Scooting!

I scooted today. I've had a long break from it, but once again I've had buses to the limit, so I went to bed at 9.15 last night, woke up at 6.30, left at 7.10, and arrived at work at 8am, for half an hour quiet time before work. I was quite pleased because I think it took 48 minutes. Broke the 50 barrier, so I'm closer to 45min than an hour. Big difference in my mind. Also, I gave up and walked the last 50 metres of Anzac Parade, cos I think I'm a little bit unfitter.

However, by the end of the work day I was really tired.

And because it is cold, I can't dress light enough to avoid a really sweaty back from my backpack. Might have to have a change of shirt.

What I did on my weekend.

Engage conference. Next year I aim to not be tired. I looked forward to this conference every year, and yet again the late nights and strange bed and the cold weather turned me into half a zombie, which makes me crave chocolate and wish the music would be quieter and the talks shorter. I saw my brother up there, but didn't catch up with many people.

I also helped the friend of a friend tidy up her house for her in-laws to visit on Saturday afternoon. One of those crafty people who see potential in everything and have more inspiration than discipline in their life. I really couldn't sit there and do cross-stitch while she flapped around among the mess and babies saying "I'm just not motivated" so I helped her. And I do believe that other people's mess is a bit easier to work with, because you are undistracted by the sentimental value of the mess, and can get more quickly to the 'before and after' transformation. Anyway, it was a weird and sort of taking-over thing to do in an almost strangers' house (it was the second time I was visiting), but on the other hand it was a practical and loving way to help. It's hard to know where the boundaries are, sometimes.

Life.

I want to blog something edifying and whimsical. Right now I can't think of anything very good. I could tell you that I cooked another batch of cookies and followed the recipe better and improved it also, and the results were pleasant. But I baked leftover dough the next day, and the results were deformed. The dough doesn't keep. Oh, here is something interesting, smh.com had this on it this morning:

I thought: the secret to long life is not exciting enough to be the main story? it's at the bottom of the screen? and the picture is soup? is soup the secret? I didn't click and read because it so obviously was NOT much of a secret.

How I measure the gap in my teeth.

Dad gave me this calliper set. It is lots of thin slivers of metal. For ages I could fit the whole set into the gap, which means it was more than 2mm, but now I fold one back (one that is 25/1000 of an inch) so I can tell that the gap is smaller, and the set I can fit in is a bit over 1.5mm wide.

This is a lot more accurate than putting a ruler in my mouth.

Braces update.

Yesterday I had my ortho appt delayed from 2 weeks ago. The hygenist said I had a cavity, but privately I have decided I'm not going to the dentist until my braces come off, because I'm sure there will be more surprises under those bands, besides needing a clean.

The appt was to remove a screw in my jaw and put it in a different place. In the end, he changed his mind about the xrays and moving the screw in my jaw, (second time changed mind about that!) because the gap is smaller. I thought it was wishful thinking. He put some more rubber chains in my mouth, and a few hours later my teeth were tapping again (when I try and clench my teeth 2 teeth bump into each other and the rest can't meet) and when I stick the spark plug calliper into the gap, it doesn't fit! I have to fold back a piece! So it has very quickly gone from over 2mm to about 1.6mm.

He said that when the gap gets to 1mm, that will be it. 

Next appointment is 11/9 so he seems optimistic that the rest of the mm can close in 4 weeks, I guess. I wonder what else will happen after the gap being closed, or if that's it and my braces can come off? I'm starting to get excited that the end of the year is a realistic goal for biting into an apple.

Pillow retraction.

It's still a good pillow, but it doesn't stop whatever it is that locks me up. Another weekend, another terrible night's sleep, another Monday with a stiff neck, killing my whimsy. I did some stuff on Saturday, sanding and so on, that might have made me stiff, but it doesn't make sense that I'd tense up in my sleep on Sunday night. I can't pinpoint it to any trigger, which is frustrating. Can only try and be consistent with the stretches. Maybe I'll try and avoid sitting on the couch next weekend and do a straight backed chair instead.

Seems like a good time to share my fav Carpenters song. It's a Monday, the weather is wintery, and I'm grumpy. Can't get much closer to living out 'Rainy days and Mondays always get me down'.

I wish I could play the harmonica.

Tonight, however, will be guacamole party night. Which means that after I've done Jillian (if I risk Jillian on a sore neck) and my flatmate gets home, we will watch Once Upon a Time and eat a bowl of home made guacamole and a bag of doritos.

Pillow update.

My neck tension has subsided again. I've had two attacks of neck-shoulder pain, about a month apart, with some neck stiffness the rest of the time. I think it's triggered by my braces, because my teeth are uneven at the moment, but I'm trying to cover every possibility.  I've swapped things around at work, moved my mouse to the left hand. I've tried different hairstyles to reduce the weight on my head. I'm keeping my jaw tucked shut even if my teeth don't meet. I'm minimising carrying a heavy bag where I can. I've had a massage. I'm doing physio stretches. And because I went to bed relaxed from a massage and woke up tense again I have bought a special shaped foam pillow for sleeping. (FYI, a Denton Medi Rest on sale from My House $66)

It is higher than I am used to, and the foam is more rigid than the feather pillows I had, but that's what I need because I was mashing those feather pillows into all sorts of neck-twisting shapes in my sleep. I wish I didn't have to use it, but I think it is beneficial. After a week, I think I'm getting used to it.

Photo Recap: Stonehenge and Chawton.

We drove to Salisbury to find wifi which was at Hungry Jacks and I bought some clean socks at M&S. We walked past the cathedral. Then we left, and found Stonehenge. Which was so wonderfully strange. You're driving along, looking at maps, and you look up and it's suddenly right in front of you in real life. It was raining really hard, so the getting out of the car and taking photos of it was not that great. So although it's stupidly tragic that Stonehenge is surrounded by roads, I think the experience of finding it on the side of the highway, like a truck stop or a big pineapple or an alien spaceship or something, is pretty wonderful.

Then we went to Chawton and I visited Jane Austen's house. AMAZING. It was quiet and pretty and full of treasures. It's manned by lovely volunteers who sit around quietly and read books.

Then we went to some boring motel for the last night of our England part. In the morning we drove to London, refilled the car, returned the car, pulled our suitcases back to Earl's Court, took pictures with the TARDIS, of which I have none. No photos. Weird. Caught train back to Heathrow, hung around a little while and then flew BA to South Africa overnight. The plane was half empty! and therefore it was the best flight we had. I moved over to an empty row and spread out and managed to doze a little.

Reality check.

Meanwhile, in the present day, the holiday is far behind me. For the sake of authenticity in social media, my life is currently nothing like those pretty holiday photos. It is this desk, and Sydney buses, and freddo frogs, and sleep.

Photo Recap: Lyme Regis.

This was one of the most anticipated Jane Austen locations. She lived hear for a little while, and she set significant parts of Persuasion here. Specifically, the Cobb.

We started the afternoon we arrived by walking along the foreshore and the Cobb, of course. It was stormy and exciting. Kind of scary as well. Then we ate at a pub. It had a sign saying dogs were allowed in, and all over Lyme were similar signs specifying the acceptance or not of dogs in various shops and cafes.

The next morning we went for a walk up the hill behind the town, towards the next town. We didn't go all the way. Once we had seen the views and the bluebells in the woods. It was a lovely soft still day. I fell over in the mud.

After I got changed, Matt and I split up for the rest of the day. I walked around reading a book on my ipad whenever I found a sunny spot to sit. I had a hot chocolate with cream on it after lunch.

Lyme had very narrow streets. The houses and shops were small and painted.

This is the foreshore, and the Cobb and harbour at low tide.

 

The beach.

And finally, the Cobb. It's lovely for walking, and has no guard rail. It's very beautiful.

These are supposedly the actual steps from which Louisa fell and broke her head. I am not surprised, they were extremely precarious and I was terrified of them. But maybe they have worn down over time and must have been bigger in Louisa's day.

 

These are some other steps, a lot safer, which I think they must use in the movie versions.

The end of the Cobb.

Looking back at Monmouth beach from the end of the Cobb.

So that was Lyme Regis. The Cobb was everything I hoped for, and Lyme was a very pleasant small seaside town. It was nice to be relaxing by this point, and not have much to do, cos we had been travelling hard for almost 2 weeks. There was only one more stop to make on the Jane Austen Adventure Tour before we departed for Namibia.

Glee Project confession.

I love this show. All that happens is some teenagers make a music video and sing some songs. It's got things that I love to hate, like Ryan Murphy, who is scary, and things I love to love, like how corny it is that each week a loser sings Avril Lavigne and goes home.

I'm sad the Charlie was sent off. To be fair, he was a difficult person to like. Super annoying. And 4 'last chance' performances in a row doesn't bode well. He wasn't going to get the job on Glee unless he somehow was able to change a lot of who he is as a person, which is ironic, given all that Glee says it stands for. But his 'last chance' performances were the best part of the show. The first time he was bottom 3, it was for a stupid stunt while 'method acting', and he sang 'Fix You' which is a blah Coldplay anthem, and it was so unexpectedly good. He has a talent. He should have gone on a show that wasn't about being a professional actor slash singer in an audition process, and gone on The Voice or something instead. Goodbye, Charlie.

Photo Recap: Meryton and the White Horse.

I don't believe I've blogged this yet. On Monday we drove east, to go to Laycock and then find a White Horse. Laycock was dead, it being a Monday morning, but we walked all around it, tried on cloth caps in a friendly shop and I bought a toy hedgehog. It has a string you pull and it buzzes along for 3 seconds. But it's very cute. Laycock has lots of tiny cottages, some of them amazingly crooked. The whole village is run by the National Trust so that it stays heritage and can be used as sets for BBC period dramas and Harry Potter movies. It was Meryton, Mr Darcy was there, hence it was a part of this Jane Austen Adventure Tour.

The nearby Abby has a photography museum, because Henry Fox Talbot lived there and invented the negative film process. Wow! And there was an orchard.

Then we drove further afield, to find a White Horse. Just because I am randomly fascinated by them. And we found this one, and took the opportunity to walk around, but it was horrid weather so we didn't walk all the way to it.

And then we drove down to the south coast holiday town of Lyme Regis, for our next 2-night stay.

Photo recap: Bath.

I've already written about this, but I'll do it again with the photos. On Sunday we went to church in Bath, Widcombe Baptist. On the bottom right corner of this useless map, which was all we had on my ipad. This was the worst driving experience we had. Even when we were in the vague area of the route we needed, the map was useless. And it took 15 minutes to get from driving past the church to getting INTO the school carpark. Bath is not car friendly at all. It is, however, another lovely place to walk around.

Church was good, very familiar in style, and we were invite back for the evening service as well, which I was not super keen on because of predicted tiredness, but the promise of all day parking in the school clinched it. Didn't have to drive to a tourist carpark!!! In the end, evening church was really good, 2 uni students were baptised and gave their testimonies, it was incredibly encouraging.  And a young man chatted to Matt afterwards so we got welcomed.

In the afternoon, between church, Matt and I walked into town and arranged to split up and meet back for dinner. We both met up again immediately in the Roman baths. I thought the baths were just the one green steamy swimming pool with columns around it, but there is a whole lot of stuff still underground and it's very educational and takes a long time to go to. I drank the water, it was warm and eggy. I drank 2 cups anyway because it was free.

When I emerged onto the street again, it was raining. The street was busy and there were lots of places to buy cheap pastry-food. I had a sausage roll for I think 85p, and it was cut in half lengthways with tomato sauce in the middle! This is brilliant, I can't believe I never thought of doing that myself, because you get to eat all the sauce and don't waste any on the paper bag.

I took this photo because I remember this exact street from the movie of Persuasion, the old one. Looking at the photo later I wish I had factored in the people a little better, because people with umbrellas are a little like red buses. They don't get in the way in a photo, they add something. This photo could have been very special.

I like this one too. Red umbrella. I really enjoyed exploring the lanes in the rain. Isn't it nice how plain the city is! No advertising, no ugly shop signs. It was very restrained and unobtrusive.

I wanted to go to the Jane Austen centre. It was a letdown. The shop is very good, but the rest of the house is not worth the visit. If you pay to go in to the house part, you do get a helpful short lecture about Jane Austen and her family which is quite good.

Then I wanted to see the round terraces. Remember how much I like terraces built on curves? Bath is famous for them. The Royal Crescent, and the Circus. These are very famous and feature in both versions of Persuasion.

Now this is lovely, on the park in front of the crescent was a Roman reenactment thing. They had trebuchets but I missed out on seeing them fling the watermelons. I did, however, find out how the Romans did brain surgery. But not how they kept warm. They looked really under-dressed for the weather.

I went then to the Assembly Rooms, which were empty and beautiful. This is where Austen and society went to mingle and dance and so on.

Underneath is a costume museum, which was quite good but I only went because it was included in the ticket to the Roman Baths.

Then I mosied around the streets for a little while, and went along the river. Even the non-circular-terrace parts of Bath are lovely.

Then Matt and I scored end-of-the-day 1 pound pasties for dinner. But I ended up with sparkling water, yuck. It is a hazard of bottled water in England that it's not all just water.

I liked Bath a lot.

Photo recap: The road to Bath via a macaroon.

I better finish my holiday photo recap before I completely forget everything!

We drove from Oxford to Bath via the Cotswolds on a Saturday afternoon. So up a bit and to the left and back down. On the way we took a turn-off and saw some Roman villa ruins.

The area was very beautiful, lots of tiny stone villages with narrow streets amid green hills, originally a sheep growing area. Now it looks like a lot of canola. But because it was a nice Saturday every town was chockers with touristy day-trippers. In a place called Chipping Norton, which was relatively large and quiet, we stopped and I bought a macaroon. Not a modern macaron, but an Enid Blyton style macaroon, which is an almond (or coconut) horseshoe biscuit. That is a childhood dream fulfilled.

That was our furthest north point. We turned south and drove towards Bath, because we had a B&B on a farm outside Bath, since Bath itself was booked out for the weekend. We had to buy dinner at a Chinese takeaway in nearby Corsham village, and it was dreadful. Tasteless noodles. Oxford had pretty OK chinese food, even Namibia had a decent Chinese restaurant, but this place was just so bland. I can safely say, the worst in the world, compared the parts of the world I have eaten Chinese food in. But, while eating we saw a squirrel AND a robin!

Back to Oxford!

There were good things in Oxford, but being there as a tourist, there was a feeling of not being allowed to go places because you weren't a student. Really, we looked like students so we probably totally could have, but I'm nervous about that stuff. We were kind of unlucky because it was a time when a lot of colleges weren't letting tourists in because of exams and some kind of special day. This is a random Great Hall, not the Harry Potter one but another one, right after an exam. Imagine doing exams in robes and stuff. It's another time.

And this is the lawn of the college Tolkien was in, which we only go to go into because we paid an official walking tour guide. They were setting up for whatever the day was.

I was a little disappointed with the guide because he waffled on a lot about how Oxford is becoming a modern liberal university, and so many women apply, and so many women get in, and people come from all over the world. He was very knowledgable, but I live 2 blocks away from a modern liberal multicultural university, so I don't care about the number of women at Oxford, Oxford is where people invented magical worlds and wrote books about them. Someone asked where this pub was and the guide gave directions. It's where CS Lewis and Tolkien hung out.

The Bodleian had a free exhibit on Romantic literature of the middle ages. Legends of knights and so on. Lots of very old books. So there was no photography allowed. But we spent ages in there, reading everything and following the development of stories, right up to an original page of a LOTR manuscript hand-written and illustrated by Tolkien. Pretty special, glad we went in there.

Finally, I love how all the colleges are built around lawns. No matter what size the college, a lawn. I rather like the small colleges in particular.