i tried to settle in last night and do some cooking but i was thwarted by the veggie grocery store near my house, which claimed to be open from 9am ’till late, but in reality is only open ’till 7pm. i’m trying to figure out under what circumstances does 7pm constitute ‘late’. sux.

unfortunately, i had no plan b, because i had to put all of my effort into plan a (going out, finding the one store i set out to find, coming home). it was also dumping rain, as it is wont to do in edinburgh in march, so i ducked into a conveniently-located thai restaurant.

i know less than 10 phrases in thai, one of which gets some use: i am vegan. it is phonetically written something like ‘ahan jay’, which in english is three syllables at most but in thai is something like seven and contains the queen mother of all diphthongs. usually when i mangle this phrase, thai people look at me like i just meowed at them, but last night the waitress said, ‘you’re vegetarian? me too.’ this was only funny to me because i went to the superstore (supermarket) yesterday at lunch and had to repeat myself three times when speaking english to the cashier.

yesterday was my first bike commute. it’s 10 miles each way, some of which is on wet cobblestones. i can’t believe that they hold bike races over those things. butchers. the rest is on really potholed rural roads and nicely-paved bike paths, which i think were old railroad lines. it was gorgeously sunny on the way in and wet at the start of the ride home but quickly dried out. the countryside here is even more lush than i thought it would be and is full of the old-world charm. i saw an incredibly bright double rainbow, a pack of shetland ponies, and heard some farmer scaring crows off with what sounded like a small canon.

it’s pretty cool here. i’m glad i got some sun yesterday. i was kind of worried that i wasn’t going to see any until i got back to seattle.

ok, i’m a little more awake now that i have seven consecutive hours of sleep behind me.

there was some debate whether to get a car or not. i am somewhat anxious about driving on the other side of the street, so i bailed on the car even before i got here. i think this was the right decision. if this city was laid out like phoenix or los angeles or even seattle, i don’t think it would be a problem. the thing is, edinburgh seems to be laid out like boston, only with narrower streets that seem to change names four times over the course of a half mile. also, they have charming point-of-interest street signs that read ’superstore police hq’ and ‘crematorium’.

the thing about working in scotland is that it isn’t like being on vacation in scotland, which is something i didn’t really consider. i don’t think i’m going to get a chance to see edinburgh during the day until weekend, though i may try to sneak out early every now and again and hit a museum or two.

today is my first bike ride to work. a lot of the streets are cobblestone. in seattle when a street still has the original cobblestones, they call it ‘old world charm’. here in the old world, they just call it ‘charm’.

that last sentence was a lie.

i heard bagpipes last night while i was hanging out at dominic’s. i looked over at him and he said, ‘i swear that i’ve never heard bagpipes from this apartment.’ i called bullshit. everyone here plays bagpipes and the whole world knows it.

i saw scottish window washers today. they were washing the windows of a four-story building. in the america, they’d be on a scaffold. in scotland, they stand on the ground and use a 40′ long stick with a squeegee on the end that takes three dudes to operate. i got pictures but forgot the cable required to get pictures onto this machine. i’ll have mia bring it next week.

i built up my bike tonight, in the hopes that it’ll be nice enough to ride tomorrow. scotland is making me miss the relative dry climate of seattle. the upside is that i am getting good pictures for my series of rain pictures.

i went to the ’superstore’ today to get fruit for lunch. the ’superstore’ has a fishmonger. i know this because there’s a giant sign on the wall that read ‘fishmonger’. i got pictures of that, too. you’ll see them next week.

ok, jetlag is setting in. i’m not loving it. and i’m unable to begin a paragraph that doesn’t begin with i.

the flight was long. i was sitting next to your indian gramma. she was nice but was hanging over my seat and i had a hard time dislodging her when i needed to get in or out. she wouldn’t get up and wanted me to squeeze past/over her. yeah, no. get up, gramma. i think that transport is maybe done differently in india, if i may extrapolate from that one data point and a bunch of hearsay. but i’m in scotland now so i’ll get on with a scotland anecdote…

a very nice fellow, dominic, from the amazon office (it’s called s9 here, in case you hear me referring to it as such) very graciously picked me (and my bike) up at the airport, took me to my flat, drove me to his flat where his wife cooked dinner, and then sent me home with some fruit for morning. so far, so good.

in the airport carpark, as i was trying to get in the passenger side of dominic’s car, i saw a six-year-old girl getting into the driver side of the car next to us. i thought to myself, ‘whoa. it’s kinda fucked up that they let six-year-olds drive here, but i should respect our cultural differences because i am a guest in their country.’ then i realized that it was me who was on the wrong side of the car. everyone else was fine. i am glad i am only riding a bike here, this way i can only really hurt myself.

oh, and i learned something today: don’t try to get through passport control at heathrow by telling them that you’re here to ‘work’ and that you have no idea where you’re staying, it raises a flag.

on saturday, i leave for scotland. i’ll be there for a month, working on a top secret project. work is sending me. though scotland is not a country i’ve ever really considered visiting, i’m excited to be going. i don’t think i ever considered visiting because it’s not warm and it’s kind of expensive, re: weak dollar. so to my mind, there were already two strikes against it. oh, and the hard-to-decipher accent was the third. the scottish mouth and the american ear don’t seem to line up, or at least their mouths don’t line up with my ear. though pc mentioned that if i can understand them, they’re from edinburgh; if i can’t, they’re from glasgow. i’m considering myself lucky that i’ll be in the former.

so over the next few days i’ll be boxing up my bike, getting my computers together, and putting some clothes in a bag (hiking, biking, running, regular). and then gone. i’ll let you know how it goes. there will be blogging.

from my publisher:
“Unfortunately the royalty statements reflect sell-in (which was great) rather than sell-thru (which has not been as great), so the next time you receive a statement, you may see a lower number, depending on returns.”

glossary:
sell-in — total number of books sent to bookstores
sell-thru — total number of books sold by bookstores to consumers

i figured something was amiss.

the thing about blogs is that it’s easier to post a correction than rewrite the original entry with slightly corrected information/a new punchline. also, i love being wrong and then correcting myself. not kidding. wait, let me amend that: i love being wrong. period. wrong = potential for a good story. right = boring.

i just got the sales report for dear future me (the book you’ve been meaning to purchase but haven’t gotten around to doing yet). matt and i guessed that we’d sold something like 200 books, including friends and family and people who actually have letters published.

turns out we guessed wrong, unless i’m misreading the sales report, which is completely within the realm of possibility. if i’m reading it right, we sold 4,200 books. i’m going to do some more investigating because it kind of sounds like a) bullshit and/or b) maybe i don’t understand how book sales work.

steinberg and i have been dating for four years as of march 1st. to celebrate, we went out to the olympic peninsula. it’s a really amazing place. huge mountains, views of canada, and beautiful beaches (and sometimes good surf, but not yesterday, luckily). we wandered around these beaches i’ve been wanting to show her, we went on a short hike, and took a short xc ski up at hurricane ridge. evidence below.

more photos here.

strangely, it only just occurred to me that if we had gone on our first date one day earlier than we did in 2004, we’d only celebrate it every four years. leap-year anniversary would maybe be cooler. anyway, it was a perfect weekend. thanks, berg!