Lazy Wednesday

Well Wednesday is the day where we have a science lecture in the morning, work for a couple of hours and then have free time after lunch. I gotta say West Dean has some genius ideas when it comes to educating people.

Stormin' Norman

Well yesterday I received a lot of information from my family, including the fact that my cat Norman was put to sleep. Norman was a 10 year old fluffy white and gray Persian who enjoyed waking me up in the middle of the night by letting his long whiskers tickle my face. He was a good kitty and I will miss him. I know this seems like some crazy cat lady's freaky cat entry, but I just wanted to mark the day somehow.

R.I.P Little Red

A sad sad thing has happened. Last night Catherine's little red Micra was stolen by a couple of bastards and taken for a serious ride. The police found her in a ditch in Lavent and the damage was so bad that they won't even let Catherine see it yet. Needless to say it is a sad day for Micra's the world over. May she rest in peace.

A Surreal Evening

Michon made a comment once that my life should be a reality tv show. Now I’m not saying that my life constitutes having an entire show devoted to following me around or even considering the fact that I am that interesting, but last night would have made a pretty sweet episode. Several of the instrument makers have been working hard on bring their dream of having a good old-fashioned American jug band complete with washtub bass. Well, last night that dream came true. I sat in the Dower House common room and played the jug while the rest of the real musicians made music. The band consisted of a washtub bass (which was made from an oil drum cut in half with a stick and a string) , banjo (made with a large tin that used to house cookies), mouth bow (made of a stick, string, and a tin can) guitar, two sets of spoons (one set wooden another metal), the jug, a cheese grater, and a shaker. And you know what the craziest part was, all of the instruments actually made music that sounded like music. At one point I was sitting there playing the jug in a state of shock because I couldn’t believe this was going on around me. Needless to say West Dean can be a pretty strange place, and last night it was taken to a whole new level.

Warning: Boredom May Occur

Well I was thinking about the things I've seen here and what we do and I decided I needed to mention it at least once in this blog if for no other reason than to avoid being called a transponster in the future. Last term we saw a lot of pretty amazing things that I managed to take some pictures of, so I thought I would share a few of them with you.

I thought this book was interesting mostly because it looks like a patch work quilt. I fully intend on trying to produce one of these some day.

The cover boards of books used to be made of old waste papers laminated together with paste or glue. This cool looking guy used to be part of a cover board before the board was humidified and the sheets of paper making the cover were separated. I think it is a sketch of one of the carvings on Canterbury Cathedral.

This one is a super fancy book with really heavy silver embellished covers. Really amazing and really heavy. I'm pretty sure the original owner of this book would take one look at me and ask where her tea was and why I am so slow at answering her every beckoned call.

This is what happens when a velum book comes in contact with a fire. Not pretty. Sadly there isn't a way to make this one go back to its original shape, the plan is to humidify the pages enough to temporarily flatten them and scan them so that the contents will still be available for readers. The binding itself will go back to this shape once it drys out.

Ok, hopefully you made it through all of that without suffering some sort of head injury from your melon hitting the keyboard. Then again maybe you learned something new, maybe that thing was that Kristi is boring and should never talk about conservation again.

Girls Night Out

Last week amidst my mental breakdown Sonia insisted on taking me out to dinner, and I must say it was exactly what I needed. Once it was over we decided that it should be a weekly event. Girls night out. This week was the first time we tried it out and it went really well. We ended up with 6 girls; Sonia, Catherine, Jenny, Sarah, Emma and myself. You wouldn't believe how many people (men) we had to turn away from our fun. We went to The Fox Goes Free to have drinks and were rudely interrupted by "quiz night", a game English pubs like to play where everyone puts in a pound to play and the winning team gets to keep the money. I have played this game once and did horribly due to the fact that most of the questions are about English history or sport, making it hard for a team of Americans to play. So after listening to the quiz-master repeat the same question three times we decided to head to another pub, The Earl of March. We spent the next three hours exchanging stories and laughing A LOT. All in all a fantastic evening. Long live girls night out.

Silence is Golden

This morning I sat eating breakfast at a full table with 4 other people. We spent the entire meal in silence. No talking in a room filled with chatter for 20 minutes. I'm not sure which is more strange, the fact that we sat there for so long with no words, or the fact that I enjoyed it so much.

I long to go to Brighton

Well I have to say this has been the best weekend I've had here this term, not too bad considering it's the end of week 6. Harm and I decided to take a little day trip to Brighton to get out of West Dean and do some shopping. By mere chance we got to the train station just in time to catch the express train, shaving 30 minutes off our journey time. When we got off the train and starting heading down towards the sea I couldn't stop smiling. We were in Brighton! We started the day off right with a nice cup of coffee and a muffin then headed to Gap. I know I should be going to English stores and getting cool stuff, but sometimes you just want the classic stuff and that's what I found. Next we went to a pipe shop because a friend of Harm's has a pipe with a missing piece so he was called upon to find a new mouth piece. Once that was done we had a fantastic lunch with Stephen and Sonia and then spent the rest of the day shopping. When it came time to go home we once again caught the express train! What are the odds!?

There was a party at the Dower House last night and apparently the drinking started around 5pm, so by the time we arrived at 7 everyone was already pissed. It was hilarious. As the next 5 hours passed by things slowly got more and more out of control. It went from people chatting and smoking, to all the wine, tequila, rum and absinthe is gone which lead to karaoke singing followed by lots of dancing to various tunes with the evening culminating in a sweet drunken rendition of Thriller.

All in all a sweet weekend, one I really needed after such a shitty week.

Text message log:

Me to Sonia: "Harm is smoking!"

Sonia to Me: "Smoking hot? or smoking a cigarette?"

Man she's funny. And by the way, smoking a cigarette. He was feeling like a rebel. It was funny.

Dear Readership,

Sometimes life pats you on the head and sometimes it kicks you in the shins. My shins hurt.

Love,
Kristi

Expelliarmus!

Something I forgot to mention about paper marbling. To apply the paint you use a wooden stick, similar to a wand. By the end of Saturday evening Sonia and I were casting every spell we could think of as we applied paint to our scummy surface. Have I mentioned how much I love Harry Potter?

Seaweed and Splatter Paint

Well this weekend several of us bookies participated in a marbling short course. Sonia and I were marbling partners so needless to say we had a grand time. Basically the way it works is you flick paint on a surface of seaweed goop, swirl it around and make a pattern and then place a piece of paper on the surface and the paints print on the paper. A pretty mind boggling thing really when you consider you're using seaweed scum what is essentially spatter paint. This is a picture of me with my first try at a pattern called "flame". As you can see I was pretty excited about this one, so excited in fact that I made Sonia go and get my camera and take a picture of me. We spent the next 5 hours trying all different patterns and exclaiming the same thing after each one was pulled from the bath, "that one is my new favorite!". All in all a pretty kick-a weekend.

BRAVO

Wow! I couldn't stop laughing at all of your answers! They were all fantastic! Can you imagine if that was the number of times someone sneezed? or the number of felony idictments I've been working up to? And may I just say Annalise that now more than ever I really wish I was going to Cracker Barrel and a movie with you, and of course the rest of the crew would come along. Anyway, none of you were correct, but many of you were close. 49 was the number of times that particular person said "ummmm" in the 15 minute presentation.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

Last night we "rebelled" and decided not to eat dinner at the college...I know, getting pretty crazy here at West Dean. But anyway, we went to Marks & Spencer and bought a bunch of Chinese take-away and had a lovely dinner back at the student accommodation. We decided to put on a film and ended up watching a fantastic animated story called "Les Triplettes de Belleville". It is a French film and has very little subtitles, it's mostly music and events. I highly recommend seeing it if you can find a copy as it was BRILLIANT!

Air Loss

Today I sat through 5 presentations about how to monitor and control humidity, temperature and moisture in libraries. Needless to say my brain has turned to mush and I am slowly sucking all the air from the atmosphere due to excessive yawning.

Quick game: I counted to 49 during one of the presentations....what was I counting?

"wishing i was somehow there again"

Am I a member of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

The other day I was going to the bus stop and my friend asked if I wanted to take a short cut through the grave yard to get there faster. It was at that moment that I heard that little voice in my head screaming "don't do it!" We've all seen this scene in movies and tv shows and I think we all know what happens when the short cut is taken. So in true horror movie fashion I ignored the voice, opened the gate and proceeded through the sea of tomb stones. It was pretty creepy, but I made it out ok.

Music Update

I'm not sure if this song is popular in the states or not, but I really like it. It's a little Scissor Sisters-ish, very happy and upbeat. It's by a guy called Mika and the song is Grace Kelly.

Dear Jackie,

James Morrison is the free song of the week on iTunes!

Enjoy.
Kristi

Dear Kristin,

Where has your blog gone?

Love,
Kristi