New Forest

A post that I've dodged tackling for a couple years, but if nothing else I'll upload the pictures although I think I'll avoid commentary.  There are some nice shots of the New Forest in the United Kingdom, and I guess I should get them up while there is still a UK to use as a label.  I went there in a different lifetime which seems more and more like a dream.  Suffice it to say, as Uncle Tupelo reminds us, "there was a time, that time is gone."

Happy New Year

And with this post I think I set a new personal record for posts in a year, and since this will doubtless be the last one of the year that's well-timed.  Normally, at this time of year I feel appropriately sad and reflective, but this year I just feel very happy and excited about the future.  So, Happy New Year to one and all.

Ready for new adventures.

Stonehenge

I usually pride myself on tracking down the spots far off the beaten path and avoiding the more touristy locations, but there are some things that you just can't avoid - and Stonehenge is one of them.  I should really write a lot more about the visit, but I'm running off to the airport to pick up Laura (insh'allah), because her 7:50 flight (initially 5:30 and then progressively later and later) has suddenly become 6:00 and then 6:30 (when they discovered that there were no flight attendants available, which is amazing since its a flight where they don't serve food or drinks).  And now it may be another half-hour.  I think I'll just head over and wait.  Anyway, we visited Stonehenge on an appropriately overcast and windswept day, which was just perfect.  I don't know if I felt spiritually moved to a transcendent plane, but it was a wonderful day.

Again, the prettiest tour guide in the world.

Thinking about blowing this one up to hang on the wall, but I can't decide if it's a good picture or not.

More Winchester

Now, a logical person might point out that if I'm way too busy (which I am) to post appropriate commentary, then I must also be too busy to post.  Sure, a logical argument, but this is also why the brain is the most over-rated organ.  I can only blame my excitement at actually finding my camera, and also the very warm memories of an amazing trip.

A typically overcast English day, which was a very welcome change of pace after a year without rain and blistering heat in Abu Dhabi.

Laura honing in with her impeccable sense of direction.

A beautiful little corner of the world.

After a year of the glossy and new, real history did my heart good.

The Round Table, from which I was fired for general bad behavior and churlishness.

Truthfully, everything after Elizabeth's death in 1603 is trivial current events.  As one of the popes, and thus her enemies, suggested, only she is truly a king.

More dissertation flashbacks.

Obviously, I never commit a nuisance so this didn't apply to me.

A photo of some nature shit, which is obviously Laura's influence on me.

Winchester Cathedral

And more pictures from the UK - and once again thank God that I found my camera. I bought the one I have, not because it takes great pictures, but because it is shock-proof and water-proof and sand-proof (which, in order, in what happened to three cameras in the space of two months). When I couldn't find my camera I was kicking myself for not buying an idiot-proof camera, but it came back to me. So, expect to see many pictures of my epic visit to the UK. It's hard to believe that a British historian wouldn't actually make it to the UK until he was fifty-two, but I can only blame poverty and the excellence of British historians and their ability to put almost every document on microfilm. I think on the night I first met Laura she abused me because of the fact that I had never made it to the UK, and that I had to go there - and so I suppose it was inevitable and appropriate that she played tour guide on my first trip. Here are some pictures, sadly more quickly that they deserve to be presented, of our visit to the Winchester Cathedral.

Obviously too pretty to be my tour guide or my girl friend.  She's celebrating the fact that she finally dragged me to the United Kingdom, which I think is near England.

Inside Winchester Cathedral.  I'd hate to think how many cathedrals I've been to in the last decade, but how could one ever truly get tired of them?

Having flashbacks of Fox's Martyrs from graduate school.

More old history stuff that Laura suffered through, and which insured that we had to go find nature stuff.

Appropriately creepy, and it naturally reminded me of the Labyrinth on Castle Hill in Budapest.

I am not a huge Jane Austen fan, but it was still wonderful to visit her tomb - and it made me want to delve into her novels again.

It is not actually a statue of the excellent Bob Mayer, but it's pretty damh close.

Reflections at 600 (postings, not years)

It always mildly amazes me when I reach some sort of milestone on this silly blog - just as it amuses me that anyone reads it (which, oddly, they do).  So, here we are at another milestone, in this case my 600th posting.  As I've said before, it either means that I lead an interesting life or am immensely self-absorbed (both of which are probably true).  I suppose I should be writing something utterly profound at this moment, but I guess all I really have to say is that I'm happy.  For the first time in a long time I feel confident about the future, and that I'm heading in the right direction, and not heading there alone.  And is so often the case, the simplest epiphanies are the best.

A nice picture from the New Forest in the UK (more on that later).  As Archer would say, "hurray for metaphor."

Land of the Engs

And thank God I found my camera. Not since I lost hundreds of pictures of western China when my camera went missing in Barcelona have I been so worried. I've been waiting to get to England forever, and then I came back and couldn't find my camera for well over a month. But now that it's shown up expect lots of UK postings. It was an amazing trip and can't wait to go back, and I suspect I'll be there a lot.