I haven't written in a very long time, partially because I needed to reconsider this whole blogging business, but mostly because I haven't had email access except sparingly (and I only use the term "sparingly" sparingly). I am now living in a small cottage approximately 9 miles from the nearest small town, Banchory, in the heart of Royal Deeside. Where is Royal Deeside? West of Aberdeen in Scotland, and fitted with all the pins and whistles a girl could need, save for a place to develop photographs. So, sadly, we will have to make do with no visuals for now, except for those I've managed to take with my handy iSight camera.

It's salmon pools and Oil Men up here, and a lot of greenery that runs the gamut from pines and ferns to green wool fisherman socks. The color palette on occasion overdoes itself with its sunsets, accompanying an evening meal whose components are all dragged up a two-mile winding forest road by foot with no small amount of effort. The addition of the internet in this last day after of month in a home that has become something of a hermitage by default is seeming, after I've been whiling away my day off online, perhaps something more controversial than I had previously imagined.

I have indulged other options available for entertainments, namely learning German and reading S.K. Woodcroft. Wir gehen Ski fahren! Alright- I just began, really, today, and this was the first phrase I learned. What I thought would be a standard beginner's course seems to be a phrase book for Brits looking to take a skiing holiday, that calls itself an intensive guide geared "towards fluency rather than mere phrase learning" because it helps you string together phrases about going skiing with those about drinking glühwein after hitting the slopes. Mmm, but it does sound delicious.

For those who have already received communiqués pertaining to my misadventures here, I apologize for my certain redundancy.

I love you. I will write soon. Maybe in a matter of hours.

the new american passport

I had to get a new passport before I flew out, and it's pretty fantastic.

This is just one of its pages, which are completely mind-blowing and look like the freebie dolphin, Daffy, and Canadian geese checks you get at the beginning of a book of checks.

But the passport is not complete without elegantly wrapping my mug in a flag and eagle:

I am not commenting on this derisively. To the contrary, I always admire dolphin check bearers for their gusto and humorous relationship with money. And no, my name is not Frank Moss.

Canton is a funny area just outside Cardiff, a perfect outskirtsville, more complete than Cardiff is complete as a capital city. Of course, Cardiff did not become the capital city yesterday (although it did, to rub some idioms, become so overnight). Actually, when I was trolling through its endless glorious retail sector and found the Cardiff castle gift shop, I read about Cardiff's bid for capital city in 1954, and how the newspaper headlines heralded the day of Cardiff's victory as "The Day of Great Relief."
But it's hard to be a city.