With Bloggery Comes Clarity?

Well, hello again! I see it's been almost a week since my last entry...and to be honest, I have completely forgotten what I did on a couple of days of last week. My apologies--however, if I forgot, then I doubt it was the experience of a lifetime and all of you will be devastated that I never told you about it, so moving right along...

I finally got a blurry picture of these fat assed bunnies I keep talking about, so good morning to them...

Anywho, funny story from Thursday, then I'll get to the stuff y'all are actually interested in, but someone pulled the fire alarm that morning. Now, I was asleep, and as you all know, I wake up slowly, grumpily, and with a complete lack of lucidity. I made it to the door of my hotel room wearing a t-shirt, jacket, hat...and no pants. Luckily, it dawned on me to put some on before exiting. I also grabbed my cigarettes. Nevermind the passports or anything important. If the building is burning, that nicotine will help me deal with the grief of losing my computer with all my wedding pictures on it (you know, the lightweight Mac PowerBook that I could've easily carried with me had I been lucid). Luckily (yes, two "luckily" moments in a row--it was a red letter day, I tell ya!), so yeah, luckily, the building wasn't actually on fire, but the hotel employee who was standing on my hall when I left the room was definitely amused by my confusion...and also by my hair, although I didn't realize what THAT looked like until I got back to the room. Pretty scary stuff, it was...

Anywho, friday night, Ric, Kevin, and I went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. Food was yummy, however I wound up threatening to stab Kevin with my fork during our meal--let's just say he and I are an odd pair. Half the time we get along fine; the other half of the time, Ric is babysitting us to make sure a murder doesn't take place. Last night alone, we managed to get into an argument about Meat Loaf (yes, with caps because I mean the singer, and that's far more disturbing than it would've been had we been arguing over beef); this was after he got on my nerves in the car, so I cranked the radio up loud enough that we couldn't hear him anymore. Like I said, Ric's babysitting!

I'm getting ahead of myself--backing up to saturday. Saturday, Ric and I decided to head out to Rievaulx Abbey, and because I'm a genius, I took a picture of the sign so it can tell you about the abbey rather than me having to sound like a know-it-all. Because I'm an idiot, it just dawned on my that once I upload the picture, it'll be too small for you to read the sign. Here's said sign...

The sign says, "Welcome to Rievaulx Abbey. You are standing within the precinct of the first Cistercian monastery in the north of England. Abbott William and twelve monks from the monastery of Clairvoux in France came to establish a religious house of the Cistercian Order. They founded Rievaulx Abbey in 1132 on land given by Walter Espec, Lord of Helmsley. The first Cistercian monastery was founded in 1098 at Citeaux in France. Its daughter-houses--and their daughter houses--spread the order throughout mainland Europe and Britain."

I honestly can't say anything about this place that would do it justice. It gives you the same feeling you get when you stand beside the ocean--awe, wonder, a sense of being so small in the grand scheme of things, that the world has gone on for hundreds of years before you and will continue to for hundreds of years after you. Here's about a zillion pictures. Sorry--they really are a disservice to the unreal beauty of this place.

I hate to interrupt all the gorgeousness of Rievaulx, but a word about these steps. They tried to kill me. I slid down them and narrowly missed dying twice in Rievaulx Abbey (death number one would have been if I had broken my neck on the steps, death two if God hadn't been feeling merciful and had chosen not to ignore my language)...

Look closely at the mud--you can see where my shoes went smearing through--not a lot of traction in mud as it turns out!

But back to the abbey...

I stood watching the birds circling overhead for a while. They'd sit a few minutes, all get up and fly around the abbey in a huge circle, then go back to sitting again.

That night, we picked up Kevin and headed to Akbar's. Ric decided to be ballsy and ordered the Chef's Challenge. I knew he was in trouble as soon as he ordered--the waiter started coughing, then said, "Sir, this is happy day! Nobody orders the Challenge!" Needless to say, he couldn't finish it (too bad--I wouldn't have minded stealing his free dessert), but I have to give him credit for making a noble attempt as it was a SILLY amount of Indian food...

The challenge included all of this...

AND his own personal order of naan bread. Told you it was silly.

After Kevin was so well-behaved at dinner (haha, I make him sound five. But really, they gave him a lollipop, I mean, C'MON! Actually, they give everyone a lollipop, but I'm just having fun with this now, heh)...what the hell was I saying? Oh, yeah, we decided to take a day trip the next day to Edinburgh, Scotland. Round trip, we spent over 8 hours in the car that day. This explains my cranking the radio up over Kevin incident--I'm not really a bitch. I'm just a grumpy car companion. Insert humongous, eat shit grin right about....now. Roaming around in Scotland was a lot of fun, and I now know where the UK hides the good-looking guys (no offense, Ric--Mandy was really concerned about this situation, so I had to check it out. It was for MANDY).

This is Durham Cathedral...