as yourself

I still love that rowing thing, but it kicked my butt this morning.

On a happier note, I was the one dominating at my tutorial yesterday.

Life lesson: you try as hard as you can, and at the end of the day, you give yourself grace.

megan is my name, rowing is my game.

Seriously, how does it get better? Early morning, boat sliding through the fog like Pirates of the Caribbean, the camaraderie of your team... yes.

indian institute

I'm sitting in the Indian Institute Library. This place is epic. The rare, string-bound books are strangely organized onto metal shelves in a dim, silent room with handwritten notes explaining "58 B continues in the small bookshelf on the carrel to your right." It's the type of place that a killer would wait for his victim, in the dark cranny behind the PAK 12 overflow shelf where the faint hum from the maintenance room can cover his stalker breathing. When you walk down the rows, it smells of dust and cloth bindings and your head brushes against the swinging light cords, though few of them are turned on. I didn't bring a pen, so I can't leave slips where I've taken books; they'll never know. Most of the people in the small adjacent reading area are serious, probably grad students, though there is a couple at the back table flirting with smiles and whispers. I sat down across from a precious old man in a Gandhi cap for inspiration.

Anyway, back to work. Books can't be checked out, so I'll probably be spending a lot of time here over the weekend. If you don't hear from me in the next few weeks, you might check behind the PAK 12 overflow shelf...

you make me feel happy

Today is my friend Maria's birthday. What better way to kick off a birthday than with a French-themed picnic breakfast in Christ Church Meadows?? Answer: there absolutely isn't one.

Maria, Emma, and Charlotte.

Ruth, Abbie, Alison, and Nadine.

Maria cutting her birthday cake.

Alison, Ruth, Angie, Maria, Charlotte, Hannah, and Emma.

Broad Walk in front of Christ Church.

sunshine + picnic blanket + camembert + sweet girls = happy

the corner of 1st and amistad

So... I have a question: where the heck is God?

Not emotionally, just physically. Literally, WHERE is he?

Outside the known universe? Isn't that contradictory, the known universe is what we know exists? In some other dimension? All dimensions are physical, aren't they? Is he something other than matter and energy, and if so what? I mean, matter and energy are what are. Other things are really explainable through the physical processes going on in our brains.

I may be talking complete rubbish, because I'm very ignorant in science, but this is a question that really troubles an atheist friend of mine. I don't know, it doesn't really weigh heavy on my mind and I'm not particularly concerned about it, but to her, it's a massive question. And so because she cares, I care. Thoughts, anyone? I'll take any ideas I can get at this point.

they all had to have been made up by somebody at some point...

I love inventing new words for essays!

Today's new word of the day:
theodicizer [thee-OD-uh-sahy-zer] –noun, plural -cizers.
one who tries to create a theodicy. Ka-bam.

may morning

It's 6:45 am and I've already been up for two hours. May morning is an epic event in the life of the Oxford student population. Everyone goes out the night before, the really committed (and even moderately committed) stay up all night. We collected a massive group of people in Regent's at 5:15 this morning and traipsed down to Magdalen College, where this is the scene that awaited us:


We lost quite a few of our bunch in the crowd, and then waited half an hour for the promised thrill of the Magdalen choir coming out to sing from the top of the bell tower.



As you can see in the video, there are neon-garbed police guarding the bridge so that people don't jump off it and impale themselves on rusty bicycle bits at the bottom. When the magical moment actually arrived, it was... less than magical. We were so close under the tower that we could hardly hear the choir and there was more attention on the random attempts by staggering performers to streak across the bridge than anything else.


It's not all a let-down, though, because the vast majority of the restaurants in Oxford open up early to provide breakfast to starving revellers. And then, the crash. Good thing it's Saturday.