Too Cute

No idea what's going on in that little head of his, but how cute is my nephew here? :)

Being a Productive Member of Society

My sleep schedule is all screwed up, you guys. I guess this is what comes of having class only two days a week & never before 2pm. I keep promising myself to get up at a reasonable hour, like 8 or 9. Then, I end up staying up late for whatever silly reason & sleeping in until noon!

Last night/this morning, I tried to get to bed by 1am. 9am - 1am = 8 hours of sleep. Perfect, right? However, I didn't actually crawl into bed until 1:45, then spent about 15 minutes using my phone's calculator to figure out my budget for the semester, then spent about an hour worrying about my dating life. Yup - finally fell asleep at 3am.

When my alarm went off at 9, I was not feeling rested at all. Fell back asleep & dragged myself up at 12:45. :( I walked down to the sandwich shop for lunch & felt even worse about getting up late. The temperature was a balmy 37, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I felt like a lazy schlub. ;)

Here's hoping I'll have better luck tomorrow!

"we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne!"

What did you guys do on Friday night? Me, I made my grad school friends celebrate an old Scottish custom with me. ;)

Burns Night is a celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Scots and ex-pats host "Burns Suppers" during the week of January 25th to honor & remember the "Bard of Scotland." It's a fun holiday and one that I've always wanted to observe. So, this year, I remembered in time & invited friends to the Coat of Arms, a British pub in Portsmouth.

My GSBB & I started off with a supper of haggis (vegetarian was all the shop had, which completely defeats the purpose, but beggars can't be choosers), carrot & parsnip mash, and potatoes w/ bacon & cheese. The traditional Burns Supper is haggis, neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes), so we did a pretty decent imitation. Above is us enjoying our meal, and yes, that's the can for the veggie haggis balanced on my beer bottle. ;)

Then, we picked up some friends w/o cars from campus & brought them to my house for a dessert of cranachan. You might remember this as the traditional dessert that I made for Thanksgiving this year after enjoying on Skye in March.

Me enjoying my cranachan w/ raspberries

Some of the girls at the Coat

Cameron's popular w/ the ladies

See what I mean? ;)

Me & the GSBB's older brother

Once we hit the pub, I tried to keep up the Scottish theme. I brought a postcard shaped like a haggis, a book of Scottish folk songs, some Celtic temporary tattoos, a version of Peter Rabbit translated into Scots (which people got a huge kick out of), and some whisky-flavored condoms that were a present from my Scottish friend David years ago. I also shared a poem I wrote awhile ago about Edinburgh. Enjoy! ;)

Like maself, ye ken the Athens o' the north,
where green are the Meadows and blue is the Forth.
The lads are all braw there, or so I've been told.
Although when the wind blows, their wee men get cold.

Hmmm . . .

I've been pondering something, you guys. For awhile now, I've considered moving all of my old blog's posts onto this one to preserve them. I used to post on a Friendster blog before coming over here to Blogger and I don't want to lose those posts. However, I'm a sucker for chronology & not rewriting history, so I'd feel compelled to post all of my old stuff in its proper place: December '05 through March '06.

Is this a totally weird idea or does it make sense to some of you?

Easily Pleased

It's true - I'm easy to please. I was back on campus today for the first time in a month & discovered something new. They opened a coffee bar in the library! It's like my wildest dreams have come true: coffee & books. :)

Half of Me

Last week, I finished a collection of short stories by Alistair MacLeod. I'd read his book No Great Mischief two summers ago. While in New York, I found this collection, called Island, at a bookshop near my friend's apartment & immediately snapped it up.

No Great Mischief made me cry & Island got me pretty close. I actually wish I'd had the chance to write this post after I finished the book, when I was all wistful & misty-eyed & close to the moment. However, life, as always, got in the way & I'm writing about it now.

In the past, I've written about how much Prince Edward Island means to me. I just checked & I've written 21 posts (this included) about PEI in the time I'd had this blog. Since my total number of posts is around 330, that's a pretty decent number.

Much of MacLeod's work is about Cape Breton Island, but the populations & landscapes of the two places are very similar. Both were populated by Scottish immigrants in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries and both have leaned heavily on fishing as a way of life for many years. These two elements undergird many of MacLeod's stories & enhance their resonance with me.

I've been spending summers on PEI since 1982, i.e. every summer of my life. I've always been in love with the Island & very, very happy during my time there. Throughout MacLeod's work, there are the memories of dogs and salt water and boats and lobster traps and buoys and lighthouses and sandy roads and Scotland and family and history and a sense of place. These things are exactly what I've experienced on PEI & the honest, yet profound way that he writes about them sometimes takes my breath away.

My first love was a boy from PEI. Well, in truth, my first love was probably PEI itself, but T. came along pretty early in my life, too. I met him when I was thirteen (nearly fourteen years ago!) & I was smitten from day one. I always saw myself marrying an Island boy. It occurs to me now that I must have hoped that a boy from the Island would understand how I felt about dogs and salt water and all the rest, that he would understand better than someone from the city or from the States.

In my daily life, I surround myself with reminders of the Island. In my bedroom, I have a large map of my township (Beach Point) & its environs over the mantel and a 8x10 photo of the view from our cottage on the wall near my bed. In my office, I have a small print of a PEI scene, a map of "shipwrecks & lighthouses of PEI," and an aerial photo of our cottage & its environs (that I took myself!). I stay in pretty regular contact with my friends from the Island, though most of them are living out in Calgary now.

The picture above (also in my Blogger profile) is a somewhat odd photo of me. It's basically just half of my body, sitting on a beer cooler at the beach at night. You can see the sand beside me & the black summer night beyond. I love this picture because I appreciate the reminder that half of me is always on the Island, sitting on a rock by the lighthouse, gazing out to sea. :)