Oxford 1

To begin, I have every reason to expect that blogging will be very difficult for me. I've never been able to keep a journal, or a diary (what we call journals when we are little, with a particular emphasis on playground romance). I actually have a distinct tendency to start journals with one or two entries, whenever some significant life change occurs, and then leave them - 98% unfinished - on my already overflowing bookshelf.

The benefit of a blog is that I am, at least theoretically, writing for other people. The problem with this is it leads immediately to second thoughts on whether or not my life is actually interesting enough to share. Do I presume a level of unmerited importance in the world by starting a blog?

Well, I am willing to suspend all of those misgivings for the moment because I am going abroad. And frankly, when one is abroad, communication is difficult. So this blog is for you, and for me... so I don't have to retell the same stories over and over again when I'm "catching up" with people. So I can ramble when I feel like it (i.e. now) and stay silent when I feel like it - I can suffer the consequences of telling and retelling the stories from those times later.

This, now, is just practice. Hopefully I'm setting myself up for more than a 98% complete blog, though at least I'm not wasting paper or a lovely bound notebook with a cheap brass lock. The facts: I absolutely thought that I was supposed to leave for Oxford, via a 5 day stop in New Jersey/New York to visit relatives, tonight. It turns out that I am mistaken, and I am instead leaving tomorrow. Yay! one more day of packing. Yay! one more day to hopefully finish reading the novel that I checked out from the local library (Howard's End, if anyone was interested).

Life these past two week as been a confusing paradox of boring and busy. I could of done much more, but I didn't; and in any case I moved my mother into a new house - a very tangible mark of progress. Moving is also accompanied but the pleasant and occasionally unsettling events of discovering long lost artifacts of past lives (first grade, fourth grade, etc.). One of my favorite discoveries was a life-sized model of the vegetable-sucking bunny, Bunnicula, from the popular childrens book. It must have been from a book report - but look! Isn't he handome/terrifying?


I tried to read the Chronicles of Narnia in preparation for my tutorial on C.S. Lewis but failed in favor of my cravings for some kind of Victorian novel. I failed those cravings by checking out an early 20th century novel. I am beginning to worry about my ability to finish it before I board my red eye tomorrow night. I would read it now but first I have to finish packing and before that I have to finish writing this post and before that I had to finish all other manners of procrastination. (My favorite among them, reenacting the facial - facial? - expressions of great white sharks with a label reading as such on my forehead. Nobody quite understands you like sisters, eh?)

Heidi, as great white shark; Dana, as giant squid

Dana as giant squid - my personal favorite. I hope this is anonymous enough for her taste.

Wow, that was a sensational post. Tune in next time for my interpretation of sea cucumbers... oh, and I won't be in California then! That would be significant.