the Dalaverse

Grahhhhh I'm tired. Granted, I did not do as much work today as I should've, but considering I spent a solid two hours walking around Blackwells, and then read the first half and the second half of two separate books...which reminds me.

Today I saw the vault of heaven, and it is called the Norrington Room.

Okay, not precisely, because the Norrington Room houses law and science instead of fiction or history, but there's the name, and the fact that you are looking at the most massive room full of books imaginable. It brought tears to my eyes. I stood at the highest spot in law and took a picture of the books, THE BOOKS, stretching back as far as the eye could see, which I am now too lazy to go fetch off my camera.

The four floors of the shop in total are impressive, although I didn't think the fiction section was as well-stocked as the massive Borders in White Flint (but the WF Borders is not nearly so cool, so it's a fair trade). Here is what I did not do: eat a piece of cake in the cafe, buy any ginormous books on the Navy or Nelson or that set of eight biographies of famous historical women for 20 pounds (the symbol on the 3 key is the pound sign, and yet it comes out as # still) or the beautiful new 10th anniversary editions of the His Dark Materials trilogy (omgwantwantwantwantwant). Neither did I buy the archaeology textbook I need, because I still mean to check the price at the other store-which-name-I-can't-recall (Borders didn't have it, but they did have far cheaper calenders). So far, I have purchased nothing at the greatest bookstore I have ever seen. But I've only been here two weeks, guys.

And then I finally got my ass to the Sackler library and Bodley to polish off some of the massive booklist I have for my archaeology paper, which is due Tuesday. And I'm actually reading, not just skimming, and taking pages of notes because I don't have a laptop yet, and so it's taking forfriggenever. Tomorrow I get to the maps and finish the Sackler text, and then I just have four hundred pages of landscape history plus three other books. Yay?

But using the Bodleian does make me feel like a legitimate Oxford scholar. I even know where the exit door is now (hint: past all the "emergency exit only" signs). And I resisted the burning desire for chips and cheese at not one but TWO kebab vans on my way home, mostly because I had some last night. Speaking of which, completely surreal and weird and wonderful. First I ran into Annie and Corey on the way back from Bodley, so we went to the Three Goats' Heads for a pint. We discussed random things like mailmen and cats and the utter insanity of sinks having separate spigots for hot and cold water (this is easily my least favorite thing about the country), and then the bartender came over to ask us if we were Americans. She had seemed kind of surly before, but we talked to her for half an hour -- she's Sicilian and will be embarking on a tour of New York, Chicago, and L.A. among other places in May. And somehow Maya Angelou was brought up, and Annie praised her poem "Phenomenal Woman," which the bartender totally had a copy of behind the bar, so we read Maya Angelou aloud.

Then we headed back, with a stop for the aforementioned chips and cheese, to find a score of people in the common room watching the end of "Desperate Housewives." Half immediately left when the next program came on. It was a televised autopsy, performed for English med students by a German doctor in a black fedora. With a real dead woman, who had been diabetic and died of septic shock. And they showed -- everything. I have never seen anything like that on TV before -- I've never seen anything like it in my whole life. And it wasn't just the autopsy: as they discussed the various organs, they referred to a set painted on the belly of a completely nude (and shaved. "He has a soul patch!" from Nathan) male model. Named Dennis. I am still blown over by this. HOW IS DENNIS FUNCTIONALLY DIFFERENT FROM A CHART, I ask?! Not that I'm complaining at the free naked. We were just concerned for Dennis' well-being and mental health. We watched the show for about forty-five minutes, dropping out one by one, until at last they showed a preview of the next segment with
yellow liquid gushing out of a cut intestine, and Karen, Nathan and I called it a night. I wish Tina and Megan had seen it. It's a good thing Katherine wasn't there, though, as I'm sure she would've quit nursing school first thing this morning.

Anyway, that about brings us up to date. And now I am going to write, because I've read entirely too much today.