birds in the sky- you know how i feel

life lately is happening these days both with contentment and much anticipation. for example, i want to do the following things around edinburgh:
-see movies jarhead, memoirs of a geisha, breakfast on pluto, possibly match point because luxembourgian pit gave me a strong recommendation though it looked kind of like every other story about adultery, woody allen and all
-see tartuffe at the royal lyceum theatre
-go see some scottish impressionist art that i've been trying to go to for ages
-go to st. andrews for a day trip and ride across the forth rail bridge (which is beeeautiful, the pictures indicate, and quite famous - it's even on the newly 2k5 minted pound coin)
-go see clap your hands say yeah in the beginning of feb (aaaand the flaming lips are coming here in april, followed by a performance of mozart's requiem which will pretty much be my life's consummation. not to mention that john and i are going to see broken social scene in glasgow so veryy soon)
-go see my friend sam's dad, a prominent professor of environmental history at the university of st. andrews, talk at the royal museum of scotland about the history and implications of bird flu (he invited me because he thinks i am sam's intellectual friend, which i suppose i am)

n.b. i feel a little silly about this high bar for cultural inundation that i try to impose on myself, but it is all here before me, and i don't want to resist it! i want to swim with the current.

also, my weekend trip to london with john has fallen through completely for the moment because i can't get off of work then, so i may just go to norwich during the week for his good company instead. and i fancy myself a train ride, so it's a worthy enterprise. to create even more itches, my family and i are having many exchanges suddenly making plans for their visit here in the beginning of april and it is so hard, because i want it all to happen tomorrow in my excitement! but i will have to wait forever and a day.

but i am meanwhile feeling pretty pleased with my new semester. i am fascinated by all of my classes (excluding literature, which technically i have not yet attended but i just spent the weekend so far reading some wholly engrossing ibsen plays), which is a such a nice feeling to have again and i am very on top of my work. which leaves me some room to become on top of my email-writing, if such a thing is possible. we will see what the beginning of this week brings. and i've been back to work in the restaurant this weekend, and i like being in the swing of things there and never having to pay for my meals. i can just ignore my grocery situation for days.

i bought some of my architecture books online from amazon, and because i live in a flat and the postman always comes at 11am, meaning i always miss him if i am working that morning, i had to go really far away to some central mail depot to pick up my parcels that wouldn't fit through my letterbox (this seems very inefficient somehow, but who knows). my boss cameron volunteered to walk me there because it was a part of town i'd never been to that is a little confusing, and we ended up taking the scenic route. edinburgh has, supposedly, 7 hills shaping its layout, and one of them is right next to where i work, called calton hill. i had never been up there and it is full of hugely important architectural structures that i just learned about in my new class, and gives you a pretty phenomenal view of the city without having to climb all the way to the top of an idle volcano. it was such a gorgeous day today and i'm so glad we walked there. to be so moved by buildings is quite an interesting sensation. hopefully i can find another pretty day again soon and take some pictures. this city seems endless and full of surprises, yet still somehow so homey. what a wonderful complexity to have.

i think caffeine is beginning to affect me, which it never has (i think maybe i am becoming more like an older person these days). and i think it is now beginning to wear off, which means i should listen to my body and go to bed to get up in five-something hours. more later, as always. we shall see what news life brings. hopefully if nothing else there will be pleased reports of crossing things off of my wankerish cultural to-do list.

for the moment, dream well, in that place where no spaceships go.