"I'm Obama's cousin, and I'm a Rothschild so you can just imagine what HE is!"

Most important information first: I just ate the last of the awesome biscuits* I bought from Wholefoods the other day. This is a sad day indeed for biscuit** fans worldwide. Until I go back to Wholefoods to buy more, that is. But who knows when that will be?

Anyway yes. I am home early from the National Museum of American History, which is what I did today instead of going to work. Due to a forgotten purse this involved a very long walk in sandals which means that now my legs hurt. I was in sandals in the first place because the shoes I wore on my first day have effectively eaten my heels (not as much of an exaggeration as I am usually prone to). I forgot my purse because yesterday my water bottle leaked all over my bag (including my visa paperwork) and I had to dry it out. As you can see, things are going well. Actually, that is unfounded sarcasm. Being here is great, even if I am already exhausted and just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a day to sort myself out. It's not Washington's fault that I'm a disaster.

I held off on blogging for this long because I wanted to have photos to put up when I started talking about Washington DC. Unfortunately, I work on a military installation and my photography skills are special needs at best, so all of them are both irrelevant and rubbish. Let's not let that stop us, though.

Erm. Where to begin. OK, well for the next two months I live here:

This is the International Student House. Inside, it is basically more Oxford than Oxford. Here is my (wood-panelled!) room (it's actually a quarter of a room):

I share with three other people, all of whom have a similar set-up going on. They are all very nice and the set-up means that the privacy loss isn't too bad, although one of them did turn the air conditioning off last night which made for a rather sticky wake-up this morning.

Speaking of, the weather here ranges from bearable to horrific. When I arrived, it was 95 degrees (that's 35 in real weather) and humid as hell; this persists long after the sun goes down and didn't even shift after the big thunderstorm on Monday afternoon. Luckily, yesterday was cooler and it's now somewhere in the 80s (high 20s) and a bit breezy, making it really rather pleasant in the shade and not too awful in the sun either. Weather gets discussed a lot here, mostly in an "oh god how are we still alive" sort of way, but I'm glad that the hell of Sunday and Monday isn't *that* normal.

In order to work, I must take the Metro, which is a couple of blocks away from the house. here are some facts about the Washington Metro:

1) The system is potentially pretty good.

2) All the stations are big and identical and industrial looking and are probably built with nuclear fallout in mind.

3) D.C. trains don't have sensors which check to see if you're in the door or not. Well, they do, but they're sadistic sensors which only open under great sufferance. Trains leave a minute after they've got into the station and if you're only halfway in the train at that point that is your own damn problem.

4) The tickets have pandas printed on the front and escalator safety tips printed on the back. I thought the escalator safety tips were hilarious until I discovered that people actually used to regularly die on Metro escalators 'cause they didn't have those big red safety buttons until recently.

5) The trains are late sometimes and it is infuriating.

6) Crazy people sometimes ride. And talk. Nobody else talks, only the crazy people.

Here is a picture of Dupont Circle, the stop close to my home, courtesy of Wikimedia commons:

When I have ridden the metro sufficiently and arrived at the Navy Yard stop, I then have a ten minute walk down to the gates of the navy yard, where I get to chat to the security guard, show the A5 piece of paper with permanent marker scrawls that counts as my pass (apparently the machine that makes real passes broke in January and they don't intend to fix it. The bureaucracy here defies belief. And I say that having lived in CHINA for crying out loud). For my first couple of days, I have been working in the back of the Navy Yard Museum:

The museum itself is all perfectly nice and well presented, and thus reminds me of the ancient capital museum in Anyang, China- one of the best museums I ever went to (i.e. well captioned and full of human sacrifices), languishing in one of the least touristy parts of the country. I mean, who honestly puts the naval base on their list of things to see in Washington? And the visitor entrance is in the most far-flung bit of the base! It's crazy. But I digress. This museum is cool, if a bit out of the way. And I work in an office which looks like you would expect an office to look, except everything is all very informal and most people who work there are also unpaid interns so the work ethic is much less stressful than it might otherwise be.

So. My job. I am presently employed in researching and then writing about the burning of the Navy Yard in 1814, when the British invaded and burned down most of the capital. The Navy Yard itself was actually burned by the Americans first to stop it falling into enemy hands, and the story of how it got burned down is quite exciting and melodramatic so that's what's going to be turned into a pyrotechnic extravaganza by yours truly. It's only going to be half an hour long, which is a mild disappointment as I could otherwise have spent a lot of time exploring the build up and particularly talking about William Jones, the secretary of the navy, whose job basically involves writing endless terse letters to ship captains telling them what they should be doing. Love you Will. But no, Jones probably won't make an appearance in this- instead, I shall be dealing with Thomas Tingey, the burner, and Mordecai Booth, his clerk, who has a pub named after him and who may find himself written with serious homosexual undertones for no reason other than that I can. Translating the events into an interesting play which isn't just half an hour of "OOOH BURNING AAAH AAAH" will be a challenge... but love will find a way.

Ooh, and I am also going to be involved in bringing in acting companies and all that jazz too, which will hopefully be exciting without tapping into my undying hatred of auditions. And then once I'm done with this, I will be writing what my boss keeps referring to as a "Punch and Judy show" about the build-up, which will be comedic and involve puppets and hopefully the reading of lots more entertaining letters and most importantly WILLIAM JONES. and that is what I have to do. It's... well, I should be more fired up about it than I currently am, but to be fair I am tired and I've only been at it for two slightly disorganised days. And also the above paragraph probably indicates that I am way more fired up about it than I think I am.

When I am not busy being employed, I am hanging out back in the house. At present, being here is like being in a souped-up freshers' week, where all conversations revolve around the holy question trinity of "What's your name- where do you come from- what do you do". The difference here is that the answers are actually interesting, but it's still a bit tiring. Luckily I am getting past that stage with people now, and hopefully my jet lag is going to be worn off enough to do some genuine socialising tonight. I tried to play football yesterday but the Blisters of Death precluded it. Oh, and the food is pretty nice. I have eaten more fruit in the past three days than in the last year put together, mostly blueberries because blueberries are the food of the GODS. Epic love for these things, especially the slightly underripe ones.

The final thing which I must write about or the world will implode is my day at the American History Museum. When we were walking in, I had a conversation with one of the girls I went with which went like this:

Person: So... this is going to be a stupid question, but...

AJ: Fire away (I did just ask you which building was the Capitol, I'm stupid too)

Person: So we've been around a few hundred years, and we teach all our history in grade school, and everybody sort of knows it, but you British have been around for AGES- how do you learn it all?
AJ: ... well.

(Answer I gave was actually "We don't care about most of it." Which is true. How much do you know about pre Tudor British history that isn't either the Romans or 1066?*** Exactly.)

With this in mind, I was intrigued to see how America manages to fill a very large museum with its own history. This is done very simply, actually, by defining EVERYTHING that happened in the past as history. Michelle Obama's 2009 inauguration dress is in there. So are costumes from the Lion King musical. So is Bill Clinton's saxophone. I think there was also some Iraq war memorabilia in there somewhere, although I skimmed most of the war bits after the Civil War. There is also a very large section (i.e. a FLOOR) devoted to science and particularly the link between invention and toys, which I would happily have spent hours in if there weren't so many kids hanging around and ruining it. Most of it was awesome though, especially the transportation section (cars! trams! Other things!) and the lady teaching nonviolence stuff outside the Greensboro sit-in bench. I lost my two companions right at the very beginning and never found them again (well... never looked either) so after getting bored at around 2.30, I wander out into the National Mall to take some generic Washington photos.

Generic Washington photos:

A statue of George which allegedly made children cry when it was unveiled.

War memorial. Sign prohibits any sort of nice activity that could be had with fountains.

The American dream in 3 easy steps.

It's the White House! With an oddly familiar bus in front...

And that is what has happened thus far. There is other rubbish going around in my head about language and bureaucracy and other mini exciting things about the city, but this is long enough for now and I would quite like to play the piano before dinner, if nobody else is down there. It's a rather nice grand and everybody else who plays it appears to be a super awesome classical virtuoso, so I'm perversely enjoying subjecting it to Eurythmics and Elliott Smith chords and half written Adrienne-songs.

*Cookies

**Cookie

*** Question does not apply to historians. Shush.

"If I have to get my stage manager on the phone to prove it to you, Mom, then I will"

My head is swimming with a load of random tiny observations and no coherent narrative line to string them together with. The last 72 hours have been some of the most hectic and insane and brilliant of my life and I should probably be adding to the magic rather than sitting in my room writing about them, but I completely suck at meeting people and I've reached my limit for now so... they can wait. They'll all still be here tomorrow. As will the most important of the things I have to say about today, I should think.

I want to write about how I got here, so I should probably start saying something about that and see how it goes. Wadham Ball was immense, there is really no other way to describe it. I didn't see half the stuff I wanted to and I still had an amazing time, it was that good. I also told people far too many personal things (or rather the same few personal things far too many times... sigh. When will I be tactful? NEVER.) and probably drank too much. I haven't had that much fun staying up since the all-nighter in Beijing airport (BEST. AIRPORT. EVAR. And maybe one of the only ones in the world where the security people will smile and wave at you whilst you're racing each other on trolleys instead of forcing you to stop and kicking you out). And then, at 6am, after making it to the survivors photo and almost puking at the sight of a pastry (seriously, what is it about pastries in the morning that makes my stomach churn?) we walked home. Most hung around for a bit and then slept.

I pack. I vacuum my room. I double check important things are in my rucksack. I wonder if my rucksack is going to be under 20kg and realise I have no way to check. I ring my father to double check a few logistical points. And then I walked out of the door to get on a bus to Heathrow. I sleep for a bit on the bus, in that very odd unfulfilling sort of way where it doesn't feel like sleep at all, just like losing an hour of your life. 24 hours, 23 awake.

Odd thing one about this trip is how nice all of the airport staff are in every location I go to. The check-in lady is chatty and pleasant as I drop my bags off, and I get some loud, slightly odd but ultimately friendly ribbing from the security man about my "Free Hugs" t-shirt- although he doesn't seem to see the word "hugs", as he keeps going on about me being free. I am in no fit state to argue, so I just smile and mutter something about sleep deprivation. Oddly, though, I'm functioning fine apart from a horrifically underperforming digestive system, which is par for the course for anything that makes me even slightly nervous. Anyway, I think, there's a plane ride coming soon and I will totally sleep for that, right?

Wrong. Apart from 45 minutes of lost time on the runway (one moment, we're being told there's a ten minute delay, next thing I know it's 2pm and we've still not taken off), I end up oddly wakeful for our entire transatlantic trip. I mess around with the in flight entertainment for a while, but it's frankly one of the worst systems I've ever had to deal with; a bit like trying to entertain yourself with somebody else's IPod for 6 hours. I do watch "How to Train Your Dragon" which was a pretty awful film plot-wise but which had really cute dragon designs. And I listen to some kinda rubbish music and watch a poor episode of Glee and get most of the way through Fight Club, too. Oh, and I listen to "At the Bottom of Everything" on my MP3 player far too many times.

At last we touch down in Ottawa, 32 hours since I last slept. I'm still feeling oddly fine, although I know this is an illusion that is going to fail on me at the worst possible moment. Ottawa airport, however, is stressful enough to keep me wired on nerves for the forseeable future. How the Canadians could POSSIBLY think this travesty of an aiport is appropriate for their capital city is beyond me. My impression of it begins to take shape when the captain tells us on the plane that we won't be able to get off after we dock (or whatever it is that planes do) because another flight has arrived and customs can't deal with two flights at once. We eventually are allowed to leave, only to discover the whole place looks and smells like an old people's home. The most frustrating thing, however, is that the place appears to have been designed by somebody who is annoyed by the fact that nobody wants to be there and is thus determined to make the transfer procedure as difficult as possible for anybody not staying. In order to catch my connecting flight, I therefore need to legally immigrate TO Canada by going through all the customs procedures (the charming young man at border control tells me he'd totally take me up on the free hug if he weren't at work), get my bag, carry it to the OTHER END OF THE AIRPORT, wave my boarding card at the authorities, fill out a bunch of U.S. customs forms, drag my bag onto the final conveyor belt myself (frankly I'm surprised they didn't make me personally load it onto the goddamn PLANE). I then find myself at US border control- seriously, what is it with these people and ostentatious exclaves? Anyway, the man here is also obscenely nice- I get a little thrill when he writes "Playwright" in the occupation field of my paperwork, and upon elaborating on what I'm going to be doing he spends most of the rest of the time humming "Rule Britannia" and telling me snippets of 1812 history. He finishes, is satisfied enough to let me in the country and welcomes me to the USA.

All very well, but I'm still in Canada really. I hang out in the airport for another 90 minutes or so, still sleepless, listening to all the announcements about cancelled flights and flights with passengers who refuse to leave (seriously) and smirking at the awful French of the bilingual announcer. Eventually, we are allowed to board the plane, which turns out to be a miniscule 50-seater with ridiculous electronics restrictions, meaning that I can't listen to music.

It's been 38 hours by this point, and going back in time and extending the day in that way has started to take its toll. I drift in and out of consciousness for most of the flight, start hallucinating that I'm on front quad, shiver uncontrollably for a while and accidentally refuse the free peanuts. Eventually, though, we start descending over Washington (an experience made terrifying by the way that turbulence gets magnified in small planes)- I get a glimpse of some of the massive buildings as we touch down. Luckily, nerves kick in again and propel me through the airport (no customs- thank God for ostentatious exclaves), and after picking up my bag it's easy to hop in a taxi and give him the address. The taxi driver is the last in the series of charming public service figures- I don't understand too much of his English, but we nevertheless manage to talk politics and gun crime. Bill Clinton is the man to beat, in his books. Good for him.

I arrive at my hostel at around 9 (2am Monday morning GMT), and am taken up to my room by a charming Taiwanese girl. Somehow, I get a last desperate burst of energy and manage to unpack my stuff and meet two of my three roommates before finally succumbing at about half 9. Sleep, dear sleep, I never intend to go so long without you again.

And then there was 6.30am this morning, and then there was going to work, and being at work, and coming home and being here and going to Wholefoods and walking down these streets and how totally immense and brilliant it is, but... that can wait. As can the tale of my budding love for this man:

William Jones... be mine.

Blogging with attention deficit

Ben's room in the flat, evening. ADRIENNE enters, exhausted from a long hard day of swimming in the river and lounging in Port Meadow eating Doritos. BEN is in his room after a day of dicking about in a lab or whatever it is he does to waste time these days.

ADRIENNE:

(semi naked)

Hey Ben, where is my shower gel? It all appears to have been used by a person who isn't me.

BEN:

Oh, yes. About that.

ADRIENNE:

Am I going to have to buy more?

BEN:

... uh- oh, no...

(He goes to the wardrobe and searches. Moments later, he reappears with a girly white bag.)

Merry Christmas.

(He hands the bag to ADRIENNE)

ADRIENNE:

This is a massage set? Why do you-

BEN:

Yeah, I've had it all year. I'm sure there's a women's shower gel in there...

ADRIENNE:

Well, great. Also, you used all the shampoo... don't suppose you can fix that?

BEN:

Actually...

(He returns to the wardrobe. Moments later he returns with a large stack of Herbal Essences sample packets. They are designed for highlighted hair but otherwise usable.)

Will these do?

ADRIENNE:

You- these- what the fuck.

BEN gives the shampoo to ADRIENNE

BEN:

Well, enjoy.

ADRIENNE:

Uh, yeah. Thanks, I think.

Since that last insistence that I liek totly hate shoes, I have bought some enormous dominatrix heels for the bop. 11cm, to be exact. I normally hate heels with a passion because they mess with my sense of place in the world (i.e. most men are taller, most women are shorter, nobody is too far either way*) but at the same time, I seem to have fallen prey to the idea that I must look nothing short of amazing for this event and anything I actually DO pull out of the bag somehow won't be enough. Hence the shoes. I will wear shoes because it is the Thing to Do.

On the same note, I had a massive dress panic due to the wasting state of my muscles and the growing state of my upper body fat. It turns out that I don't normally slouch, though, so testing what I look like in my dress whilst slouching was a little... pointless. I should be OK. It's not like anybody expects me not to look fat...?

I got my reading lists through for doing Chinese politics next term, which has put an end to two years of worrying about the whole "oh my god you'll have to ballot for that course it's soooo popular" thing that all of the PPE handbooks have going on. China's going out of fashion, so I'm assuming everybody else on it is as specifically China-faggy as me. I'm probably the only one with a massive academic hard-on for Xinjiang though. My thesis preparations are still awfully unprepared, but apparently I need to Not Panic.

I'm leaving in two days. Don't Panic.

My hair is getting blonde bits in the sun, and I don't like it. Although... maybe I should go blonde-ish for a change (blonde blonde would be sick and wrong). I feel like I've let go of hair dying too quickly. Or I could try purple again and see if it actually works this time.

I got one more night in 126a. It's best I don't summarise that year or I'll break my no-angst promise. Let's just say that next time I have to choose housemates on six weeks of knowing them, I'm going to make sure they're all gay, camp or charmingly coupled men under 5'10. Oh and that I actually DO know them.

Speaking of housemates, I hope That One is gone from the kitchen so I can go steal the Other One's biscuits.

*falls apart in China, alas

Shoe person

I always insist I am not a shoe person, and most of this time this is true. I don't really understand most shoes- sure, they look great, but you can wear most shoes with most outfits and not look stupid enough for people to comment on*, and high heels are just pain and death and I hate them with a passion. To exist, I need some trainers, some normal shoes, some sandals and some posh shoes. And I'm flexible about the sandals.

There is, however, one weakness in my carefully built up insistences that shoes are something that happen to other women, and that becomes apparent when we get to the subject of Doc Martens. 'cause I maybe sort of own five pairs. And I love them with a passion that I rarely manage to muster for any other animal, vegetable or mineral. I couldn't care less about most shoes, but show me a shiny ankle high work boot and I am SO ON THAT. It's a bit ridiculous.

This obsession began Back in the Day (year 11? I think) when my mother was clearing out her wardrobe and discovered a pair of dark green ones that she'd never managed to wear in. I pounced on them, and after getting more than a few comments from friends about how they preferred me in Converse (lol teenagers) and these looked like wellies, I eventually managed to win them over to my beautiful boots of majesty. I also put weird colourful teeny laces in them. They were, in short, majestic, despite their habit of mashing up my feet if I wore them too regularly. And I believe it was these that I was wearing when I discovered a pair of black ones in my size at a car boot sale for £15. I bought them immediately, and it was then that the addiction truly began. I owned more than one pair of Doc Martens. It was only going to get worse from here.

Next came a pair of pink ones which were, for some reason, not made out of the same shiny stuff as the rest of them. They were also slightly bigger than my other boots and thus caused foot destruction at a much higher rate, making them my least-worn pair (but they were PINK! And they went with a lot of my sixth form outfits. So I think they did well out of that). In the meantime, I had painted orange stripes on the black ones for some sort of fancy dress thing, which made them cool for a while and then not so much. I also at some point inherited a pair of dark blue snakeskin ones which went a bit unloved at the time but have been my second year boot of choice.

All this was in the heady days of sixth form, when I was experimenting with fashion in ways which probably shouldn't ever be repeated by any sane person. I have never since had more than one pair of Doc Martens in use per year. And it was this habit that was started by my fifth and most marvellous pair- the cherry reds.

I bought them to wear to China, and despite the fact they were completely impractical in both winter and summer (no grip on snow and not much air circulation in the warm...), I wore them to death and loved them more than any boot before or since. However, as they are new and thus not from the old school made-in-England-will-survive-nuclear-attacks-but-will-never-stop-skinning-your-ankles strain of Docs, they began to wear much earlier than my other pairs (barring the pink ones). The toes lost their colour from banging them against the stairs up to my flat in order to get the snow off. The sides began to fray from where my foot bends. The laces went fluffy and difficult to tie. The eyelets started coming off the lace holes. My cherry reds were no longer the shiny new things of 2007. They were starting to wear.

And I, shamefully, began to see these imperfections as reasons not to love my boots any more. I wondered with annoyance why my greens and blues and blacks could stay new and shiny indefinitely and yet this pair, supposedly the best Doc Martens I would ever own, had to grow old so quickly. And after getting back to England in August 2008 I put them in the cupboard and got out my greens instead.

Two years go by. I wore green in 08/09, and blue in 09/10. My reds were left forgotten and dusty in a cupboard. That is, until this week, when in a fit of travel nostalgia, I opened my cupboard and found them, looking distressed but beautiful and holding all the memories of a year bumming around the People's Republic. I would otherwise have taken my blues, or no Doc Martens at all (!), but something made me pick up my Reds and pack them into my rucksack, "just in case".

I get the X5. I get off. I spend Tuesday in sandals. And then on Wednesday, I need some slightly more practical footwear to go cycling in. I unpack the cherry reds which I have not worn for years... and it is hard to describe the sensation which occurs next. The year of hard wear may have made them look old, but it had also softened them in ways which, having never compared before, I had never really realised. Putting them on was like having my feet hugged by... two really small fluffy puppies or something, I don't know. Walking up and down in them, they give just the right amount of support and give- powerful for kicking people (useful when you're going to a party with Zac), but without any risk of the blisters which all the others will give no matter how much wear they get. They are, in short, majestic.

And they have not judged me. They still love me as much as I realise I love them. Forgive me, cherry reds. I will never forsake you again. We are meant to be together for as long as you live.

... although I do kinda want to wear my blacks next year.

*actually, it always worries me that this threshold is much higher than I usually think. Then again... who cares?

Roll bus roll

Back in Oxford again, staring hopelessly at the combined debris of a packing effort and a tidying effort. This is what packing and tidying look like when you're me:

That used to be my bed. The theory is that if I put it all on there, then I will have to tidy it up before this evening 'cause otherwise I won't be able to go to bed. But we all know that come tonight I will have made no progress whatsoever and will thus just throw it all back on the floor. And thus the cycle will continue. Also, I thought that maybe putting everything on the bed would help me to find my Oxford University travel grant cheque, but... no. That is apparently somewhere hidden in one of the several large bags of stuff I've had taken home over the last couple of weeks. We'll see if it resurfaces, shall we? At least I never throw out paper so it's unlikely to be in a landfill somewhere.

It's certainly not all bad though. The weather is beautiful (certainly more beautiful than I am expecting DC weather to be... 35 degrees and thunderstorms, apparently), and the week is theoretically packed with exciting activities for we lucky many who aren't being examined on our knowledge of Stuff. Swimming and Italian food yesterday, brunch and swimming today, palaces tomorrow... it's like being back travelling in China or something again. It almost makes me wish I was hanging around here for another week or so, but then I remember that I'm about to go to WASHINGTON FUCKING DC and it's going to be immense.

Facts pertaining to me being in Washington in summer:

- it's fucking hot and sticky and nobody likes the weather

- I'm staying in the gay district

- most of the good touristy stuff is free

- the gay district is not in the dodgy murder district.

- their fringe festival is the last two weeks of July

- their independence day celebrations are immense and next week

- it's only a couple of hours away from New York and there is a POKEMON CENTRE in New York

- I could seduce a congressman

OK, the last one is not really a fact so much as it is a thing I wrote to be cute. Still, it could happen. There is always the hope that my love life might take a turn for the existent this summer. God knows it's never going to in this town.

Then again, I'm staying in the gay district. So maybe not, after all.

I wanted to write something about the X5 bus, but I don't really know how to link that in to my love life, as the two are about as mutually exclusive as it gets. I also don't really know what I want to say about the X5 bus other than that it is without a doubt the single worst bus route on the planet. Believe me, I've taken some shitetastic bus rides in my time, but the ride from St Neots to Oxford tops them all. I'm not even sure what the highlight is, there's so many to choose from- is it the fact that for the first/last hour, the entire route is based around Tesco superstores? Is it the tour of every roundabout in Milton Keynes? The ten minute stopover at Bedford Bus Station, arsehole of the universe? Or perhaps it's the abnormally high number of complete fucking crazies that tend to ride with you... then again, actually the old lady crazies often are a genuine highlight. Also, a very nice boy gave me his seat yesterday (and by that I mean "he let me have the last space on the bus and waited for the next one", which was really very nice and also made me think twice about judging all scene kids as fucktards on the spot) so I guess I shouldn't lump them in with Bedford. I should pretend to be fair occasionally.

I leave you with this fact: People READ this shit. Only yesterday, a mysterious person called "Bella C." (lolz) e-mailed me saying I was great and I should join her fashion site. Yes. Me. Her fashion site. Turns out that the whole dress-sock-converse look is the kind of thing that teen Twilight fans want to see more of... and frankly, why wouldn't they.

Later, bitches.

Just a huge manatee

So, I set myself the target this weekend of trying to sort out the huge messy dump of files that Rubato, my external hard drive, has turned into, mainly so that I can just take my laptop (whose name is Fortissimo, but it seems a little overly faggy to KEEP referring to my technology by name...) with enough music on it to keep me going and not have to worry about leaving important things behind. Unfortunately, I was not counting on two things: the sheer scope and implications of my messiness, and the nostalgia which looking at old computer files brings.

The messiness is probably the bigger problem, to be honest. Whilst I imagine that most people quickly learn that saving all of your documents to the default location with the default save name is not a clever idea, it's never quite sunk in with me. This means that I have 3 separate folders (2 on Rubato and my current hard drive) which are just basically large disorganised time capsules with every single document that passed through all mixed into one. There are *attempts* at organisation (usually by labelling a folder "wank" and throwing everything older than a certain date into it) but they don't stretch very far, and really only amount to labelling a folder "wank" and then throwing a few old things in it. Oh, and there are some schoolwork folders, but yawn.

And as for nostalgia... well. The first folder starts in year 13, and into China, including several frankly painful letters to people written around November when things got Bad, and also the infamous MSN conversation between Jenna MacBitch and her retarded friend. Incidentally, a hint for the future: if you're going to tell outrageous abusive lies about your housemate on their own laptop, *don't* save your chat logs. Second one, after the Great April Crash and subsequent Day of Fun in Chinese Computer Lab, starts with the photos off the back of the trip (I wasn't writing anything by then, too busy living), into the drafts of We'll Meet Again (working title: Alternate Ending), hits my break-up with Alex and the subsequent outpourings of rage, and then has all the Network and Sequel (my kinda rubbish NWF entry) drafts and most my NaNo novel. Then Cadence the wonder-machine breathes her last, and I mature in time to start filling this hard drive with slightly less morose wacked-out crap and significantly more dubiously titled DOS games. That's maturity for you.

Also, my 17-year-old self's Livejournal is saved on the first one. God help us all.

Anyway. My point is this: if I were really to refile all of this, how would I even start? Either I could put EVERYTHING into one big file labelled "wank" and let the 18-year-old relationship drama rub shoulders with the culture shock and the early drafts of apocalyptic Hull without any real regard for filing, or I'd have to devise some sort of epic filing system to ensure that everything is preserved in context for future incarnations of me to periodically look back and wince at- livejournal entries and all. Given that Rubato's not the quickest of machines, and everything is saved either as the first line of the file itself or as something cute like "a letter of wankiness" with no clue as to which aspect of wankiness we are talking about, the latter would take a long time, but the former... well, I'm just not sure that counts as tidying, really. No matter what I may keep telling myself. So, Rubato is staying as is, and I will survive on the music of my 4-gig MP3 player for the duration of my DC stay. Better to preserve history and be musically challenged than the alternative... and besides, I survived on nothing but China pop and High School Musical after the first Cadence crash. All will be well.

(Incidentally, there is no spotify in America, is there? Shit.)

From one sort of nostalgia to another, I have rediscovered my camera after a photographic absence of about a year and have been using it to record deeply exciting stuff like "where I live". Or, more accurately, "where I've lived". Alas for the realities of past tense.

(These pictures are small 'cause that's how they uploaded them. And it's not like you would get much more out of the bigger versions...)

Here is my lair, before I had to take all the posters down in order to bring them home (which I spectacularly failed to do... oops). Looking tidier since the piano left. Also I took all the lightbulbs out of the bed.

And kitchen. Daniel Craig is visiting with his tiger, as you can see.

Next I decide to go for the whole "knock on people's doors and take surprise photos of them" thing. Amyus reacts well...

Alex: Did you really knock on my door and come into my room and photograph me whilst I was sleeping, or did I just dream that?

Adrienne: No, that happened. I'm going to upload it to the internet!

Alex: Great. Thanks.

Adrienne: *True to her word*

Despite appearances, Ben actually prefers me bursting in his room to take pictures to all the other things I burst into his room to do. Like running in, screaming "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" and jumping on his bed. He doesn't like that one much at all.

And of course no album about the Greeks would be complete without a corridor shot.

Back in Offord, on a *proper* river. Because the Great Ouse is a proper river and the Thames is not. That is the truth of the matter.

Dog walking for Father's Day... I love you Cambridgeshire. You and your brown scrubby pancake flat fields.

Keah does not like to be photogenic. In this way we are alike.

Soggy doggy.

Aaand here is where I spent my teen years before I fucked off to Xinjiang. It has been Tidied, which makes me vaguely uncomfortable. And I will not be spending enough time here this summer to sort it out again. I am slowly but surely Moving Out... what an odd feeling. Soon my parents will probably paint it yellow and refer to it as a guest room.

I leave you with this fact: Philip Reeve brought out a new book and it is great so far. I love him. The End.

Logicians be craaazy...

So, it's summer and I have nothing to do for a week and I can therefore read for pleasure again! To celebrate, I stole Scumface's copy of Logicomix, which is as the name suggests a comic about formal logic. Hence (or otherwise) it is rather brilliant. It mostly focuses on Bertrand Russell and what a total fuck-up his life was (I mean, the guy got taken to live with his grandparents when he was young because his parents had "gone away"; he didn't find out for a looong time that they were actually dead and his gran just hadn't told him. And it just gets worse from there...), and occasionally branches out to show Russell meeting other logicians, showing what fuck-ups their lives all are (and occasionally what fuck-ups he makes their lives into *cough* Whitehead *cough*) and just generally being pessimistic about the whole thing. Poor logicians and their inability to not be completely crazy.

Goedel (umlauts are for the weak) is the worst, of course . Grows up, permanently destroys any hope of a complete system of logic with his incompleteness theorem, gets paranoid and ends up starving himself because he's convinced people are trying to poison him. Poor chap. Plus, look at him. I just want to cuddle him and give him a puppy and read bedtime stories to him until he cheers up.

And the saddest part of all, Mein Herr, is that I am too stupid to be able to appreciate your theories fully and will therefore never be studying you as part of my Formal Logic course. Nope, I'm stuck with Turing. You know, the guy who did all that code cracking in World War II and then got injected with oestrogen after being convicted of homosexuality 'cause it was the only alternative to a prison sentence. God it sucks to be a logician.

(Hmm. I wonder if logicians have fucked-up lives because they are logicians, or if people with fucked-up lives are more likely in some way to become/have become logicians because of some quality that fucked-up people share?)

My other uses for free time include cycling to Sandford, reading "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (a copy of which mysteriously arrived in my pidge from 4Chan earlier today...), wandering around looking like a vigilante, playing Jazz Jackrabbit on DOSbox and finding new solutions to my snake cube. What an exciting and varied life I lead.

Oh, and I'm back in Cambridgeshire for a couple of days tomorrow, which will be nice. If my cycles around Oxfordshire in the last week have taught me anything, it's that I bloody well LIKE being able to see for miles when you get to the top of the only "hill" in the region and the Thames valley just can't deliver when it comes to that. Rolling pastoral countryside be damned, I want a fen. Well, not actually a fen. Huntingdonshire. And my prayers will be answered. Tomorrow.

Rebooting in preparation for country exit

So I'm leaving in, like, 10 days. I should probably write about it when I'm there, it will be good for me. And that means I should probably give this place a bit of a facelift beforehand.

Sooo. Yes. As years go, I've had better. Much better. I guess it was always going to be a survival year, and I did totally call the whole "lol I'm going to break down in Hilary" thing last year so no surprises when it actually happened, but even the warm fuzzy glow of being right about stuff doesn't really counteract the fact I'd rather it just hadn't happened. Still, that is the past and I get further away from it every second, in theory.

Leaving the country will be a good thing. I miss being elsewhere.

Anyway, I am supposed to be talking about interesting things here instead of moaning about my emotional crap. Err. So yess, it is Thursday of 8th week and I am almost finished with Middle Eastern politics (:D) and Formal Logic (:S). Both have been good in their ways but my work ethic has been awful this term for one reason or another, so I haven't devoted as much time as I'd have liked, especially given that I'm now doing subjects I actually *want* to do rather than stuff that the syllabus is forcing on me. The play went well, rowing threatened to go out with a whimper and actually ended up going out with a... well, a sort of fizz, maybe. Not a bang as such... anyway, that's all done now. And maybe next year will see me ushering in a new golden age in Wadham drama, although that's, uh, doubtful.

I'm getting obsessed by double dactyl words and phrases again, mostly because a lot have suddenly sprung themselves on me at once. Metamathematical, computability, plenipotentiary, absolute monarchy, pre-revolutionary... primitive recursive is almost one, but "recursive" has the wrong emphasis. Still. Great phrase. I wish I wrote more...

And now I'm going to go away and play with colours and links and stuff and make this look presentable and maybe hide some of the old wank that's in here. Hmmm....