I Like Poetry

I like poetry. My mom read us Dorothy Parker and The Highwayman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, when I was growing up. In college I took a poetry class and learned to love Robert Hass and Billy Collins and my very favorite, Saint Judas by James Wright. And then I discovered the Favorite Poem Project, Robert Pinsky's project with the Library of Congress. There are three Favorite Poem Project books, and the best one is the second, Poems to Read. The Favorite Poem Project invites readers to submit their favorite poems and the reasons why they love the poems, which is what makes the books so fantastic--there are reader comments on almost every poem and they're SO interesting. The comments provide an extra layer of meaning to each poem.

This is one of my newest poetry finds. Enjoy!

Why I Am in Love with Librarians

by Julia Alvarez -- Library Journal, 1/15/2003

I love how they know things
only to pass them on,
how they fade into the faux-wood-paneled
walls of the reference room,
their faces hidden between the covers of books,

how they look up only to help you:
What is the capital of Afghanistan?
How do the Maori bury their dead?
Who invented Barbie? How many were murdered in Guatemala in '84?

—every query worthy of their attention,
any questioner taken seriously,
curiosity the only requirement.
I love how they listen, their lined faces opening,
their eyes already elsewhere:

scanning a plain for the lights of a distant city,
hunting for bodies in the highlands,
searching the web for Barbie—
their minds like those flocks of little birds in winter
swooping over a landscape, looking, looking.

And always when they get back to you,
that sweet smile on their faces,
pride and deep affection for what can be known,
as if Barbie's invention
or the tally of the massacred

could save you, could save the world!
And who knows if Stalin or Hitler
had spent their youth in the library,
history might be rewritten,
re-catalogued by librarians?

Curiosity sends us out
to a world both larger and smaller
than what we know and believe in
with a passion for finding an answer
or at least understanding our questions.

That road is paved with librarians,
bushwhackers, scouts with string
through the labyrinths of information,
helpers who disappear the moment
you reach your destination.

for Joy Pile

Oh Happy Day

Our boiler at work BROKE this morning, and will REMAIN broken until at least Friday, which means
1. Sleeping in
2. Wearing jeans to work the next two days (and hats and scarves and gloves)
3. NO patrons
4. Happiness
5. Not staying until close tomorrow night when I would have been supervisor

Librarians get so much done when the library's closed to the public.

And we got to eat lunch together today, which is a special treat that doesn't happen when the Library's open, because a few people always have to work the reference desks and we all have such different schedules. Today, though, most of us took our lunches to the quiet area (where we were very loud) and broke library rules by eating in a public area. I felt kind of naughty -- the way I imagine doctors feel when they get together to smoke cigars and eat bacon and candy sandwiches (which is what happens when the boilers break in hospitals).

Finally, the cold weather has served my purposes. Yay!

London: The End

My mom makes fun of me for anonymizing (I just made up that word. I think it works.) my blog pictures by doctoring people's eyes. She thinks I should just post pictures and not worry about who sees them. It's good that she feels this way, since I don't change pictures of her before posting them online. She fails to recognize, though, that 1) Cutting out the eyes completely eliminates any red eye problems 2) If you work with the public a lot and daily chat with men who tell you that you have pretty eyes, explain how they developed their x-ray vision, and then head off to trawl the web for mail order brides, you strive for a sense of anonymity, even if it's a false sense of anonymity, when posting personal information online. Which is why I gave myself sunglasses in the following photo from Stratford. And I gave everyone else sunglasses, because I didn't ask any of them how they feel about having their pictures online.

You can find lots of pictures of Michael (and other Festival actors) online at the Utah Shakespearean Festival's site, so he probably doesn't need anonymizing, but I gave him sunglasses too, so he wouldn't feel left out. I have no idea who those two women on the far right are. I assume that they were with our group, since they're in this picture, but I don't remember ever seeing them in England, including on this day.

This is Shakespeare's (assumed) birthplace. Note that there are flowers in bloom. Then ask me about the ice covering every inch of my car at the moment. Then watch me weep and reach for my dwindling supply of Ferrero Rocher.

Being Responsible for My Health

I have three levels of food storage containers.

1. Empty yogurt and cottage cheese containers. They're a little ghetto, but they hold a lot of food, I don't care if they get damaged or lost, and I have a never-ending supply of them, because I eat a lot of dairy products. (That is a butternut squash in the background. I'm going to make a delicious butternut squash soup and then store it in a cottage cheese container this week.)


2. The remnants of a cheap set I bought several years ago at a store that does not deserve to be mentioned on the blog. It's much easier to take a single serving of yogurt or soup or salad to work in these than in a giant cottage cheese container. (That is an acorn squash in the background. Squash make me happy.)


3. The very nice, heavy plastic containers that never spill. These actually belong to my sister, but I haven't returned them to her yet, because a) I forget about them when I'm going to her house b) they're currently full of hummus c) she hasn't really noticed that they're gone and demanded to have them back. That might change after today.

A little while ago I ran into my sister in the library while I was carrying a hot container of soup that I had just microwaved in one of my level one storage containers. My sister was not pleased, because microwaving foods in plastics will kill you. I know this because my sister gave me a little talking to that included all of the following: leaching chemicals, carcinogens, hormone irregularities, cancer, death, mullets, animals dressed like humans, no new episodes of The Office, blah blah blah. Actually, she may not have mentioned those last several items, but apparently heating foods in yogurt containers does contribute to a number of sorrows and ills in the world.

So, being a girl who listens to her big sister and avoids known carcinogens when possible, I added a new storage container to my rotation. The glass, trying-to-preserve-my-life, lunch dish to take to work for food heating.


It'd better add several years to my life, because that dish cost more than all my other storage containers combined.

Pants

I attended a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" tonight. It was set in 19th century South America with this whole imperialism/colonization background built into the performance. What I really enjoyed was the fairy choreography. The actors playing the fairies were trained in modern dance and Capoeira--two of my favorite arts. The Capoeira was especially effective in differentiating the fairy world from the Athenian world and fit perfectly with the South American setting.

Unfortunately, there were some bad pants. Two of the main male characters had TERRIBLE pants. I was so distracted. I may be a pants snob. One of my greatest triumphs in life thus far was convincing my sister to rid her closet of skinny-legged jeans, and I cry a little bit every time I think about the brown jeans Marmot Dad used to wear. In college, Amy and I knew this guy who had these lovely eyes and was perfectly nice, but every time we referred to him, we included the disclaimer (as if people needed to be warned about a shocking flaw--"now he's very nice but you should know--he sells crack to kindergarteners") that he wore pleated jeans.

I'm a pants snob, but I also own and wear unattractive pants myself. Several months ago, I looked in my full length mirror and realized that my black work pants didn't fit AT ALL. They were way too big (and, no, I didn't lose weight--I guess they just never fit right). I'd been wearing those pants a lot. Every week for years. And I even wore them to work that day, because I didn't have any other clean work pants, but I felt awkward all day. Our director stopped me to ask me about something, and the whole time I was singing in my head, "I look like a freeeeakshow." I've seen him wear tights and capes and all kind of wacky stuff, though, so he probably didn't even notice.

Gross Incompetence

I'm in charge of the Library's periodicals collection. Sometimes this is a good thing, because I get to decide that we need to start subscribing to Every Day with Rachael Ray and Cooking for 2. And I discover important things like my great love for the magazine Dwell. And I know exactly when new magazines are available to check out before the masses take them home and cut out all the articles I want to read. Because magazine readers are stealers. Especially the readers of Mother Earth News. You'd think people who care about the earth would also care about public libraries, but they don't. How am I supposed to build a corncob house powered entirely by the sun and invite Barbara Kingsolver to my home to raise turkeys and garden, if patrons keep destroying our copies of Mother Earth News?

People interested in astrology are also stealers. I was helping two people look for astrology books the other day. Not surprisingly, every single one of our astrology books was either checked out or missing. Mostly missing. I was explaining that those books frequently go missing, and the patrons gave me a look that might have been an expression of their disbelief at the inconsideration of other people, but I think was actually an expression of remorse that they weren't going to get the chance to steal from us themselves that day.

Anyway, periodicals. The BAD part about handling periodicals is that my main job function in relation to periodicals at the moment is to call the distributor of the two major Utah newspapers EVERY DAY and complain that we haven't received our papers. We've only received our newspapers (our DAILY newspapers) 3 days this month. THREE DAYS. And two of those days, we received the wrong number of newspapers. Are you kidding me?! If your job is to deliver newspapers and you only deliver them 3 times in a month, why aren't you fired? How much worse at your job do you have to be?

Life is Hard

I was almost consumed by giant, smelly dogs tonight. Even before the dogs tried to eat me, I was disgruntled. Have I mentioned how I hate winter? And how I don't like to leave the house in the winter unless my final destination is a See's Candy store or a Thornton's Chocolate shop or Tahiti? Yeah. So, I didn't want to be outside, but I had to go with Good Attitude Girl to visit this girl from church who's been sick. We got to her house and her brother let us in, mostly because it's 2 degrees outside. We never spoke to the sister. Instead, we talked to the brother (awkwardly) about his desires to write poetry, while he watched two black labs chew on my hat, climb on my lap and over my back, sniff me in an overly-familiar way, and try to lick my eyebrows off. I was sending Good Attitude Girl please-get-us-out-of-here-fast-before-dog-saliva-poisons-me vibes, which she totally ignored. Next time I think I'm going to pretend to pass out. I think I'll get out faster that way.

Dinner Party List

Last night we had a mermaid drawing contest at the Marmot House. This is Madame 3-yr-old's entry. My sister did the basic mermaid, octopus, and starfish outlines. Madame filled them in and made some additions, including "101 bubbles."


The girls are currently in a gift giving phase, which is how I ended up with this artwork. Every time I visit, they slip broken plaster hearts and paper dolls and princess drawings into my pockets.

Sometimes they also meet me at the door and, without taking a breath for five straight minutes, tell me everything they've learned since I last saw them, sing me a song, and tell me all about the fascinating clothes they're wearing. Yesterday they showed me the "shells" my sister had fashioned for them out of diaper liners and ribbons, so they could be mermaids. They LOVE mermaids.

Madame 3-yr-old told me recently that she'd like to invite a mermaid to dinner. The logistics on that one seem awkward to me, so no mermaids made it onto my dinner party list. These lovely people are included on my imaginary dinner party list, though:

Kermit the Frog - Does anyone NOT want to meet Kermit the Frog? He's so nice. And I like his little legs.

Haven Kimmel - I'd have to really work hard not to mention every 2 minutes that I love A Girl Named Zippy.

Haven: Could you please pass the pie?

MBC: I just love A Girl Named Zippy.

Haven: And could I have some more milk?

MBC: Especially the part about the Shriners and the bike. I love that part. I tried to read it out loud when I was booktalking at a library event, but I couldn't because I started laughing too hard.

Haven: I think Kermit the Frog is choking on his dessert!

MBC: Man, that's one good book you wrote.

The Raven Master at the Tower of London - He led the tour of the Tower I took with the Supreme Coordinatrix last year and was VERY amusing. I still have a lot of questions I didn't ask, though. Starting with those Royal Guard hats. What's the deal with those? Why so tall?

Laurie Colwin - It would be especially nice if she brought a pan of her gingerbread with her.

This is Me Saving the World

I bought a computer. The laptop I was using at home, before I purchased the one I'm typing on now, was created in 1997, so it seemed about time to update. I'm currently disgruntled with both Apple and Microsoft, though, so I bought a Zonbu. It's an energy-efficient computer that comes fully loaded with open source software. I've got Mozilla, I've got OpenOffice, and I've got a smug expression on my face for shunning The Man and keeping us all one tiny step further away from a future that resembles the novel Feed. I'm way off my blogging game this week, but if you want some good (and amusing) information about the joys of open source, check out this post from Miss Nemesis.

I almost thought I'd have to send my little Zonbu back, because there were some configuration difficulties. I was sitting at a table in the library (off duty), muttering threats and curses at my new, special computer friend. I was preparing to find our hammer, smash the computer, throw myself on the floor and weep over my foolish purchase, and buy a Mac, when I had a moment of sanity and called one of our systems guys to come look at the demon computer. He took it away to a secret computer area of the library and did, I imagine, some sort of white magic and chanting. When he was done, I had a fully-functional, world-saving computer. Ta da! I, of course, agreed to name my first child after him or possibly just give him the kid outright if it looked like it would be unattractive or a whiner.

I don't have my dinner party dream list done yet, but it's coming. And I still want to see your lists, so feel free to keep adding to yesterday's post.

Happy 3 Day Weekend!

A Good King Lear (and some bad punctuation)

I recently finished reading Ian Pollock's Illustrated King Lear for a graphic novel genre study. (Don't tell me, because I already know--graphic novels are a format, not a genre.) I've also been talking about it a lot, because I was recently hanging out with Shakespeare fans, and I just posted a brief review of it on my library's staff review source.

Here's my basic conclusion: I really like illustrated plays. And I kind of think Ian Pollock's a rock star. He has an unusual drawing style that reminds me a little bit of Gris Grimly and Edward Gorey--not because his drawings are similar, just because they all do things that are slightly creepy but in a way that makes me want to invite them all to my house for a dinner party. (I don't want to hear about the bad punctuating, or lack of punctuating, that went on just there either.)

Which brings me to my actual point--strangers and/or famous/dead/fictional people I would like to invite to my house. I don't have time to make my list right now, but tell me who'd be on your list and I'll get to mine eventually. Maybe even tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's Birthday (and Ann-Marie's and, I think, the Supreme Coordinatrix's--Happy Birthday!). My mom doesn't like having a January birthday, because rotten stuff happens in January. For example, there are snow storms in January, so the doctor can't come and deliver you at your birth. And it's so close to Christmas that a January birthday sneaks up on people, and they forget to send you a gift. And the first Iraq war starts on your birthday and your favorite child's cat dies on your birthday. Things like that get Mom down.

The year the cat died was also the first year I attempted to make a cake from scratch by myself. I made it while Mom was napping, which is why it turned out completely inedible. Fold and Beat just didn't seem like they could be all that different, but they turned out to be the difference between a moist and delicious birthday treat and a flat, hard, chocolate hockey puck.

On my birthday, there is always a perfectly divine birthday cake, because my mom or my sister make it. They are excellent bakers and usually prepare an Italian cream cake or a German chocolate cake. (Cakes with a specified nationality in the title are always delicious.)

Birthday cake baking has never been my calling, even for birthdays NOT in January. My cakes are usually mediocre in the taste department, but they make a statement. The Technicolor Dream Cake and the porcupine cake that turned out looking like a demented deer stand out in my mind as particularly festive ("festive"). If I were in Tennessee today, I would make Mom a mediocre-tasting, love-filled cake, too.

Happy Birthday!

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

My landlord has rented out the basement of my house. This actually makes my mother happy, because she doesn’t like me living alone and assumes that the basement neighbor will defend me against intruders and bugs (that would be nice) and all kinds of unsavory characters. Unfortunately, there are a number of large vents in the house, so I can hear every blessed thing that goes on downstairs, which probably means that the neighbor can hear all of MY phone conversations and stuff, too. It really cramps my style. I feel obligated to watch movies at super low volumes (sometimes with the subtitles on) and keep the radio down.

The neighbor has been shoveling and salting the walkways, which I never do. I always just give guests the number of the hospital and strict instructions to keep to the edges of the steps, when they’re leaving the house on icy days. Because of this one good habit, I’ve decided to let the neighbor stay for a while and not set fire to his portion of the house. At least during the snowy season.

A Little Something from Madame

I'm planning to tell you all about my new world-saving computer AND my new and improved life plan AND my unfortunate encounter with burning hot chocolate lava AND the guy who now lives in my basement, but I don't have time for any of that right now. Instead, I will give you this conversation from Madame 5-yr-old (she had a birthday in November).

We were watching a video adaptation of some Maurice Sendak stories. One of the stories, "Alligators All Around," is an alphabet story featuring an alligator. To represent the letter I, the story says "Imitating Indians" and shows the alligator dancing around a fire with a headdress and tomahawk in a very unfortunate, stereotypical portrayal of a Native American.

Madame: How do you imitate an Indian?

My sister: (in a noncommittal, trying not to perpetuate stereotypes or encourage tomahawk use in the house, way) Oh, I don't know. It would be tricky.

Madame: It sure would. First, you'd have to go all the way to India.

Librarians Get No Respect

Rejoice with me, friends. Friday is usually my long day on the reference desk, but today I'm on an interview panel. Judging people is much easier than helping them use the library. Having just completed the first half of the interviews, let me tell you my personal library interview pet peeve. When candidates aren't familiar with these things about librarians (the position for which they are applying), it causes a sharp pain in my head, suggesting that I'm about to burst some blood vessels. As soon as someone mentions shelving books, I mark his/her score right down. Librarians do NOT* shelve books!

I was going to post about Stratford today, but I didn't take any pictures in Stratford. (There were lots of places where I didn't take pictures.) The staff member from the Utah Shakespearean Festival who accompanied us on the trip took some, though, and he's sending them to me, so I'll post them when I get them and give you the London wrap up. And then I promise never to speak of it again. Maybe.

*except in very small libraries where the staff is usually paraprofessional

London, Part 5 (I promise it will end after tomorrow)

I'm having blog writer's block today, even though there are still a million things I could post about London. I promise to end the London talk soon. I think we're going to do a Q&A today.

MBC, How did you become the hero of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport?
I talked to a customs officer and made him take 15 of us to the front of the line so we wouldn't miss the connecting flight that was scheduled to take off 45 minutes after we deplaned. It doesn't sound exciting, but someone did refer to me as a hero, so I'm going to put it on my resume when I apply to be a superhero.

What was your favorite treasure in the V&A?
As I suspected, Tippoo's Tiger is, by far, the most fantastic relic of the British Empire. I really, really want one.

How do you feel about that yogurt from Tesco?
One day, I was drinking my yogurt (I didn't have a spoon) when I got off the elevator and was so transported by my delightful, culinary treat that I got myself completely turned around and discovered areas of the hotel I'd never seen before. My yogurt was so good that I thought, "Why aren't we all demanding this in the U.S.?" Then I looked at the ingredient list, saw that the second ingredient was heavy whipping cream, and all was clear.

Why didn't you take any pictures at the Globe Theatre?
I don't want to talk about it.

How often did you almost get run over by cars when you were crossing streets?
Logically, I KNOW the cars will be coming from a different direction than I'm used to, but I just couldn't ever remember which way I should be checking for traffic. I almost got run over A LOT.

What was the best thing you did while in London?
I'm so in love with Evensong at Westminster Abbey. We got to sing Christmas carols, and I was sitting by this darling English teenager who chatted with me (very quietly and respectfully, of course) about London.

Did you bring back digestive biscuits because they are the best treat in the whole world?
Absolutely, I did.

How effective is blow drying wet blue jeans while you're wearing them?
Well, if you have to wash your jeans and they don't dry during the night and they're still damp when you put them on in the morning, you CAN blow dry them while you wear them. It's not the best system, but it works okay.

If you have any other questions about the trip, leave a comment.

London, Part 4 (and another reason I hate winter)

I woke up this morning to the sound of snow sliding off the roof. It snowed about a foot in the night and it's been snowing all morning. My neighbor and I both got out our snow shovels to unearth my car and even after all our work, my neighbor, after making some detrimental remarks about my car (it was born in the South! it wasn't made for snow), had to push the car out to the street. I might have to walk home tonight. Right about now I'm wondering why I turned down that opportunity to take a trip to Bermuda this winter.

Now, back to London.
I saw five plays in London. Four were scheduled through the tour and the fifth I attended separately with several people from our group.

La Cage Aux Folles—When I got back to work this week, the BBC adaptation of The Way We Live Now was on my desk, so I watched it Monday. The actor who plays Roger Carbury in The Way We Live Now, Douglas Hodge, was the lead in La Cage Aux Folles. Kind of cool, yeah?

Boeing, Boeing--FUNNY

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story—So, the writing and acting on this one were kind of weak, but a significant portion of the play was a musical performance/rock show. The actors were actually performing—playing the instruments and singing--and that part was good. I’ve had a perpetual loop of Buddy Holly songs in my head ever since I saw the show. That's not a good thing for someone who already suffers from Musical Tourette's.

Much Ado about Nothing—Wonderful, wonderful! We saw this at the National Theatre, and it was so well done! I was especially impressed by the revolving set that allowed the actors to perform without any breaks between acts. We toured the theater earlier in the day, and the set looked like a wooden cage, but it worked just beautifully.

Present Laughter--This was also at the National Theatre and also excellent. The set and lighting were amazing.

I'm going to go look up information on building a snow cave now. I'm most definitely NOT going to check weather.com and discover that it's still 45 degrees in London.

London, Part 3

So, the number one question I’ve been asked since returning from London is whether or not I was hanging out with octogenarians, as I had suggested I might be. Because the tour was sponsored by the Utah Shakespearean Festival, I (and all my friends and family) thought it likely that the tour participants would be the elderly patrons who give tons of money to the Festival and think they’re best friends with Fred Adams.

At the beginning of the trip, it looked like all of my stereotypical theater tour dreams were going to come true. I was sitting in the airport in jeans, listening to my MP3 player, when I heard the distinct tapping of high heeled shoes. I looked up to see two very elderly people carrying Break-Away Tour bags. The wife was wearing pearls and a skirt and high heels. I later met them and discovered that they're in their 80s. They were by far the oldest members of our tour, though.

Two people on the tour were younger than I am, my roommate had just turned 65 (and I liked her very much--she told me that I made a very nice 2nd choice for roommate, if she couldn't room with Michael Sharon; he is, apparently, the imaginary boyfriend of many generations of women), there were a number of single women who ranged in age from 40s-60s, and there were a lot of couples in their 40s or 50s.

I mostly hung out with the single women, because single women are rock stars. I particularly liked this group of women because

a) They were terribly nice to me. The older ones, to use their term, mother henned me and made sure I was never alone if I didn't want to be, V, Fruit Fly Expert and Better Picture Taker than Me, gave me fortune cookies when I didn't feel well, and the others were all just generally lovely to me.

b) None of them ever asked me if I was dating someone. It's a weird thing to ask a stranger, but I get asked if I'm married or seeing someone ALL. THE. TIME. where I live. Someone should only be asking me about that, if his next statement to me is, "Because I'd really like to fly to Greece with you and build you a palace made of jewels."

c) One morning at breakfast, two of the women were asking me for book recommendations and when I asked, "Are you familiar with the StoryCorps Project?" (because I LOVE the new StoryCorps project book, Listening is an Act of Love), they said yes.

V took these pictures of me and sent them to me this week. See? Wasn't that nice of her?

I'm standing near a back entrance to Westminster Abbey.

This is in the garden behind John Hall's house in Stratford. (John Hall was Susanna Shakespeare's husband.) I don't know what I'm hugging. It looks like it might be a statue referencing "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

That's Alice's hat. I stole it from her at a party a few weeks ago when my hair was looking very bad. I wore it all over London, because I didn't take my flat iron with me, so my hair was curly every day. Sometimes my curly, au naturelle hair is fine and sometimes it makes me look like I live in a van down by the river.

London, Part 2

I highly recommend bringing in the new year in a foreign country. We went as a group to see Boeing, Boeing on New Year's Eve. Afterwards, my roommate and I went to St. Paul's for the New Year's service. We took the tube to the Embankment station, but as soon as we stepped off the train, the police closed down the station due to overcrowding, and we couldn't make our connection for the train going to St. Paul's. No station closing can thwart my English holiday plans, though, so we walked! The service was gorgeous, the Cambridge Brass provided the music, and right at midnight we were standing at the west doors of St. Paul's looking out toward the Thames.

This is me on the Wobbly Bridge in front of St. Paul's Cathedral on New Year's Eve around 12:15 am. You probably can't see it, but there's a Christmas tree lit up in front of the cathedral and the guys walking past me are wearing crazy hats. I am, in fact, wearing my favorite boots. If I'd known how much I'd be walking on New Year's, I'd have worn different footwear, though. (They're blister-producing boots.)


The next day I was so exhausted that in the middle of the V&A, I grabbed a guard and demanded that he find me somewhere to sit down IMMEDIATELY. (Actually, demanded might be too strong a word. I politely requested directions to the nearest bench, because I didn't think the museum staff would be down with me napping on the Great Bed of Ware.)

St. Paul's in Daylight

A few more details about my New Year's Eve--

Number of people I saw vomit in the street: 1
Number of police officers consulted for directions to St. Paul's: 4
Time it took to walk/run to the cathedral: 45 minutes (we got there one minute late, so we were walking up the nave just as the clergy entered)
Number of times I feared we would be trampled to death by a crowd: 3
Number of people in the streets: 12 billion (I saw on the news the next day that the official count was 700,000)
Number of people in the streets who were drunk: 11.75 billion
Number of fireworks I saw over the Thames: .75 (We went down to the bridge to see the fireworks, but there was a building between us and the London Eye, so we only saw the sparks that made it past the edges of the building.)
Number of times I thought, "Yay, London!": 12 billion

London, Part 1

When I woke up this morning (which was at 4:30, by the way), I almost stayed in bed to weep all day, now that my life is bereft of joy. I knew there wouldn't be any sausages waiting for me at breakfast and no doormen in top hats and coats would wish me a good morning. If you can't start your morning in exactly that way, you should really just stay in bed.

I got back from my tour to London last night. My group, sponsored by the Utah Shakespearean Festival, was part of a larger tour run by Break-Away Tours. The tour was wonderful--all of our guides were excellent, we saw fantastic shows, we had plenty of free time, I enjoyed all of the people I spent time with (except that one guy who I considered stabbing with a fork every time he spoke), we were centrally located in a very nice hotel, and Michael Sharon was so gracious to all of us.

I know you're burning up to know all kinds of things about the trip, like how I came to be the hero of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, what happens when you tell women over the age of 60 about imaginary boyfriends, and which treasure from the Victoria and Albert Museum I would like someone to steal for me for my 30th birthday. I'll get to all of that next week, but today you just get photos and my favorite conversation from the trip.

This is Christ Church. It was only a few blocks away from our hotel. If I had time in the mornings, I ran over here and sat in the church's gardens for a little while.

These are the mews on the way to Christ Church.


Westminster Abbey is quite possibly my favorite place in all of London. I went to Evensong here on Sunday and returned with a small group tour later in the week.

Houses of Parliament from the park just behind the buildings. I thought that I got some good pictures of Parliament at night from across the Thames, but none of them turned out well.

This is not a good picture of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, but you can see the Christmas tree. Christmas decorations were still up all over the city, because it's bad luck to take them down before Epiphany on January 6.

Windsor Castle is too big to get a single good picture. This is just a small section of it. You can see the guards between the gate spikes on the right. We watched a changing of the guard in a different area of the castle, complete with brass band. Strangely enough, one of the selections the band played was the theme from Star Wars. Eleventh century architecture and Star Wars don't naturally go together in my mind, but it's their country, so they can do whatever they want.

And, my favorite conversation from the trip:

Around 2:00 am on New Year's Eve, the fire alarm went off in our hotel, so I got up and checked with our neighbors in the hall to make sure it was a false alarm. (It was; someone set her coat on a lamp and burned it.) The next day I was having dinner with my roommate (age 65) and several other people, and someone mentioned the fire alarm.

Roommate: Oh, that was the fire alarm?

Me: Yes. It didn't ring for very long because it was a false alarm.

Roommate: I thought it was your alarm clock. (pause) So, when you went into the hall, you were just checking on the situation?

Me: Yes.

Roommate: Hmmm. I thought you had gone out into the hall to have a little tryst.

That would have been much more fun. I'll try to arrange for that next time.