Prague: reprise

Hey, remember how we went to Prague almost two months ago? And how Josh did a brilliant job planning the whole thing? And then how he forgot the camera? Well, we finally got some film developed (much, much cheaper in Michigan than Durham) and got the pictures on CD as well. The quality is not fantastic, but we thought we'd share some anyway. As the photos themselves look great, it must be the scanning that made them so grainy, so don't hesitate to buy one of those disposable cameras should you ever find yourself in our camera-less situation!

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Wenceslas Square
Wenceslas Square from the other side
The old clock in Wenceslas Square
Looking across the river towards the castle
The old Jewish cemetery
Crossing the bridge to the castle
Josh in one of the palace gardens
Looking back at the city
Our last supper. We were eating inexpensive Italian, sitting on a square with a bell-chiming church in a large green, watching people walk by in the sunshine. We both agreed that Prague is a very beautiful city.

Some photos

(This photo makes me feel strange. Could we look any more like we were from West Michigan?)

See more photos from our trip to the USA...

An afternoon to kill in London
"Why won't you feed me, Josh?"
Tate museum- they'll take big suitcases at the coat check, in case you're curious. They do prefer you not take them into the galleries, although they are very polite about it if you do.
J: Why are you taking a picture in the underground? We are not tourists.
M: Says who.
I think my niece and nephews like Josh alright.

The "reason" for our trip! Lindsay made a lovely bride.
More beautiful women.

Family...
... and more family!
We are sooo glad our parents get along!

I do miss the Lake.
Back again and with three hours to kill between our early (!!) to arrive flight and our train north.

We had a wonderful time. It was so nice to see all of you! Who's up for Christmas?

post funny photo friday post

The headlines at our two homepages today:

NY Times- Talks Implode During Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved
and
BBC- Wall St rescue plan 'needs work'

Funny.

Funny Photo Friday: the annals of botany

What other kind of plant is there, exactly?

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

What strange mysterious links enchain the heart to regions where the morn of life was spent.

-James Grahame in "The Sabbath"

Thoughts for the 'day'

1) Jet lag sucks. (I am presently both tired, awake, hungry and full all at the same time)

2) I have now flown on what has to be the oldest trans-atlantic airplane in continual use. (I'm sure it was cutting edge technology in 1984, but now-a-days, not so much.)

3) I had a meeting shortly after arriving back in Durham... it was culture shock hardcore. I went from talking with only/feeling rather distinctly American to talking/interacting with British folks in about 5 minutes, that's just a quick shift... quick enough I had a hard time understanding people.

4) It's hard to leave family and friends.

Funny Photo Friday

Two signs from Barcelona:
In the Catedral. Did cameras ever look like this in a format appropriate for touring cathedrals? Or maybe it's a different apparatus they're banning? Like bellows?
Unfortunate they put it in neon in multiple places. (If only they'd just left out the 'c' altogether, we'd have thought it was on purpose.)

Things learned/learnt on the homefront...

1) In some parts of the world the weather in the morning is the same in the afternoon (even though I'd be impressed if weather was the same for 30 minutes in a row back in Durham).

2) Everything feels really big and spaced out here, housing lots, min-vans, SUVs. (I went to Sams Club to drop off film when we return and forgot that so many SUVs and Minivans carrying on 1-2 people could be in one place, doesn't that break a rule of physics somewhere?)

3) I always feel out of shape at home. Before it was normally during proper holidays (thanksgiving, Christmas, etc...) but now there is nothing going on and I still feel out of shape here.

4) I like Mexican food. If they don't have Mexican food in heaven heads will roll....

5) I miss not having a car or more precisely not needing a car. I don't like HAVING to drive to places in order to get around.

6) It is funny the occasional ways that the British/American-ness contrasts, the words that slip out (I still refer to a bathroom as a loo to Meg) and the occasional mistakes that are made (almost driving on the wrong side of the road).

7) It's nice to be around family.

8) Lake Michigan is simply wonderful... and unique. Everywhere else in the world water this big is called a sea but here its a glorious little lake...

To Do List

For our time in the USA (which begins TODAY).

1. Consume massive amounts of Mexican food. Also, find the best burrito in Holland, Michigan.


2. Visit the potato chip aisle and verify that there are in fact fewer flavors of chips in the USA.


3. Buy blue jeans


4. For that matter, buy a whole wardrobe at those prices.


5. Eat a good steak.


6. Buy a Twinkie for my curious coworker.


7. Buy something ranch flavored (chips, preferably) for coworkers so I can stop trying to describe an indescribable flavor.


8. Go chuckle over what's included in Meijer's British section in the international aisle.


9. Go see if Donutville still exists near Megan's high school. If not, buy donuts elsewhere.


10. Make sure that we can vote in November (and maybe later take absentee ballot to work for show and tell).


11. Renew Josh's drivers license. Please don't tell the government of Michigan that we no longer live there.


12. Attend the Allegan County Fair. Look at chickens, find record size pumpkin, eat fried cheese.

Funny Photo Friday: a complicated contraption

I had no idea there was so much to know about using an escalator. For that matter, if there's so much to tell us, couldn't they have come up with just one more thing for that last square?


On the way up to Park Guell in Barcelona.

Numbers

Well I’m done! While there is more that could be written it's not going to be and my dissertation (thesis for those of you in the states) offically completed and handed in... and to think it only took 5-6 months of work! Now, this is exciting for me but less so for everyone else, (who else really cares about your dissertation aside from yourself?) so in an attempt to make it more interesting I’ve included some numbers on it and some things I’ve noticed throughout this process.

- To begin I should say there are 63 books stacked in the picture.
See those numbers...

- My dissertation is about 14, 998 words long (my max was 15,000, whew!), that’s about 57 pages double spaced, not including cover page, table of contents, bibliography, etc…

- There are about 81,189 characters and 310 paragraphs.

- Because of the length of the thing that means I have 5 pages in footnotes (in about 200 citations) and a 6 page bibliography.

- If you include the sections/phrases/sentences of this paper I have cut, (5,032 words worth in major sections…I don’t delete my sentences in case I want to use/reference them again) that means I’ll have 19,962 or about 75 pages double spaced.

- I use the word ‘and’ 750 times

- I have 1,119 commas.

- There are 543 periods.

- Don’t forget the 13 semi-colons and 24 colons.

- The most reference book is Bryan Wilson’s Religious Sects which I cite 13 times

- If I am conservative on how long I've been thinking/reading/writing/revising this it's somewhere in the ballpark of 200 hours.

- I have drank about 700 cups of coffee and about 550 cups of tea while working on this thing (to make a conservative estimation).

- Its amazing how you can work on something for so long and not care about it by the time you hand it in; I’ve never felt so apathetic in regards to a deadline so large. I am turning in the culmination of 5 months of work and I’ll just be happy to be done with the thing. That's not to say that I'm not proud of it, I'm rather happy with it and glad I wrote it... but I'm largely happy to be done with it.

Megan has a favorite paragraph in my dissertation...

And this is it.

With the methodology and primary objectives of this essay mentioned, it is worthwhile to turn and address the first of two ... that being the group associated with .... However, before such analytical work can proceed, it is important to provide the necessary context within broader .... Additionally, it is vital to note that any notion of .... In fact some scholars assert .... Such observations are important and vital for this essay, given its concern for... and as such....

(Note from Megan: I just went ahead and removed anything that was worthwhile in that paragraph. I read Josh's entire dissertation as part five of my six-year campaign to convince Josh that people do and should be judged in life based solely on their grammar skills, and I am now familiar with a very common Josh Tactic. When he gets bored, tired, or just plain lazy while writing, he tends to find something he likes and run with it. It usually takes me about three sentences to spot It, and It has varied from the phrase 'in order to' to excessive semicolons to the overuse of the word ‘sectarian.’ Each paper will have its own It. This time It was transitions. As demonstrated above, he had entire paragraphs of transitions. Fascinating. Luckily, Josh is confident enough in his ideas (which are usually pretty good) to take my heat and post this.)

Rebuttal from Josh: I view my papers more as a game of hide and seek, I pick a writing quirk and see how many I can add into the essay, so Megan has something to do while thumbing through 15,000 words of prose... :) I've also been trying to convince Megan that the vast majority of people do not have flawless grammar and she has to get, and her quirky brain, to accept that most of us can't recite the MLA handbook from memory.

Regardless... the above mentioned paragraph is not my best, but what's one paragraph out of three hundred anyway?

Politics

Lest you think that it is only Americans who have to suffer the woes of American political advertising, I need to tell you yesterday I saw an:

OBAMA 08 BUMPER STICKER

I couldn't stop giggling... England, what a place.

I just need to tell someone that I could see my breathe when I walked to the train this morning. Just when you think you know the world, you move to a new climate, and it screws you all up again.

Funny Photo Friday: Don't ask us the meaning of life, please.

In a train station in Barcelona.

Our Night at the Circus (and how we missed the train. Again.)

Last Thursday, a co-worker showed up after lunch with coupons for half off Chinese State Circus tickets and a persuasive argument that anything claiming to feature Shaolin warriors simply cannot be missed. She convinced me, so on Saturday night, Josh and I headed up to the Town Moor in Newcastle (it really is a moor in the middle of the town- a huge field with cows and everything). We came via train and metro and ended up sitting with my co-worker and her assorted friends.

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The Olympic Nation Spectacular did indeed approach spectacular. There were plate spinners who spun 12 plates at a time, a contortionist who sat on her head, gymnasts who tumbled their way through 7-foot-high hoops, 'lions' made of two people who walked (together) on 6' diameter balls over see-saws, and a couple who spun around above our heads using only a few pieces of clothe and absurd displays of strength. They even ended with a quick round of gymnastics routines on the pommel, rings, parallel bars and balance beam in front of the Olympic rings and the British and Chinese flags. We were not represented.

The crowd cleared out quite quickly, but we hung around on the grass in front of the tent in the darkness, practicing our plate spinning (£2.50), picking candy floss out of our teeth (£3), and judging just how possible it would be for us to hang from each others' flexed feet (not very). Sometime around then, I pulled out my trusty little train time table. And panicked.

You see, most working societies use the weekends for extra-curricular activities. I know they do the same here because I've seen the drunkards in Durham on a Saturday night (or in Newcastle on a Friday afternoon, for that matter). And most extra-curricular activities, say the circus, for example, end not earlier than 9:30 or 10. Yet, for some reason, the southbound trains from Newcastle end at 9:50 on Saturdays. NINE FIFTY! That's a full 54 minutes earlier than a weeknight (which is embarrassing enough). And while, though not encouraged, you could always hang around until the 4:30 on a Saturday morning, the first train on Sunday is at 8am. I hadn't even looked at the train schedule before we left because I assumed that there would even be an extra, later train on top of the weekday schedule. That is exactly what I get for assuming such foolishness in this country of 10-5 shopping hours. Sheesh.

We had ten minutes to make the half hour journey to the train station, so we tucked our tail between our legs and headed out for a drink with co-worker and friends. Luckily, this co-worker is a recent student who understands the nauseating quality of a £45 taxi ride. Also as a recent student, she lived for three more days in a house with four vacant but fully-furnished bedrooms.

Instead of a dash and a price tag, we had a nice pint, a decent bed, and a lovely bus ride on Sunday morning. We ate croissants and coffee at the train station and headed home around 9 the next morning. Altogether, a satisfying excursion.



By the way, that makes number three for me, and I plan on JOTTING DOWN the emergency bus schedule onto my train timetable as soon as possible!

(Which, I know from experience, gives you an extra 27 minutes on weekdays. Not an extra 27 minutes out with your coworkers, mind you, but an extra 27 minutes to dash, panicking, from the train station to the general area you know buses leave from near the Earl Grey Monument. If, through shear luck and providence, you happen upon the bus with Bishop Auckland as it's destination, you then have just enough time before the bus actually pulls away to call your husband and thank him profusely for his quick fingers looking up the bus timetable online. It gets into Durham around midnight.)