today i'm at the gym - you know, the GYM, where that one woman is always there riding the stationery bike and sweating through her entire outfit.  gross.  THAT gym.  so i'm at the gym.  and my gym sometimes has people at a table near the front giving away free stuff so you will hopefully buy it later...like protein bodybuilder juice.  that is the typical product being "sold" at the table.

today they were giving away PEPPERONI PIZZA and CHICKEN PASTA IN A CREAMY SAUCE.  at my gym.  excuse me??  and this was not diet food.  this was like, "you just worked out for an hour and burned like 300 calories?  come over here and gain it all back in 10 seconds!!!"

i pretended i couldn't smell it while i was on the treadmill.  and then i ran away.  be proud.

happy happy birthday, mama!  i love you!

i went to limerick junction this weekend with some of my favorite people.

(other favorite people not shown but definitely present.)

pretty close to the best night ever.  elevated to "close to the best night ever" status by the fact that willis got on stage and sang with the guy who plays live music there every other weekend.  it was incredible.

what i'm listening to right now

i. love. sugarland.



(eww - sorry about the ad that starts off this video...)

this music is a great way to start a slow monday...

from mcgrady

when i was home in north carolina in june i helped my mom plant three rows of corn in the garden.  little dried corn seedlings, dyed red so you don't lose them in the dirt.  abby the dog "helped" us.  i mourned the fact that i'm never at home in august when the corn is ready to eat, and fresh corn on the cob is a religious experience.  i made my parents promise to mail me some corn in august.

today i received that corn in the mail.

!!!!!!

my parents are awesome.

8 ears of corn still in their husks, in ziploc bags and protected by some shredded paper.  yessssssssss.

and a bonus!  one (dead) green bug in an ear of corn.  i didn't get a photo of that.

i made enchiladas verdes (with black beans, not chicken) and they were DELISH.  the corn was sweet and crisp and i was (am) happy.  the rest of the corn is off the cob and in the freezer for another day.

life is good.

nightmares

i have discovered that sometimes my unconscious needs to work through stuff and doesn't tell me during waking hours.  it tells me in the middle of the night via scary nightmares that paralyze me with fear when i wake up from them...as in, i have to talk myself down before i can get up to pee.  when the uncertainty in my life has worked itself out, the dreams stop.  BIZARRE.

apparently the start of school is causing anxiety and it is manifesting itself in my dreams.  over the past week i have had a scary dream almost every night.  here are the ones i remember:
1. i am in a hotel and a bad guy is standing in the doorway to my room and he is going to kill me.
2. i am back in oxford and our program office is in a tree house and i have to keep climbing up and down the tree and it is annoying.  i have no memory of the scary portion of this dream, but there was one at the time.
3. i am at a trivia night hosted by a coworker (he is having one in october - so far, this dream is plausible), and somehow we need to break into this secret room to get these old books.  we get into the room by detonating a mini bomb.  when we reach in to get the book, bats and rats and things attack us.  OKAY, I KNOW THIS DOESN'T SOUND SCARY, BUT IT WAS.  i woke up scratching furiously at my neck to get them off.
4. i am trying to get into jerusalem (unclear why), but as i am not a jew i can't go through the front gate and must go through this maze in a house with the other members of my traveling group who are not jewish.  there is a tiger there and it bites me on the finger and i am worried i have rabies.  i never get to jerusalem.

scary dreams, i need you to stop.
love,
claire

new addiction: mad men, available to watch instantly on netflix.  i, um, watched a lot of episodes this weekend.  not as many as my sister watched one day of summer vacation when she was making her way through the west wing...  what's your record, becks?  19 episodes in one day?  please confirm.  love, claire.

in 2003 or so, as part of a college history class, i watched the documentary paradise lost and became really interested in the case.  and really angry about the court decision, but of course that's what the documentary filmmakers intended for my reaction to be.  i've followed the appeals off and on since then and have continued to feel a bit queasy about the whole situation.  today the west memphis 3 were released from prison and i spent a good hour of my time watching everything CNN.com could throw at me.  incredible.  i also learned a little bit about the supreme court case of north carolina v. alford (1970), which, you know, i didn't expect when i woke up this morning.

if you have no idea what i'm talking about, put paradise lost in your netflix queue.  and while you're at it, brother's keeper, by the same filmmakers.  both very well done and i think both will affect you greatly.

as 12th grade dean at my school, part of my job is organizing the chaos of senior parking.  who gets which spot, how to make it fair, getting all the cars "registered" with the school, dealing with the almost daily "someone parked in my spot."  it is NOT the best part of my job.

my job was not made any easier by the company that repaved and relined the senior parking lot the friday before school started on monday.

book challenge update

tina fey's book bossypants is AWESOME and anyone remotely interested should read it.  it is part hilarious and part inspirational (i was not expecting that part) and i have had to put the book down because i was laughing too hard to continue to hold it.  get thee to your local library.

all this, you know, READING, is because i made a little goal for myself to read 25 books this year.  last year i read 15, which was a number surpassed in the beginning of june this year.  reading is so fun!  i'd forgotten.  yay for my personal reading challenge.

this is the crazy blogger whom i occasionally read and who inspired me to try to read 25 books this year.  since i started this, i've discovered world lit up (thanks to willis for telling me about it!) and reading 100 all time novels (not sure how i discovered this one) and they are both fabulous reading-y blogs.  my book list is growing, not getting shorter, though.  not quite sure how that's happening.

i went to yoga this morning and sweated an incredible amount.  it felt SO good to be back, but my flexibility has definitely suffered without weekly yoga classes.

the instructor today, as we were getting ready to start the class, told us to think about our last week...and then to let it go and focus on this moment.  (this is a common yoga-y thing to do - don't worry about what you did this week or what you have to do when you leave class: focus on just being where you are right now.  it's a great lesson for life, i think - i'm often planning the next event instead of focusing on enjoying what i'm doing right now.)  but today her comment made me think even more:
one week ago i was in oxford, preparing for the van to come to pick up all our office stuff that needed to go into storage.
six days ago i was saying goodbye to all my summer friends.
five days ago i was flying back to the us.
four days ago i was starting work.
three days ago i was getting used to my routine and trying to stay awake to a normal bedtime hour (if 8:45 is a normal bedtime hour, i succeeded).
two days ago i was saying goodbye to my friend erin who is moving to new hampshire.
yesterday i was drinking beer and sweating profusely with my friends at a beer festival.
today i'm taking stock of it all - sitting in a yoga class.
tomorrow the rush will continue, with the first day of school for students.
but today i could reflect on all the changes in my life.  and it was a really nice moment.

last days in oxford

i have some photos from our last days in oxford that i didn't get around to posting before i left...

on the last night of the program we have a big party for the kids...and a mini party for the adults!  woo hoo!  our director's 6 year old daughter is particularly excited.

these are the girls from my office this summer - love them:

and the three pembroke deans from last year...i, of course, moved over to oriel this year but that did not prevent us from having a lot of fun again this summer:

remember how we "went ape"?  this is our little "go ape" family portrait, which made us laugh a LOT as we took this picture.

after the kids left (without a hitch - yay!) we attempted another 15 person pyramid - which we never completed last summer.  this is as close as we got this summer...no success again this year, but we got so close!  that's my 12 year old "son" climbing to the top of the pyramid to complete it...shortly after this photo was taken he fell off.  oops.  pyramids are dangerous.

coming back to my "real" life has been great - so good to see my friend and get ready for the new school year - but i miss oxford, too.  it's an amazing summer job and i've been lucky to work with great people all three summers that i've been there.  and spending 5 weeks of the summer in england?  an incredible - and really fun - opportunity...  i know i'm a lucky girl.

incredibly powerful: "where children sleep"

i'm home!  hooray!

i went to work today!  hooray-ish!

in other news, the following occurred in the middle of a phone conversation with my mom - after she told me about the garden, teacher workdays, and having my sister home to visit (AKA this was not her top priority during our phone call):

mom: "oh!  did i tell you i was in the hospital for three days?"

o.m.g.

a week or two ago (they don't remember) my mom was in the hospital for three days AND NO ONE CALLED ME OR MY SISTER.  three days!  three!  days!  to quote my dad, "to be honest, it never occurred to me to call you."

wtf, parents.  wtf.

mom is fine now and went back to school this week for teacher workdays and all is well and i'm not to worry.  my sister and i have both informed our parents that in the future THEY HAVE TO TELL US THESE THINGS and they have agreed to do so.  sheesh.  shouldn't it be the other way around?!

omg this pleases me.

(also, i think willis should marry this man.  if he doesn't, i will.)

departures day...

...has actually been shockingly easy and organized - probably because (a) my office rocks, and (b) i slept from 1:30am-8am, missing most of the departures (because the two guys in the office WANTED to stay up all night).  woo hoo!

we're checking the last 30 or so kids out over the next several hours, making a trip to oxfam to donate all the random things the kids couldn't fit in their suitcases (i got two great poetry anthologies! [only i would be excited about this]), and then having dinner with the staff.  hooray!

stonehenge

on my day off last week i did pretty much nothing.  oops.  but sometimes you need a day like that, right?

on my day off THIS week - my final day off of the program - i did A LOT.  part 2 of the day you already know about - "go ape."  part 1 was stonehenge!  it's about an hour's drive from oxford, but not easily accessible by public transportation.  luckily, mike had his car.

stonehenge is one of those places you can't believe you're seeing in real life.  (other such places: times square, big ben, the san francisco bay bridge, pearl harbor, the grand canyon, the rosetta stone in the british museum - i've been lucky to go to some really cool places so far in my life.  all of these places are so LEGENDARY that when you see them in real life it doesn't seem possible - like they only exist on tv or in movies.  but there you are.  seeing it.  weird.)

here's our little crew again, less sweaty than in the "go ape" videos from later in the day - jakob, mike, me, and rosie.  it was early - probably 10am.  we actually beat the crowds - the place was twice as crowded when we left as when we arrived.  go us.

it was a beautiful day - 28 degrees celsius was the high (82 degrees fahrenheit) - and that was part of what made it so incredible.

how is this still standing 4,000 years after it was built?  i learned why!  1/3 of the stones are underground AND the stones lying across the top have a little carved out area in them that fits over a bump carved into the top of the standing up stones - tongue and groove style.  smart!  the biggest stones weigh as much as 7 adult elephants.  historians believe that the stones were probably brought from a quarry in wales 240 miles away.  THAT IS A LONG WAY AWAY.  (as you may have noticed, the audioguide gave me a lot of useful information.)

it was also incredible to see how precise they were - an archway marks where the sun would rise if you were standing in the exact center of the circle on the summer solstice and another marks where it would rise on the winter solstice - seven archways away.  in june the sun would rise through one archway, in july the next one over, august the next, all the way to december, when the sunrise would start its way back towards june.  (am i explaining this well?)  the people who built stonehenge were smart(er than me).

stonehenge + go ape = the best day in a long time.

go ape

this week for my day off i went to "go ape" with two of my coworkers (mike and rosie) and the son of another coworker (jakob).  "go ape" is a high ropes course thing with different tasks to complete HIGH UP IN THE AIR and then a zipline that takes you down from UP HIGH.  there are 5 stations, and once you're trained you just go off with your friends (and no guide) and go through them.  (if you click the link above you can get a better idea of the complete "go ape" experience.)  we "went ape" for about 2 hours, and it was so. much. fun.  i am not necessarily in my comfort zone while up high and doing scary things, but i was very brave and did all the elements.  you all would have been proud of me.

we took 13 videos.  they are hilarious.  i had to make a youtube channel to show you guys all of them / give you about 30 minutes of good procrastination while at work.  let me draw your particular attention to videos # 10, 12, & 13.

note #1: the cinematography isn't the best.  we were high up in the air or on the ground and shaky from being high up in the air.  don't judge.

note #2: my nickname "logdog" has evolved this summer into "logpoodle."  unclear why.  but a funny name nonetheless.

really thought-provoking article from the new york times, for those who are interested!

why executions should be televised

old + new

garden party

other claire came to visit on sunday and we went to the annual oxford garden party that is hosted by the founder of the summer program where we work.  think: hats encouraged for ladies, little tea sandwiches, lots of wine.  in addition, we had gorgeous weather - 75-ish degrees, sunny.  perfection!

i had all these plans to show other claire around oxford - st. mary's church, the sheldonian, the ratcliffe camera, the covered market - and in fact we only had time to (a) eat, (b) drink, (c) garden party, and (d) sleep.  oops.  it was so fun to show her the college, though, and to introduce her to my friends here.  they loved her (of course).

at the garden party we took a picture of my whole office!  these are the people i work with on a daily basis - and socialize with on a daily basis.  love them!  as i've said before, we have a great office this year.

i'll continue to say how shocking it is that the program ends on saturday and i'll be sleeping in my bed in atlanta next tuesday night.  wow.  i will absolutely miss this place and these people...but i'm also ready to get home and back to my 11-months-a-year life.

the high tomorrow is supposed to be 28 degrees celsius (82 degrees fahrenheit).  um, this will be warmest temperature i've experienced since june 21st, when i left atlanta.  hooray for this warm weather...but i'm NOT looking forward to atlanta's heat when i return...

this makes the norway attacks feel real.  and, still - always - incredibly incredibly sad.  sigh.

july: 19, 20, 21, 22

as this summer in oxford comes to a close (sigh), summer comes to a close, too.  assuming my flight is on time, i'll be pulling into school to start my first day of work exactly 15 hours after my plane lands at hartsfield-jackson international airport.  the almost unlimited free time will come to a close, and reading will take a back seat to work.

in my second (and final) month of freedom in 2011 i read:


a storm of swords, by george r.r. martin (the third book in the series.  in college i read the first 3 books, i thought, but halfway through this book a MAJOR CHARACTER DIES and i did NOT remember that, so i'm thinking perhaps i didn't finish this book the first time around?  either way, this book was really good and i'm pretty embarrassed to admit how invested i am in these characters' lives.  i have my name on the list at the library for the fourth book [and the fifth, which just came out this summer, so of course that list is realllllly long], so expect more george r.r. martin in future posts.)

moon tiger, by penelope lively (a girl i work with here in oxford let me borrow this book, which i LOVED.  it has a very similar feel to white oleander and the english patient if you liked either of those books.  the author puts words together in a way that is beautiful.  a storm of swords was all about the action; this book was all about the writing.  i'd highly recommend it.)

the prime of miss jean brodie, by muriel spark (this is one of those books you're SUPPOSED TO READ if you want to call yourself a cultured person.  right?  that was my perception.  it made it onto my list for that reason, and then seemed a fitting book to read while in the UK, as it's set in edinburgh.  i liked this book, but i don't know if i quite GOT why it's so famous.  the main character irritated me because she did all these things that teachers aren't supposed to do.  let her students into her personal life.  told them who to dislike.  used them to get information about other teachers.  tried to get one of them to have an affair with another teacher (?!?!).  i have trouble liking books if i don't like the main character, and i didn't like jean brodie, even though i knew that was the POINT.  i did love the way that you sometimes couldn't tell what was fact and what was the girls' perception of facts.  i did a lot of questioning throughout.  i'd KIND OF recommend it, i guess?)

never let me go, by kazuo ishiguro (i saw the movie last year and LOVED IT.  really an incredible story - a world just a tiny bit different than our own - with a great cast.  i liked the book, too, but (of course) i think i would have liked it more if i hadn't already known what was going to happen.  sigh.  why did i have to read the book second!  i'd highly recommend this, though - an easy read, but it stuck with me - i'd think about it at random times during the day.  i won't tell you what it's about, though, because you are meant to discover that over the course of the book.  it's set in an english boarding school; i can safely tell you that.)