British Museum

Sorry for being so slow to get these up. Our trip must have wore me out because I was feeling pretty run down yesterday and didn't even realize I hadn't posted on the blog until I woke up this morning.

The front of the British Museum:

Marble statues from one of the Parthenon pediments:














Socrates:

London Weekend

Thursday:
We traveled by train to London, Liverpool Street and took a cab to our hotel. Dinner at the Texas Embassy. After Texas gained independence from Mexico and before it was part of the US it was it's own country and had an embassy in London very near the location of the restaurant. So says the menu.

Friday:
The British Museum! We spent a long time in the Roman and Greek areas. I got to see the Elgin Marbles. After lunch we ran through the "must see"s including the Rosetta Stone.
Friday night was at the opera (in my black dress) to see La Boheme.

Saturday:
The Original Tour. Did you know that Trafalgar Square has no pigeons because a hawker and his hawk are there all day? Did you know that if you sit in the top of a tour bus in freezing weather for a long time your legs can get numb from cold without you realizing it until you stand up?
We added layers before going on the Thames river cruise. We also stopped by a retro clothing store we discovered and I got a dress for the upcoming 1960's Ancient House event.
Saturday night we saw Avenue Q. It spoke to me as a college graduate (especially a college graduate with a "BA in English.")

Sunday:
Leisurely lunch with Gray (a dear friend from UGA who is studying in London). We ate at a restaurant that serves dum sum. Shared food in small portions that keeps coming as long as you keep ordering. Perfect for catching up and reminiscing. Then the train ride back to home sweet home.

Pictures will follow after I unpack.

London

We are spending the weekend in London.

John says there is no internet at the hotel, so Lappy is staying here.

You probably won't hear from me again until Monday, but I should have a lot to say!

I've Got Style!

Well, I finally sat down and made the style sheet for the website today. Now I've got font, color, and fun times with the links. I also added that icon that shows up in the address bar, but not on the style sheet. I had to put that on every page. I suppose I'll keep tweaking the site as I learn how to do fancier stuff, but it is more or less done for now.




That's pretty much all I've done today. But here is a random picture I took for Amanda of the panda on the side of the tobacco shop.

Georgia Download Destination

I am sorry to say that all the audio book suggestions I got are books that are not available in mp3 format on Georgia Download Destination. I will keep your suggestions for some future time when I have more access to audio books.

I have to say that it is great that I can get audio books with my PINES card even though I'm all the way over here in Norwich. But, user needs are not truly being met. The vast majority of the books are not available in a format that will allow you to put them on an ipod. And the vast majority of the books that will work on an ipod are checked out. Because the vast majority of GDD users have ipods.

I know, I know. It's not GDD's fault. The people who hold the rights for the books decide which formats they want the books to be available in. And many of these people are wary of Apple because Apple makes it harder to keep people from stealing stuff.

And this seems to be true. Books downloaded from GDD are supposed to automatically delete themselves from your computer after 7 days. I have an Apple and the book did not delete itslef. When I downloaded a new book, I got a message notifying me that I should delete the old book (and I did).

So I guess, if you allow your book to be downloaded by ipod users they might be able to keep it indefinately. But if you don't, you've very likely created an audio book that no one will listen to.

The first book I checked out from GDD was Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley. Yeah, I got it just because the main character is named Socrates. Pretty good. I wonder if there are comparative lit classes out there reading this along side Plato's Socratic dialogues.

Now I'm listenting to Treasure Island becuase I haven't read it in a long time, it's fun, and out of five pages of "classics" it was one of only three books that were checked in.

Snow!

It actually snowed pretty much all day today. I went running in the snow this morning, which was mostly powdery and not too slippery.

Then John and I went in the garden to play in the snow this afternoon. John made a tiny snowman named George. And I made a snow cat.

Nelson Museum

This is a picture of John in front of the Norfolk Nelson Museum in Great Yarmouth. It's a pretty neat place, and very kid friendly, which meant there were things for me to touch! We learned all about Nelson as a leader, a strategist, and a husband (not sew gud on dat count, akshully). I really enjoyed the explanations of how he won some of his big sea battles. I was not, however, thrilled that a "sleeping rat" was in one of the Georgian room feely boxes. We now own a Nelson encyclopedia so that we can look up anything relating to Nelson we might want to know at any time. And John picked out set of ship book ends.


Here are some pictures from yesterday's trip to the Imperial War Museum. I was too lazy to go upstairs to get the camera when I was writing in my blog last night.