Glasgow in the summer is a sea of fake orange and burnt red.

(I should clearly join Twitter. What wit!)

More books read (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist isn’t great in either of its forms…), more How I Met Your Mother watched. More trying happening. Always happening, never going anywhere!

So, if you’re reading this, offer me some advice. Some motivation. It doesn’t have to be specific to dissertating – let’s just hear it! Seriously. Srsly. Please. Pls.

Lsng vwls s nt ky. Nd hlp.

In the past two months, I have…

…Finished classes! Yeah! Thank goodness! Now…where did I put my motivation? In all honesty, the end of the semester was absolute murder. It involved a lot of not sleeping and cramming and “why-did-I-put-this-off-so-long?!”-ing. But it all got done! Wish I could tell you what the result of it all was – if I had any marks back, I would be sure to do so! Okay, that’s not fair, because I got my play back and did amazingly (yay!) but the remainder of my work (which was handed in nearly two months ago) has yet to be returned to us. Unbelievable. I could rant about the Theatre Department for ages, but I won’t. I’ll leave it there!

…Seen my brother! Yeah! It was awesome. It was the longest stretch we had gone without seeing one another (about 9 months), so it was lovely to get to spend time with Bryan. Here’s a photo of he and I and his girlfriend in Glencoe:

We had plans to go to Portugal together, but….

…Been attacked by a viral infection! No! (Well, yes!) I came down with a viral infection a few days before Bryan and Laura left for Portugal. Apparently, it was a strain of chicken pox/shingles, and it made me feel lethargic and sad, and it gave me an intense rash on my face, hands, and arms. It resulted in a trip to the hospital, a trip to the doctor, and many trips to the pharmacy for medicated lotions. I would post a photo of the night when my left eye was almost swollen shut, but I’m too embarrassed. Only Bryan, Laura, my doctors, and Margaret and Tim (who drove me to the hospital) will ever see me like that!

So, in addition to not being able to find a cheap flight to Portugal, a raging rash kept me locked up in my flat, miserable and itchy, for almost two weeks. Not the highlight of my summer so far!

…Seen Flight of the Conchords! Holy crap! It almost seems like a dream, because my viral infection was peaking and I was in an itchy daze, but I saw FotC and it was a spectacular show. Best of all, we had front row seats, so after spending almost two hours just feet from Bret and Jemaine, they jumped down off the stage for their finale and danced in spandex just inches from me. There are no words.

…Started my dissertation!………..Wait…….have I?

……

…Yeah, I have. Sort of. It has been incredibly difficult mustering up the motivation to really dive into it, though. I have a vague idea of what I am doing, but I’m not inspired! On a very basic level, what I am doing is writing a play that is, in a very abstract way, a deconstruction of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, along with a 7,000 word accompanying critical and reflective document. What I have actually accomplished so far, however, is about 400 words of one scene from the play which I am certain will never end up in the final product, and a lot of random notes in my “Dissertation Notebook”. So it’s coming along slowly, to say the least. It’s hard not being in classes, having to do this on my own, and on my own time, because I would rather just not do it. Don’t get me wrong – it’ll happen. I just need to find the mojo.

Instead of what my friends and I have started calling ‘dissertating’ – that is, the act of writing a dissertation (use it: we want it to catch on), I have…

…Read about 14 novels! In my defense, reading is good for my brain and my imagination, and it’s helped me feel relaxed and like I am actively relaxing for the first time since I started University, almost six years ago. Among my favourites so far, The Sopranos by Alan Warner and The Incredible Adam Spark by Alan Bissett. Both are amazing and well worth reading! I have also been reading the Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels – the ones True Blood is based on – and they are entertaining-as-hell. I will be starting book 10 tomorrow. I started reading them on my flight back to Glasgow on 15 April. So there you go. A LOT of reading!

…Watched bad bromances and chick flicks! That’s right – the films I have been avoiding for the last number of years. I decided to start watching them to see what the fuss was all about. It started with The Hangover, which is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and has moved on to movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall (not bad, mostly because Jason Segel rules), Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (pretty ‘meh,’ though I am now reading the book to see if it’s any better), Valentine’s Day (I liked it – I admit it!), and Knocked Up (Better than it could have been), to name a few. I don’t even want to count how many I’ve watched. My brain’s tired, what can I say? I’m enjoying not thinking about these films as I watch them! (Though I inevitably analyse the hell out of them anyway…)

ANYWAY!

Summer has been great so far – lovely weather, lovely time with friends, and lovely alone time, too. Here I am with two of my favourite people, Margaret and Audrey, at a picnic:

There’s lots to look forward to, too. I’ve joined The Arches Community Choir, which performs popular songs like “Sweet Dreams” and “Standing in the Way of Control” – our first performance will be at the New Works, New Worlds festival at The Arches, one of the coolest venues in Glasgow. My Mum will be visiting Glasgow once again in July, and we’ll be going to Ireland for ten days, which will be amazing. I’m visiting home/Edmonton for ten days at the end of July to see one of my best friends get married to her best friend, and to see all of my other friends too! I’ll be making at least one trip to Sweden this summer – “Jag heter Andrea! Trevligt att träffas!” And I’ve been learning a bit of Swedish. And I will somehow finish my dissertation, hand it in, and becomes a Master of Letters, specializing in Dramaturgy and Playwriting. How about that?!

(Now, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of stuff, but I’ve just written over 1,000 words – that’s 1,000 words I should have been writing on my dissertation. I won’t tell if you don’t. Deal? Deal. Good.)

Not too shabby for Andrea.

The above quote taken from a Garfield Minus Garfield comic strip. If you don’t read it, check it out – it’s depressing and fascinating and hilarious all at once!

So, basically, this is a blog post to say please don’t expect anymore blog posts any time soon. I mean, I’ll certainly try if I have time, but right now the stress is on max volume and I can’t even remember what I did yesterday to blog about it. I can’t even form enough sentences about my visit to Edmonton to say anything worthwhile, because I have so much to do in the next week and a half that I think I may just involuntarily fall asleep until May.

And then the dissertation begins. So like I said, I will try, but no guilting me this time! I genuinely don’t have the free time to blog right now!

If you’re not on Facebook, email me because I miss you.

Also, my brother is visiting in less than three weeks. A.Maz.Ing. Can’t wait!

x

…For giving me the kick in the ass that I needed to take the time to make the post which follows!

Okay! Wow! First of all, many apologies for pretty much never updating this thing in 2010. I have to say, I have never, ever, ever worked so hard at school. Ever. Like, if I had put half the effort I am putting into this degree into my undergrad, I would have been made an honorary professor. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.

Soooo. Six months. Wow, right? Half a year. Two semesters. Longer than any relationship I’ve ever had (by a long shot). It doesn’t seem like it’s possible that I’ve been living here that long, and yet it seems I’ve been here forever. So I thought it would be fitting to create some sort of Glasgow retrospective. Brace yourself, because it’s probably going to be a bit random (I hadn’t planned on updating my blog, like, ever again [I'm half kidding] so I didn’t plan anything…also, it’s nearly 2am and I’ve been suffering some seriously effed sleeping patterns over the past couple of nights) but hopefully it will be somewhat enjoyable.

Where to begin?

Preamble: I could NEVER make these lists exhaustive. They’re on the spot, so feel free to point out the GLARING oversights, because I’m sure they’ll happen.

Things I like about Glasgow:

* It’s a quirky old city with a lot of old buildings and a lot of history
* It’s in Scotland, and therefore in Europe, a.k.a. the centre of the world (not literally, but figuratively)
* It has an amazing theatre scene – you can go out an see a piece of new work pretty much any day of the year
* It’s full of pretty people; these pretty people have pretty accents
* You can get chips (fries) pretty much 24/7
* The coldest it gets is maybe -10 – that’s what they call “Britain’s Big Freeze” in the news headlines
* Its literary and theatre scenes are totally humble – oh look, that’s David Greig on the subway; oh, hey Alasdair Gray, what are you getting at Tesco? (That hasn’t happened yet – I wish)
* It can feel like a big city or a small town depending on where you choose to wander and when.
* You can walk pretty much anywhere, and if you can’t walk there, the buses and subway will get you anywhere.
* The University Campus looks like a fairytale

In Glasgow, You Can See…

* Girls dressed like Lady Gaga – meaning girls in their underwear, at plays, on the subway, etc.
* A lot of amazing architecture, most of which is older than Canada
* A ridiculous amount of West Highland Terriers (Westies. Nom Nom.)
* Babies being fed Irn Bru (Canadian equivalent = Mountain Dew) by the bottle
* Asians with thick Glaswegian accents (in a loving, not racist, way)
* A lot of USA Nail Salons, whatever that means
* More colours of track suits and sweat suits than you ever thought possible
* Darker fake tans than you ever thought imaginable
* Your favourite band, walking down the street
* You favourite writer, walking down the street
* As many cool European films as you want
* 12-year-olds drunk off their faces
* 14-year-olds in full tramp garb and makeup going out to clubs
* Girls wearing pantyhose as trousers
* Swans in the park
* Block-long lineups for karaoke night

Since Getting to Glasgow, I have Learned…

* How to live on my own
* What happens when the batteries in all of your fire alarms are dying at once
* What mould sickness feels like
* That vegan haggis is fucking delish
* Not to hang out at Edinburgh Haymarket station unless I decide to take up a heroin and/or cocaine habit, or to work for a dealer of said drugs
* That doing a Master’s is a lot of work
* That I am not, and do not wish to be, an academic
* That I can survive without a car
* That Vitamin D is crucial
* That I don’t understand as much of the Patter as I thought I did, especially during stressful situations
* That ‘tip’ means ‘a mess’, and ‘bathrooms’ are called ‘toilets’
* That I kind of love being called ‘hen’, ‘pet’, ‘poppet’, ‘love’, ‘dear’, ‘darling’, etc. by strangers
* Not to take the subway when the football’s on at Ibrox
* That I can carry a lot of weight all the way home and up four flights of stairs
* That humidity and me are mortal enemies
* That young kids can be intimidating as hell
* That writing is what I have to do with my life
* That I have yet to find the place where I feel I belong

So. Six months down and at least six more to go. This is the almost/maybe halfway point. I say ‘at least’ and ‘almost’ and ‘maybe’ because I have no – and I mean no – idea what I am going to do after I have my degree. I may stay in Glasgow for a wee bit, but unless I find an amazing job/get a play in the works with a company here, I don’t think I want to live here for a prolonged time. There’s something in me that says I don’t fit in here. That I can’t be 100% myself here. (And that I can’t eat as well as I’d hoped here). I love love love the city and I love love love my friends, but something’s missing.

Ideas? Well, maybe I’ll move to Bath. Why? I liked it when I was there for a day almost four years ago.

Otherwise, who knows?

- P.S. I will try to be better at updating this thing more often. It should be easier during the summer semester than it has been lately. Also, I will be in Edmonton from 29 March until 13 April, so let’s get together, aye? -

Epic Blog Fail Number Two.

A six-month Glasgow retrospective soon. I promise!

I don’t know why I am surprised: I have always, always had a love-hate relationship with school. In elementary school, I did well in my classes, but had a hard time with being picked on, a trend which continued until almost high school, when the bullying stopped (I switched to homeschooling), but I learned that there are certain subjects that I cannot wrap my head around. When I was nearing the end of high school, I was determined to not go to university – school just wasn’t for me, I had decided. But then I applied anyway, and was crushed and sobbing when I got rejected (I hadn’t passed enough math classes to get in). And somehow, even though I hadn’t wanted to go to university, I took two years of Spanish classes via correspondence in just two months in order to fulfill the requirements and still get accepted for that same year.

Then, after struggling with university for five years – loving and hating it all along – I couldn’t wait to be done, but somehow in the jumble of papers and novels and creative writing assignments, I decided to apply for an MA in another country. Post-grad? For the girl who hated school?

A weird choice. And yet, one I was (and still am) so excited for.

So here’s the thing: I don’t like being told what to do. I have a naturally “dissident” personality, in the words of my very first acting instructor. So when I am given an assignment, my first instinct is usually, “No! I don’t want to!” I don’t like being told what to write about; I just want to write. And when it comes to essays, unless I am madly in love with the subject, I’d kind of rather do anything than research and write a paper. An argument about something that means nothing to me? That just made my inner indecisive Libra’s head explode. Blam.

Which means that maybe I don’t hate school; maybe I just have some serious issues with authority.

Then again, I spent over an hour today E-Researching the character of Caliban from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as portrayed in a French adaptation called A Tempest just because I got really intrigued by all of the word play and references to Africa and colonialism and tons of other cool things, by my own accord, might I mention.

Did I just say, “cool things”?

Yep. I did.

Maybe I’m just a nerd. I’d be okay with that.

This long and potentially death-inducingly dull rant isn’t really leading anywhere. I guess that rather than that, it’s just been inspired by the last four months. I’ve enjoyed some classes, disliked others, but all have been interesting at least. I can’t seem to get a strong enough grip on the “academic” classes, though. The ones that don’t let me write plays. (I wish there were fewer of those and more than one class that did let me write plays…) I keep disappointing myself, grade-wise. I haven’t gotten my first play returned yet – if I get a strong grade on that, I’ll be happy; that’s kind of how it’s always gone for me in school, anyway. Strong when allowed to make things up; weaker when told what to argue for.

Post-grad? For the girl who hated school?

A weird choice. And yet, one I was (and still am) so excited for.

Wow, so hi! I forgot I had a blog. Okay, that’s a lie. I didn’t forget, I just became a very neglectful blog-parent and made the active choice to ignore it for a while…like, a month. Things got extremely busy in the last days of my Mum’s visit, as we tried to squeeze in as much as possible. This was followed by a period of moping and sadness after my Mum left, and then the beginning of term two at uni, in which I am now fully immersed – drowning, even!

Belgium was amazing. A gorgeous country, albeit very expensive! (And I thought Glasgow was bad – I had NO idea!) Still, it was a fantastic experience, and I hope to go back one day! We were fortunate to see a few cities, and I think this gave us a feel for the country as a whole, which is kind of half French and half Dutch. Brussels, for example, is mainly French speakers, but when you get to Antwerp, it’s all Dutch. It was challenging at times, but I’d say we did a pretty good job navigating the cities and getting what we needed! Here are a few photos from scattered points of the trip…

Brussels – and Belgium is general – is made of chocolate and candy.

And let’s not forget the waffles, which smelled incredible and made me wish I weren’t vegan every time I caught a whiff.

Antwerp at Night.

Mum and I at a Royal Gardens in Brussels, part of our epic self-guided walking tour of the city!

Just looking at this photo makes me want to go back for some of the best fries I have ever, ever had!

Swans in Bruges through my fogged up lens.

Proof I stood here, just like in the film!

The obligatory city hall photo in Brussels – such a stunning building.

Ringing in 2010, Brussels style.

Our trip back to Glasgow, which should have been about an hour long flight, actually took us fifteen; long story, I’m not even going to get into it! I was just really glad to be home after that. And after getting stranded at the train station in Edinburgh due to cancelled trains (due, in turn, to frozen rail lines and snow) for three hours before deciding to catch a late coach home, I felt pretty done with traveling for a while. Though now that it’s been a couple weeks, I’m ready to go somewhere again! Don’t know where, or when I will find the time and money, but I’ll cross that bridge hen I get to it.

Now that I am back to school, travel and holidays feel so distant. And it’s shocking to me that I am already about to start my third week back. This semester is going to be much more intense than last, to say the very least. I have four classes rather than three, and all of them have much bigger work loads than last semester. I feel like the university eased us in a little too gently, because now we all feel like we’re on the brink of mental breaks – and I kind of felt that way throughout semester 1; if only I had known!!! To top things off, the term, like last, is only 10 weeks long, so there is a massive amount to get done in a very short time. The stress, in other words, is on. In a big way. In the next eight weeks, I will be working on: two major essays, two final portfolios, a full-length play, a presentation, and other smaller assignments, not to mention all of the reading that goes along with all of that! (When I type it out like that, in one sentence, I feel like I need a paper bag to breathe into!)

Still, despite the insanity, things continue to go well here in Glasgow. The weather has gotten quite lovely. Still chilly a lot of the time, but there’s been more sun and it’s starting to feel more like Spring than Winter. Rain rather than snow. I like it. There are a lot of amazing Spring/Summer theatre seasons about to begin, so I am excited for that, too. I want to see as much as I possibly can while I’m here!

I promise to make more frequent updates, and I leave you with this: look out, Edmonton – I may be seeing you quite soon!

Well, I don’t even know where to start at this point! I’ve been doing holidays in Glasgow with my Mum for just over a week now, and we have been to so many places and seen so many things that I thought I may just post a few photos to explain!

First things first: we put up a mini Christmas tree, which my Mum brought over to Glasgow with her. What’s funny about that is that I also went out and purchased a mini tree, to surprise her!

One of the first places we visited was the People’s Palace and Winter Gardens on the South East side of Glasgow. I hadn’t been there since almost four years ago when I was in the UK, and it was nice to go back, both to experience the history with a little more personal knowledge of the city, and to situate the building’s location in my (now quite extensive) mental map of the city.

Winter hit Glasgow pretty much the day my Mum arrived (I blame her in part for the cold weather she seems to have brought with her from Edmonton, which apparently was the second coldest place in the world about a week ago. Insane!). We got quite a lot of snow, and have continued to get more over the past week, though it often doesn’t stay on the ground too long…here’s a shot of the snow outside my back window.

I took my Mum to Edinburgh over our first weekend to do a first bit of sight-seeing over there. We did a walk of the Royal Mile, saw the castle, St. Giles Cathedral, the Museum of Childhood, and we did a ghost tour down in the underground vaults of the city! We’ll be going back sometime next week to see more places, like the Palace of Holyrood House, which is stunning.

I also had other reasons to take my Mum to Edinburgh: to see my friend Katy, who spent Christmas in Scotland with her boyfriend and his family!

The next day, my Mum and I caught a train to Balloch, to visit Loch Lomond and to check out the aquarium they have there. I had never been to Loch Lomond before, and it was amazing. It looked absolutely magical in the snow, and I imagine it would be breathtaking in the summer, too! The trek over to the shores of the loch was quite interesting, because it was pouring snow and everything was icy and wet. And being that I was wearing my very low quality, fabric boots (the only ones I had until I got a new pair for Christmas, woo!), I got drenched and frozen! But it was still an amazing time, and the aquarium was quite nice. My favourite part might have been the view of Loch Lomond from the top of the building. Amazing.

Interspersed with our exploration fun has been puppy fun! One of my classmates went home to the states for Christmas, and rather than put her dog, Audrey, into a kennel for almost a month, my friend Kat and I decided to split the duties of taking care of the pup! She is such a sweet-natured little dog, and a joy to spend time with!

What else have we done? Well, we took a walk about five minutes down the street from my flat, where the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Museum of Transport are. We stopped along the Partick Bridge to take a few snaps of Kelvingrove Park and the University, which looked incredible in the snow, like a postcard.

It was really cool to go into the Kelvingrove Museum – I hadn’t gotten the chance when I popped briefly into Glasgow four years ago. It’s such a calming and beautiful building, and I think I may start hanging out there to study and read! There’s a cafe and a huge main foyer, and the building is so gorgeous, it’s hard to wrap your head around it. It’s a good place for inspiration, I think. The beauty was magnified when we walked in to live organ music, playing in the main foyer. My eyes welled up with tears it was so beautiful.

We spent a quiet Christmas day together, which was a nice break from all of the busyness of the past few days! Yesterday, which was Boxing Day, we decided to make a trek to the Braehead Retail Park, which is out West, in a kind of industrial area of Glasgow, but it’s where IKEA is, along with a huge mall and a huge row of big-box stores. The inciting incident for this trip was the fact that my downstairs neighbour was giving away her old TV, completely free of charge. And it’s a big TV, probably a 24-inch screen or so, so I jumped at the chance! Then I did some Internet sleuthing and discovered that I could get Freeview cable and a DVD player for about £40, so we packed Audrey into a sweater and a rain coat, and got on the bus to Braehead. And now I have a TV! It’s funny how it worked out, because I had decided not to spend the money on getting one, and ended up receiving one for free! What a nice Christmas gift!

Today will be another relatively quiet day. It’s our last day puppy-sitting Audrey, and also our last day in Glasgow for a few days, because tomorrow morning, we will be getting on a plane to Belgium!! I am so excited to visit Brussels – and Bruges!!! – and to chill out and explore a new country. It should be a lot of fun. What’s funny to me, though, is that I am also a little sad to leave Glasgow, even though it’s only for four days! And I’m also now a home-”owner”, so I’m worried about my flat while I’m away! Hilarious. Maybe I’m a grown-up now or something.

So, expect a report on Belgium soon, and since we’ll be ringing in the New Year over there, I’ll say Happy New Year now!

It seems I have become a bit of a blogging delinquent, but I blame this entirely on the University of Glasgow. Case in point:

My Dramaturgy research paper and my Playwriting draft two swallowed up the last two weeks of my life. Thankfully, they are both handed in at the moment, so I have a slight bit of breathing room, though the amount I have to get done over the holidays is appalling in itself! But I’m not going to think about that right now – I’m giving myself a few days off…

My flatwarming went wonderfully! My flat was full of friends, and love, and wine! And a puppy! Named Audrey! Who I will be puppysitting for a few days over the holidays!

Speaking of holidays, the feeling of Christmas is all over Glasgow in a very serious way! I suppose this is, in part, because Glasgow is a much more condensed city than Edmonton, and has a very urban city centre, but I have never really felt Christmas the way I have felt it here. There are so many people bustling around the city, shopping, browsing shops downtown – it’s crazy! And everything is decorated!

My past couple of days have been full of friends. We’ve been spending quality time before everyone disperses for Christmas. Today I went to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen at Glasgow Film Theatre, and it left me in the greatest mood – what a lovely film! I can’t believe I had never seen it before, and I am now in love with Jimmy Stewart. I know I’m like, over fifty years late, but I don’t care!

Tomorrow my Mom will be arriving to spend Christmas with me here in Glasgow! I’m excited to see her and spend some time together, and to take her to Edinburgh and other fun places. It sounds really nerdy, but I’m looking forward to showing my city off to someone!

And that is that (for now)!

With the end of the semester nearing (tomorrow is our last day of classes), school has quite successfully swallowed up my life as of late, along with getting settled into my new flat, which is still amazing. I got wireless Internet set up, which is brilliant because it’s cheaper and I get unlimited downloading…and I just finished downloading series 1-5 of Peep Show, so I’m pretty excited about that.

For our last playwriting class, our instructor Philip brought in his good friend a colleague David Greig, a.k.a. one of the most well-known playwrights in Britain. I hadn’t read any of his plays until Philip asked us to, but once I started, I didn’t want to stop. He’s an amazing writer. We all had to read two of his plays, and then each of us had to pick a third to write a critique on. I asked a friend for a recommendation and he said, “You can pretty much pick up any of his plays and you’ll love it, because he’s a genius.” I didn’t realise how right he was, but I honestly want to read everything David Greig has ever written now! Really strong storytelling. And it was very interesting and inspiring to hear him speak, too. He had a lot to say about the process of writing, and about having a career as a writer. Some of it was depressing (the usual, “you’ll make no money” story), but a lot of it made me want to be a playwright (not that I didn’t want to be before, obviously, but you know what I mean). It was great to be able to meet him.

The next day, those of us pursuing the playwriting path of our program got a chance to meet with the playwright who is going to be our instructor, Selma Dimitrijevic. She, too, was very inspiring, and I think I am going to love working with her. Her approach to writing is very open, like you could say anything to her and she’d be all right with it. I also think she’ll help me to take the risks I have always wanted to take with my work, since that’s what she’s all about. She’s also really open in terms of contact – when she found out that a couple of us had written plays before, she asked us to email them to her, and also told us that during the writing process, or even right away, we should email her ideas, bits and pieces we’ve written, anything, really. I have a feeling I am going to learn a lot from her, and I’m really excited for it all to begin!

Friday evening I went to the King’s Theatre with my friends Janice and Georgia to see The Rocky Horror Show live. I was so incredibly excited, and I was not disappointed. The show was impeccably cast, and the actors were all amazing – they looked the part and sounded the part, which often isn’t the case. The design was also incredible – I was constantly in awe of the set and how the space was utilized. The man playing Frank-N-Furter was so beautiful and so saucy, it was just perfect! The only thing missing was an English accent, which he didn’t have. And the only flaw in the evening was the dreadful, dreadful crowd. I would really prefer if the King’s had designated one performance in the run as a “callback” night, because I kind of hate watching Rocky Horror with callbacks – they are so annoying. I can understand allowing them during the film, but in a live theatre it blocks out the actors’ voices and distracts them, too! At one point, Frank-N-Furter stopped halfway through a line to turn to a girl in the audience and say, “Honey, this is the part where I talk and you shut the fuck up!” On top of everything, I’d say 80% of that audience was so drunk they won’t even remember the show by now, and we were sitting – literally – in the last row of the theatre, so people were standing up and dancing, and having full-volume conversations through the entire show. It was so obnoxious. We ended up sitting up on the half-wall behind our seats so that we could see. Over all, though, it was a fantastic production, and despite the audience, I am thrilled that I got to see Rocky Horror live!

We had a scary encounter on our way back from the King’s that evening. We were walking parallel to the M8 (the main freeway in Glasgow) towards the St. George’s Cross subway station, and as we were walking, we noticed we were approaching a group of 10-12 guys, probably between about 19 and 24 years old, standing in a circle, all wearing tracksuits. Janice said, “Oh, this’ll be fun,” but she didn’t realise how “fun” it would be. As we got closer, about half of the guys took a few steps backwards, trying to form a circle around us, but we still managed to walk behind the group. But as we neared them, one shouted out, “One, two, three, who would it be?” and another said, “The one that lives.” I was the only one who heard that and started walking more quickly. We were all focused on just getting away and making it home in one piece. They hassled us the whole time we walked by, but I didn’t hear much because I was focused on not getting stabbed. I remember the words, “Cow” and, “Aww, yeah, looking nice tonight,” or something along those lines. Luckily, they didn’t follow us, and we got home just fine, but in hindsight, it was a dangerous situation and I’m very glad we were in a group, or something very bad would have happened. Thank goodness nothing did.

Yesterday, my entire day (well, I got a late start since I didn’t wake up until noon) was devoted to the American Thanksgiving my friends were throwing. I got up and got started on my contribution to the evening: vegan haggis with roasted potatoes, courgettes, and peppers. I was cooking up until the last minute, and then headed over to Carissa, Kat, Sara, and Elysia’s flat where the Thanksgiving magic was happening. It was a blast! There were tons of people there – we counted around 25 at dinner time – and there was even more food!

Just a few of the people:

Just a bit of the food:

It was a lovely evening, and I do not think I have ever been so full in my life! It’s nearly 5pm the next day, and only now am I hungry! Anyway, a fabulous night over all, and my friends were amazing hostesses – they even moved their enormous couch out of the living room and rented tables so that everyone could sit and eat together! And it was so nice to congregate in the kitchen with a glass of wine and just chat, and then do dishes later in the evening. Good friends and good food = all a girl could dream for!

Today I dragged myself out of bed and got myself out of the house to see the new Twilight movie with my friend. Yes, I said it – I went to see Twilight. I figured I’d see what all the hype was about. My friend had already seen it once and really wanted to go again, so I thought “why the hell not?” Well, it was awful. And it was all around awful, too – the acting was an embarrassment, the script…well, the script didn’t really exist, the direction was dreadful, the CGI effects were cartoon-like, and they didn’t even put any effort into making the vampire makeup consistent, or even complete! I couldn’t believe what I saw – parts where Edward would put his hand on Bella’s face and you could see that the white makeup had been rubbed off his knuckles; other parts where you could clearly see where they stopped applying makeup on Edward’s neck. Just embarrassing! Oh well. At least I learned about how not to make a movie while watching it. Also, a couple of the vampires are hot (discovered on IMDB later that they are only hot as vampires – I hate how often that happens to me!). And I had good company. And I got out of the house. So oh well!

This week will be focused on research. My last class of the semester is tomorrow, and then after that, I have a research paper to write, and then a second and third draft of my play to finish, as well as a reflective essay about my play (ugh). It’ll be nice to work on my essay on my own time and not stress about smaller readings for classes and stuff. But I’m also realising how soon the paper is due and am getting a bit nervous. Still, my instructor was really excited about the approach I want to take on the subject, so I am motivated and actually looking forward to writing the paper. I am still trying to get into the right head-space to work on my play, but I know that’ll come as I stop stressing about the research paper.

So, that’s where I am at. One semester almost over. It’s insane how quickly it went by. It’s like I blinked and three months passed, and I have a feeling the same will go for semester two and three. It’s almost stressful how quickly time is flying, because it means more decisions need to be made on my part as to what I will do when this Master’s program is over. But I won’t think about that just now!

Also happening this week: Discombobulate at the Arches on Tuesday (it’s a really cool spoken-word event that I may even be taking part in sometime in the New Year), and a flat-warming do on the weekend, woo!