Oh, you know. Adventures and things.

[<-- Inverness Castle, which fails on all three counts of being a *real* castle in my book. My criteria are simple: (i) royalty have lived or are living for substantial periods of time inside, (ii) royalty have been or are being heinously slaughtered for political reasons inside, and/or (iii) it's really, really old. Inside. ] --------------------------------------------

There isn't much left to tell of the Skye happenings. On Sunday e and awoke to even more Scotlandish weather: rain, mist, and this time ridiculous wind as well. We found some free Cornflakes in the kitchen, chatted with a young couple from Birmingham about the process of making whiskey (they'd actually taken the Talisker tour, whereas I just wanted to know for free), and then played Jenga. There was much cheating. We got tired of that after a while and e built a precise, to-scale model of Stonehenge, which I then destroyed with the precise, to-scale dinosaur I'd built out of one Jenga block. Then we tried building Frank Lloyd Wright houses. Then we just got tired of being creative and threw the blocks at each other like any pair of mature adults would do. Our favorite taxi driver soon arrived and charged us twice as much as he had the day before to drop us off at the Lochalsh Hotel back on the mainland. Inside the hotel, we ate a very nice lunch (I had Sticky Toffee Pudding again...and honestly that's all I remember) and then lazed about on the plush leather couches in the lobby, watching the seagulls hover on the gale-force winds coming off the bay. At some point we notice a train at the station, and then that the train is leaving, and only then that it was in fact OUR train. Commence Obligatory Misadventure with Transport in a Foreign Country Part the Third. (I counted the 2nd taxi drive as Part the Second. For all that money the ride should count as something bad). The rest of the afternoon was frantic, consisting of e and I pouring over schedules and itineraries to see if he could get to Edinburgh and I could still catch my train from Inverness to Aberdeen. In the end we took separate buses-- e to Glasgow and I to Inverness. However, this unfortunate event resulted in one of the best parts of the trip for both of us, I think-- my bus, though going north, first took a little dip southward along the Western coast, the same route as e took but for fewer miles. And this trip was glorious. By then it was evening and the sun had come out. The Western Highland were rugged, golden and green, and so breath-takingly beautiful that it's hard for me to believe I would ever willingly go back to Skye, knowing such beauty as this existed, completely neglected in comparison, just a bit outside of all the touristy hubbub of the Isle.

Though I did get a few nice shots of a brief moment when the rain ceased on Saturday night (see next three pictures)--
there is probably a lot of beauty there. We just didn't get to see it.















































The next few pictures are from the bus ride through the Western Highlands, then back up along Loch Ness into Inverness. Loch Ness is not so much a lake as it is an obese river-- I think it's almost five miles long. These are some ruins sitting on the edge of Loch Ness. Now THAT , my friends, is a castle. You can almost SEE the ghosts of the murdered former inhabitants hovering about.
































And that was the weekend trip. When I finally got back to Aberdeen in the wee hours of Monday morning, I had to fight a bunch of drunk old men to get a taxi (Monday was a bank holiday, and the peoples of Scotland lived it up large). The taxi driver was so relieved to have a sober passenger that he charged me a small fee. Which redeems taxi drivers in the end.
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Now I shall relate two recent adventures I've had walking around Aberdeen.

Adventure 1: Thursday Night Amble

I think I've mentioned that my B&B is undergoing some construction at the moment. Which is fine, except I have to eat out every meal (though my luck has been improving as far as hunting for decent food) and the electricity flickers on and off occasionally. This latter thing isn't usually so bad, except for times like this morning when I was all sudsed up in the shower when the power went out. And since all U.K. folk seem to have these weirdo electrically run shower thingies, that meant I had to rinse myself off by splashing cold water from the bathtub faucet at just the right trajectory and with just the right velocity that it, from its tiny position near the floor, might rinse an entire person.

Well, last night just as I was settling in for my new secret indulgence (watching cheesy British quiz shows while nibbling on assorted dried fruits instead of actually going somewhere to get a normal dinner...) the electricity went out. I suddenly felt inspired to venture out of my room for real food.


It was 8:00pm and still the sun was bright as noon day. So I walked several miles to the beach and played around in the surf until sunset (10 pm!). I realized that (a) I had my camera with me and (b) part of the stipulations of accepting one of the travel grants I received was to take a picture of myself doing my "research" on location (probably some stupid PR thing, but who am I to complain?) and (c) my trip was fast coming to a close.

Since my "research" does in fact consist in part of sitting (or standing, as the case may be) around thinking about stuff, I thought I might as well get the picture over with. Here are two attempts:




In this one, I'm thinking about functional relationships between pairs of conjugate variables in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space.












And to be honest I probably can't use this picture, because at the time I'm pretty sure I was either thinking about those mini cupcakes you can get at the grocery store, or about the stupidity of walking around in salty water after rubbing one's feet raw by walking several miles in shoes without socks.

[note to self: wear socks more often. you ninny.]


Oh, and for the record: yes, I did taste the North Sea. Only lightly salty, in fact (though my feet were screaming to the contrary. Silly feet.) I think the Pacific wins so far as being insanely salty.




By the time I was done taking artsy pictures of myself by propping my camera up inside my shoes to avoid it getting wet in the rising tide (I'm such a smart, pragmatic person. Really. Sheesh. I should get metals for successfully bathing myself (oh wait...failed at this one just today in fact) and tying my shoes and things. Didn't Socrates have people to do these trivial things for him? Or maybe that was Aquinas....) Anywho, by the time I was done playing around, it was getting dark so I headed toward downtown to grab a bite to eat.

It was getting on 10 o'clock and yet the sun was still setting! This morning I woke up to pee at 5:00 am and it was so bright I had to check three clocks before I was convinced it was in fact 5 am and not sometime in the afternoon. I thought I'd better make the best of the waning light, though, as it was still some distance into town. On the way I watched a man playing soccer with three separate soccer balls all at once, in a field some distance away. But I became puzzled after a little while, because the balls seemed to behave in complete contradiction with the fundamental laws of physics. What the what??? The balls were veering all over the field and then RETURNING to him!

After I got a bit closer I realized that the three soccer balls were in fact tiny, fuzzy dogs. Yes, dogs. I thought, man, who would want a pet that was indiscernible from sports equipment? Just add a few beers into the equation and you're asking for trouble.

Eventually I stopped seeing lovers walking hand in hand after a walk on the beach, or kids eating ice cream cones, or....or any people at all. Suddenly my entire scene was comprised of scary concrete buildings, dark alleyways, and a single busy street. And then it came back to me: a conversation I'd had just that day with someone about Aberdeen's very own red light district.

"Oh, BRA-VO Elise," I muttered to myself. "Thank the good Lord above I didn't wear my hoop earrings and fishnets today. THAT was a close one."

But it wasn't in fact the red light district. I know this because there was absolutely nothing going on, and no people. Just lots of darkness, shadows, and big empty buildings. I was in fact in the only place more dangerous than the red light district in all of Aberdeen-- the docking area for the ships. I picked up my pace, my feet screaming with every step. I tried to look composed and sure, and made myself as tall as possible and also started talking to myself about unicorns and spacetime wormholes, on the off chance that a would-be attacker would think I was a derelict and leave me the heck alone.

It felts like miles, but eventually I arrived at Market Street-- dear old Market Street-- right downtown. I popped into the first café I found, had a lovely late dinner, then took a taxi home (another wonderful taxi driver. Two gold stars, Aberdeen cab drivers!).
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Adventure 2: Friday Night Social Experiment

So I joined the St. Machan's Cathedral choir for the time that I'm here because, hey, why not. It's a sweet, small group of folks that regularly sing the likes of Tallis and Byrd, and complain about the lack of young people involved. I choose not to suggest that it might be because we are in fact rehearsing obscure late-Renaissance church anthems in a dank (yet charming) medieval church at 8:30 pm on a Friday night.

Anyway, I hadn't eaten dinner before choir (unless you count three cookies as dinner) and was starving by the time we ended at 9:30. Guido (who also sings in the choir) said there was a place just five blocks down the main road from the church-- a pizza and kabob place that was supposed to be pretty good.

I set off and had a completely uneventful walk. I reach the restaurant, and immediately a woman pops up--literally--from behind the tall front counter. I see a man's hand still lingering on top of the counter and quickly note to self not to ask her what she was doing under there, nor indeed to even ponder the question myself... While I'm making my order I hear clinking from under there, though, like he's fixing a pipe or looking for a particular cooking tool. Whew.
I order a veggi pizza (it comes with sweetcorn? on TOP of it? I want that in my stomach RIGHT. NOW.) and attempt to start a moody philosophical book while waiting for the pizza to bake. During this time, a police woman and a police man enter the store. I feign reading my book at this point and instead strain to catch their Scottish whispers with the woman. I hear them ask "Do you know why we're here?" And there begins a scene straight out of the movies: the womans' eyes become round as saucers, she looks left, she looks right, she goes pale, then slowly picks up a stack of papers and asks with much terror "Is...is this...is this why?"

There's an awkward pause. The police-people exchange glances. Then the she-policeman says "Um, eh, no..." Surely the woman should know better than to offer up incriminating evidence like that! CLASSIC mistake. I struggle to maintain my composure despite competing desires of equal strength to (i) laugh out loud or (ii) get too curious about what those papers meant that she so freely and so ill-advisedly volunteered. Were they cooking rodents in their pizza? I silently offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for choosing a vegetarian meal.

At this point the police-people lean over the counter and carry on the rest of the conversation in very hushed tones. Believe me, I TRIED to listen. I picked up just enough words here and there to gather that it was not a health or safety violation, but rather about a fight had taken place inside the joint the other day. Booooring...

I'm so focused on eavesdropping and simultaneously pretending to read my philosophical book with intense concentration that the dude (who was hiding behind the counter but eventually popped up to bake my food..too bad he didn't wait until the moment the police came in to spring up from no where) he had to yell at me twice when my pizza was ready.

I grab the small box filled with a delicious, piping hot pie of goodness and light and set off back down the same busy street, past the church and on to the B&B. Now here's the funniest part. I'd walked those same five blocks down this same busy street just 15 minutes prior. I had not changed my hair, which was in a mess to begin with (recall lack of functioning shower this morning). Nor had I carried out a dramatic costume change, or decided to walk in a more provocative way on the return trip. The ONLY difference this time was that I was holding in front of me like a newborn child my precious pizza.

And I got hit on more times than I could shake a tiny, fuzzy dog at. In just those five blocks. I was stopped and asked inane questions, I was called "Love" twice, I was honked at, waved at, whistled at...you name it. I just broke down laughing right then and there, as I walked home. The FOOD was the only difference. It reminded me of one of my favorite commercials from a recent superbowl. How wise these ad execs are. How very wise.

So ladies. Toss out those low-cut tops and high-cut heels. Just carry a freshly baked pizza around with you, and the boys will come. Oh, how they will come.

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