I’m cold.

It’s just true. Most of today I’ve had really cold feet and have been running around to just try to get a phone contract set up in a way that just cannot happen.  They will not let it.  The process is frusterating and fills me with depression, but its slightly sorted now, can be put [...]

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Snow in October

The first snow in October in London in 74 years caught everyone off gaurd, and all the girls slipped around in their ballet flats, and all the boys suits got stained with slush, and yet the sun came out this morning and while it didn’t mealt the snow, the world was cheerfully cold.

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Knoxville Girl

We were just heading out to the Sister’s Rodeo, and we were listening to what passed for cowboy music, given the music available in the car. The twag of appalacia was heavy, and we felt real rodeo appropriate.  Just as we came to the junction between Highway 99 and I-5, I started listening to [...]

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Pergola

So. In Golder’s Hill Park, next to Hampstead Heath, there is something called the Hill Garden. In the Hill Garden there is the biggest pergola you’ve ever seen, growing roses and wastiria. The Hill Garden is seperate from the regular park, and is open from 8:00 am to 6:30 pm (times change [...]

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Children’s Day

Yesterday was a children’s day at the British Library, which meant the place was literally swarming with children.  They were on all the escalators and all the stair cases (which there are many in the British Library), they were sitting on the ground and they were clearly inspiring rage in all the regular researchers who [...]

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A More Uncomfortable Chair?

We all remember, from Color Theory in Renaissance Literature class, Professor Kunin’s focus on Issac Newton’s apparent masochism. We remember his explanation of Newton’s notebooks (which we’d just read for class) that go over Newton’s experiments with color and poking himself in the eye. We remember the theoretical conversation that occurs when Newton [...]

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700 Pound House

So.  As we all know, when I am not working I look at venture real estate on the internet and imagine houses.  Yesterday I was looking and I found a house listed in Hampstead Garden Suburb, which needed minor remodel (the kitchen was bright seafoam green) but which had wood floors and four bedrooms and [...]

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Failure to Save Time

In Britain, they don’t have Thanksgiving nor do they think much of Halloween.  That means Christmas season starts literally October 1st.  Isn’t that kind of a lot of Christmas? On the other hand, we got my mother the most excellent Christmas persent the other day.  It’s a long festive season, leading up to a long [...]

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Discovery

Me: And you know what else I discovered today?
David: Another amazing, previously undiscovered, manuscript by Donne, this time a sermon?
Me: No. I discovered that the British library has amazing looking cake. I’m sure they have other amazing things too, but I had juice there today and I noticed they have amazing looking cake.  We should [...]

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Donne

I’ve got the coolest book at the moment.  At the British Library you can’t check books out, or even move them from room to room, but you can look at amazing things in the reading room.  What constitutes amazing things, you might ask.  Well, I’ve got the first edition of Donne’s poetry.  Actually the first.  [...]

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47

Home in 47 days and counting.  Next Sunday, it’ll be 40.

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Oh…Britain

I was talking to a friend yesterday and I said “no, living in Britain is lovely. I mean, every so often there are things that make you say ‘Honestly, British people? Honestly?’, but it’s lovely.”
I’ve realized that since I’ve been living in and doing laundry in the dorms, the only things that have gone [...]

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The British Library

Why, on a weblog called Cowboy Boots and Libraries in London, is there not more posts about the famous British Library, where I work with genuine origninal handwriting form poor Donne himself, and that sort of thing?  Because it’s too ridiculous for words.  However, if we were going to try to have words for it, [...]

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MLA

If this weblog ever gets picked up by Google, which I keep trying to have happen and which never happens, this is one of the posts that will get a lot of traffic, because I imagine its something that gets Google searched a lot. I bet I’d get even more traffic if I titled [...]

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Job

I got a job working with a guy who distributes books to universities across Europe from publishers in the U.S. and the U.K.  I can’t take it.  I did it for a day and I don’t get to the library early enough at all if I do this job.  I don’t get any homework done [...]

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The Sword Ghost

I was running through Hampstead Heath, and coming down a grassy hill.  I came up behind a man wearing a black dress (a druid outfit) and a backpack.  There was a handle sticking out of the backpack and as I passed the druid he yelled “track” and drew his sword dramatically from the backpack, to [...]

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The Closet Ghost

In graduate school housing my door is near the door that goes to the closet where the brooms and vaccuums and things are kept.  On Friday I was getting out of my room, and jumped around the cleaning woman who was coming out of the cleaning closet, and as I did I looked into the [...]

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The Lime Ghost

It was the first misty morning, when the world was frosted over and as I ran I could see my breath.  I turned down the shady garden path, which goes up the hill to Spaniards Road, and came up behind a mother holding her son’s hand, while her older son walked ahead of the group.  [...]

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Ghosts

I’m warning you now, so that you’re not supprised later, and so that you’re not caught of gaurd and scared, the next three posts will be about ghosts.  Don’t worry.

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Frost

Today is the first day in which I went running and could see my breath and the frost on the ground.  It’s still sunny and pretty (which is why its cold enough to have frost), and I think fall is lovely, though summer is good, too.  This is where life is good.  Because its pretty [...]

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In Reverie

I have to say, in reviewing photos of this spring and summer, this was clearly a hugely great time of life.  In the summer I think we did almost every great thing you can do in Oregon.  David and I went to the coast quite a bit.  We went to Smtih Rocks and a rodeo [...]

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Donne Again

So, as anyone will tell you, when you start being horrible and tired at night, you should just go to bed, rather than try to think.  Thinking at night is always a recipe for spiralling panic.
Seeing original Donne, while awesome, does probably mean that I’ll never be able to live up to the amazingness of [...]

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Donne

I saw genuine John Donne’s handwritng today, and touched a paper both he and King James had touched. And the thing about that, is, which is a bit stressful, actually, is that it’s extremely alarming.  By which I mean, I saw a bunch of unclassified, never-been-researched sermons by Donne.  No one has researched them.  I [...]

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Running

For nine years (just over) I have run pretty much every day.  The first five of those years I literally never skipped a day.  Since then I have never ever gone more than a week without running, and I only did that once, and besides that once I have never gone more than two days [...]

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The Oregon Trail

Mystic Meg (Woman in shul who wears all black and is very thin):  Now you’re from Wisconsin, correct?
Me:  No, Oregon.
Mystic Meg: Ah, that’s also in the mid-west.
Me:  It’s on the west coast.  It’s right above California, on the coast.
Mystic Meg:  I hear the mid west is beautiful.
Me:  I hear that, too.
Mystic Meg:  I knew Oregon [...]

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Magic

We found a free dryier which you don’t have to pay.  If you use it laundry only costs $2.80, rather than $5.00.  It makes life much more reasonable (though still ridiculous).  The laundry room here is related to Bus 13.

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Jewish Leaders

I know all the Jewish leaders Claremont has had during my generation because I was one.   I’m amazed when I consider that, of the 15-ish kids, all of whom heald major Jewish roles on campus, most of whom where the Jewish life on campus, that only one of them has parents with a kettubah at [...]

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Reserection

Well, my music player, that I run with, which has been broken since April, isn’t broken anymore.  It just works like normal, like it has for the past three years (except for it’s recent six month hiatus from working).  I was pretty excited, and, I have to say, it made me empathize wth the Christians, [...]

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Library Times

My alarm went off at 8:00, which didn’t matter, because luckily I’d gotten up an hour earlier to start working.  However, it did signify the moment when the British Library catalog opens for request, and so at 8:00 I rushed quickly (internetly) to request books for when the library opens, at 9:30.  Now I’ve got [...]

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American Psyco

I don’t usually recommed media, but in these tough economic times there’s nothing like Chinese take out, Tesco cheesecake, and “American Psyco”.

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The Other Side of Fall

I’ve got class this morning and then all day until way past dark, and so I got up at six to run.  The sun, however, did not get up until seven, impeeding my process.  This is the other side of fall.

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Sugar-Free Yogurt

Sugar-Free Yogurt, while difficult to find and philosophically how yogurt should be, is not very nice.  The upside is that if you eat sugar-free yogurt and then drink water, the water tastes like candy in comparison.

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Fall

While clearly I miss Pomona and the people there and the (I now realize) giant resource of many many friends at hand, I am extremely excited to see legit fall again.  London’s fall is about the same as Oregon’s, which is a season I missed for the last four years of sunshine and warmth during [...]

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Knife Crime

At the International Student Orientation for King’s College London, there is a health and safty session in which the police come and talk to you about staying safe.  The policeman who talked to us emphasized that he’d get to the serious stuff, which was knife crime in London, last.
Police Officer: And now for the most [...]

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