Finally

Guess WHAAAAAT! It's snowing in London! My dreams are all coming true! I'm so happy, I want to go out and run around in it but it's still super cold out. So I made do with standing on the back "porch" and taking pictures of it for posterity. I also, of course, promptly made hot cocoa and stared out the window while doing so. Snow.








Snow in my hair, snow on my hat, snow everywhere!

So yeah. I really like snow. ...Moving on. I've been reading this book The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, which I'm really loving. I was up until 5:00 in the morning reading; I could not put it down. It's one of those big fat fantasy books, but the setting, characters, and overall aesthetic make it super appealing to me. Especially the balls. There are balls, with nobles, and it's pretty pimp. I like balls in fantasy novels. And tea parties.

Okay so I'm gonna go read that now.

Dream Castles

They're always so far away, the castles. I can never get to them. It's always night, and I can only just see their spires outlined against the stars. Or it's day, but there's fog all around me and when the wind picks up I catch a glimpse of towers silhouetted against the whiteness, far away. Or maybe I simply can't see that far; it's like a video game, when mountains in the distance seem to be a solid purple-grey, just shapes against the sky. Just purple-grey towers, so far away that I can barely make them out. That's how they appear to me in my dreams.

As soon as I see it, so far away I can never reach it but just close enough that I need to try, I'm filled with this inexplicable longing. It tugs at my heart and I can hardly breathe, because I need to go there. I need to be where the spires are, far away, where it's beautiful -- I know it's beautiful. I need to go there but it's so far away, and there are forests and valleys and mountains in between. It's such a long way to go.

When I wake up I feel cheated, I feel loss. I never find them, and I try, I try so hard. I remember standing on the shore of a still dark lake, fireflies dancing above me, and I saw the city rising on the other side of the water, a black bristling creature. And right at the top of it, tall and buttressed, waiting for me, was the castle. Lights were on inside. Tiny golden pin-pricks in the night, the castle and its city, so far across that lake. How could I ever make it there? I wanted so badly to go inside, to gaze up at the tall stained glass windows, to hear my voice echo in its grand halls.

But I never will. I never do. I see them so often, the faraway castles, but I never find my way to them. They're never within reach. And every time it hurts just as much as the first.





(image sources: 1, 2)

Rooftop Sky

I was heating up some instant rice in the kitchen, and noticed that the sky was really pretty. I've been meaning to take some photos from out on the roof, our weird little balcony deck that we've got going on outside our kitchen (it's basically a roof), so I figured today was the day. They're nothing too exciting, but I love the kind of gross, grungy look of my neighborhood. I live in Walthamstow, which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in East London. It's more Northeast than anything, but the postcode says East, so whatever.

I kind of wish I smoked, just so I'd have an excuse to regularly go out on the roof and listen to the doves. There's a really loud dove that lives outside my window, or near some kind of vent opening, because I hear it really clearly and it is cooing all the time. I have a love/hate relationship with that dove, but I think I'd be sad if it went away.

So yeah, this is where I live. I'll try to post some better photos of my room soon, and maybe soon I'll take the camera 'round to the Walthamstow market, which I hear is all right.

My Bed

So this is where I spend about 95% of my time, i.e. my bed. And the bedside table. I mean I don't spend time on the bedside table, but it's included in the whole ensemble. Notice all the healthy snacks and empty Diet Coke bottle going on there. I am not a neat person, nor am I very healthy. Let's just get that out of the way. I sit in bed, drink diet soda, and eat cookies and cheese biscuits all day long. While watching Sherlock and Doctor Who. It's glorious and sad.

Anyway I'm a bit tipsy, I've had 2 pints of Strongbow and was intoxicated enough to eat a chicken quesadilla even though it was spicy, but I was super hungry okay? And yes, 2 pints of anything will get me loose and happy. I'm that small, and I don't eat a lot. Stop judging me!

I don't know why I thought I needed to update right now, as it's 1:23 in the AM, but here you go. Enjoy. I have Doctor Who pictures on my wall.

Edinburgh Part 2

And here is your Scottish bagpiper, everyone! I'm super stoked about him. I took a bunch of photos of him that turned out to be really awful except this one, and then I emptied my coin purse into his case. Yeah, I'm a total BAMF, emptying coin purses into bagpipers' cases all over the place. I like to support the busking industry. It really stimulates the economy. In all seriousness though, if you see a street performer who actually entertains you or makes you smile, even if it's just for a second, you should probably give them some of your pocket change, if not more. I completely admire talented buskers, not only for their courage in going out there to play for the masses, but also because of their talent -- which is clearly going unappreciated if they have to busk to make money. Just saying. What a dreadfully boring paragraph.








So these photos are all from my second day in Edinburgh, most of which was spent at the Royal Botanical Gardens. I really, really enjoyed the Botanical Gardens. If you've never been to such a thing, I suggest you try it! They're really calming and beautiful, plus you learn about crazy plants from all over the world. Win/win situation right there. My favorite bit was the glass houses, but my favorite room, the rain foresty one, was so warm and moist that it fogged up my camera lens and I wasn't able to get any decent photos in there. Boo! You'll just have to imagine lots of thick hanging moss, curling ferns, and the slow drip-drip of condensation falling from the tips of leaves to the mossy floor. I liked it.






















And finally, I'd like to draw your attention to some pretty cool cars I saw on our walk back to the city center from the Botanical Gardens. I saw two minis parked near each other and I had no choice but to photograph them, because if you combine the two cars pictured, you get my dream car. Retro mini, British racing green. Bam. Then we saw this badass grey hulking thing, lookin' all retro and stuff. So I had to photograph its beautiful visage.

I didn't used to give half a shit about cars, but ever since I became hopelessly addicted to Top Gear, I've grown fond of the gas-guzzling, environment-destroying things. This is probably due to some strange subconscious and Anglophilia-related need to please Clarkson, May, and Hammond, but until a therapist tells me to stop, I'm gonna love them up like the hilarious assholes that they are. Who else loves Top Gear? You know you do. I feel like everybody in the UK feels nothing but searing hatred towards Jeremy Clarkson and his minions, but in America we don't care about political correctness, common decency, or the planet. So the boys are totally welcome in the States any time they'd like to have a visit. We don't care.

Edinburgh Part 1

"Yes! Finally! Photos from Edinburgh!" said my readers, in my mind. Yep, it's that time again, time for pictures I took while traveling somewhere. Lots of old buildings involved. Will I ever get tired of taking pictures of old buildings, looming above me? No. Nope. Never.

I talked about it on twitter, but since my twitter has become more and more of a cesspool where my thoughts go to die, I can understand why you would stay as far away from that place as possible. So I'd better just update everyone: I went to Edinburgh for Christmas. It was pretty awesome. I met up with my friend Lily and her partner in crime Angus, and stayed in a really cool flat right below the Edinburgh Castle (the view from outside our building pictured above). Lily had been working up in Orkney over the fall, and then she and Angus trekked around Europe for a few weeks before ending their adventure in Edinburgh with me. I was super glad that they invited me to spend Christmas with them, because otherwise I probably would have spent the holiday all alone in my dimly lit room, eating beans and sobbing.

Here's a neat story. The morning I arrived, Lily and I planned to meet at a Starbucks near Princes Street in the Edinburgh city center. Lily didn't have a working mobile at the time (what primeval world is she living in) so she sent a facebook message before she left the flat, saying to meet at the Starbucks on George and Castle. So I got off the bus at George and Castle, went into the Starbucks, bought a latte, and waited. And waited. And waited. After a while I decided Lily must have gone to the wrong Starbucks, so I went down the road to another nearby Starbucks. She wasn't there. I think I must have gone back and forth between those two Starbucks like three times, tweeting and facebooking forlorn messages as I went, finally just sitting outside the original Starbucks full of despair.

After a while of sitting there convinced I was going to die alone on the streets of Edinburgh, Lily finally showed up all panicked. Apparently, you guys, there is a third Starbucks in that vicinity in Edinburgh, to which Lily had initially gone. So while I had been wandering back and forth between two Starbucks on George Street, she had been going back and forth between the Starbucks on George and Castle, and the one on Princes Street. Jesus Christ Edinburgh, talk about confusing. Maybe, before erecting three Starbucks locations in one small area, consider the sad mobile-less Americans who might be trying to find one another, lost and alone and scared, on the cold streets of your city. Maybe think about that one next time.












Despite the harrowing first hour, Edinburgh turned out to be pretty amazing all told. If you've never been, you should go. People kept asking me what I was doing for Christmas, and every single person, when told I was going to Edinburgh, exploded with, "Oh my god you are going to love it, it is so beautiful and amazing, narrow streets, cool shops, so quaint, castle, oh god Meg you will love that Scottish shit." They weren't wrong. I loved that Scottish shit.

I even tried haggis, which I was convinced would be disgusting (because who doesn't have a horrible idea in their mind about what haggis is all about), but turned out to be pretty okay. I couldn't eat more than a bite because the idea of it freaks me way out, but it tasted okay. I did like those tatties and neeps, though. Mmmm tatties and neeps.

My favorite thing about Edinburgh, and I imagine Scotland in general, if I'm honest, was the ever-present and often eerily distant wailing of bagpipes. I felt like, no matter where I was or what I was doing, the whole time I was in Edinburgh, there was bagpipe music in the background. Sometimes it was far away, those melancholic strains drifting through Old Town, and other times it was blasting loudly from a speaker in some kitschy Scotland Gift Shop. The best, though, was the man standing outside a church or some old building or other, playing actual bagpipes. Now, bagpipes are no new thing for me, having grown up like three blocks away from Rose Park in Missoula, where apparently every bagpiper in the city goes to practice for hours at a time, but there's no doubt about it: bagpipes are way better when experienced in Scotland. God, I love bagpipes. (Bagpipe man will be featured in the next post of pictures from Edinburgh.)














Well guys, I guess that about does it for my first post about Edinburgh. I really liked the city, and I could totally see myself living there, unlike in London, which is a terrifying prison of concrete and pigeons. (Not really; I love London, but if I had to live here for years on end I fear my soul would whither and die. Unless I lived in Hampstead, though; I think I could manage Hampstead.) I'd love to go back to Scotland later in the year and visit the highlands, and Orkney, and basically everywhere cool that doesn't involve being in a city.

Homesickness

Guess what! One of my favorite places in the world isn't actually real. It's in a video game. BIG SURPRISE. I've already done a post about Mass Effect and how cool I found that one spaceship to be, but my relationship with World of Warcraft goes much deeper than just a casual fling with some BioWare RPG. Okay, yeah, for a few years there I was pretty addicted to it and put off doing normal human things like eating and bowel movements in favor of leveling my mage or raiding on my holy priest, but let's forget that for a moment! Let's forget that I abandoned my friends for a year for this game, and just remember the good times. And there were many of those.

Sometimes I try to tell people about WoW, and how much I loved it, and I basically always come off sounding like a meth addict or an unforgivable loser. The fact is, though, and I've come to realize this more clearly recently -- I don't miss the gameplay of WoW so much. I don't miss the PvP (although twinking around in Arathi Basin on my 49 hunter was always a good time), and I don't miss raiding, unless you count the golden days of Karazhan when Greg was shamelessly flirting with me in whispers, and that crazy-eyed Australian girl kept copying my mage specs because I was clearly the cooler female in the guild. No, those were just perks. What I mostly miss, I've found, is the world itself. The landscapes, the magic, the inhabitants, the music -- they all go together to create this pretty badass world that you can explore in its entirety. I feel like the world of Azeroth is a place I actually used to live in, and now I've left, but I miss it because I'll probably never experience like I did the first time.










Admittedly a lot of the appeal for me was also in the social nature of WoW. I got to spend time and interact with Greg while gaming, which is pretty fucking neat. We also had several out-of-state friends who we knew mostly through WoW or other online games. Now Greg is living with one of them in Salt Lake, so clearly we made some legit connections in game! (That, or Greg's roommate is waiting patiently for the opportune moment in which to kill and eat him.)

The thing is, though, I really do miss the world of the game. I particularly miss one continent that was introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, called Northrend. I remember boarding the zeppelin from Undercity to Howling Fjord for the first time, and becoming totally obsessed with the music that played on it. I mean, how can you not be obsessed with these glorious harmonious strains? Scandinavian music is the best.




I could make an entire post on the music of WoW, but I won't, unless you want me to, and then I will. Because seriously, it's the best game music ever made, not counting Ocarina of Time, and selected music from Fable II. I used to go to certain zones in WoW just to listen to the music there. Or I'd be in the middle of questing or something, and my favorite bit of the song would start, and I'd drop everything just to sit and listen. I know. I'm just that cool.












Northrend is such a great place, though. It's dark and snowy and Scandinavian, mysterious and full of hulking viking-like creatures. I have dreams about it. (I know. I'm just that cool.) Maybe these screenshots I took years ago will give you a tiny insight into how beautiful and enthralling WoW, particularly Northrend, can be. I just feel like people don't pay enough attention to how lovely the game is. I wish it were a real world that I could live in. I feel homesick for a place I've never been. Sigh.