TL;DR The post-donation snacks are better. Having said that, I am only in the UK for 6 months. I sign up to give blood the second week I'm here. I tell the intake person at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, and she asks, "You are
At a Scottish party, no one gets left behind. No one! The word ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee, just like it looks) means "visit" in Scots Gaelic. But of course a ceilidh is more than a visit. The object of a ceilidh is to dance your ass off. Or, more
There's a difference between The Best Album and Your Favorite Album. It's hard to accept this fact, especially if you're passionate about music. If you love the album so much, it must be objectively better than other albums out there. But then you start
I woke to the smell of tomatoes and macaroni. My mother used to make tomatoes and macaroni routinely for lunch. It was literally a handful of macaroni cooked with a jar of home-canned tomatoes. Maybe some salt and pepper, I dunno. I wasn't paying attention. But it was
In Edinburgh, I find things worth a double-take. Like the above. It's a brick from the flat on 52 Queens St. Ah yes. Chloroform. The serial killer's best friend. Put some on a rag, grab some innocent victim from behind, shove the rag in their nose.
My opinions of the British Monarchy come courtesy of the Sex Pistols. It was 1977, Axtell Park Junior High, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The upper classes in journalism cranked out a regular mimeographed newsletter - I forget the name of it - and tossed copies into a wooden rack in
OK, let's address the elephant in the room. Edinburgh Castle is an eyesore, and it's got to go. Stupid Castle Built on a huge 260 foot pimple of volcanic rock named Castle Rock (I'm sure it was named that BEFORE they built the castle)
My Fitbit was about to pee its pants. "8200 steps already??!! It isn't even 8:00 AM! Are you for real??!!" The Fitbit screen had erupted into a bunch of colors and flashing, little stick figures jumping up and down, and badges. It was practically buzzing
Cooking is meditation. That pulsating whack-whack-whacking of your knife against the cutting board pulls all the focus from myself to ... that fricking' shallot sliding around the board (PITA!). If you think about it, it's the antithesis of computer programming, where your sole job is to eliminate repetition
There is a rumor going around which I would like to address. The rumor is this ... that Amy and I only moved to Edinburgh, Scotland because it's the one venue on planet Earth where Taylor Swift tickets are still available. (For £419.) Rather than answer that ugly, vicious
It's like Hobbiton, but filled with Scots! If you wander out of our apartment, take a right, 1/3 of the way around Moray Place, there's a semi-hidden street named Doune Terrace, a back way slinking out of Moray Feu (the neighborhood we're in)
Meanwhile back in Ithaca, a tree top swan-dived into the roof of our house. The view from inside the house, I'm told, was pretty disorienting. Krys heard a crash in the dining room, and rushed in to find a 3 feet chunk of the ceiling in the middle