There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

This is just way too impressive to NOT talk about. Once upon a time, there was a land called Wales. Apart from funny accents, Charlotte Church, and Catherine Zeta Jones, Wales is primarily know for sheep. Lots and lots of sheep.

And apparently, shepherds have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands.




Beat that, New Zealand!

For those of you out there who don't know, I happen to live in one of the most remote, backwards, white-trash, hillbilly areas of California. That is, when I am not living in Scotland. Normally, when I tell people in the UK that I am from California, I get the typical not-from-California responses: The weather must be so nice! Everyone must be so tan! What's is like having Arnold Schwarzenegger for a Governor? And almost all their comments (apart from the last one) is location specific, as in anything SOUTH of San Luis Obispo. For those of us North of that pseudo-equator, its a different story. We have trees that have been around since the ice age, live half the year in fog, the other half in rain, and every once in a while get to enjoy weather in the mid 70s/80s Fahrenheit in the summer. Then there is the sliver of California that even Northern Californians blink twice upon hearing about its existance. It's dry as a desert, rattlesnake infested, and contains neither trees, beach, fog, rain, or any form of civilisation. It is so un-Californian that I think most people just call it Nevada, and in fact, Nevada county is just 40 minutes away, even though it's like 2 hours from Nevada state. I believe that this is because California secretly wants to let this part of CA cede from the state.

And that is where my family has ended up. Here's a list I've drawn up of what I've noticed so far.

-More women have mullets than men...and that is only because there is a larger female to male ratio
-Children under the age of 4 have Mohawks...when they turn 5 they get to graduate to mullets
-They list the day's hunting hours on the front page of the local paper
-You see people walking their llama up the driveway
-Your driveway is over a mile long
-The freshest milk available is at the gas station next to the highway, a 10 minute drive away
-You're the obvious outcast if you don't have at least one gun
-Your household only has 2 legal drivers, but your yard has at least 4 cars, 3 of which have dogs, goats, chickens, or cats living both on and inside of them
-You still use livestock as a form of currency (my mom had 10 guinea hens butchered and paid the butcher 5 hens for the task of killing and cleaning them)
-The roads don't have lines painted down their centres
-Everyone has a truck that has 4 wheel drive, covered in dirt, mud, and won't get washed until it rains
-The illiteracy rate is 20%
-Your mom waters the garden with a hose in one had and a rifle in the other...just in case there are rattlesnakes
-Dressy attire at a restaurant is dusting the dirt off your jeans and scraping the equine/bovine manure off your steel toed boots
-There are two sit-down restaurants, complete with menus and waiters/waitresses for ever 14 fast food ones. 1:8 = classy dining.
-The town consists of (1) post-office, (1) "mercantile" shop which sells jerky and chewing tobacco, (1) elementary school, and (1) bar.
-The bar opens at 9- this most likely leads to
-Headline in paper: Farther shoots son in car chase, injures friend.
-Also could lead to : Four assault rifles, about 40 pounds of frozen meat and piles of 20-year-old deer antlers all point to a case of poaching against a father and son
-Might also be the reason the deputies drive into canals
-It's not uncommon to eat rabbit, deer, and any animal you happen to find in your back yard
-You're not hard pressed to find a varriety of people selling produce out of their homes, trailers, cars or trucks every mile or so, most of which looks like it was previously purchased at the Grocery Outlet store beforehand.

I'm sure this list will grow, but I've only been visiting home for about a month now.

Holy hell, I miss Edinburgh SO much!

The weekend after handing over that bound, 67 page dissertation fell on one of the fortnightly dinners with my boyfriends parents. While we all sat down to one of the few authentic and delicious Chinese meals in Edinburgh, I was naturally bombarded with thousands of questions about where my life was now heading. 'Erm...,' I paused in between bites of beef with garlic sauce, 'well, I only handed my dissertation in 2 days ago, and haven't really thought much beyond that.' 'Well,' by boyfriend's dad replied, 'you should have a wee holiday. You've worked so hard all year, you deserve a few weeks off to rest and enjoy yourself.' And boy did I plan to.

The following two weeks, as was expected, was spent consuming large amounts of alcohol and pretending that it was well deserved or that since this was the last time everyone from our course would be together, we might as well go out guns blazing on a major rager. But honestly, two weeks is enough for me. I'm not what you would call a workaholic, but I get antsy when there is nothing to be done...and so far, when I am not recovering from the night before, I am puttering around the house looking for something- anything- to do: wash all the dishes, dust all the furniture, scrub all the mould from the shower, wash the windows, iron every article of cloth that exists, etc, etc, etc. And all the while, while at least one of my old coursemates is busy recovering from the night before by planning the same night out and complaining about her dwindling funds, I am secretly applying for as many jobs as I can find.

The depressing aspect about my degree is how utterly useless it is in life. While my boyfriend studied infectious diseases in the hopes of one day curing HIV, all I can pretty much do is confirm that things look old. Or at least argue that old things are somehow relevant to the modern age. This leaves a lot of uninteresting job opportunities for me, such as the exciting world of secretarial work! The fascinating life of administration! The mind-boggling merriment of sitting day in and day out in an office somewhere doing something completely unrelated to what I worked hard to succeed in for 5 years.

Actually, in all honesty, I would be working right this very minute if I wasn't so damn susceptible to peer pressure. I know I need money ASAP, so the logical, smart thing that I would have done, having spent a week 'relaxing,' would have been to go to the temp. agency. I've used temp agencies before, and guaranteed, I was always given some sort of clerical job that paid well within that week. It was wonderful...constant employment and a cheque every week. But then I let myself get talked into going on this trip to the Islands....

So, here is where it stands. 1) I have no money and am putting everything on my credit card. 2) I am utterly annoyed with the incompetence of my fellow traveller, who quite frankly wouldn't be able to figure out which direction to take a bus on a one way street. 3) It means that I am delaying my sweet temp agency job for another week, and thus reiterating that 4) I have no money!!! I keep telling myself that this trip will be fun, that seeing the islands will be a new and unique experience, and that I might as well do this while I'm young because I'll never get the chance again, yada yada yada. But so far, planning this trip, though not my idea, has ended up being left up to me to plan. I researched the hostel (only 2 folks, on the whole island, and an hour apart from each other), researched the bus time table (one bus every 2 hours going from tip to tip), and figured out how we would be able to get our butts from the hostel to Iona and back without being stranded on the bloody little island, population 700 (ferry leaves at 1500, after that, find a warm sheep to cuddle up with). Meanwhile, all my companion has done is look to see what castles exist on the islands (not noticing that 80% of them can only be accessed with a car), whine to me that I'm making her walk 3 miles in order to see two castles in one day ('why can't we take a taxi?'), and go on and on about the new boots she just bought specifically for this trip (her Calvin Kline and Jessica Simpson boots would 'so' not work).

All this trip planning naturally had to go hand in hand with a major allergic reaction I had with a newly purchased makeup, which left my face swollen with a thick cover of small, itchy little bumps that haven't quite all gone away, leaving me perpetually feeling like Quasimodo. Great. So stressed about being poor, stressed about going on this trip with L.A. Barbie, stressed about my deformed face, and stressed about how poor the combination of everything is making me.

I am so going to need a vacation after all of this.