All the way from New Zealand!

One of my college roomies lives in New Zealand (the other two from our senior-year Mod Quad live in Connecticut and Alaska). I last saw NZ roomie when we were both in New York, back in 2009.

She was in England for a wedding (her boyfriend was the best man), and came and visited us in Suffolk for two days. WOOT!

I took a day and a half off from work - I picked her up at the Bury station, we St Edmunds-ed ourselves, then we went to Ickworth and romped through the gardens and parkland, and then came home and made veggie shepherd's pie. Yum!

The following day, which was the first properly cold and autumnal day we've had, we adventured coast-ward.

We visited Framlingham castle (as windy as I've ever been there - it was tempting to cling to the railings!), and then revived ourselves with tea in Framlingham. A cream tea, even. See? It was excellent.

We then went to the seaside, Mr. Todd, down by the sea! Liz may or may not have serenaded the seagulls and me with this.



We took lots of pictures, including this one, of four seagulls pointing into the wind:

And this rock, which I liked. These were all taken with my new S95, by the way. Look at that blurry background!

And then we met John in Ipswich and went out for a curry at Indian Palace in Ipswich, after a recommendation from our veg box guy. Excellent.

Too bad she lives so far away - we had a blast!

John & Kate Plus Houseguests, Episode 2

The guest bed had just about cooled down after my mom left, when one of my Colby buddies arrived to hang out with us for a Sunday afternoon. She's "Coburn Freshman Hall Resident Now In A Relationship With A Brit" No.3. They must have been putting something in the water...

Anyway, because of the whims and vagaries of Sunday rail replacement busses, we realised that in order for her to get back to where she was staying before midnight she'd have to leave Stowmarket at 3pm. Having arrived at noon. BUMMER.

I suggested she stay over and take normal trains back on Monday morning. WOOHOO! So we kidnapped her and took her to Kentwell Hall, followed by a sojourn to the now world-famous Radhuni.

Kentwell was a blast - we took the cross-country route.

Kate: "The speed limit on this [single track, winding] road is now 50 miles per hour."
Viv: "Um, what??"

John later commented that Viv and I were both knitting, chatting, looking out the window, and I was also navigating. He said that had he been attempting to do all of those things simultaneously, his brain would have fused.

Here's a sneak-peek at what I was making. It's a birthday present that hasn't been given yet - finished product pictures soon!

While at Kentwell, we took inspiration for what I need to do with hedging in our front garden:

Parts of the house have a higgldy-piggldy feel to them - this lookeed like they just kept adding bits on.

I loved the sign on this ex-greenhouse.

We were bad and got put in the stocks:

And Mr. Peacock decided that Vivienne was the bee's knees and kept showing her his tail feathers. Um, she's taken, Mr. Peacock, but I guess you would still fall into the English Boyfriend category!

Viv also showed me some knitting tips - I've been doing my M1 increases all wrong, leaving a trail of little holes behind me. This is now resolved. I was also weaving in my ends wrong. All future knitting projects (and the previously-pictured blue mystery project) will have awesomely woven-in ends. Phew.

My brain on music

Anna at twelve22 recommended Daniel J. Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music, about how we hear music in neurological terms. It's riveting. My only problem is that I need to be by myself when I'm reading it, since I'm compelled to read chunks out to whoever's around at the time.

I'm only about 50 pages in, but I can see that it's the kind of book that a Colby music prof would assign as an extra-credit project. I'm actually enjoying reading it just to read it, rather than reading it knowing that I need to write a paper on it or answer questions on it on my next midterm.

(This is a random picture of a clock from one of the church towers we visited last weekend)

In other music news, I seem to have come out from under my rock to find Owl City (warning: music auto-plays). I normally find auto-tune stuff to be really irritating, but for some reason I think it's really catchy. Embarrassingly, I didn't find out about them (him?) on the radio like a normal person. No, I heard about it because someone at work asked if we would be buying in the matching folio. In case you're wondering, the answer is yes.

Review: The Art Thief

I went to college with Noah Charney, the author of The Art Thief. I met him when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. He lived in the Coburn 6-man with 4 other people (2 of whom are now married and just had a baby). I ended up living in the same suite (although not the same room) the following year. We had a lot of mutual friends, and I used to hang out in his room and we'd do our homework together, sitting on his bed & listening to music. He still has my blue fleece blanket, btw.

We kind of lost touch after my freshman year (he went abroad to London when he was a junior and then when he came back his senior year I was in Paris for the first semester). A few months ago I noticed this article in the NYT magazine. Then I read about him again in the Colby magazine. Apparently he's 'invented' the field of scholarly study to solve art theft, and is now the world's foremost authority. He's also written a novel. I wasn't sure what I'd think of it - the reviews on Amazon were...erm...crap.

The writing style is exceedingly verbose - if it weren't by someone I know I don't think I'd have read past the first few pages. Why use one adjective when 6 will do? I kept reading bits out to John, prefaced by "Oh my God, you won't believe THIS sentence!"

Overall, though, much as a part of me wanted to, I didn't hate it. Despite all the adjectives and the somewhat hackneyed writing, the twist at the end was kinda clever and I may even admit to having enjoyed it. I feel like a bit of a numpty for not spotting the twist earlier, but still.

Oh, and if you check his bio on NoahCharney.com, it mentions his punk band, The Jump Into. I have their debut (and only) CD, bought from the bass player (who I dated in college, another claim to fame...) It kind of sucks, but what can you do?

Bach Therapy

Had our first Bury Bach Choir rehearsal of the term last night - we basically sang ALL the way through all the choral parts of the St Matthew Passion, which we'll be performing on March 31st. It was a completely exhausting rehearsal, not least because the score is a somewhat epic 248 pages and is rather heavy to hold on to for 2 hours. But this was just a warm up - we're not making any cuts in the performance which should being it to a resounding 3 hours and 15 minutes. Phew.

Having not sung much Bach since Colby, I'd forgotten how completely relaxing I find it. Not necessarily the chorales (4 part hymn-things, for the non music geeks)...they're nice but not anything special. It's the fugues that I love (nmg's: a Bach fugue is kind of like a REALLY complicated round). The fact that each part is not only complex, with lots of notes, but it has to trundle along on its own without any help from the other parts, means that the only way to sing one is to have your mind completely empty of other things. This is not the kind of music you can sing (and especially not sight read) while you're worrying about the house/the job/the hubby/the car or anything else.

We sang Bach's Magnificat in Collegium when I was at Colby - I think it was one of my all-time favourite concerts. In any event, last night's rehearsal was very tiring but really rewarding and generally brain-clearing.

I got home to find the boys gaming by candlelight - there was a power outage in our corner of Stowmarket and so the two flashlights I picked up at Tesco's on the way home were MUCH appreciated. John and I very industriously turned everything off so that when the power came back on, it wouldn't all kick in to high gear, but apparently we were the only ones. I'd left my bedside light on so I'd be able to wake up and check on things, and so at 2:35 this morning I was peering out of the kitchen window (as the washing machine was finishing its interrupted cycle) to see our little neighborhood all aglow. Since the power had gone off at 7:15, most of the people had ALL of their lights on and hadn't thought to turn them off. When I drove John to the 6:40 train (still dark out), most of the lights had been switched off, but a surprising number were still on.