Last weekend I went to Bath. I really enjoyed it. The city really had that aura of history around it while clearly being a current center of activity. This feeling was helped by the fact that the students had also returned about the same day and were descending on the town center for reunions and exploring with the excitement of the new academic year.
Due to the lack of good public transit options, I tried something I have never done before: I got on one of those busses full of tourists to get shunted from one place to another in a big passel. Well, it was a van and only 15 of us, but still. I took a day tour out into the country and saw
Which was much smaller than I had expected. Well, smaller may not be the right word. More compact is probably more accurate. The height was what I thought from the pictures. And more compact does not mean less impressive.
The tour also included the Avebury stone circle, grounds lovingly maintained by many ovine caretakers
We also made stops in two adorable Costwold towns. They were very quaint, and I'm glad that I went, but I'm also glad that it was just a brief stop on this tour. I think that if I had followed my guidebook's glowing recommendation and done a driving tour through the Costwolds I may have gotten bored.
So there are two main things that have happened to me since I last updated (whenever that was). Can you guess them from this photo?
How about the combination of these two?
I'm currently in England, and I have a very small companion (who's demanding more room every day). I'm actually in Manchester, to be precise, though I took those photos in London last Saturday. I'm doing some research at the U of Manchester, paving the way for a series of student exchanges between our two schools. At this point I'm basically just dealing with administrative things and training on various equipment until my samples arrive. The increased airport security made us think they might be a little eeked out by my checking uncured epoxy packed in dry ice, so Brian is sending them on. Today marks a week since I left Ohio. Oh yeah, we moved to Ohio too. (We have decided that MS is now the place that shall not be mentioned or we'd just spend all our time saying "x is better than how it was in MS.") In a very scary twist, we also bought a house:
With a huge backyard:
It's technically in a suburb of Dayton, but it's one of the first-teir ones and is more urban feeling. It seems to be the best neighborhood around, and only a very desperate seller (a previous contract fell through and the seller had already moved to a nursing home) and extreme price drop made it possible for us to move there. It needs some (entire) redecorating, but is in very good shape otherwise. While Mark works out the details of that, however, I will be living out of a suitcase until Christmas. Until after Christmas, I suppose, since we'll probably travel for that. First I'll be here in Manchester until the 23rd of October, then I'll go back to Ohio until the 28th when we go to NJ for a wedding and then I'm back in Seattle until the holidays frantically trying to finish my research and general exam. I gave up my apartment so I don't have a plan, per say, as to where I'll be living this time, but I figure I'll work something out on Craig's List or something. If all else fails, there's always the couch in my office and the showers at the gym...
I've worked a little on my River Rapids socks, but otherwise not much knitting has been done.
