I checked out hotel prices for Newcastle, and found 'Roselodge House', a weird mix of hostel/B&B/renovated church. 20 for a night! Obviously, despite the terrible reviews, I couldn't say no. Plus, it's not far at all from the airport (if the website's to be believed), meaning something as luxurious as taking a cab is on the table. Hooray! People have been describing how on the Newcastle metro you have to take the right train, or else you'll just sail on by the airport. I am exactly the kind of person that happens to, so I'm very happy to have other options.

One last thing to do: find someplace in Durham market that sells 'suet'. Mom's decided she's making traditional Christmas pudding, but I have to find the stuff first.

But it was close there, for a while. The portable reliquaries paper was a disaster, but a valuable lesson was learned about actually looking at the evidence available before deciding a research paper topic. The saints' shrines, not too bad, I think my writing improved from one to the other. Bizarrely enough, my strongest piece was probably the critical review of Petersfinger, proving that I'm still better at writing English papers than I am at writing Archaeology ones. I need to work on that.

Now that I'm done though, everyone is gone, and I think I'll do likewise; I didn't get to travel AT ALL this term, like I had hoped. Of course, I only have a few days before I have to be at Newcastle airport, and damn but all I want to do is sleep. The traveling may be limited. Like, to an overnight stay in Newcastle.

One week to go before my papers for the term are due. I am screwed beyond reasonable belief. As such, I will be avoiding the fun parts of the internet as much as possible, but I wanted to just throw out why.

• Reliquaries and The Portable Dead (2000 words, outlook unfavorable)
• Early Shrines and English Saints (3000 words, outlook mild)
• Critical Review of the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Petersfinger (??? words, answer hazy try again)

This is so unfortunate. What's "Real America" to do? (You have probably already seen this, and I'm sorry.)

One of the funniest things to me was how an Arkansas Time article about the video spent half its time discussing the effect on the tourism industry this video would cause. This is becoming a frequent point in a lot of gay rights discussions; California's Republican Governor came out in favor of gay marriage (not that it did much good) and flatly admitted it was because California needed the marriage-tourism dollars. On the other side of the country, shifting some of that sweet gay money out of mere civil-unioning Connecticut was cited as one of Massachusetts's gay marriage motives. This discussion may be just a product of the (often true) stereotype that the Gays bring with them great restaurants, cute shops, awesome clothing shops, and city beautification projects... It reminds me an awful lot of that Will & Grace episode where a gay couple is considering moving to a small town, but are worried about small town prejudice, then at the end it's revealed everyone in the small town is desperate for them to move in so that the town can finally have the perks of having a gay community: i.e. the restaurants, shops, and nightlife.

Even if the tourism factor is just an invention, it doesn't make it any less funny that the 'They're Coming To Your Town' DVD has probably sealed the fate of the small town it features: gay all the way. Because a big piece of Ozarks's economy is tourism, it being historically a Christian resort town, and now, as the writer from gaynewsbureau.com the Arkansas Times quotes points out:

Things are getting a little nervy: I've got a lot of writing between now and December 17th that I don't feel too confident about, I have to have serious thoughts about my dissertation and my PhD application before the end of term, and there's going to be some kind of ball in college before Christmas which means finding a dress that's a solid mix of cheap and not embarrassing.
Obviously, the dress is the thing I think about when the others get too scary. Ebay has been my go-to, without the greatest success, but it's a fun way to kill time. Here is my attempt to encapsulate the experience:

• "So... It's pretty much a plain black dress, with a weird-ass cape."
• "Goddamn that is an unforgiving dress. And it is not a gown. Nightgown, maybe."
• "...Wow... The entire dress is ruffles...
• "Why are all these photos of the 'evening gown' outside, in broad daylight? Walk-of-Shame preview or something?"
• "I love the Jane Austen/Regency look, but I'd rather not be known as 'that girl who wore a costume to the ball'."
• "Wow. That dress is almost violently 80s, yet it's from the 50s. Does it time travel?"
• "Okay, that's a muumuu. A classy muumuu, but still."
• "That is the cheapest-looking £55.00 dress I've ever seen. And by now, I've seen a lot."

So, Britain has this whole National Healthcare Service thing, and I think it's dandy. The most miserable part of my day was finding the University NHS center... Though to be honest, that was pretty awful. Even though I knew where I wanted to go, the streets signs were invisible and the roads shot off in weird directions. Near the end my entire strategy was just going into places that would know where it was, asking directions, and then using the new directions to gauge my progress of following the old directions. 'Guess and check' as a system of navigation is at its worst when your throat is swelled halfway shut. (That's exaggerating. But the basic fact is, this trip to the doctor was pretty much motivated by how I could feel my glands whenever I got up the nerve to swallow, and after 4 days with no improvement, figured it was time to make a grab for some penicillin.)

I hadn't registered yet, and half-figured I get turned away, but I filled out a bizarrely short form and got an 'open surgery' appointment, which is just a scary way of saying 'walk in' appointment. A short wait later, I was in a room with a very nice lady who took a good look, remarked on how red my throat was and how my glands were definitely swollen (always nice to find out you're not just being a baby), and wrote me out a prescription right away. I was in and out in about half and hour total.
I had a long wait in Boots, while they were checking and labeling and taking care of about a dozen other people, but I got the stuff, and am currently 2 wonderful doses in. It isn't as cool as that 'Z-Pak' thing I once got from my GP at home, which was just 3 once-a-day doses of what had to be a nuclear blast of anti-biotics, but it was only 7.10 for the 2 boxes and I'm already de-swollen and feeling pretty great about mold, the good Doctor Florey, and life in general.

Last entry of the trilogy, I swear. Tomorrow I have to break out my ballot and fill it out again-- it came the day of November 4th, and I had already filled out an emergency ballot and sent it in. To make the whole thing legit I have to send in the official ballot, leaving me with the unique job of voting for people who've already won. I'm fully intending to do it, but damnit that I don't get the thing I want now, which is to magically have a vote against any of the anti-gay measures that made it through this year. And I already spent my birthday and Christmas presents from God this year on Obama.
But the upside is, I have three months worth of time to kill. I don't really know how much time I'm going to free up by not checking polling data every 5 seconds (rough estimate: 5 hours a day) but it's definitely enough to write some letters. Proposition 8 was just a stupid and annoying joke until it passed and became a travesty, and I want a do-over. Nothing is ever over in American politics, and while it's insulting that intolerance demands time, attention, and money, this is just one of those things that has to get put back to right.

I'm just so goddamn proud you guys. I've been crying on-and-off all morning, since I checked my laptop and saw what can only be described as an unimpeachable victory. Some of the crying has been relevant ("The White House was built by slaves, and now Michelle Obama, descended from slaves, is our First Lady.") some of it... Not so much ("They're getting a puppy! *sob*"). I am also very happy that Chicago didn't ignite from the pure heat of its collective joy (or fireworks). It's a good day, you guys.



(Language warning on the video.)

Get drunk on my behalf, since I got sand-bagged by a miserable flu.

I decided this weekend (and since I didn't have any classes scheduled for Thursday and Friday, it was a long weekend) to sleep off the persistent sore throat I've had most of the week. And since I get about 5 emails a week from my stupid college email, I also decided to ignore my email for this long weekend of reading in bed. Yes, it was nice, and I'm feeling much better. But I'm sure you know where this is going:
Turns out I DID have a class Friday afternoon, just one that I hadn't been told was scheduled. I was informed/reminded the day before, and now I have to write a really groveling email apologizing for missing the class, where we were supposed to talk to our supervisor about what we'll be doing for the assignment that's 33% of our grade. Additionally, a professor from another class wanted to talk to me about my paper topic Friday, and I blew her off too (that offense being the lesser, the groveling email has already been sent). Huzzah. I'll probably be able to get both rescheduled, but I just feel really stupid and pissed off that I created this whole mountain out of a mild cold.

Of course, it could be worse: I could be that lady who denied children candy if they didn't support McCain. I wonder if she can even still find her front door under all those rotten eggs.