Ash the Mighty

53.22% to be exact. I promised myself I would go to bed after I reached half way, but then continued on for a few hundred more words because they just kept coming. Not complaining, mind, but it’s definitely time for sleep.

And for those keeping track (which is roughly me), this means I have my first (of at least two) Introductions done, the Heraldry chapter done, most of the Royal Sites chapter put to bed (still need to write most of Edinburgh), and about half of the Noble Sites chapter finito (consisting entirely of Craigmillar Castle. If I need more to write about, I can throw in information on one of the eight pieces of heraldry that I skipped). I’ve not even properly started the Cathedrals chapter and of course I’ve yet to do a conclusion. But, it still adds up to over half! Yay!

Slainte.

“Yeah, we never talk about the future
We never talk about the past anymore
We never ask ourselves the questions
To the answers that nobody needs to know . . .
. . . Yes, I guess we need the drama.
So much for the afterglow.”
~Everclear – “So Much For the Afterglow”

Ever just feel like you need to scream?

What with the power outage that lasted considerably longer than it needed to, I’ve only added a paltry 1200 some-odd words since I’ve been back. The good news is that it means I’m over 1/3 of the way done. The bad news is I was supposed to add about 1200 words a day not every three days.

And my shower still doesn’t work.

Slainte.

“There ain’t no morals to these stories at all
And everything I tell you, you can bet will be a lie
I been away from the living, I don’t need to be forgiven
I’m just waiting for that cold black sun-cracked numb-inside soul of mine . . .
. . . To come alive.”
~The Refreshments – “Nada”

I have officially discovered a couple dozen more people who well and truly rock. I went to Cambridge this past weekend to visit Spence and also to see a few Shakespeare plays. First let me say that we got caught up in the biggest rain storm I have yet to encounter while we were in Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was a pretty warm rain which made it a bit more OK, but with so much water coming down it was like having a shower! While still damp we saw the Royal Shakespeare Company perform MacBeth. Once again they dissappointed a bit, but the fact that Lady MacBeth at one point found herself in the exact same pose as the Lady Mac statue at the Shakespeare Monument kinda made the play for me.

So the cool people started happening the next day really. This is when I started really meeting Spence’s fellow classmates. I won’t get into the startling details of what went on over the weekend, but suffice to say there were many MANY antics, much vodka and Jameson’s consumed, amazingly funny and/or stupid and/or deep things said, and no small amount of drama (which is probably old hat to them, but was like living in a soap opera for lil’ deprived me . . . and made all the better because I wasn’t involved). I would however, if just for the sake of my own memories, like to acknowledge the ones who were particularly cool to me in no particular order:

Of course here’s to Spencer, who is the man when it comes to downing a flask of Jameson’s. Here’s to Theresa for introducing me to the phrase “riding the V wave.” Here’s to Tim for being one of the bravest people I know in more ways than one. Here’s to Alex for being the coolest pink-haired Mormon I’ve ever met. Here’s to Lauren and her status as Faerie Queene. Here’s to Francine for looking way too much like Carrie Jeffers. Here’s to Courtney for being well over 6 feet and damned proud of it. Here’s to Jared for genuinely wanting to watch out for all his friends, old and brand spanking new. Here’s to Brandi for leading me down memory lane. Here’s to LaurenandWill who were only seen seperate once all weekend. And finally, here’s to Piotr for founding the Smirnoff distillery which produced the vodka we so lovingly guzzled all weekend (and to anyone I didn’t include: sorry! My memory sucks, remember?).

That’s about it for me now. I had a really really awesome time, and I simply can’t tell you how little I wanted to come back home to my empty flat and all my friends away doing interesting things! But alas, the proverbial bills must be paid and the dissertations must be written!

Slainte.

“I gave her my speech.
I waited for her response.
All I heard was the wind blowing.”
~Tim

Two reasons for the subject of this post. One, it’s been almost two weeks since I wrote in (and during that time, I’ve only gotten a handful of messages on my G-Mail account. Granted, I’ve only gotten a handful of messages during that time period, but still!); and two, two weeks exactly until I get to go home for a further two weeks! It’s a very auspicious amount of time, the fortnight.

Over the past two weeks a lot has happened. The major thing is that my Mom and Dad came for a visit starting on the 8th of July. That night we caught a very late plane to Dublin where we were met the next day by my brother Spencer. Dublin absolutely rocked, though I can’t tell you how glad I was that my folks were picking up the tab. If they hadn’t, I would never have been able to do most of the fun things that we did. Not only did we bum around the city a lot, but we also got to go visit the Irish version of Stonehenge called Newgrange, but after Spence had to go back to Cambridge for classes, the three of us who remained also went and visited County Wicklow, which was absolutely gorgeous. I took a couple of good rolls of film, so once I get them scanned I’ll put them in the picture section!

So Spence had to go home on Sunday, but Mom Dad and I stayed until the following Wednesday. We flew into Glasgow International Airport, and weren’t home for two hours before we left again to go meet Rob, Chris, and Alice at Oran Mor, a new pub down at Byres Road and Great Western Roads. After that, surprise surprise, we headed over to the Loft. It was a good night and thankfully very few truly embarrassing stories about me came out. I don’t need any more floating around than there already are.

The rest of the week progressed rather normally. We caught Spider-Man 2 on Friday and had a BBQ on Sunday, but other than that, we just passed time really. Oh! Before the movie on Friday, we caught a train to Edinburgh where I then proceeded to drag Mom and Dad to Craigmillar Castle so that I could take some pictures of the copious amounts of heraldry there. It was amazing. I didn’t know I was starving for material at places like Castle Campbell with it’s four blank shields until I saw Craigmillar which had no fewer than 8 fully recognizable period sets of arms. It was great! Now all I have to do is write it up. Talk about mood swings!

So the parental units left this morning. I’ll see them in a couple of weeks, so I’m not too bummed about it. Really the only thing that’s keeping me down is the stupid dissertation that I need to write. I’ve done a couple thousand words already, but I don’t really know how good they are, and even it they’re terrific, I’ve still got another eight grand at least to go! Well, if I can get two (or better yet three) chapters well and truly done before I leave, I’ll only need to do one or two more while in Phoenix (plus a conclusion) which should be manageable. I’m gonna do my best to get it all at least in rough draft form though. I’d rather not have to write an opus while I’m there . . . it’s supposed to be a vacation!

And unless you are of the “never click a link” group, you’ll notice that I’ve added something. I’ve put in a new section simply entitled People. As it says on the page, I’m fully aware that I refer to people with little regards for whether or not people back home know them. Therefore, I’ve created a kind of encyclopedia of those poor souls who have been sucked into my life. You’ll also notice it’s not even close to being a complete list. Write and send me pictures or requests and I’ll put them up!

Slainte.

“So you see it’s all up to you
You can be better than you are
You could be swingin’ on a star”
~Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, etc. – “Swinging on a Star”

Today I was bored. No big surprise there, every day that I work on my dissertation I tend to get bored. But this time I was really bored, so I not only planned a rather intricate visit to Tucson (including an eye exam, a lunch, a dinner and possibly an overnight stay with some friends) in August, but I also remembered that I had read somewhere that people were selling G-Mail addresses for as much as $60 on eBay. I had to see this for myself, so I surfed on over and discovered to my surprise that they were actually going for about $4 a piece. Well, this I couldn’t pass up, so I went ahead and bought myself one. Especially nice since I already had a $4 credit at Paypal as a shipping refund from an earlier purchase. Therefore, I got this free membership as it should have been . . . free (well, sorta free).

This mostly has been in an effort to review the supposedly revolutionary way of e-mail handling that Google has been talking about so much. I now have an e-mail address (drhodes@gmail.com), and am looking forward to getting enough e-mail to really try all this stuff out. But now that I’ve had the thing for all of 12 hours, let me give you a small rundown of G-Mail vs. Yahoo! Mail.

For starters, G-Mail will let you stay logged on for two weeks at a time, whereas Yahoo only allows about 24 hours or so. As far as security goes, that’s a bad thing, but when you live alone like yours truly, it’s bloody terrific. Yahoo trumps G-Mail in the whole Yahoo Instant Messenger thing, in that I can be told when I have mail, rather than having to check it constantly, which is really nice for obsessives like myself. About two weeks ago I would have raved about the 1 Gb that G-Mail offers, but since Yahoo has recently upped my mailbox to 2 Gb, the point is pretty moot. I shouldn’t ever need either amount of storage anyway (after keeping every single e-mail I’ve gotten and sent for the past two weeks, I’ve finally reached the 1% mark on my Yahoo account). But most key here is the filing system. Quite simply, G-Mail claims not to have one. That’s not exactly true of course. Basically it will try to file for you. Any time you send an e-mail to someone, a “Conversation” is started. Assuming each person keeps pressing “Reply” (and maybe if they keep the same subject too, I’m not sure yet), then the e-mails will be grouped together so that you can keep track of what has been said. Additionally, you can create a multitude of “Labels.” On each conversation you can select as many different labels as apply. So for example, if I’m having a conversation with my brother about women at Glasgow Uni, I could apply the labels: “Family,” “Glasgow,” and “Hotties” and if later I need to find the e-mail I could either use Google’s famous keyword search technology or can click on any of those three labels to narrow the field. Don’t worry. Only two of those three labels exist, and if you have to ask which ones then you need to have more faith in me (or I need to stop talking about women so much! ).

SO, despite the fact that I have yet to really fully explore the G-Mail system, I think I like it. While the not-a-filing-system is difficult to understand at first, once you have some messages to play around with, it really is quite simple and intuitive. That said, I don’t think I’m going to be switching over fully quite yet. If nothing else, I don’t like not being able to actually file my messages in to folders at all, which may sound old fashioned, but there you have it. Plus I’ve become totally adicted to Yahoo’s “nicknames” function which, if G-Mail has it or something similar, I haven’t figured it out yet (instead they have an auto-complete type system, which I’ve never been a huge fan of). I’ll still be checking this new address a lot however, so those of you who hate the whole “Ash” thing can now start hitting me up at my G-Mail account (which once again is: drhodes@gmail.com). Oh, and if you do, make sure you check your Bulk Mail (or Spam) folders for a while to make sure my reply doesn’t go there. Both Yahoo and Hotmail were trying some dirty tricks for a while there to try and stop G-Mail from being a success!

And 32 more hours! Yay!

Slainte.

“Memento, homo, quad cinis es
Et in cenerem reverentis”
(“Remember, o man, that you are ashes
And into ashes you will return”)
~Mediaeval Baebes – “Erthe Upon Erthe”

I just can’t think of any pithy subjects, so that’s all you get. Well, I’ve had an eventful weekend. Friday I saw Driscoll who, to my surprise, didn’t tell me that I couldn’t write my dissertation. So that was nice. In fact, he told me that I now have more than enough data and that I should put together a new outline and start writing. Now. Indeed I need to have the new version of the outline and preferably the whole introduction in to him before my folks get here on Thursday morning (and little does Driscoll know that for pretty much every weekend between now and when I leave in August I will either be gone or have guests . . . he would probably have a fit). So needless to say I haven’t even started . . .

. . . because yesterday was the 4th of July! It was great. We were supposed to have a huge BBQ with 20 some odd people there. Burgers, hot dogs, (American) football, baseball . . . the whole shebang. But then it started raining. Hard. So hard that instead of 20 people there were only 4 (including me). What a turnout. So instead we just BBQed our food (in the process almost setting the place on fire) and then watched Greece wipe the floor with Portugal in the EuroCup Finals. First time Greece has ever even been to the finals and they won. How cool for them?

That’s actually is about it. Today I’ve been all over the West End running errands. Had to pay a gas bill at the old place, checked out some books, bought some groceries, got film developed, went to the bank. Busy busy busy. Even went to the gym (but alas was unable to do more than half my usual workout. I was dying there!). Wow my life is boring. I’ve reached the point where I’m actually telling you guys the details of my errand running. I need a vacation! Oh yeah. Three days until I get one! Yipee!

Slainte.

“Here’s to the Montagues, John Wayne, and Bette Davissss.
And Romeo, gave it for this chorus girl in Vegas, yeah ha ha!”
~Butthole Surfers – “Whatever (I Had a Dream Last Night)”

I’ve had several people suggest one or more of the things below, but never in quite such a venemous and vehement way as in the e-mail that was waiting for me this morning when I turned on the computer. I’ve waiting for over three hours before doing anything about it in hopes that I would cool down a bit. I haven’t. Instead of writing an e-mailed response to this person (who shall remain nameless), I decided to put this out in the open so that anyone else who wants to criticize the handling of my love can rest assured that it has already been done.

“Meggan didn’t deserve to be treated the way you treated her” – First let me say that that’s not the actual sentence sent. None of these are. They were a bit too . . . vulgar . . . to be repeated. Anyway, in response, you’re right, I probably didn’t. I’d like to think that Meggan hasn’t been telling everyone she knows the intimate details of our short relationship, so I’ll just assume you got this from my own blog. Yes, we went out for a short time. Yes it ended badly and in a rather unfortunate protracted manner, mostly because I didn’t have the guts to just flat out hurt her. But it was aparently inevitable, and it happened. I’ve already appologized to her as much as I can, and I just hope that some day she’ll forgive me and be my friend. She has a right to be upset with me about it. No one else does.

“Meggan was obviously just a replacement for your ex-wife” – Untrue. Do they look a lot alike? Oh absolutely. Both are slender, with short red hair, bright blue eyes, and sharp features. But then, that short description is accurate for a truly amazing number of women in the world (not the least of which is Shirley Manson, who you could really just say Meggan and Carly are just replacements for!). I think instead of saying that Meg was similar to Carly, you could just as easily say they’re both similar to Marjorie, or April, or any number of other women I dated. I’d say I have a type, not that I’m stuck on Carly. In fact, if you look at the dominant type of woman where I was growing up (blonde hair and really soft features) it’s probably not that much of a surprise that I ended up with girls who look different!

“You’re not over your ex-wife, and you shouldn’t mess with other girls’ hearts until you are. Stop looking for a rebound girl” – This one I feel is unfair. While granted I don’t really know if I’ve been looking for a rebound girl or not (I don’t think so. REALLY), history says that I haven’t. Carly was supposed to be a rebound from Ashley and I stayed with her for almost 6 years! As for the not over Carly bit. Well, I can’t speak to that. I certainly found myself depressed when the divorce came through, but it was (and you can ask Chris about this) more because I was divorced. I never ever wanted to be a statistic. In fact, I think I kept saying that that night. So while I may not be fully over Carly, what happened between Meggan and me wasn’t about that. It was about me being a bit screwed up and not really in a place to have another long distance, long term relationship; but that’s it.

I’m going to shut up now because I’ve been told by a reliable source that I’m too long winded. That I need to shut the hell up more often, and that my blogs are often too wordy and way too depressing. Heard you! This was a one-off type of thing that I hope to not have to repeat (hint, hint). Take care folks. I’m off to have my work torn apart by my advisor.

Slainte.

“This isn’t where I parked my car.”
~Jacob Pitts (as Cooper Harris) – “Eurotrip”