, I'm in Middle Earth/Harry Potter land, and that's what you do, right? I've never been more thankful for a good pair of rain boots and a nice trenchcoat. Anyways, we made it back mostly intact and hung out in the kitchen near Jed's room for a while, enjoying white wine, coffee, and talk about Firefly and vegetables. Then we got to see some of Jed's paintings, and geez. Lots of thought in their composition, I really liked them.
Jed and Selena tried to persuade the other five of us (hold on, I totally remember names: Vicky, Alex, Tom, and Joe) to stay and chat in the Wolfson bar (which is open until 2:30, ridiculously late compared to other places), but it was half-twelve and I was so ready to go home. So that was the second day that I crawled into bed around 2 in the morning and still couldn't sleep because I was so excited.
Yeah, so I totally love it here, just in case you haven't been able to tell by my blog entries. Perhaps later I can blog about what we discussed at hall last night (which included something like athletes, scholarships, and the growing burden of debt on the middle class). In the meantime, though, I need to do a lot of reading for Ethics still, and I need to finish by dinner ish so that I'll still have time to write my 5k today!!! So busy, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
- Jen -
15 November 2009
Countryside adventures
Last night I had the opportunity to go to a write-in at an abandoned church in the English countryside, and... yeah, it was an adventure. It was a thirty-minute walk through a muddy cow field, and I was one of the few people to actually be wearing wellies (the British word for rain boots). Once we actually got to the church, Jed had brought candles, so we looked around, poked in all the nooks and crannies, recited some poetry, and finally noveled a little. I finished a chapter in the church in about 50 minutes, though my hands were freezing (I don't have my fingerless gloves here) and I could see my breath every time I breathed out. Really cool... wish I had been writing gothic fiction or fantasy, it would have made the atmosphere so much better.
So, after we all got a little writing done, we headed to the nearby pub, the Perch. It's so far away from town but I really recommend it. We went in the back entrance, which had a series of arches lit by Christmas lights, then went into a garden of gigantic weeping willow trees before we got to the pub itself. It was gorgeous; I thought I was on Middle-Earth or something. Inside the pub I got my first experience with mead, which is... honeyed wine, I think, I don't know really. But it was warm, and it was the perfect drink after spending so much time in the cold. Spent a lot of time talking about Men Who Stare At Goats, drowning babies and how babies cry in their native language, synaesthesia, and shooting guns. (It was a G36, by the way, check my blog entries from September.)
After some other excellent conversation we headed back to Jericho (the town next to Oxford), still chatting and looking at the stars (which surprisingly look the same as the US, but brighter since there was so little light pollution in that cow field). We were on the way back when we found a bar called Freud (I can't make this stuff up) and I ended up staying until 2 in the morning. Excellent rum in the rum and coke apparently. Ended up doing some dancing in the middle of the bar (try waltzing in rain boots, it's difficult, but I managed to do it), and got Tom to demonstrate the White Man Shuffle for the British people.
It's so much fun talking with Americans among British people. We'll start talking about things, then have to explain something like, why guns are so popular in the States. Apparently you're not allowed to own guns in Britain so gangsters own dogs and knives instead. What a strange concept for an American! I also got asked if I was engaged because of the promise ring Justin got me. Only one other American understood the phrase 'He went to Jared' but it came across. They were somewhat confused that a promise ring was different from an engagement ring; I explained that for us, engagement means he actually asked me to marry him and we've set a date and all that, but promised means that someday he will ask me to marry him and I'm very definitively taken. They all thought my ring was pretty, too, which was a huge ego boost for me because I love it and wear it every day. I'm so glad other people notice these things!
More later if I can remember. I have to do work but I keep getting distracted by RiffTrax...
- Jen -
So, after we all got a little writing done, we headed to the nearby pub, the Perch. It's so far away from town but I really recommend it. We went in the back entrance, which had a series of arches lit by Christmas lights, then went into a garden of gigantic weeping willow trees before we got to the pub itself. It was gorgeous; I thought I was on Middle-Earth or something. Inside the pub I got my first experience with mead, which is... honeyed wine, I think, I don't know really. But it was warm, and it was the perfect drink after spending so much time in the cold. Spent a lot of time talking about Men Who Stare At Goats, drowning babies and how babies cry in their native language, synaesthesia, and shooting guns. (It was a G36, by the way, check my blog entries from September.)
After some other excellent conversation we headed back to Jericho (the town next to Oxford), still chatting and looking at the stars (which surprisingly look the same as the US, but brighter since there was so little light pollution in that cow field). We were on the way back when we found a bar called Freud (I can't make this stuff up) and I ended up staying until 2 in the morning. Excellent rum in the rum and coke apparently. Ended up doing some dancing in the middle of the bar (try waltzing in rain boots, it's difficult, but I managed to do it), and got Tom to demonstrate the White Man Shuffle for the British people.
It's so much fun talking with Americans among British people. We'll start talking about things, then have to explain something like, why guns are so popular in the States. Apparently you're not allowed to own guns in Britain so gangsters own dogs and knives instead. What a strange concept for an American! I also got asked if I was engaged because of the promise ring Justin got me. Only one other American understood the phrase 'He went to Jared' but it came across. They were somewhat confused that a promise ring was different from an engagement ring; I explained that for us, engagement means he actually asked me to marry him and we've set a date and all that, but promised means that someday he will ask me to marry him and I'm very definitively taken. They all thought my ring was pretty, too, which was a huge ego boost for me because I love it and wear it every day. I'm so glad other people notice these things!
More later if I can remember. I have to do work but I keep getting distracted by RiffTrax...
- Jen -
14 November 2009
Personal accomplishments.
Yesterday I wrote the most I have ever written in one 24-hour period. I wrote 12,378 words that took probably 5 hours to write, not counting times that I went to dinner and took breaks to stretch my hands. And I don't think that means a lot to anyone, but think of this: It was six chapters. Six chapters! Six really fun chapters, where things actually began happening. And I passed 4 days' worth of my daily goal this year in one day. Not even one day, because I didn't devote my whole day to it, just from 4 PM-11PM. Disregarding the hour I spent at dinner, five out of those six hours were spent frantically typing.
My hands are sore, and my head hurt so badly that I slept two extra hours today, but it was so, so worth it. The sad part is, to me, that no one will really understand how much of an accomplishment it really is. This isn't quite the longest work of fiction I've ever written (last year's novel at 88.5k takes the prize for now), but it will be by the time I'm done; rough estimates at this point put it at 110k at least. And with the pace I'm moving at, I will probably finish sometime during the early 20s, so maybe in as early as ten days. After the novel is done, I have another novel without an outline and I really want to see what I can do with it - usually, no plotting means that I get completely lost, but this idea might hold up on its own. I'd like to squeeze another 50k out of it just so I can say that I wrote two novels in a month, but then again, there's a delicious Firefly fanfic that I want to write by the end of the month. Probably won't clock in at more than 7k, but still, that would take most of a day to do.
Long story short, I've pretty much amended my goal for this month from 100k to... let's say, 115k for the first novel, 50k for the second, 7k for the Firefly fanfic... yeah. Somewhere around 175k. I want to point out at this point that my entire goal for last year's NaNo was 75k. Then again, I drastically overshoot everything I do by a large margin, so this doesn't exactly surprise me.
I'm excited because the Failed Novelists (the writing club I've started attending here) are having a NaNo write-in tonight at an abandoned church. Hopefully my laptop can stand up to not being plugged in, because I'd like to write on it for at least a few hours. I type so much faster than I handwrite, and it's so helpful with fiction because I see what I'm writing like a movie (when I do point of view, I think of it as cameras behind that character's head, if that gives you any indication). When things are going so fast visually, my hands need to be able to keep up. Thus why they hurt so badly today - I think I was going so fast yesterday that I set my fingers on fire!
---
I'm kind of offended right now because one of my friends decided to call me 'unwilling to go for glory' in his blag. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but as you see by the above, it's totally not true. I don't know of anyone else here who is trying to write so much in so little time with so much else on her plate. To write that I'm not gutsy and won't go for anything is just libel, and I won't stand for it.
The comment was given in the context of not being in the 'backroom,' being the grunt or mook who just sits there and gets all the work done without getting any of the praise. My friend has decided (and good for him, if he can live with the implications) that he will be the one to lead such grunts and take the 'glory' for their accomplishments. Now, it's true that people who go into 'grunt' fields or do 'grunt' work usually don't get any acknowledgement, but they're usually content with that or they wouldn't have chosen that job in the first place.
What the argument assumes is that there are leader jobs and there are follower jobs. Perhaps this works in a large corporate environment, where there is a definitive tier structure. However, it disregards the fact that there are opportunities to move upwards, and my friend's argument assumes that there is not. For example, one of the fields I researched going into while I was a freshman was the field of book publishing. It's a rather thankless job for the first five to ten years that someone enters the field. It starts out with a series of coffee internships (you know, the internships that don't really mean anything, but have you job shadowing while you make the coffee for your boss) in, preferably, the summer after your sophomore year, then another internship summer after your junior year. By the time you graduate, you've accumulated enough respect at your internship company that they hire you... as the lowest-level grunt. There's really no opportunity to move upward until you put in your time, and meanwhile, the books you're publishing become more famous for their authors. But when you get to the top, you suddenly find yourself in a leadership position. It may take years and years of unacknowledged hard work, but suddenly you're top dog taking credit for what everyone else is doing.
So, not even all tier companies work the way my friend suggests in his argument. In fact, I think it's plausible to argue that most companies intend for younger employees to 'pay their dues' before they have the opportunity to go into leadership; personally, I think it's the best way for companies to divine who really belongs where. But let's introduce a new element: freelancers. I'm talking about people in the field I want to go into at this point, property law and corporate law. These people are usually consultants, on the periphery of any type of tier structure. They interact with the top dogs but do all of their own work. Instead of a tier, they're more self-sufficient, not only doing the work that deserves the praise but getting acknowledged for it.
So, to say that I'm unwilling to 'go for glory,' instead preferring to work in the 'backroom,' is a completely faulty assumption and I won't stand for such slander against my personal character. In corporate law, there is no backroom, and there is no public recognition of one's work (unless you're the representative of some hugely famous name... I remember reading an article in the WSJ at one point about the lawyers of Mac and Windows trying to reach settlements, and their names were mentioned in the article proper). There's just work. A lot of post-graduate education, then a lot of work.
---
Also, at this point I feel like I need to go into a defense of why it's not necessarily such a bad thing to be an introvert after all.
I think being an introvert might be necessary to being a writer. With only the plots and characters from my own head, I'm able to create fantasy worlds that I can dwell in for hours. Now tell me that doesn't sound like the stereotypical qualities of an antisocial young child. I'm self-satisfied by my work; I don't need anyone's approval for it to please me. It's nice when people do read it, but that's not necessary for the creative process.
I'm just fine being an introvert. I can deal with having relatively few people in my life that I know very well, I can deal with not being as social as other extroverts might want me to be. I've just never been the type of person to want superficial friendships or to attempt to be friendly with someone I genuinely can't stand or don't want to be closer to. It's just a difference in perspective, really, and I'm slightly tired of being perceived as being a bad person when my priorities are just different. I enjoy keeping my sense of shame, thank you very much, and I don't think anything's likely to change my mind any time soon.
---
As some final and mostly unrelated notes, toasters and I really don't get along - I burnt my lunch bagel for the second time today. Kind of depressing, because they were delicious :(
There are so many things here that British people take for granted. One of them is really low tuition fees. I got to watch the shock on my tutorial partner's face when I explained to him that I pay $65,000 a year to go to a university that is only barely in the top 25 in the country. Apparently, when he studied in Germany, he paid a 300-euro fee per term and that was it. People here are lobbying for change when they have to pay more than 7000 pounds a year for university. When I told him that I pay about $300 every semester just for books, I swore his jaw dropped off. Being here really puts some things into perspective... like how awesome libraries are, and how much I'm really overpaying to be here for just a year. Because on top of normal ND tuition, I now have to pay airfare to and from, I had to buy several things to make my life easier over here (like luggage and voltage converters), and I only get one meal a day.
Also, British people take good weather for granted. While I've been here, it's been nice enough that I can usually get away with wearing just two layers outside when it's sunny. When it's rainy, I just pull on my trenchcoat. People were complaining yesterday about rain, and I just wanted to laugh. Rain? Sheesh, you should see three feet of snow. Apparently, when there's so much as a half-inch here, people just don't know what to do. I'd hate to see it if they had an ice storm here; everyone would probably lose their heads. And explaining to them that we once had a day so cold on campus that it was down to -40 degrees (convergence in both Celsius and Fahrenheit!) was loads of fun too.
Also also, British girls my age don't seem to believe in pants. They quite often wear tunics and leggings (or just tunics and tights!) outside. No pants. I feel so American walking around in my trousers sometimes. It doesn't help that I'm definitely not of the build to pull off any of those fashions, so it just makes me feel kind of ridiculous when I walk down the street here.
I'm going to stop here, but I just want to point out that this blog entry is about 1850 words long (so says Microsoft Word), if that gives you any indication of how much I've been writing this month. So, cheers, everyone.
- Jen -
My hands are sore, and my head hurt so badly that I slept two extra hours today, but it was so, so worth it. The sad part is, to me, that no one will really understand how much of an accomplishment it really is. This isn't quite the longest work of fiction I've ever written (last year's novel at 88.5k takes the prize for now), but it will be by the time I'm done; rough estimates at this point put it at 110k at least. And with the pace I'm moving at, I will probably finish sometime during the early 20s, so maybe in as early as ten days. After the novel is done, I have another novel without an outline and I really want to see what I can do with it - usually, no plotting means that I get completely lost, but this idea might hold up on its own. I'd like to squeeze another 50k out of it just so I can say that I wrote two novels in a month, but then again, there's a delicious Firefly fanfic that I want to write by the end of the month. Probably won't clock in at more than 7k, but still, that would take most of a day to do.
Long story short, I've pretty much amended my goal for this month from 100k to... let's say, 115k for the first novel, 50k for the second, 7k for the Firefly fanfic... yeah. Somewhere around 175k. I want to point out at this point that my entire goal for last year's NaNo was 75k. Then again, I drastically overshoot everything I do by a large margin, so this doesn't exactly surprise me.
I'm excited because the Failed Novelists (the writing club I've started attending here) are having a NaNo write-in tonight at an abandoned church. Hopefully my laptop can stand up to not being plugged in, because I'd like to write on it for at least a few hours. I type so much faster than I handwrite, and it's so helpful with fiction because I see what I'm writing like a movie (when I do point of view, I think of it as cameras behind that character's head, if that gives you any indication). When things are going so fast visually, my hands need to be able to keep up. Thus why they hurt so badly today - I think I was going so fast yesterday that I set my fingers on fire!
---
I'm kind of offended right now because one of my friends decided to call me 'unwilling to go for glory' in his blag. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but as you see by the above, it's totally not true. I don't know of anyone else here who is trying to write so much in so little time with so much else on her plate. To write that I'm not gutsy and won't go for anything is just libel, and I won't stand for it.
The comment was given in the context of not being in the 'backroom,' being the grunt or mook who just sits there and gets all the work done without getting any of the praise. My friend has decided (and good for him, if he can live with the implications) that he will be the one to lead such grunts and take the 'glory' for their accomplishments. Now, it's true that people who go into 'grunt' fields or do 'grunt' work usually don't get any acknowledgement, but they're usually content with that or they wouldn't have chosen that job in the first place.
What the argument assumes is that there are leader jobs and there are follower jobs. Perhaps this works in a large corporate environment, where there is a definitive tier structure. However, it disregards the fact that there are opportunities to move upwards, and my friend's argument assumes that there is not. For example, one of the fields I researched going into while I was a freshman was the field of book publishing. It's a rather thankless job for the first five to ten years that someone enters the field. It starts out with a series of coffee internships (you know, the internships that don't really mean anything, but have you job shadowing while you make the coffee for your boss) in, preferably, the summer after your sophomore year, then another internship summer after your junior year. By the time you graduate, you've accumulated enough respect at your internship company that they hire you... as the lowest-level grunt. There's really no opportunity to move upward until you put in your time, and meanwhile, the books you're publishing become more famous for their authors. But when you get to the top, you suddenly find yourself in a leadership position. It may take years and years of unacknowledged hard work, but suddenly you're top dog taking credit for what everyone else is doing.
So, not even all tier companies work the way my friend suggests in his argument. In fact, I think it's plausible to argue that most companies intend for younger employees to 'pay their dues' before they have the opportunity to go into leadership; personally, I think it's the best way for companies to divine who really belongs where. But let's introduce a new element: freelancers. I'm talking about people in the field I want to go into at this point, property law and corporate law. These people are usually consultants, on the periphery of any type of tier structure. They interact with the top dogs but do all of their own work. Instead of a tier, they're more self-sufficient, not only doing the work that deserves the praise but getting acknowledged for it.
So, to say that I'm unwilling to 'go for glory,' instead preferring to work in the 'backroom,' is a completely faulty assumption and I won't stand for such slander against my personal character. In corporate law, there is no backroom, and there is no public recognition of one's work (unless you're the representative of some hugely famous name... I remember reading an article in the WSJ at one point about the lawyers of Mac and Windows trying to reach settlements, and their names were mentioned in the article proper). There's just work. A lot of post-graduate education, then a lot of work.
---
Also, at this point I feel like I need to go into a defense of why it's not necessarily such a bad thing to be an introvert after all.
I think being an introvert might be necessary to being a writer. With only the plots and characters from my own head, I'm able to create fantasy worlds that I can dwell in for hours. Now tell me that doesn't sound like the stereotypical qualities of an antisocial young child. I'm self-satisfied by my work; I don't need anyone's approval for it to please me. It's nice when people do read it, but that's not necessary for the creative process.
I'm just fine being an introvert. I can deal with having relatively few people in my life that I know very well, I can deal with not being as social as other extroverts might want me to be. I've just never been the type of person to want superficial friendships or to attempt to be friendly with someone I genuinely can't stand or don't want to be closer to. It's just a difference in perspective, really, and I'm slightly tired of being perceived as being a bad person when my priorities are just different. I enjoy keeping my sense of shame, thank you very much, and I don't think anything's likely to change my mind any time soon.
---
As some final and mostly unrelated notes, toasters and I really don't get along - I burnt my lunch bagel for the second time today. Kind of depressing, because they were delicious :(
There are so many things here that British people take for granted. One of them is really low tuition fees. I got to watch the shock on my tutorial partner's face when I explained to him that I pay $65,000 a year to go to a university that is only barely in the top 25 in the country. Apparently, when he studied in Germany, he paid a 300-euro fee per term and that was it. People here are lobbying for change when they have to pay more than 7000 pounds a year for university. When I told him that I pay about $300 every semester just for books, I swore his jaw dropped off. Being here really puts some things into perspective... like how awesome libraries are, and how much I'm really overpaying to be here for just a year. Because on top of normal ND tuition, I now have to pay airfare to and from, I had to buy several things to make my life easier over here (like luggage and voltage converters), and I only get one meal a day.
Also, British people take good weather for granted. While I've been here, it's been nice enough that I can usually get away with wearing just two layers outside when it's sunny. When it's rainy, I just pull on my trenchcoat. People were complaining yesterday about rain, and I just wanted to laugh. Rain? Sheesh, you should see three feet of snow. Apparently, when there's so much as a half-inch here, people just don't know what to do. I'd hate to see it if they had an ice storm here; everyone would probably lose their heads. And explaining to them that we once had a day so cold on campus that it was down to -40 degrees (convergence in both Celsius and Fahrenheit!) was loads of fun too.
Also also, British girls my age don't seem to believe in pants. They quite often wear tunics and leggings (or just tunics and tights!) outside. No pants. I feel so American walking around in my trousers sometimes. It doesn't help that I'm definitely not of the build to pull off any of those fashions, so it just makes me feel kind of ridiculous when I walk down the street here.
I'm going to stop here, but I just want to point out that this blog entry is about 1850 words long (so says Microsoft Word), if that gives you any indication of how much I've been writing this month. So, cheers, everyone.
- Jen -
10 November 2009
Wait, why are there double digits?
I forgot how fast November can go by sometimes. I swear, yesterday was Tuesday too.
I had so many edits in my last post, but I suppose it doesn't matter. To quote my FMC (female main character, for those who don't speak in NaNo acronyms), "please, I'm just so tired..." I'm mentally exhausted. I can't read an ethics essay without wanting to sleep, every consecutive chapter is taking longer and longer to write, and it always rains on Tuesdays... conveniently the day of the week I always choose to run to the grocery. And I haven't heard from my family in over a week. I really hope everything is okay.
Just a half-hour ago, I realized what the loneliest place in the world is: it's right in front of your monitor, with only four words of a title on a Word document which you have to turn into a 2500-word essay by midnight or else YOU turn into a pumpkin. Or something like that. As you, the reader, can probably tell, the ease of metaphors has gone right out the window. But yeah, I have an essay due at midnight over a topic I don't really understand, but I have to get into the details anyways.
I'm just... tired. I'm so tired. November is my least favorite. There are so many things I want, I don't have the money or the inclination to buy them right now, and the one place I want to be is the place I can't go for another month.
Hopefully tonight I will at least book my hostel for my week in London for the week before I go home. I'm at least a little excited about it; I plan on doing a lot of shopping and museum hopping, picture taking and people visiting. I'm going to get marvelously lost and not worry about finding my way home just yet. I'm just worried about logistics... like which bus to take to London, which bus to take in London to get to the airport... blah.
I will worry later. Now is for work.
- Jen -
I had so many edits in my last post, but I suppose it doesn't matter. To quote my FMC (female main character, for those who don't speak in NaNo acronyms), "please, I'm just so tired..." I'm mentally exhausted. I can't read an ethics essay without wanting to sleep, every consecutive chapter is taking longer and longer to write, and it always rains on Tuesdays... conveniently the day of the week I always choose to run to the grocery. And I haven't heard from my family in over a week. I really hope everything is okay.
Just a half-hour ago, I realized what the loneliest place in the world is: it's right in front of your monitor, with only four words of a title on a Word document which you have to turn into a 2500-word essay by midnight or else YOU turn into a pumpkin. Or something like that. As you, the reader, can probably tell, the ease of metaphors has gone right out the window. But yeah, I have an essay due at midnight over a topic I don't really understand, but I have to get into the details anyways.
I'm just... tired. I'm so tired. November is my least favorite. There are so many things I want, I don't have the money or the inclination to buy them right now, and the one place I want to be is the place I can't go for another month.
Hopefully tonight I will at least book my hostel for my week in London for the week before I go home. I'm at least a little excited about it; I plan on doing a lot of shopping and museum hopping, picture taking and people visiting. I'm going to get marvelously lost and not worry about finding my way home just yet. I'm just worried about logistics... like which bus to take to London, which bus to take in London to get to the airport... blah.
I will worry later. Now is for work.
- Jen -
09 November 2009
November sucks.
It's been a rough month for me so far, but I'm making it. Don't know how, but I'm making it.
More things I've realized I want for myself, but don't have the money to get right now:
- LoZ: Twilight Princess soundtrack. Oh, it is so good. I have the others from the N64 generation of games, but they're just not as rich, though the themes themselves are good. ETA: Possibly Wind Waker as well. I am such a sucker for good video game soundtracks.
- FFVII. Which would also mean that I would need a PS2 to play it on. Seriously, I keep hearing so many good things about the storyline, the characters... I need to experience it for myself. And no, I've never played any Final Fantasy games before.
- This pendant. I realize it's incredibly pretentious to want jewelry from Tiffany's, but if anyone can find a knockoff that looks similar I'd be glad to see it.
- ETA: Holy crap I did not realize a new Legend of Zelda DS game was coming out in December. New number one item on the List Of Things I Want.
The novel is coming along well. Since I took a time-out this morning from everything to do my laundry and get stuck on TVTropes.org, I might take the day off from writing and instead focus more on my essay due Wednesday. Yes, focusing on schoolwork.
Otherwise, life is pretty boring. Remember to check out my Shutterfly site for pictures of my adventures. ETA: link is on the right side of the blag.
- Jen -
More things I've realized I want for myself, but don't have the money to get right now:
- LoZ: Twilight Princess soundtrack. Oh, it is so good. I have the others from the N64 generation of games, but they're just not as rich, though the themes themselves are good. ETA: Possibly Wind Waker as well. I am such a sucker for good video game soundtracks.
- FFVII. Which would also mean that I would need a PS2 to play it on. Seriously, I keep hearing so many good things about the storyline, the characters... I need to experience it for myself. And no, I've never played any Final Fantasy games before.
- This pendant. I realize it's incredibly pretentious to want jewelry from Tiffany's, but if anyone can find a knockoff that looks similar I'd be glad to see it.
- ETA: Holy crap I did not realize a new Legend of Zelda DS game was coming out in December. New number one item on the List Of Things I Want.
The novel is coming along well. Since I took a time-out this morning from everything to do my laundry and get stuck on TVTropes.org, I might take the day off from writing and instead focus more on my essay due Wednesday. Yes, focusing on schoolwork.
Otherwise, life is pretty boring. Remember to check out my Shutterfly site for pictures of my adventures. ETA: link is on the right side of the blag.
- Jen -
05 November 2009
Guy Fawkes Day
I just want to point something out to my American friends.
No one in Britain is running around today in Guy Fawkes masks and quoting lines from V for Vendetta (either the graphic novel or the film adaptation). Halloween was over the weekend; today is Guy Fawkes' Day. I don't know if you realize this, but British people treat it as somewhat of a big deal.
Guy Fawkes legitimately attempted to blow up Parliament. I don't know if you people think that's funny or not, but I think the British people consider it to be a terrorist action and consider it to be a good thing that Guy Fawkes was caught and executed for his crime. These people don't go around triumphantly extolling the virtues of Guy Fawkes; they burn his effigy instead.
I also don't think you people realize that V for Vendetta is a fictional story. The only relation that it has to the Guy Fawkes story is the masks that everyone uses and the quotation/three minute scene at the beginning of the movie. The entire thing is composed of a totalitarian government, which Britain currently does not have, and a terrorist cell attempting to take it down, something that we consider to be evil when a Middle Eastern group does it to their own government but something we appear to approve of in Western culture. It's a political fable, in short, it is FICTIONAL. V never existed. Acting as if he did, and as if V is all this holiday is about, is sadly misguided.
So for all of my friends who posted Facebook statuses quoting V, I'm ashamed of you. You're making a mockery of the British 4th of July. It's as if Britain were to announce that they still ruled over us while we were celebrating our independence. It's rude, it's ill-founded, and it distorts the sense of the holiday.
In conclusion, you just keep being 'funny.' I don't think the British populace is amused.
- Jen -
No one in Britain is running around today in Guy Fawkes masks and quoting lines from V for Vendetta (either the graphic novel or the film adaptation). Halloween was over the weekend; today is Guy Fawkes' Day. I don't know if you realize this, but British people treat it as somewhat of a big deal.
Guy Fawkes legitimately attempted to blow up Parliament. I don't know if you people think that's funny or not, but I think the British people consider it to be a terrorist action and consider it to be a good thing that Guy Fawkes was caught and executed for his crime. These people don't go around triumphantly extolling the virtues of Guy Fawkes; they burn his effigy instead.
I also don't think you people realize that V for Vendetta is a fictional story. The only relation that it has to the Guy Fawkes story is the masks that everyone uses and the quotation/three minute scene at the beginning of the movie. The entire thing is composed of a totalitarian government, which Britain currently does not have, and a terrorist cell attempting to take it down, something that we consider to be evil when a Middle Eastern group does it to their own government but something we appear to approve of in Western culture. It's a political fable, in short, it is FICTIONAL. V never existed. Acting as if he did, and as if V is all this holiday is about, is sadly misguided.
So for all of my friends who posted Facebook statuses quoting V, I'm ashamed of you. You're making a mockery of the British 4th of July. It's as if Britain were to announce that they still ruled over us while we were celebrating our independence. It's rude, it's ill-founded, and it distorts the sense of the holiday.
In conclusion, you just keep being 'funny.' I don't think the British populace is amused.
- Jen -
04 November 2009
November has been a rollercoaster.
Two nosebleeds in the past two days? No thank you.
More things I want for Christmas:
-Halo ODST soundtrack (what? it sounds pretty)
-latest Guitar Hero game for DS
-possibly some of the later series of Red vs. Blue on DVD? maybe?
-that being said, Dr. Horrible on DVD?
I've also decided that as soon as possible, I need to start watching Buffy. I kind of missed out on the whole phenomenon and that might need to be rectified.
Also, in the interest of things everyone already knows, TVTropes is a huge timesink.
I'm doing well on my novel. My characters are behaving well and I even laughed in a good way at something I'd written. I'm also doing well with the balance between wordcount goal and chapter goal.
I have a tutorial to be at in a half-hour, so I'm going to finish my tea and print my paper. Ciao, everybody.
- Jen -
More things I want for Christmas:
-Halo ODST soundtrack (what? it sounds pretty)
-latest Guitar Hero game for DS
-possibly some of the later series of Red vs. Blue on DVD? maybe?
-that being said, Dr. Horrible on DVD?
I've also decided that as soon as possible, I need to start watching Buffy. I kind of missed out on the whole phenomenon and that might need to be rectified.
Also, in the interest of things everyone already knows, TVTropes is a huge timesink.
I'm doing well on my novel. My characters are behaving well and I even laughed in a good way at something I'd written. I'm also doing well with the balance between wordcount goal and chapter goal.
I have a tutorial to be at in a half-hour, so I'm going to finish my tea and print my paper. Ciao, everybody.
- Jen -
27 October 2009
Assorted thoughts before November starts.
I know some of the things I want for Christmas!
I've got my novel almost plotted. I have an essay due tomorrow but I have until dinner to finish it. There's a pub crawl tonight for international students, and if I get my essay done in time I can go without feeling guilty.
The weather has been brilliant here. It's been sixty degrees fahrenheit pretty much every day, with a breeze and some sun. Not much rain. It's really been quite nice, to walk to my errands and go out and get lunch.
Have a good day, everyone :)
- Jen -
- Firefly DVD
- Serenity DVD
- This shirt
- This poster
I've got my novel almost plotted. I have an essay due tomorrow but I have until dinner to finish it. There's a pub crawl tonight for international students, and if I get my essay done in time I can go without feeling guilty.
The weather has been brilliant here. It's been sixty degrees fahrenheit pretty much every day, with a breeze and some sun. Not much rain. It's really been quite nice, to walk to my errands and go out and get lunch.
Have a good day, everyone :)
- Jen -
19 October 2009
Work hard, play hard.
That's basically the slogan of the University of Oxford as a whole. Your tutorials, lectures, and problem sets will probably kill you, so you need to have killer fun to make up for it.
Tonight I had a family dinner at the Big Bang. I realize that sentence needs a lot of explaining... there are things called 'families' here at New College. You have two parents; one of them is your JCR (junior common room, like the executive body) parent, and one is your subject parent. I have a subject mom, but I only met her in passing, so my dinner tonight was with James, my JCR dad (who is head of the LGBTQA association). And the Big Bang is a place which specializes in bangers and mash... again, bangers is a British term for sausages, and mash is just short for mashed potatoes.
And let me tell you, the food was divine. Our table of nine ordered the Whole Hog, which was a sampler of each of their 18 varieties of sausage, one generous scoop of six varieties of mash, and enough peas and cabbage to go around. I don't know exactly what varieties of sausage I got, but they were delicious, as were my (I think they were?) garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes.
It was also BYOB tonight since we were dining in the basement, which led to some interesting drinking games. The first one I learned about was pennies. Everyone has a one-pence coin that they are allowed to slip into someone else's already-sipped-from drink while the other person is holding it. The person who then has the penny in their drink has to finish their drink to 'save the queen' and retrieve the penny, at which point the game starts all over. Oh, and apparently, if someone double-pennies someone else, that original someone has to finish their drink out of a shoe. (Tonight my right heel was one of the unfortunate shoes!) That way, everyone gets drunk rather fast.
Another drinking game is sconces. It's like 'never have I ever,' except it begins with someone saying "I sconce anyone who has/has never X" and whoever fits that category has to stand up and take a sip from their drink. It gets rather embarrassing rather fast, and again, if you've done enough things everyone gets drunk really fast. Some other games we were exposed to were Shark Attack/Nuclear Bomb (get on top of your chairs, get under the table), X Masters (somewhat like Nose Goes, except you announce it and the last person to touch their whatever to whatever, like Girl Masters you have to touch a girl, loses), and Good Pants Bad Pants (not gonna go there). Thank God I didn't drink tonight.
Also, thankfully I finished my essay due Wednesday on Sunday, so for the rest of this week I only really have to worry about my Logic and Language tutorial. Tomorrow I'm making a trip to Sainsbury's, Blackwell, and possibly the University of Oxford Shop before returning my books to the New College library and making a trip to the Philosophy Library on Merton Street. Busy busy busy... like I was explaining to someone tonight, there's always something to do here. Much different from home.
- Jen -
Tonight I had a family dinner at the Big Bang. I realize that sentence needs a lot of explaining... there are things called 'families' here at New College. You have two parents; one of them is your JCR (junior common room, like the executive body) parent, and one is your subject parent. I have a subject mom, but I only met her in passing, so my dinner tonight was with James, my JCR dad (who is head of the LGBTQA association). And the Big Bang is a place which specializes in bangers and mash... again, bangers is a British term for sausages, and mash is just short for mashed potatoes.
And let me tell you, the food was divine. Our table of nine ordered the Whole Hog, which was a sampler of each of their 18 varieties of sausage, one generous scoop of six varieties of mash, and enough peas and cabbage to go around. I don't know exactly what varieties of sausage I got, but they were delicious, as were my (I think they were?) garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes.
It was also BYOB tonight since we were dining in the basement, which led to some interesting drinking games. The first one I learned about was pennies. Everyone has a one-pence coin that they are allowed to slip into someone else's already-sipped-from drink while the other person is holding it. The person who then has the penny in their drink has to finish their drink to 'save the queen' and retrieve the penny, at which point the game starts all over. Oh, and apparently, if someone double-pennies someone else, that original someone has to finish their drink out of a shoe. (Tonight my right heel was one of the unfortunate shoes!) That way, everyone gets drunk rather fast.
Another drinking game is sconces. It's like 'never have I ever,' except it begins with someone saying "I sconce anyone who has/has never X" and whoever fits that category has to stand up and take a sip from their drink. It gets rather embarrassing rather fast, and again, if you've done enough things everyone gets drunk really fast. Some other games we were exposed to were Shark Attack/Nuclear Bomb (get on top of your chairs, get under the table), X Masters (somewhat like Nose Goes, except you announce it and the last person to touch their whatever to whatever, like Girl Masters you have to touch a girl, loses), and Good Pants Bad Pants (not gonna go there). Thank God I didn't drink tonight.
Also, thankfully I finished my essay due Wednesday on Sunday, so for the rest of this week I only really have to worry about my Logic and Language tutorial. Tomorrow I'm making a trip to Sainsbury's, Blackwell, and possibly the University of Oxford Shop before returning my books to the New College library and making a trip to the Philosophy Library on Merton Street. Busy busy busy... like I was explaining to someone tonight, there's always something to do here. Much different from home.
- Jen -
17 October 2009
Pubbing and birthdays.
Last night I kind of took the night off from doing anything productive in favor of sitting in pubs and just... hanging out. There were discussions about... hm, let's see... systems of ethics (specifically moral relativism), the word 'khaki' and how it is to be pronounced here, twelve-year-old boys, physics tutorials, and awkward animals. Pretty much a great night.
I also indirectly had my first experience with Hassan's! For anyone who's not actually here, Hassan's is basically like a van that makes food (something like you'd see at a state fair, only a little bit higher class). They make very good chips ('fries') and coat them with all kinds of stuff, like chilli (yes, that's how they spell chili) and cheese, hummus and falafel... anything really. They also make good gyros, burgers, and onion rings (which I can personally attest to). I think sometimes I might have to take a night off from the dining hall in order to really appreciate some of that food.
Among my many revelations last night was that though I have a personal moral system, it is not coherent by any means... I don't even want to go through that brain-bender of a conversation last night again (though it was excellent while it happened). I also got called an aberration because I don't think babies are cute and I have no maternal instinct. Who needs enemies when you have friends like these? haha.
Usually I've been hanging out with the physics kids here... they live right next door (well, the girls do anyways), they're funny, they throw awesome parties, and everyone gets along. Sometimes, though, it's odd just sitting there in the pub while the conversation about tutorials and professors kind of flies over my head. Yes, I got your Taylor expansion joke, though I don't know what it is. Stuff like that.
Last but not least, it's Dakota's birthday today and we need to figure out something special to do. We also as a group need to figure out how to watch the ND vs. USC game today (interestingly, Firefox says USC is a typo but not ND, so we must be better). The physics girls are also throwing a house party, and I also personally have about seven books to read on utilitarianism by Tuesday night (and that's not even my entire reading list for this week). So, I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in... I think this is gonna be all for today.
- Jen -
I also indirectly had my first experience with Hassan's! For anyone who's not actually here, Hassan's is basically like a van that makes food (something like you'd see at a state fair, only a little bit higher class). They make very good chips ('fries') and coat them with all kinds of stuff, like chilli (yes, that's how they spell chili) and cheese, hummus and falafel... anything really. They also make good gyros, burgers, and onion rings (which I can personally attest to). I think sometimes I might have to take a night off from the dining hall in order to really appreciate some of that food.
Among my many revelations last night was that though I have a personal moral system, it is not coherent by any means... I don't even want to go through that brain-bender of a conversation last night again (though it was excellent while it happened). I also got called an aberration because I don't think babies are cute and I have no maternal instinct. Who needs enemies when you have friends like these? haha.
Usually I've been hanging out with the physics kids here... they live right next door (well, the girls do anyways), they're funny, they throw awesome parties, and everyone gets along. Sometimes, though, it's odd just sitting there in the pub while the conversation about tutorials and professors kind of flies over my head. Yes, I got your Taylor expansion joke, though I don't know what it is. Stuff like that.
Last but not least, it's Dakota's birthday today and we need to figure out something special to do. We also as a group need to figure out how to watch the ND vs. USC game today (interestingly, Firefox says USC is a typo but not ND, so we must be better). The physics girls are also throwing a house party, and I also personally have about seven books to read on utilitarianism by Tuesday night (and that's not even my entire reading list for this week). So, I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in... I think this is gonna be all for today.
- Jen -
13 October 2009
Spending too much time on forums!
I've been spending way too much time on forums lately (specifically, the forums for NaNoWriMo and TVTropes). While fun and enlightening, it's now reached the point where I need to do actual work, so Something's Gotta Give.
For those of you who don't know, TVTropes is a wiki for obvious cliches in any type of media, though they specialize, strangely, in anime/manga examples for their tropes. It makes for an entertaining read, and also a culture immersion for someone like me who actually has to learn how to avoid or adapt these cliches for their own work.
And for anyone who doesn't know what NaNoWriMo is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November. A good explanation of what I'll be doing is here, but instead of the basic requirement, I believe that the novel I'm plotting will require 100,000 (that's one hundred thousand, folks) words at least. My novel synopsis and author info can be found here, if you'd like to read it.
And before anyone says "OH THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE," I would like you to revisit my author profile and note that I have winning stamps from the last two years, and to view my signature on forum posts which states that 2007's novel was 61k words and that last year's novel was 88k words. The last two winning years have been won while I was a) in college (with sometimes ridiculous amounts of coursework), b) preparing to go abroad (which required additional writing samples, applications, and interviews), and c) never lowering my academic expectations for myself (ie. I still earned top marks while completing this side project).
So far this academic year, I've seen myself have much more free time than I normally do, though this may be a side effect of They Are Just Freshers (can you tell I've been on TVTropes much too much?). In the past, I've often found that squeezing this one extra thing into my schedule has made a positive difference in the way that I schedule my life, in that I think more creatively when I am not actually writing creatively (which helps when writing papers), I schedule my time more effectively, and I just generally am a happier person when I have more things to do than less.
I am still working on regular coursework (in fact, I have my first lecture and my first tutorial both tomorrow, so we'll see what happens). I've just made word requirement on both of my page-long essays for this week, one of which is due tomorrow at noon, so the rest of the night will probably be spent... on the Internet, as per usual, while patching up the rest. I'm also working on plotting my novel and adding characters (which is necessary; I have a terrible habit of working with a character base of about 4 people during NaNo, which needs to stop).
So, wish me luck tomorrow and I think I can handle the rest. Good luck to all of my friends back home who are dealing with midterms week.
- Jen -
For those of you who don't know, TVTropes is a wiki for obvious cliches in any type of media, though they specialize, strangely, in anime/manga examples for their tropes. It makes for an entertaining read, and also a culture immersion for someone like me who actually has to learn how to avoid or adapt these cliches for their own work.
And for anyone who doesn't know what NaNoWriMo is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November. A good explanation of what I'll be doing is here, but instead of the basic requirement, I believe that the novel I'm plotting will require 100,000 (that's one hundred thousand, folks) words at least. My novel synopsis and author info can be found here, if you'd like to read it.
And before anyone says "OH THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE," I would like you to revisit my author profile and note that I have winning stamps from the last two years, and to view my signature on forum posts which states that 2007's novel was 61k words and that last year's novel was 88k words. The last two winning years have been won while I was a) in college (with sometimes ridiculous amounts of coursework), b) preparing to go abroad (which required additional writing samples, applications, and interviews), and c) never lowering my academic expectations for myself (ie. I still earned top marks while completing this side project).
So far this academic year, I've seen myself have much more free time than I normally do, though this may be a side effect of They Are Just Freshers (can you tell I've been on TVTropes much too much?). In the past, I've often found that squeezing this one extra thing into my schedule has made a positive difference in the way that I schedule my life, in that I think more creatively when I am not actually writing creatively (which helps when writing papers), I schedule my time more effectively, and I just generally am a happier person when I have more things to do than less.
I am still working on regular coursework (in fact, I have my first lecture and my first tutorial both tomorrow, so we'll see what happens). I've just made word requirement on both of my page-long essays for this week, one of which is due tomorrow at noon, so the rest of the night will probably be spent... on the Internet, as per usual, while patching up the rest. I'm also working on plotting my novel and adding characters (which is necessary; I have a terrible habit of working with a character base of about 4 people during NaNo, which needs to stop).
So, wish me luck tomorrow and I think I can handle the rest. Good luck to all of my friends back home who are dealing with midterms week.
- Jen -
09 October 2009
Why I'm here.
So, as many of you know, I'm actually here to study stuff and not just here to muck about Europe for nine months. What you may not know is what I'm actually studying and why it makes me the anomaly of all of New College.
Here at Oxford, there is no such thing as a degree in philosophy. All the philosophy is taught as a part of a group of degrees. There are several ways one can do this, but the most popular way seems to be PPE. It's a common phrase around here and it stands for Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The focus on the degree seems to be on the 'E' part of it, but for the time being I've grouped myself with the PPE students in order to go to my library orientations, group meetings, etc. Other degrees that include this are Philosophy and Physics, Philosophy and Mathematics, and Philosophy and Psychology.
So, to New College it's strange enough that I'm doing what I call 'straight philosophy' without doing anything else. But when I tell my classmates, either ND or New College, what I'm studying, I'm met with universal derision. "Philosophy? Always hated that subject. Never saw the point."
To make matters even worse, I love the logic aspect of philosophy, so much so that I specified on my application to study here that I would study basically nothing but aspects of logic while I was here. If I thought just being a philosopher was unpopular, I was totally unprepared for the hatred people here have for logic. "Oh, yeah, I hated those classes, that's why I dropped the P in PPE." "You really want to study that? It's so awful."
Yes, I really do want to study it, and I quite enjoy it, thank you very much. I intend on taking full advantage of Dr. Halbach's resources and branching out as far as I can in this substudy.
---
As a sidenote to all of this, New College/Oxford's IT departments leave much to be desired. I have no wireless internet in my room, I had to retrieve all of my passwords, and our e-mail has not yet been moved from the old host to the new host (creating a slew of problems when we tried to sign on to Nexus and found out we were still on Herald). Most of the ND people are now known by sight to the IT office, and I have learned how to decipher some pretty strange handwriting to discover my pre-set passwords for some of these things.
Also, I need to remember to bring my camera to more things, because it is absolutely beautiful outside right now (slanted morning sunlight) and I haven't taken pictures of the college or the city as a whole yet.
I'm off to the New College fresher's fair in a few minutes, and I probably have another busy day ahead of me. Still don't have school supplies like notebooks, folders, pens, or pencils... I've had my head on completely backwards for about a week now. At least at this point I'm relatively settled in and have a fair grasp of the major streets of Oxford. Pip pip for now (or however these people say it.)
- Jen -
Here at Oxford, there is no such thing as a degree in philosophy. All the philosophy is taught as a part of a group of degrees. There are several ways one can do this, but the most popular way seems to be PPE. It's a common phrase around here and it stands for Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The focus on the degree seems to be on the 'E' part of it, but for the time being I've grouped myself with the PPE students in order to go to my library orientations, group meetings, etc. Other degrees that include this are Philosophy and Physics, Philosophy and Mathematics, and Philosophy and Psychology.
So, to New College it's strange enough that I'm doing what I call 'straight philosophy' without doing anything else. But when I tell my classmates, either ND or New College, what I'm studying, I'm met with universal derision. "Philosophy? Always hated that subject. Never saw the point."
To make matters even worse, I love the logic aspect of philosophy, so much so that I specified on my application to study here that I would study basically nothing but aspects of logic while I was here. If I thought just being a philosopher was unpopular, I was totally unprepared for the hatred people here have for logic. "Oh, yeah, I hated those classes, that's why I dropped the P in PPE." "You really want to study that? It's so awful."
Yes, I really do want to study it, and I quite enjoy it, thank you very much. I intend on taking full advantage of Dr. Halbach's resources and branching out as far as I can in this substudy.
---
As a sidenote to all of this, New College/Oxford's IT departments leave much to be desired. I have no wireless internet in my room, I had to retrieve all of my passwords, and our e-mail has not yet been moved from the old host to the new host (creating a slew of problems when we tried to sign on to Nexus and found out we were still on Herald). Most of the ND people are now known by sight to the IT office, and I have learned how to decipher some pretty strange handwriting to discover my pre-set passwords for some of these things.
Also, I need to remember to bring my camera to more things, because it is absolutely beautiful outside right now (slanted morning sunlight) and I haven't taken pictures of the college or the city as a whole yet.
I'm off to the New College fresher's fair in a few minutes, and I probably have another busy day ahead of me. Still don't have school supplies like notebooks, folders, pens, or pencils... I've had my head on completely backwards for about a week now. At least at this point I'm relatively settled in and have a fair grasp of the major streets of Oxford. Pip pip for now (or however these people say it.)
- Jen -
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