Leaving the beautiful mountains to return to charming Edinburgh...

( Not much to see here, just the tragic end of an adventure )

These weather forecasters seem to be having problems…

( sod huts, sweeties, bison, and wild horses )

Wow - I really, really suck at updating this. And now I have a trip to Paris to do as well...oops. Well, at any rate, here is finally the next installment from the highland adventure

Chuga, chuga, chuga, choo choo!

( Harry Pottering it (or as close as I could get anyway) )

Nessy and the long walk ( the road goes ever on and on )

The Castle Day ( read more )

Wow. I don't even know how to begin to describe it. The official end of the festival was today and the final event is the RBS Fireworks. The world renowned Scottish Chamber Orchestra played 6 of Brahm's Hungarian Dances and 6 of Dovorak's Slovanic dances. Then the impressive castle is where the fireworks are shot off to the music. It was amazing. The timing was unbelievable, the visuals breathtaking and the music stunning. Every year there is the 'waterfall' which is a huge line white sparks cascading down the side of the castle wall on to the castle rock. It's stunning. It is a continuous stream of white that bounces and splits over the rocks just like a real waterfall, but in a sparkling, almost floating display of light. And that was just a tiny part of the entire thing. About 45 minutes of possibly one of the most awe inspiring things I've ever seen.

AHHHH! Yes, that is the best way to express how I feel at the moment. I'm so frazzled. This week has been hectic with hanging work. It turns out the maintenance people are on vacation, so I ended up sanding and painting my own wall as well as one of the doors in the space. Gah. Then, of course, there was picking up the prints from where they were being mounted and then hanging them on the wall. I helped Laura out with hers and she returned the favour. All together, it took about 8 (?) hours... Then there was printing out and binding another copy of my thesis, deciding on pricing, gathering together all the extra materials for examination, picking up the press packets, and, oh yeah, paying tuition. Great fun. All in all, I'm knackered. Tomorrow there is the internal assessment, which I'm not there for. On Monday I have the external examination and interview. And then my prof tells me today he thinks I have been randomly selected to defend my thesis to the CVCS people (the people who can actually sort of write, unlike the general artist community). Fantastic. I haven't gotten an e-mail or any official notification about that, but of course, now that I say that I will now.

Soon, soon it will be done. I should know by Tuesday. At this point, I just want to pass. I just want the degree!

This weekend marked the official start of the Edinburgh International Festival 2008. It was a fairly full weekend for me as well. I started it off by attending a performance concert given by Dmitri Hvorostovsky, with Ivari Ilja on piano. He gave a magnificent performance of songs by Tchaikovsky, Medtner, and Rachmaninoff. It never ceases to amaze me how stunning the voice can be. It was a night of romantic tragedy, an intense evening and throughly satisfying.

Sunday afternoon I attended the very popular (and packed) performance of Giselle by the State Ballet of Georgia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It was all Giselle can be, graceful, entertaining, mystical, and simply put, beautiful. Wagner's comment that Giselle is just a bit of 'French frippery' may have a bit of truth, but it was no less enjoyable and remains as charming as ever.

Both Giselle and the performance given by Dmitri Hvorostovsky were fairly safe bets musically speaking, and this was reflected in the audience turnout. There was a good sized audience for Hvorostovsky, and there was hardly an empty seat for Giselle. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's performance of Thomas Adès's Tevot and Messiaen's Eclairs sur l'au-delà had a much smaller turnout. Personally, I have mixed feelings about the performance. I throughly enjoyed Tevot - it was contemporary yet with a surprising amount of passion and spirit. This was no nostalgic attempt to recapture past compositional giants and neither was it an alienating intellectual exercise. It was a suspenseful mix of contemporary harmonics and spiritual tradition. No wonder this new work, commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker, premiered to such great acclaim last year.

However, the main piece of the night, Eclairs sur l'au-delà, was less satisfying to me. The disjointed bits of harmony, the at time repetitive melodic strains, and lack of orchestral cohesion may be historically and intellectually noteworthy, but as a piece of music, it didn't work for me. The bird song which was supposed to be one of the main elements of the work is infrequent and isolated. It feels dropped arbitrarily into the piece, rather than part of the greater whole. But then, the entire work seemed that way. Everything seemed fragmentary, yet instead of creating a tension filled sense of disharmony and disorientation, it was simply boring. There was no depth to any of the pieces, nothing to contrast with the sudden stops and inharmonic strains. They didn't clash with each other or move with one another. It was too loud, too long, and too obvious. Overall, it felt rather like flipping through a glossy popular magazine, small bits and pieces are slightly interesting, but overall it is more or less forgettable. When I left the performance, I heard comments like 'interesting', 'well played', and 'significant'. Troubling, since they all have a bit of a detached, intellectual appreciation of the work. It was like the audience parroted what experts had told them made this piece rather than truly enjoying the work.

Still, I'm glad I went. I am interested to hear more of Adès's work and Messiaen was an apt reminder that 'classical' music is not all the same and a challenge for me to define my own tastes.

Well, kind of. I'm done with my dissertation anyway. Hurrah! It ended up being over 15 pages long, single spaced, Garamond, font size 10 on A4 paper. Hehe...so yeah, long. With my bibliographies, research images and documentation of my work it ended up being over 40 pieces of paper. And I had to print out two of the things. I killed a nice patch of forest I think. But it's done! Now I just have to get everything ready for the show. Eek. Oh, and sit through the external examiner interview thing. I'm a bit nervous 'bout that. I mean, really, it's not something I've ever had to do before and the thought that all the work I have done (not to mention money I've spent) and my I might not get my degree? Gulp. Yup, definitely a bit scary. And it's August now, which is terrifying. The good news: I see mum and dad in less than a month and get to show them around! Very excited for that!

Finally, the post for the second day in the trip.

( Lochs, mountains, flora, fauna, and more! )

This is the first instalment of my journey up into the highlands with Calam.

( dual carriageways, caravans, and mountains… )

I moved into the new flat today, with much help from calam. She's such a sweetheart. Gave me and my massive amounts of stuff (where did it all come from???) a lift over to the west end and helped carry it! Earlier in the week we meet for her to drop off the suitcases, which she'd so graciously stored for me. We ended up going out afterwards for coffee, a chat, and eventually dinner and a drink. It was wonderful. We touched on all of those lovely subjects - art, politics, religion, you name it! I love actually having a thoughtful, intellectual conversation now and again. With a fair amount of random goof as well ;) It was she who mentioned that this really kind of is my first place. First time living alone, first time not in Uni housing or with parents. Wow. I didn't really think about that before, but I suppose it's true. My first place is in the WestEnd of Edinburgh. :D

All in all, I'm fairly happy with the place. It isn't huge (calam said it was the smallest bedroom she'd ever seen, lol), but it is plenty of room for little ol' me. Even with all of the things I seem to have accumulated somehow. I think my possessions were bunnies in a past life...

There were a few minor set backs - No. 1 - one of the doors has a crappy lock. As in, it's a (insert cuss word of choice here) to open. I think my fingers were going to fall off by the time I finally got it open, and that was after I had to go back and get a different set of keys. Set back No. 2 - the clock/timer on the oven is making this horrid thump/clicking noise. It sounds like a faucet dripping rapidly into a stainless steel sink. It's constant, sort of loud, and WON'T STOP! I've tried everything I can think of to get it to stop and no good. Hmph. I'm tempted to see if I can some how pry off the face of the thing and disconnect the entire clock somehow...but I'm waiting to see. Maybe it will stop on it's own? I hope. If not, I might call maitence when I get back and see if they can do anything about it. If it doesn't stop, I have the feeling it will drive my stark raving mad (instead of my normal just plain crazy).

And in other news...I go to the HIghlands tomorrow with Calam! Hurray! Joy! Rapture! For a whole week! I'm very excited, can you tell? I'm so happy I could just bounce :) Hopefully the next post, when I get around to it, will contain much more exciting pics!

( The Flat - small, but it's mine )

What can I say other than...ah...oops? (And yes, you know with my accent I linger over the o's). January, wow. Um...well, it's not January anymore. Hehe. I know, I'm awful. I'd swear to be better, but that'd just be an awful, albeit unintentional lie. I always have the best of intentions, but as you know kinda stink and the follow through when it comes to keeping up with this thing.

Obviously, a lot has gone on and changed since January. Not the least of which is the weather. It was fairly nice in January (oddly enough) lovely in February (for the most part) mainly miserable through march, getting better and eventually nice in April and now...now it is amazing! Sunny! Warm! This lingers until well after 9:00 now. In fact, I think it will soon be fairly light at 10:00 even. And so, naturally, I'm horrifically busy. End of term and two major turn ins. One, my work in progress and two, a 6,000 word version of my thesis. These decide if I get to go on and complete the MA or if I'm stuck with what they are calling a PgDip (post-graduate diploma). As far as I can tell, a PgDip is good for nothing, so cross your fingers that I get through this hurdle ok.

As for what I've been up to besides school work - a lot and I don't even know if I can recall it all, much less relay it all in this post. So, I'll give a brief summary and some pictures, some from Craigmillar Castle and some more random ones.

( Sorry, this might take a long time to load )

I seem to have angered the bookshelf gods in someway, for they most definitely hate me. My first year in college I had a bookshelf fall on me. Luckily, that time it managed to miss my computer and didn't hurt me at all, though it did break a bottle of nail polish on a sweatshirt of mine. All in all, not too bad. Today I've had my second bookshelf fall on me. Tell how likely is that? Bookshelves falling on people can't be that common, can it? In any case, nothing was broken this time, and I escaped serious injury yet again. However, it did manage to smack my hand nicely. I now have a huge swollen area around the knuckle of my first finger and I see a lovely bruise forming and it's only been 2 hours or so. Lovely. And it's cold and rainy yet again today. Locals tell me to expect it until may. Fantastic. I'd rather have snow.

On the plus side, I have managed to get the photo techie to give me an unused darkroom space for myself. And I got a package from my mum and sister today. Items sent from my closet back home, a word a day of forgotten English calendar, and makeup. Hurray! I've got some liquid light ordered and some glass from the glass department at school. I can't wait to start printing with this stuff!

It's true! It really snowed today! Off and on throughout the whole day it was snowing. In the morning, it was just lightly falling and not accumulating at all, but then a bit after 1:00 a fine layer of snow began to cover the ground and I just had to go out in it. I rang Anupa up and meet her at her flat. Sadly, she foiled my plan of smacking her with a snowball right as soon as she came out the door, but we did start an mini fight in the parking lot. From their we moseyed on over to the grassy area in front of Arthur's Seat and proceeded to have an all out snowball war. It was still really warm, so the snow was extremely sticky, making for great snowballs. Anupa, having never experienced snow before, was at first startled by my ruthless attacks, but she quickly caught on. The first time I tackled her right into the snow, pelting her head, she was shocked, but she soon got me back. Eventually, seeing all the kids sledding we decided we needed to do that as well. A quick trip to Homebase and we got ourself a nifty blue sled. First hill was a bit of a tame ride, but then we found a good bit of slope right above where our snowball war took place. After a few mishaps of sliding more on bottoms than sled, we figured out keeping our feet out and almost laying back like it was a luge worked the best. I hold the record for sledding the farthest, though Anupa came close. By the way, wet plastic sled on wet, slowly turning to slush snow makes for fast sliding!

After a bit of that, we were quite soaked and chilled so we headed back to Anupa's flat. On the way we meet Dhwani. We had nice cup of hot cocoa while our wet gloves, socks, and shoes dried on the radiators. Then it was out again (in the dark this time, being after 4:30 now) with Dhwani and sledding and snowball fighting again. Rose, sadly, has a had a bit of a cold and was staying in, kept company by a hot water bottle. So, since she couldn't come out to play in the snow, we decided to take a bit of it to her! We made a bit of a monstrous, deformed snowman in the sled. Poor Fredrick lost his head over the first curb on the way to Rose's, but he bravely soldiered on. He is really one of the most well traveled snowmen. Went all the way from Arthur's Seat to outside Rose's flat in Marchmount. Shortly before he arrived, we gave him his 2nd head. He then decided to reside outside Rose's flat on the sidewalk.

All in all, it was a good day. More importantly, I have corrupted Anupa. She now loves snow as well ;-)

I forgot to post the pictures from Rose's Christmas Dinner! Silly. Plus, I now have my own Christmas Tree!

( My Tree & Chirstmas! )

I am enjoying my holiday by truly relaxing and not doing much at all. It's fabulous. In that spirit, this post has not much at all, just a few random pictures and such from around Edinburgh, the winter fair, and Christmas dinner at Rose's.

( Mostly pictures and a bit of text )

Right, this is the first in an instalment of backdated posts. This exciting edition features a short road trip up to the lovely Bruar Falls. A true adventure featuring holiday shoppers, land rovers, schizophrenic weather, moss and much more!

( “click )

Okay, so I really am behind on this (I know, I just keep saying that) but I promise, really, once I get my proposal done and my book I'll play catch up. I have posts from before thanksgiving to do! Eek!

But moving on - the real reason I'm shirking my work at the moment is to say IT'S SNOWING! Okay, it may be extremely wet snow and it isn't accumulating on the ground at all, but still. SNOW! For those of you who don't already know, I love snow. It is so beautiful and so much fun! I've been terribly jealous of everyone back in the Midwest with their snow. I've been told numerous occasions that it rarely snows in Edinburgh anymore and when it does, it doesn't stay. So, with all of this gloom, I had resigned myself to a snowless winter and then today it begins to snow! I would take a picture and post it up, but it didn't start until it was already dark.

Well, I must get back to working. But here's hoping this snow leads to many others!