crying 'bide, lady, bide!'

[timeripple]

In which Fiona reflects on the oddities of life.

I have, for once, fallen ill at a convenient time. Because classes don't start until Tuesday, I can sit around my room huddled under blankets instead of slogging through classwork and such. I am of course annoyed - nay, infuriated - that I cannot go out in the beautiful clear autumn afternoon, but quite honestly I don't trust myself to be aware enough of my surroundings to cross a street, and I'm much better off in bed with a cup of tea reading Thomas the Rhymer. Again. 1) Because it is a delicious book, with words and glorious images and songs enough to fill my music-deprived soul (nope, still no practice time), and 2) because my only other reading material at this point is the Trial and Death of Socrates. In Greek. While it is a fascinating document, I simply don't have the vocabulary to understand more than one word in five without a dictionary. So, to Elflyn land it is.

Comments

hi fiona!!!

[(Anonymous)]

sorry i've been absent for a while - i have no good excuse other than excessive business, since lj's been working just fine for me.

so this is a response to your last few posts...and look at rachel's lj for a more detailed description of what i've been doing and a note to both you and her.

you're making me miss edinburgh so much!!!! i remember all the places you're talking about ...what a wonderful city. i think i even remember your dorm. i definitely remember the new parliment building, which was still being built when we were there. allie and i walked all around that area while rachel was sleeping. and the holyrood hotel is just down the street from the hostels we stayd in when we were in edinburgh! i forget what they were called, but they were both on that street closer to the castle but before the old parliment building, right before the road gets skinnier and less populated, one on the north side and one on the south. oh...i wish i were there with you :( but i'm having fun here.

I go through matriculation (which, as one of the numerous student union booklets says, sounds “a little like an obscure sexual predilection” but is in fact much less interesting)

...just wanted to put that up here again. i really enjoyed that sentence.

my edinburgh pointers (you've already probably figured all these out, but just in case...):
climb the weird gothy tower across the park from the castle. it's fun.
there's a fun graveyard on holyrood, probably pretty near where you're staying. get a tourbook - there's a bunch of famous people buried there.
there's also a lot of cool magick shops scattered around that street and some near it. one right around the hostels i was talking about. in a kilt shop on the north side of the street in the same area, you can get scraps of tartan for cheap. and cheap used kilt socks.
at the top of that hill with all the half-finished neoclassical monuments, there's a fun little observatory house, where there's a ball on top that drops every time the castle cannon is shot (i think it's on the hour or something), and a nice cat that lives there. i think admission might have been expensive (we didn't go in, just into the lobby) but it looked like it might have been worth it if we had had more time. in any case, it's a fun weird hill to explore. lots of strange abandoned buildings and a great view.

ok, i should really get to work now. have to type up a fun science proposal, plus a butload of reading to do. so, anyway, keep me updated - and feel better!

siena

Re: hi fiona!!!

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

I agree, Edinburgh rocks. I'll be spending New Years there, so I do intend to climb the Sir Walter Scott monument (hereafter in my mind the "weird gothy monument") at some point. Geek that I am, I of course had to look at the half-finished copy of one of the Acropolis buildings to see if they'd angled the columns properly outward (I couldn't tell if they had). Great view, though, like you said. The observatory was closed when I was there, but I noticed it too.

All you talk about hostels reminds me that I have to renew my youth hostel membership, as I'll probably be needing it.

Have fun with that science proposal!