M. Willis Monroe

Today I decided to make some pita bread. The first batch were a bit bready, so the second batch I made sure to roll out thin. They came out quite nice, and took all of ten minutes from start to eat.

I’ve been playing with this panorama program the best I’ve gotten so far is this one of my room.

Friday I went into Oxford to see Chris’ band Captain Pirates preform in Jericho. They were pretty amazing, the music and theatre went together perfectly and people certainly enjoyed them. Afterwards I spent a lot of time hanging out with Ed, Joey and Richard.

Tonight we had a small housewarming gathering. Not too many people showed up but that’s ok. I also realized that I was missinformed about Ramadan; it actually started today, so I’ve already missed a day. Tomorrow I’ll start it proper now.

I decided yesterday to hang my (long!) string of christmas tree lights around my room. The only tape I had was white electrical tape which blended in with the wall, which I thought was great. So I went around making nice little borders on things and designs and finally using all the lights up (it’s really long). It looked amazing so I left it to go have some dinner. Every once in a while I’d come back to my room to check and one part might’ve fallen down. So that’s ok I have tons of tape, and I taped kind of sparingly when I was first putting it up. So I’d add another bit of tape and put that section back up. Well anyway this continued all night, and right before I went to bed I ran out of tape. Right before I fell asleep I did sorta of a visual check around the room it all looked ok. How wrong I was. All night I’ve been woken up by falling bits of christmas tree lighting, especially the ones over my bed that hit my head. I can’t exactly leave them hanging as they’re right where I’m sleeping. Not only that some lighting on the other side of my room managed to fall off the wall and knock by bass guitar onto the floor cause a huge crash which I mistook for my futon frame breaking the risers it’s sitting on when I woke (very suddenly) up. It’s five o’clock now, and my throat really hurts. I remembered there’s a few pieces of tape when Esther tried unsuccesfully (I should’ve learned) to tape up some lights in the kitchen still on the kitchen walls. I’m hoping with maybe the addition of those I’ll at least be able to secure things enough to get some sleep.

In other news I went into SOAS yesterday. I got three really cool books out of the library, two for my thesis and one was a sort of narrative/journal of a woman on a dig in Iraq in 1950. The latter is really interesting, it reads like a little novel but about excavation. I also signed up for evening Arabic courses at UCL (SOAS was full). I’m really looking forward to that.

Dept. of Transportation (Bureau of Transportation Statistics), 2004

    * Amtrak: 2,100 BTU per passenger mile (in 2001, latest available)
    * Airlines (domestic): 3,341 BTU per passenger mile
    * Transit bus: 3,496 BTU per passenger mile
    * Automobile: 3,527 BTU per passenger mile

Dept. of Energy (Oak Ridge National Labs), 2003

    * Amtrak: 3,228 BTU per passenger mile
    * Automobile: 3,549 BTU per passenger mile
    * Airlines (domestic): 3,587 BTU per passenger mile
    * Transit bus: 4,160 BTU per passenger mile

From the wikipedia article on amtrak. I also discovered NARP: The National Association of Railroad Passengers. It costs twenty bucks to join as a student, which gets you a monthly magazine and 10% off rail tickets if bought in advance.

Today sitting around I was daydreaming about things to change about my room. So I walked down to homebase bought some nuts and bolts and fixed the futon frame in our hallway. Then I spread apart the mattress bases and put it on top. It leaves tons of room below for my suitcase, dirty laundry (broken washing machine!) and shoes amoung the countless things I’ll need a place to put. Plus it raises my bed up quite a bit which is nice.

In other news I’m really stuffed up, my neck is sore and I have somewhat of a headache. I drank some lemsip and I’m going to goto bed early tonight and hopefully wake up tomorrow feeling much better.

I’ve spent the past week hanging about in Oxfordshire seeing people and listening to good music. It was great to be back in Oxford and see the lot that live there as well as visiting others. I hitched a ride back to London with Chris’ mom and brother Richard. Now I’m home for a bit till Friday, that is unless I have another dance date on Wednesday.

I’ve decided recently that I’m somewhat fervently anti-juice. Fruit has evolved over the millenia into it’s appropriate portions, so why not instead of drinking a glass of processed orange juice; just eat the orange.

Sauteed red onions, corgettes and green olives over pasta with feta cheese. It was quite nice, althought next time I’ll get better feta.

Today I decided to do some looking into the web presence of 9/11 conspiracy theories. I watched some videos on YouTube and read a few articles both pro and con. It was very interesting. As much as I hate to admit it the pro controlled demolition people certainly have a convincing argument. Which of course is somewhat damaged by more radical members of their community taking it too far. Anyway this isn’t something I want to believe, but I hope more investigation will be done on the matter.

I’ve had a nice relaxing day at home. I made a few stencils I liked this one the best. I’m not great at making stencils but I enjoy it a lot and with practice hopefully I’ll get better. We’re getting the real internet on Saturday so I can stop stealing it from our neighbor.

Last friday I met Sam at the V&A and we toured the gallery and then walked around the city for a while catching up. He had some really cool adventures this summer, and brought me back a can of “Ugarit” cola for which I’m very grateful.

That evening I went to Heathrow to meet Dan flying in from Italy. Except he got tagged by immigration as suspicious so I got a call on my phone while I was waiting at the arrivals gate and they quizzed me as to what I do in London and where I live etc… In the end he was cleared and we took the tube back to mine.

The next three days were spent touring London. We saw Chekov play, “The Seagull” at the National Theatre. I sat next to a percussionist from the Philidelphia philharmonic who was preforming at the Proms the next evening. We spent a lot of time in the BM, the Tate modern, and the National Gallery. On Monday evening we went to A Comedy of Errors at the Globe theatre with Sam as well. It was absolutely amazing. We bought five pound standing tickets and stood in the yard for the show, but being one of the shortest of Shakespear’s plays it wasn’t bad. The Actors were amazingly funny and overall we all agreed that it was excellent.

Dan left Tuesday morning and Peter came later in the evening. Today we walked up to Wood Green and investigated the “Shopping City” as well as played some baseball in the park.