Woah, that's deep...

So, like I was saying. The crop circle that was deemed 'crap' was this one. Though we were bummed that we didn't get to see one, we did go to a really, uhm, interesting (mind-stretching?)series of lectures, The Summer 2006 Lectures put on by a group called Temporary Temples. Three of the four speakers were really good. Slightly beyond our clear comprehension perhaps, but still very good to listen to. Michael Glickman is someone K is familiar with through her work for S (in LA). He spoke about the lovely and complex geometry found in crop circles and other sacred art. He is an excellent speaker, smooth and self-deprecating. The next speaker was Dan Vidler. He was a bit more down to earth, looking like a sleepier version of the singer of Coldplay. His topic was the ground-level structure of crop circles. Things got a lot more complicated and abstract when Jude Currivan spoke about multi-dimensional realities. It sounds very 'airy fairy' but it was a very matter-of-fact explanation of how the universe is interconnected, conscious and holographic. The final speaker shall be known as JDV. He spent the entire 30+ minutes without finishing a sentence or saying anything with real meaning. We are assuming that he was severely jet-lagged and that isn't how he normally is! His main point (we think) is that he never used to believe in crop circles but now he does.

The lectures took place in the Devizes, Wiltshire, town hall, which gave the whole thing quite a bit of clout. We were expecting it to be in some out-of-the-way pub hall with a whole bunch of slightly batty hippies wearing mismatched tie-dyes and Birkenstocks. It was great to see that the audience was mostly "normal" people like K and I. A group like that just might be able to convince the rest of the world that there is a lot more to crop circles than long-debunked hoaxes. One thing is for sure, there is no easy explanation for how/why they appear, but that's another story.












Things we ruminated on or came to understand during the course of these lectures:

-If the reciprocal of the past is the future, then the reciprocal of the present is nothing.

-There is a harmonic relationship between everything in the universe.

-Geometry is beautiful.

-There are a lot of crop circles that have squares in them or insinuate a square.










The next series of lectures is in July 2007. We definitely want to go again! Hopefully, there will be some crop circles this weekend. Suzanne is going to call us if there is.

Crap Circle

Ok, there was a crop circle, but it was "crap" (i.e.- not very good and very likely a hoax), so we didn't go see it. Suzanne and her cronies checked it out. Instead, we met up with them at a restaurant in Marlborough for dinner before heading to Devizes for the lecture. It was a very thought-provoking, consciousness-expanding evening. Sacred geometry is amazing. My brain hurts from trying to comprehend it!

We just got home. Will write more later.

Crop Circle Hunt

We were told yesterday that there weren't any new crop circles nearby, so we might not be able to visit one today. Instead we would get together for dinner and then the crop circle lecture. Hopefully, a crop circle would appear over night and we would then make our plans for heading up to the area.

Suzanne called this morning and said that she was still waiting for her "spies" to tell her if there is a new circle. We made plans to meet at Longleat at 2pm if the day turned out to be crop circle-less. A bit disappointing, but what can you do?

We were about to leave for Longleat when she called again and said that there are rumors of a new circle nearby. They are "chasing" it right now. She told as to wait at home and she would get back to us soon, we just might be able to see one after all. So, that's what we're doing.

More to follow...

Good News

Today, just as we were about to leave for work, the postman delivered our mail. Two great things arrived: a letter from Pearsons and one from the DVLA (driver's license agency). Inside the letter from Pearsons was a check for our full deposit and a refund of our rent from the 18th, a nice hefty check to put in our very beleaguered bank account. Despite all of our extra outgoings this month, we were able to get through it without overdrawing our account (though we did add a bit to our credit card). K ran up to HSBC to put the check in right away. Now we're pretty much in the clear.

The letter from the DVLA was my passport. I had to send it to them as ID for my driver's license application (starting the long, complicated process of getting a UK license... more about that later). It was a relief to get the passport back. A bit unnerving to send it away in the mail!

---

Another busy weekend coming up. Ever since we moved to England, our social calendar has just flourished! Sheesh! Anyway, we're going to do some chores tomorrow during the day (groceries, DIY, more unpacking, etc.). Then one of my friends from UEA is going to pop by after doing some apartment hunting in Bournemouth. He and his girlfriend will likely crash here. On Sunday, we are going up to Wiltshire to see a crop circle or two (perhaps this one, the most recent). The woman that K worked for in LA (a writer, researcher, etc.) is here for about a month for her annual trip to see crop circles. She invited us up to go out to one with her and then to a lecture by a few crop circle experts. Should be VERY interesting, to say the least. We've been wanting to see one for a long time! Planning on bringing our cameras, but electronics have been known to stop working inside authentic crop circles, so we'll see what happens.

More about crop circles HERE.

Back in "Bomo"

We got back to Bournemouth last night around 9:30. Miss the animals a bit, but it's great to be released of the pressure of taking care of them. Horses are a bit tricky.

Nice to be back in the new apartment. There was a mid-day Florida-style thunderstorm today with nice torrential rain coming dawn. The grass here really needed that; looking quite brown.

Today we went to our local Tesco supermarket for the first time. There's a big sign out front that says "24 Hours", then in smaller print below it gives the opening hours of 8am - 10pm Monday thru Friday and 10am - 4pm Sunday. What loophole they're using to advertise themselves as a 24-hour supermarket I do not know. It's a Tesco 24-hours a day even if it's not open (i.e.- doesn't masquerade as a roller-skating rink at night)? Or is it just open 24 hours in total? Shall have to ask the manager some day.

Hot House, Horses, Dogs

Today was supposed to be the hottest day in British history. The forecast was for 96-97 degrees Fahrenheit. It hasn't quite reached that recording breaking temperature where we are, but they're saying it's the hottest day in London since 1911 (but no, global warming isn't happening... yeah, right). It's about 95 here. Hot enough! The air feels heavy. Anyway...


We're a week into our house/horse/dog-sitting holiday. Moved into our apartment on the 8th and then 3 days later we drove back up to Winchester (actually Hursley, just outside Winchester) to start house-sitting for my former boss. They live in a thatch-roof cottage with a sizable back yard and several acres of pasture for their two horses. They also have two dogs, Jack Russel terriers, a male and a female. The female is the male's mom. They're very cute.

Though the four animals have a set routine that they go by, it's not too bad taking care of them. The horses have breakfast at 8:30am before they are let out to pasture for the day. At 6:30 they are brought back to the stables and fed dinner. Then at 9:00pm they get some sweet-smelling hay and one Polo mint each (horses with minty-fresh breath!). The dogs are pretty straight forward. Just food twice a day and being let out to do their business. Though they can pretty much do that when they please because we have the back door open when we're here. K has taken time off from work for the whole house-sitting period. I had a day off last Wednesday and have taken off today through Friday, too.

So far, the experience has gone fairly smoothly. We've been cooking food on the barbecue and eating outside. The animals were initially a bit stand-offish with us, understandably. The dogs were fairly easy to win over. The horses were a bit tougher. K had a breakthrough with them yesterday. It seems at least one of them has accepted her. Despite all the carrots I've been giving them, they're still a bit wary of me. Fair enough. I don't take it personally. However, the dogs have been able to sense that I'm a big softie because they only stare at me when we're eating even though I have never fed them from the table.

There's a big trampoline in the back yard by the stables. We've jumped on it a few times. The horses seem perplexed by this concept. Haven't tried getting them up there yet. Maybe we'll try that tomorrow. It's nice to lay on it at night to look up at the stars. Strangely comfortable. We'd sleep out there if we had a mosquito net or something because it's a bit hot upstairs in the house.

We had one abnormal thing happen the other night. Sunday evening. I was just about to serve a dinner of poached trout and pan-fried potatoes when we heard the dogs out front barking by the driveway gate. Went out to check on them and discovered a bloke and his girlfriend pulled over on the driveway with a broken-down red MG. He asked me if we had any oil because he had run out. I explained that we're just house-sitting, but I would have a look. In my head, I'm thinking, "Ran out of oil? That's not something you can really solve by putting oil back in the engine." Couldn't find any oil and I didn't feel like driving them anywhere because we were just about to eat and watch "Lost", so I told him we didn't have a car ("that BMW is not ours"), a little white lie that I instantly felt quite guilty about. He thumbed a ride quite quickly and got a lift to a petrol station a few miles away. I went back inside and we ate dinner. Then I decided to pop out to check on them afterwards. They were still out there. The engine turned over but it just wasn't starting. Gee, what a surprise, even after putting oil in it? We lent them a mobile to call the AA (the UK's AAA). He didn't have a membership, so he had to join over the phone before they sent out a truck. It took about 15 minutes for him to get through to someone, so I was talking to his girlfriend and what's this I hear? A familiar accent. And well, she does have quite a Nordic look. "Are you from Sweden?" Yes. I told her I was half Swedish and then we spoke Swedish for a little while. Quite random. They break down on the driveway of the house we are sitting and out comes a guy with an American accent who subsequently turns out to be able to speak Swedish. They boyfriend was surprised at first but then said, "You Swedes are everywhere!" A few minutes later, two horse-drawn gypsy wagons trundled by on the road next to us -- gypsy wagons like you'd see in a movie. One guy said he would trade the wagon for the MG. After a moment of "Ok, now I've seen it all", they told me the AA truck would arrive in "up to 2 hours". I invited to wait with us, but they decided to walk into town to go to the pub. A bit dumb on their part and sure enough, 45 minutes later there was a truck out there and they were nowhere in sight. I explained to the AA guy what was wrong with the car and where they had gone. He decided to wait around for 10 minutes before driving slowly into town to see if he could see them. As far as I could tell, he never came back with them. When we were closing up for the night, around 10 o'clock, I peeked out there to see if they were still there. Yep, waiting in the dark in the same place. They made their bed, now they can lie in it. It was stupid of them to leave, especially when I offered to let them wait here, so we left them to sort it out on their own. Which they seemed to have done because the car was gone the next morning.

Well, we have two more days out here in Hursley. They're coming back late Friday night, so we'll put the animals to bed and drive back home after the horses have gotten their hay and Polo mints. We might kidnap at least one of the dogs, though.

---

In other news...

We drove to Winchester today to do a bit of shopping (big sale at HMV right now) and to take a peek at our old apartment. No one has moved in yet! However, the realtor's sign out front says it has been let. Not sure when the new tenants are going to move in. It was supposed to be by yesterday. Perhaps we won't get a refund after all. Will have to call them to see what's going on.

Our new neighborhood

Technically our address is Poole...this is Poole harbor. Our neighborhood is at the top right side of the picture.



Bournemouth beach and pier looking south. It doesn't look like this today though- lots of misty drizzle!



The beach huts are all along the beach and are very popular (and expensive). I saw some this morning, although there were no people around.



This is at the end of our road and the closest place to get on the beach. It reminds me a lot of the Oregon coast, but is a lot warmer!



It will be fun to live by the seaside!

~K

We're in!

Another chapter comes to an end

This is our last weekend in Winchester. On the 7th, we will be signing the contract and handing over our deposit and first month's rent for our new flat in Bournemouth. Then we'll move all our crap down there on the 8th, spend our first night in the apartment before coming back to Winchester the next day to get our old flat ready to be handed over to the estate agent, Pearsons. We still don't know if they have found any new tenants to take over after we leave. They are just atrocious. They haven't even advertised the place. No ads in the paper, on their website, or in their office window. I've called them on twice to ask about it, but the person who I need to speak to is never there and never calls back. It's really frustrating. Anyway... I digress.

We haven't done much packing yet. That's one of the things we will busy ourselves with this weekend. Filched a heapful of boxes from Tesco last night while we were grocery shopping. We'll try to get as much packing done as possible between watching the England v. Portugal football match today and going to my former boss's house for lunch on Sunday (to go over the details for our house/horse-sitting task later in the month). Lots to get done!

It will be nice to move down to Bournemouth and be closer to work, but we're definitely going to miss Winchester. It's such a beautiful, quaint little town. So cozy and comfortable. Trying not to think about that too much, though. Bournemouth will be nice, too. Just in a completely different way.

Without further ado, a few pictures of summertime Winchester: