here's where i've been all day, and where i'm reading tonight.

here is the edinburgh university creative writing website that i put together for the class. special thanks to amanda for her help.

the view of edinburgh from arthur's seat is fantastic during the day. it is also very cool to see lit up at night, esp the castle brightly lit up the top of the mound.

the next few weeks look like they could be quite full in my calendar. posts may be infrequent as i try to work on more projects and spend more time with friends in the same amount of time. i'm not a big fan of time...it keeps running out on me.

stagnation would kill me. (i think there's a poem in that somewhere)

meanwhile, ryan is in the galapagos islands.

a teaser of my highland photos. upper left: Strath na Sealga (strath means wide valley--wider than a glen); lower left: Old Man of Storr (Isle of Skye); right: coast of Loch Brittle--i'm the dot on the point of the cliff.

back from the highland trip. it was great. we covered a little over 35 miles in various parts of the northwest and skye. many many pictures taken, some of which i hope you'll find here when i get around to it.

i sent dave off this morning and now have the fun task of unpacking and cleaning.

dave made it here w/o much trouble today. we'll be in the highlands for the next six days. torridon and skye.

i'm the proud new owner of a brand new, never been used, university mattress.

sam and his friend inder from canada missed their flight to italy today. that was not good. but i don't really feel like dwelling on the negative right now.

it's amazing what can happen and go through one's head in a 24 hour period.

yahoo mail has some filters to block spam, which although not perfect, are way better than hotmails. i also have a dice.com account that emails me contracting job postings based on criteria that i set up. what i find interesting is that when there are no new postings, and i get an "empty" email from dice, yahoo puts it in my bulk mail folder, but when i get a "real" email, it delivers it to my inbox. i don't know if it was designed to do such things or not, but i like the way it works.

salam was able to post some 'back' entries of his experience of the war. this has got to be unprecidented in terms of having a first hand account available to so many people and in such a short time after the incident. if nothing else, it provides one iraqi's feeling and attitude toward the war.

so, i don't watch much tv, but appartently this commercial (requires flash) is playing in the UK.

i feel i have a lot of people to write to. i know i'm way behind on writing paper letters. if i've seemed unresponsive, bear with me, i've just been trying to get lots of things done. after i get back from my highland trip i'm going to make an effort to catch up on some correspondence.

bought new boots and a waterproof jacket for next weeks highlands excursion with dave. i'm wearing my boots now i'm so excited.

sometimes i do some basic reseach while writing a poem, just to make sure it makes sense. in this case, i found an amazing site on owls.

i saw X-men 2 last night. i agree with ryan.

self-integrity. i think sometimes people have a hard time understanding why i won't do or say things even if they've 'given me permission'. if i refuse to give advise on something, or refuse to repeat something that someone else has said to me, it is because i've made a commitment to myself. breaking promises made with others is an incredible act of dishonesty, breaking one to yourself is denying your own self worth.

i think people suffer far more often from doing this than from dealing with external relationship issues. sure, they're related, but self demeaning acts are the ones that cause more hurt, more emotional damage, and are much harder to convince yourself someone else is to blame.

for those that want to reminisce

NOOO!!!! Mapblast.com (vicinity) has been bought out by Micro$oft and is not part of MSN maps and directions page.