Research!

Research owns my life right now.  By June 7, I will have done more work and more writing than I've done all year.  Mostly, I did not realize how time-consuming transcribing the interviews would be.  An hour-long interview equals 20 pages, and takes at least four hours to transcribe, more if the interviewee is a rapid talker.  Yesterday's interview ran over 100 minutes, with a very rapid and animated talker.  I got loads of interesting information out of it, but it is going to be BITCH to transcribe.  I'm also about 2 days behind in my transcriptions at the moment.  I know that if I get really up a creek with it, I can enlist help...but it's something of a point of pride to get all this done by myself.  Plus, there's a lot of value in hearing oneself speak, and in getting as well-acquainted with one's data as one does whilst transcribing it oneself, and I'm reluctant to give that up.

It's going to be a challenge to see all the people I want to see and do all the things I want to do on this visit.  This is compounded by the fact that my car broke shortly before I got here, so I'm sharing cars with my parents, which takes some planning.  I went to the beach last weekend, and I want to go again next weekend, which may prove problematic because my aunt, cousin, and a few of their friends are using the house there next weekend (but I'm definitely going to pull the "it's my house and I'm not going to see it again this side of Christmas" card on that one).  I would also kind of like to see my brother's new digs in the Charlotte area, but the likelihood of that seems remote at the moment.

I thought three weeks would be plenty of time, but I'm seeing the reasoning behind my supervisor's question, "Is that going to be enough time for you to visit?" more and more each day.

Cheers, y'all.

Final marks.

I've gotten all my marks back, and I am officially 7/7 on my goal of all 60's or better, including a completely unexpected first class mark in Team Dynamics.  Yay!

I'm flying back to the States tomorrow to collect data for my thesis, and also to see my family, eat good food (seriously, my first stop after getting home from the airport is going to be Chubby's Tacos), and spend some time at the beach.  I cannot wait to get away from all these triflin' hos I live with, even if it's only for three weeks.

Cheers, y'all.

Participant recruitment and recent reads.

Participant recruitment for my thesis project is officially underway!  I spent most of yesterday working my way through the Beethoven symphonies while messaging every single person on my Facebook friend list who plays music and is likely to be in North Carolina between May 23 and June 5.  I still have to figure out how to use the digital voice recorder that the university is lending me, and also rehearse my presentation for Tuesday.  Tomorrow and Tuesday, all of us who are writing theses this summer are presenting our background and methods to each other, as well as to anyone in the department who cares to drop by.  Basically, I think this qualifies as my defense.  Eeeek!

***

I have been plowing my way through Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.  In less than four weeks, I have finished both Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager.  I bought the next book in the series, Drums of Autumn, yesterday (along with Garth Nix's latest book, A Confusion of Princes), but I'm going to force myself to hold off on starting it, at least until all my data collection is done.  The wise thing would probably be to wait until my entire thesis is done, because these books have a horrible tendency to distract me from my work...we'll see.

I bought Bill Bryson's book about Europe, Neither Here Nor There, at a bookshop in Ross-on-Wye a couple of weeks ago, and just finished it.  It was written in the early 1990's and is now terribly dated, but it still gave me a few good guffaws.

I just started reading Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick last night, and am also slowly working my way through A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin and Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian.

Cheers, y'all.

Amendment 1.

When I heard that Maurice Sendak died, I knew it was a bad omen.

I walked to the Leith Docks shortly before sunset to watch the light fade. It seemed important somehow. Like I needed to personally bear witness to the sun setting on any chance some people very dear to me will have to love freely.

I have been up all night monitoring the election results. The margin was 59%-41% in favor when I started. It only widened. I spent time composing a suitably vitriolic Facebook status for when it became official. Something to the effect of, "I hope I can get my British visa extended so I don't have to go back to a place that legislates hatred." But then as the sky started to lighten again, a certain sense of calm came over me, and I let the vitriol go, just a little bit.

I am ashamed of my home state. So long as this amendment stands, I do not intend to call it home again. But now, as I'm watching the sun come up, I am certain that the amendment won't stand. And all shall be well.

All manner of things shall be well.

Cheers, y'all.

Passive-Aggressive Note Wars.

A passive-aggressive note war is officially underway in my flat.  Victoria has posted notes asking folks not to run the washing machine late at night because it keeps her awake, and also notifying everyone that some of her stuff has been stolen.  I have just posted a note informing everyone that no, their dishes will NOT magically get cleaned if they are left in the sink long enough, and please keep the kitchen tidier.  I'm considering also posting a note in the bathroom, asking people to refrain from running the cold water while the toilet is running, especially at night, because the pipes make a terrific racket which never fails to wake me up.

I'm looking forward to going back to the States for a bit, just to get away from this flat.

Cheers, y'all.

Ben Lomond: a preview.

Interrupting our regularly scheduled program to document that I attempted to climb Ben Lomond (3,196 feet) today, and sadly came up short.  I experienced four seasons in one day, had to convince the dog who desperately wanted to play fetch with the tree branch I was using as a walking stick that I needed that stick far more than she did, and for the first time ever, took longer to descend a mountain than I took to ascend it.  (About 3 hours ascending, 3.5 descending.)  All told, I made it about 3/4 of the way up.

Details and photos to follow at a later date.

Cheers y'all!

September 3, 2011: Back to the mainland, briefly.

This morning, we said goodbye to the blackhouse in Gearrannan and drove to Stornoway to catch our ferry to Ullapool, on the mainland.  We had a few hours to spend in Stornoway before the ferry left.  Others in the group went to explore the town, or to see the Lewis Chessmen, which were on display somewhere in town.  My cold had predictably worsened overnight and I was feeling rather wretched, so I curled up on a couch in the ferry terminal and endeavoured to nap.  I spent the 2.5 hour ferry ride doing the same.

At length we landed in Ullapool and began the long drive to Laggan, on Loch Lochy in the Great Glen.  I don't really remember much of this drive, except for the fact that I desperately needed the toilet by the time we got to Invermoriston.  You can't fully appreciate how remote northwestern Scotland is until nature calls, and there isn't a bathroom within fifty miles. 

This was our final night together before those of us continuing on to Orkney (me, Andrea, Laura, Derwyn, and Kathy) would join another group, while everyone else departed south for Edinburgh.  I have been wracking my brain trying to remember what we ate for dinner.  I have a feeling it was hamburgers. 

Coming attractions: Loch Ness, Orkney, and far northern Scotland!

Cheers, y'all. 

September 1-2, 2011: Harris and Lewis

On the third day of the Wild in Scotland tour, we departed our hostel in Flodigarry on the Isle of Skye to catch the ferry from Uig to Tarbert, on the Isle of Harris.  The driveway from the hostel to the road going to Uig is a rather steep hill, and as luck would have it, the van stalled.  We were all obliged to pile out of it so Danny could get it up the hill.

Luckily, we still made it to Uig in good time for the ferry.  The weather was sunny and I spent the crossing up on deck. 

We landed in Tarbert and began wending our way around Harris and Lewis.  Harris and Lewis are in fact one island, with Harris being the rockier, more mountainous south end and Lewis being the flatter, more fertile north end.  The total population is 20,000 and shrinking, the roads are almost all windy one-track roads, and there are many, many more sheep around than people.

Photo by Mila Tikhonova

We spent the day viewing the rocky scenery, with one historical stop being Rodel Church.  This is a rather inconsequential church, but is has the distinction of being at the very southernmost tip of the Isle of Harris.  We also went to a blackhouse which has remained untouched in the hundreds of years since it was built.

One thing you might not expect about the Outer Hebrides is the beaches.  If it weren't for the fact that the weather tends to be cold and windy, they could be tropical: white sand and clear turquoise water.

We stopped at this one.  I took a dip!  It wasn't as cold as you might expect.

Photo by Andrea Henkel

However, I had to change out of wet clothes essentially in public.  Tina and Kathy graciously held up a towel for me as I changed behind the van, shielding me from the view of the seven-year-old boy in the parked car behind us.

Then we went to our lodgings for the next two nights: another blackhouse, in Gearrannan on west coast of Lewis.  This one had the modern amenities of electricity and running water, and is generally one of my favorite places in Scotland.  It's basically in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the waves crashing outside for company.

Photo by Kathy Armstrong

Dinnertime!

Photo by Kathy Armstrong

***
The next morning, I woke up with a cold, which should not have been surprising given my dip in the northern Atlantic Ocean the previous day.  We spent the morning exploring the blackhouse village of Gearrannan, and then set off for Dun Carloway Broch.  This is an Iron Age circular fort.  There are loads of them all over Scotland, in remarkable states of preservation.  Stones aren't missing because they've fallen down: it's because people have removed them to build houses and fences and so forth.

Dun Carloway Broch (I'm the one in the black and red sweatshirt):

Photo by Andrea Henkel

Then, we went to the standing stones at Callanish, where we had a lunch break.  Scotland has standing stones all over the place.  I visited no fewer than three sets on this particular trip, Callanish being the first.

In the afternoon, we drove up to the Butt of Lewis, which is the northernmost tip of the island.  Having been to Rodel the previous day, this means that we spanned the entire island from north to south in two days.

Photo by Andrea Henkel

Photo by Andrea Henkel

Then we drove to Stornoway, the only town on Lewis of any significant size, for dinner provisions.  I was feeling well and truly puny by this time, so I stayed on the bus.  Derwyn was sick too, so at least I had company.

By the time we made our way back to Gearrannan, I had taken some Tylenol and copious amounts of cough drops and was feeling human enough to make the couple-mile hike along Dalmore Bay to the blackhouse, which about twelve of us undertook.  I'm beginning to think it's my destiny to never have photos of this walk, because no one from the trip seems to have any.  It's a gorgeous walk, and the sun came out for us while we did it.  By the end of it, I was absolutely knackered and I think I collapsed into bed pretty soon after dinner that night.  I'm sure my snoring was far more resonant than usual, thanks to the rapidly worsening cold.  Oh well.

Cheers, y'all.