Day 18

Before I begin this blog- thank you to Emdowd for knowing her dog breeds, and summing up what probably was a needless paragraph (or at least a sentence or two) of description.

Today, I did various things. My favorite was spend several hours on mylifeisaverage.com and reading all the crazy things which go on in the world which remind me that people are awesome sometimes.

But anyway...today we had Justin's class, which I have termed Justin's class. It's basically like Comp Gov from high school, with an accent and about a different country. I learned that the monarchy basically has no control over this country, and that the British actually get irritated when their monarchy get involved in politics. Ridiculous.

...I just realized that if you listen to the Barbie girl song, the woman sounds like she could look like a barbie doll, but the male totally doesn't sound the way the Ken doll looks. By the way- Thanks Lou for the mix CD! :D

After Justin's class we had an hour break between classes, so I took the tube up a couple of blocks so I could try a traditional cornish pasty. It was pretty good- onions, steak, sage, and some other stuff in a flaky pastry crust. I also went walking through Kensington Gardens. The birds by the lake are not afraid of people. At all. I seriously had to be careful where I stepped, because these freaking birds just would not move. I get the feeling those italics didn't work, but whatever.

This couple came by, an old man and a young woman, with food, and all the birds just went into an uproar. Several people including myself and a guy (who I assume to be a frenchman) who asked me to take his picture with all the birds had to cover our heads as the birds flew at and around us. Then, all the swans noticed and were eating the breads. One goose managed to somehow steal an entire slice of bread from the loaf the man had brought to feed them, and was immediately set on by five of the smaller birds trying to eat it from it's mouth. The goose had to fly away and dive underwater to escape the mob. I think it still lost it's lunch though.

THEN this dog came, and would sit down at the man's feet just politely begging for scraps of bread and sniffing around, chasing away the birds to eat the bread. It was a black lab, by the way. At one point, this dog went and was chomping on a piece of bread next to the bank, and in the water were 20 or so swans just hissing away at the dog, who didn't care at all. It looked like there was going to be an epic battle, but I wasn't fast enough with my camera (the lens on the one Lou gave me is broken and takes a little while to focus) so I didn't get the photo.

After the epic at the park I walked back for our history class, where people gave presentations and we had a short meeting. Then we had an hour to make dinner and get to the place where we were having the other part of class and seeing a chamber concert. Unfortunately, even though our fridge is at the lowest setting, it's still freezing all of my foods solid, so I lost a lot of time having to change dinner plans from leftovers to a sandwich and half-thawed fruit.

The chamber music was wonderful (though I zoned during the Schoenberg atonal stuff) and the lighting was really neat. The entire small room was wood paneling and wood seats all the same light wood color, it was beautiful. Then there were blue lights lighting straight upwards and some pink lights lighting straight down and crossways so there were blue, purple, and pink shadows and stuff, with white light on the instruments. Suuuper pretty. Also, when the lights went down to a certain level, the black grand piano was so shiny that it perfectly and clearly reflected the dark red and gold strings in the piano, so pretty!! I wasn't able to get a picture since they changed the lighting to something sucky in the second half.

I was moderately amused and moderately saddened when, during intermission, Annie and Alison got into a conversation about lights, and when I tried to get involved, I was somewhat dismissed at first. Alison was referring to Annie with her questions, which Annie admitted she could only somewhat answer, and then when I tried to answer, I seemed to get half ignored. Kinda not so good, but whatever. People will stick with the people they know and the assumptions they make, I guess.

Most of the group went out to a pub after the concert, but I was having issues deciding if I wanted to go. To be honest, I didn't want to deal with going and trying to have a good time, only to be ignored or dismissed again. So instead I came back, and have been chilling in bed trying to find ways to cheer myself up. MLIA seems to be working, and even though it's 1am I'm not tired.

Ah well. I'm supposed to learn how smartlights work tomorrow, take one apart and put it back together again. Should be fun.