Unabridged Opinions

I’ve been in the U.K. nearly ten months now, and it has been amazing.  Rainy, snowy, sunny, exciting, (and, during driving lessons, occasionally terrifying), fun, and fascinating. Since February (when I have been keeping an “official” (okay, June is a bit shaky) tally), I have read over 150 book and started reviewing for Bookgeeks.  Who, I must say, are all sorts of awesome.

Aside from the fantastic Bookgeeks, I’ve also finally started reaching out and actively building a life here. Mostly by learning how to drive, which I must admit has been terrifying, hysterical, and frustrating all at once. The hysterical bits are usually at the beginning of the lesson when I reach for the seatbelt on the wrong side or (just the once!) stick my hand out the window while I thought I was reaching for the stick shift. Oops. Luckily, I appear to have the worlds-most-unflappable driving instructor, so he just gently corrects me, and we move on. (After telling me the story of one student who managed to drive into the centre of a roundabout and then attempt to flee the car in his stress and terror). Trust me, being a middle school teacher and being a driving instructor are closer than you might believe.  At least the fourteen year olds don’t have control of a thousand pounds of steel. Continue reading

Librarything has just been going from strength to strength lately. I’ve been a member since 2006, and Librarything became my favourite *thing* ever when I moved all of my books from San Diego, California to Manchester, England late last year. I had a list of every book, organized by box, painlessly scanned in with a barcode scanner. In fact, the only bit of the process that was disorganized was me–I stopped about every third book or so, distracted by favourite paragraphs.

And recently, Librarything introduce *collections*. Now, if you are a at all like me, you….overthink…the organization of your books. I like to claim it as a necessity. With over a thousand books, surely it’s better if I’m organized? I had always loved Libarything’s tags, but, being the uhhhh…focused?…person that I am, I didn’t like adding books I didn’t own to my library because they weren’t, well, mine. I know, I could have tagged them, but they still would have counted into my “library” total, and that just felt wrong. Now, though, now I have collections. With collections, I can have a section of books named “read but not owned” where I can list all of my borrowed and library checked-out books. And, of course, now I have a wishlist. And a wishlist widget (both above and to the left). Continue reading

Since well before we moved in to our current flat, there has been a derelict building (a large one) on the corner of the road.  Surrounded by a frighteningly spiky fencing and well-established bramble bush that hid most of the building from view in a very Sleeping Beauty sort of way, it had been steadily crumbling at its own pace (occasionally helped along, I think, by squatters and various animals).  Recently, we’d noticed that the trees were being torn out and the bramble flattened.  Suddenly, a few days ago, the building was gone and only piles of bricks remained.

The scary fence is still there (hence the vaguely surreptitious photos), but it has been amazing to watch this building being taken down so quickly and efficiently.  One day: building. Next day: bricks.  And all without us hearing any noise at all.  We’re only about half a block away–we regularly hear people driving by on the main road  (and experienced a mini-earthquake when a neglected church collapsed across the way)–but this building came down without a sound. There wasn’t even any beeping or equipment noise–let alone, you know, bricks falling down and crashing to the ground.

The building was definitely a hazard, and I’m glad it’s down.  I hope that whatever is put in its place is functional and not terrible looking. The plot of land it stood on is really quite large–the building used to be a medium sized hotel (a fact we discovered when the brambles had been torn up, and we could see the sign), and there was still room for grounds around it.  We have no idea what will go up–although odds are that it will be a block of flats (or just sit there empty for awhile) or some other sort of housing.  Either way though, I’ll always be impressed with the speed and skill with which this one was taken down to make some room.