september already?!

the weeks are flying by and the days are growing shorter. apparently fall - or 'autumn' as they call it here - is rapidly approaching. after mom and dad left, my part time job hunt began and dustin and i have have many culinary adventures in the kitchen. (lamb burgers, oven-baked hake, green curry chicken) my birthday weekend was nice. dustin took me to breakfast, we saw the dark knight, had a picnic in the gardens, and attempted to go on a 'literary pub crawl' in grassmarket. the sunday night festival finale fireworks marked the end of a lively month in edinburgh. the views of the fireworks high above the castle were unforgettable.

what's next? fortunately, a good friend of mine is loaning me a copy of the ARE study materials so i'll soon be in the thick of architectural exam preparation and working to afford trips home, if all goes as planned. last weekend we attended a gallery show at 'zed art', the gallery on the ground floor of our building. we see the owner each day as we come and go, but had a fun evening of getting to 'really' know our neighbors and enjoy a little art (and wine) appreciation. we befriended the IT director, colin, who also works in the building and went to a pub and lamented the hard drive and learned about mountain biking in and around edinburgh. the weather last weekend was horrid. rain, cold, and wind like i've never known. we hibernated (instead of going to stirling castle!) and watched NLF and ate nachos instead. hahaha sometimes you just have to resort to coping mechanisms. thank you again, slingbox. perhaps he was stir crazy, but dustin got to tinkering with the 'broken' hard drive (which we spent hundreds of dollars to have data recovery performed on in june) and he got the damn thing working. and when i say working - ALL the files showed up intact and completely undamaged. we are calling it a miracle and trying not to dwell on the fact that the IT place we took it to led us to believe it was broken so they could empty our bank account. SO that means all my school work and all our pictures (even the one of katy eating s'mores at emma long!) are back. yesss! lesson learned. back up your stuff, seriously. we're getting ready for our trip to stockholm next week, busy making preparations. we'll be there from wednesday to sunday and get to see amanda, tj, and cissi while we're there! rex will be staying at a kennel outside of edinburgh while we are gone...we are calling it 'camp'. we took a train out to west calder at 7am tuesday morning to meet the owners of the kennel that our friend recommended. mandy and scott, the owners, were both busy city professionals before they decided to head to the country and open up their kennel. their facilities were fantastic and the countryside around them was beautiful. they adored rex, and were excited to have a new breed in the pack. rex met all the other dogs and got along famously with them, thank goodness. they will go on walks in the nearby forest in the mornings and mandy says she'll have to watch rex with the rabbits. i can only imagine... i met this week with the american women's group for scrapbooking, which really means tea and gossip. i always learn great things and get to ask all kinds of embarrassing questions. i learned that we need to get 'travel insurance' for our trips around europe and back to the states. we haven't played much soccer lately - dustin because of the weather and me because i am trying to let my knee heal. BUT we are going to the gym m.w.f. mornings and even survived a 7am spin class this past monday....gotta burn off the beer and lamb burgers somehow. i take rex to see a vet on monday to get his EU 'pet passport'. (how silly!?) he is all the rage in our neighborhood these days...we're constantly being stopped and asked what breed he is. nobody seems to know what a boston terrier is. (dustin tells them it is the result of two ugly dogs mating.) one woman even ran out of the pizza express - left her husband sitting at the table - to ask us where we got him. she had just been to nyc where she saw a bunch and wanted one. he always just looks up with that silly, perplexed grin - they love it. we often mention that he's a texas dog and not built for the scottish climate, as he sits there in his ridiculous fleece-lined raincoat. dustin found out he'll be headed back to houston immediately following our stockholm trip. they have a big deadline ahead so he has been working long hours to get everything completed. we have big plans to load up on hiking and camping gear when we goes back...and i'm sure he'll find some time to chow down at chuy's. last night - a bit of reprieve - we went to the vincent pub across the street to watch scotland beat iceland (2-1) in a world cup qualifying match. the atmosphere was a lot of fun, especially since we can finally understand what the locals are saying. not nearly as much cussing as at the live football match in august, but still pretty colorful use of language all around. that's about it on this end. looking forward to the weekend and praying the weather is decent. we'll be in the thick of packing and dustin plans to see if our arkansas neighbor wants to watch the ut v. arkansas game via slingbox in the middle of the night. the things men will do for football... miss you guys lots! let us know what you are up to and we'll be saying a prayer that ike doesn't cause too much of a frenzy his weekend. xoxo for bday weekend and fireworks pics, click here. for september pics, click here.