Yikes

It suddenly feels a lot like winter today in Vermont, although the precipitation is still rain and not snow.  Here's a picture, sadly blurry, that I snapped last month looking out over Lake Champlain which gives us a gloomy sense of what awaits.  Can't believe I was reveling in 80 degree weather and sunshine in Abu Dhabi a week ago.

Happy National Day

Happy National Day to all my friends in the United Arab Emirates

Exiles On Main Street

Just back from a wonderful trip to Abu Dhabi for Thanksgiving break, and doubtless I'll have more to say about that in the days to come (including a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner provided by my great friends Mel and Rob, in which Laura and her sister Heather got to experience their first Thanksgiving - and the mystery that are candied yams).  In the meantime, here's an odd sign for a maid service that we came across.  On the one hand it seems like a clumsy name, but considering the prevalence and status of foreign workers in the UAE it might be dead on.

Being a visiting professor was a great gig there, but we were also clearly just mambers of the food chain of foreign workers (although pretty near the top).

The Greatest Gig

I had one of those reminders today about why I have the greatest job in the world.  It was late afternoon and I should have been packing for my trip to Abu Dhabi tomorrow, but instead I was sitting in my office working up material for class tomorrow.  My excellent and far more brilliant friend David Kite was sitting in his office across the hall.  David was working up material for a discussion tomorrow on Chinese Buddhism while I was putting together a Powerpoint with musical links for a discussion that somehow tied together Igor Stravinsky, Miles David and Neil Young.  Essentially it was about the artistic desire to blaze new territory, fight against conformity and expectations, and the audience's inability to "get it" (which, in my fevered brain anyway, logically tied together Rite of Spring, Bitches Brew and Tonight's the Night - and I'm sure that somehow passages from W. Sumerset Maugham's The Moon and Six Pence will sneak in).  And while the logic might be undeniable only to me, it was another reminder of what a gift it is to be a teacher.  In addition to helping developing mind to think, I'm also being paid to create.  I ran back and forth to David's office several times so that we could swap ideas.  It was amazing and just left me energized and thankful.  And, if nothing else, I get to play Young's Tired Eyes, one of my all-time favorite songs, from Tonight's the Night, the greatest album in rock history (this clearly deserves its own blog posting), in class.  What a gig.

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."