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06 October 2010

a moving birthday!

above: from the awesomely funny Perry Bible Fellowship.

Although my birthday actually is April 2nd, I was so happy - and surprised! - to receive a birthday package in the mail two weeks ago from my lovely sister Maggie. Inside was the best birthday card I've ever seen in my entire life:

above: my sister knows me well.

And, even more excitingly, BOOKS! more books than I know what to do with!

In case you're wondering, no, most of these are not in fact for me. They're for my awesome pre-schooler students, who have already fallen completely in love with the aptly titled "Banana." But the bonobo book - since bonobos are awesome - and the the two graphic novels were very exciting to see, particularly Unwritten. As a nerd who grew up nerdily obsessed with Sandman comics and embarssing epic fantasy paperbacks* whose covers I always hid whenever I rode BART, I've always been drawn to books that approach similar nerdy themes in smart, original, self-referential ways. Unwritten reminded me very strongly in both atmosphere and theme of the Sandman series, and I probably finished it in about 20 minutes and then spent the day in that weird good-book haze I always have whenever I finish and yet stop can't thinking about a book I really loved reading. Really you should just read what my sister wrote, but the point is, if you're a huge nerd like me, you will probably love Unwritten. So anyway, apologies for the nerdy outburst - it was very exciting to spend a morning curled up in bed reading comics.

Also in the last month or so, I received not one but TWO belated birthday gifts - both yarn! - from my grandparents. My grandmother has given me yarn every year for awhile now, and this year she ordered me a few skeins from an online yarn shop. Unfortunately, one of the colors was backordered, so it didn't ship until just recently. At the same time, a gift card to the same shop from last year's birthday - that I'd given up for lost in the mail right about the time we left for China - magically appeared in a package from my mom, tucked in with all the other mail I accumulate. I don't know how it got lost in the shuffle but it was tremendously exciting to find it (and to go crazy shopping for yarn online, which is sort of like being in a candy shop except for string!) So now there are piles of yarn spilling out of the closet and books everywhere - it's very exciting. Best moving birthday ever - thank you, Maggie and Grandma!

* If anyone wants to fill me in on what's been happening in the late Robert Jordan's now ghost-written eleventy-billion-book long-saga ever since I put down book seven at age sixteen because I could no longer keep track of the labyrinthine political alliances and machinations that were rapidly becoming far more complex than the ones I understood in real life, I'm all ears.

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27 December 2007

Nerd Quest, Part II

I know I posted the first part of the Nerd Quest way back when I started this, but it occured to met that I never got around to posting photos of Tintagel, which is especially unfair, as Tintagel may have been one of the best places I saw the whole time I was away.

03 December 2007

it seems that anyone who consumes thorn apple root feels deep trust in the people he is with at the time

In Sevilla, which is so hot I´m wearing a tanktop and finding excuses to stop walking around so much in the unfamiliar sun; I only have a few minutes left of what I´m pretty sure is free internet at the Tourist Office, so for now I just wanted to say that the high point of being in Spain (aside from making it to Chapter Two of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal) has definitely been the Antiguo Museo de Brujería, or museum of witchcraft, which tragically does not have a huge internet presence, unless you count numerous directions to the travel sites that tragically advise their readers to´walk past the witchcraft museum¨ on their way to bigger, less unexpectedly awesome and kitschy venues. The museum itself is about five euros (though the guy gave me two books for free, so it sort of balanced out) and made up of several dimly lit rooms that house a comprehensive exhibit of medieval poisons and hallucinigens (from which comes the title of this post) and a collection of false relics, including but not limited to: the holy grail, the head of elizabeth bathory, the hand of a hanged man, a mummified mermaid, a fairy floating in a jar of formeldahyde, the elixer of eternal youth, an impressive array of stuffed mythological animals and a case of what I can only describe as 'penis monsters.' And, lest you think being a witch was all potions and sex with demons, the basement includes a slightly more somber collection of torture implements and accounts of witch trials. BEST MUSEUM EVER.

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15 October 2007

Nerd Quest, Part I

Glastonbury Tor, backlit. Not pictured: King Arthur

I am nursing a nasty cold, so these last two days have been in spent in London (after a last-minute trip to Paris with my dad (!), which is another post). At any rate, I had an amazing end-of-last week chasing down obscure Arthurian tourist attractions; on Wednesday I went out to Glastonbury, a small town about an hour out of Bristol which is traditionally associated with Avalon, where Arthur sleeps until England needs him again, and where Marion Zimmer Bradley set the crack-like retelling of the legend as a Druids vs. Christians soap opera from Morgan Le Fay's point of view that totally took over my life when I was fourteen:

Glastonbury correspondingly itself feels like a town I might have fantasized about when I was fourteen, replete with Avalon-goddess-allusions, crystal jewelry shops, tarot cards and a statue of the Wise Woman of Wookey Hole (elsewhere referred to as the Witch of Wookey Hole, whose remains are the star attraction of a nearby museum).

At any rate, I spent a few hours at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey before catching the last bus to the Tor and picking my way back down the hill through a cow pasture (the cows seemed unconcerned about this, so I'm assuming that this was okay).

Glastounbury Abbey also houses Arthur andGuinevere's tomb, which was built after monks claimed to have unearthed their remains on the premises sometime during the 1100's.