Fluff piece.

Some shiny bits from the day … FunkyPlaid and I were referred to as “the septics” by a friend and I guessed correctly what it meant. And it wasn’t even an insult! Well … not entirely. What? What’s that? A photo of what I made for dinner? Unheard of. I know you know Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I know this because you are obviously a person of taste and refinement. However, if you somehow missed the recent release of the second Marcel video, I have included it here for your enjoyment: And then this video made me dance in my seat (via Bradley): Official Trailer: Girl Walk // All Day from Girl Walk // All Day on Vimeo. Did you finish NaNoWriMo? My friend Adam did, as per usual. He makes it look so awesome that every year I am...

HIDWtS: Thanksgiving in Scotland.

This Thanksgiving edition of How I Decide Where to Sit is dedicated to reviewing all the rookie mistakes one can make when riding public transit in a new city for the first time, because it is kind of like what the Pilgrims did when they– no. Even I can’t torture that metaphor. It is dedicated to rookie mistakes because I made them all today and I need to laugh about them with you. I waited thirty minutes for a bus whose arrival time as reported by the phone app was stuck at "21:39" before giving up and walking to a stop of a different bus that seemed to be showing up every ten minutes. I assumed that the stops for the line going inbound were in generally the same place as the stops for the line going outbound. I forgot about the driving on...

Bluster.

I like St Andrews more each time I visit, and I already liked it a lot the first time. There are great people there, and books and learning and junk, and also videos of sneezing pandas. To commemorate my deepening affection for this place, here is a really fancy postcard that it took me all day to make. Or my iPhone did it in about two seconds. Walking to the market last night, I was gently picked up by the leaf-addled wind and set down a few yards in front of where I started. Since it was generally in the correct direction, I saw no need for alarm. This happened about four more times on the way there and back. Bluster. I forgot about proper bluster! Such polite people excused themselves as they bounced all over the walk. Every once in a while, I caught a...

Mental map, one month in.

I’ve been in Edinburgh a month already! Really? Really. So I thought it might be time to draw a mental map. The trees here don’t look anything like that. And I didn’t know how to draw the building we live in without taking up the entire lower-third of the map, so you get a Monopoly house instead. It took a lot of willpower not to include the tram works, but I didn’t have an iPad stylus setting for “fubar”. The good news is that my map of the immediate vicinity is very clear. I can now navigate between all places of importance, which is a list that coincides with the places I will find tea. Additional good news: next week I start my volunteer position at the National Trust for Scotland, which means I will be reliant on public...

Shepherd’s pie.

Here is another post about food instead of about anything else, because food is easier to talk about. Although FunkyPlaid does an excellent job looking after me, I do not do the best job looking after myself. I have allowed myself to be a bit overrun by deadlines and responsibilities, and haven’t carved out enough time to just sit in one place and not do anything. I even have a China Miéville book on my nightstand that has been sorely neglected. Because of my mental state, I have been falling back on old recipes for dinner. Not so tonight, when I decided to make Alton Brown’s recipe for shepherd’s pie. This involved a trip to Waitrose, which I love. It is very posh and has nearly everything … except for a glass baking dish, which we...

Simplest sauce.

There is plenty to report, but no time, so here is my pinboard of home cooking. There are just a few photos up now, but I hope the collection will grow as we continue to explore our new culinary horizons. Dinner tonight involved an old standby, this excellent recipe for tomato sauce with butter and onions. It is not only tasty but very easy and inexpensive to make. Two 400g tins of organic peeled tomatoes: £1.50. One organically-grown yellow onion: £0.25. One 240g packet of organic unsalted butter (only used 70g): £1.50. One 500g packet of Doves Farm organic brown rice fusilli (only used 200g): £2.50. Approximate total cost of two servings: £3.50. Share a simple yet tasty recipe in the comments, won’t...

Contented.

Mental map sutures.

O, look! It is a photo of the castle! Another photo of the castle! And not at all because it is one of the only places I can recognize in the city! No, no, not that. Actually, it is a photo of the castle because I watched FunkyPlaid take a picture of the castle with the moon just so and I had to take one too. But his is better. But I took one too. So, you see, I am twelve. The exciting part is the part that has no picture, where I somehow recognized not just the castle but a whole string of things — including Starbuxen and libraries, yes, okay, so I am predictable — and was able to recognize them not in some arcane card-flipping memory game but in the actual field, the actual walking-about time and needing-to-navigate time, the pertinent time, the...