Adventures in crisps

We're sort if in a dead zone of tourism at the moment. A lot of castles and other attractions are closed until March, the highlands are full of snow and rain, and Sam's probably not up for a whole lot of hiking at this point anyway. Life around the house is exciting and fresh though- when I cook, I usually don my Scottish apron, strike a confident pose, and grab the whisky and a packet of crisps for nourishment.

If we were conversing, you'd probably say 'Hey, what kind of crisps are those?'

I'm glad you asked!
I saw these at the store yesterday and was stunned. It's a pretty ambitious idea, and it was impossible to resist purchasing some to see if they could pull if off. The answer: no. Sam said they smelled like someone had sprinkled fish food on regular crisps, and she has a heightened sense of smell right now so let's go with that description instead of 'dead sailor', which is what I first thought. The taste is extremely salty with a blast of vinegar up front, and then the fish flavor hits you. This is part of a contest to see what flavor (flavour) will make it into the lineup. I feel bad for whoever got put in charge of the fake fish flavoring division at Walkers. Fake fish flavoring is probably never a great direction to find your career heading, and I guess they did the best they could, but based on our initial testing I don't think there are going to be any promotions handed out based on this product.

Throughout this all, Sam continues to grow a human (free of synthetic fish additives), and still looking pretty good:

Change of plans

So, our long term plan has changed a little bit. We were all set to move to Cardiff in the fall, and after our visit there we were pretty excited- nice city, close to family, and the project I would have been working on sounded pretty good. Then everything got confusing when I got an offer we couldn't refuse, in a non-threatening way.

New plan: head to Cambridge for three years starting in October. Plenty of time for people to come visit us and prance around under a descendant of the tree that assaulted Newton.

Unrelated: I walk by these statues of penguins every day on the way to the bus. I think they're walking toward the Discovery hoping to get back home. I like that Dundee will take one of their oldest buildings (the church in the background), build a shopping mall around three sides of it, and decorate it with a whimsical statue of penguins.



This billboard I don't walk by every day, but I love it. Dundee College's advertising team are either geniuses or wildly out of touch. You could draw several accurate conclusions about Dundee from this sign, including their penchant for silly fonts. This is the sign that greets you when you enter the city:I think they take themselves more seriously in Cambridge, so that might be an adjustment.

Tentsmuir Forest & Our First Rugby Game

As you can tell, I'm getting worse at posting but I'm blaming that on the cold weather which keeps us indoors on the weekends. This last weekend we were able to get out and we headed over to the north-eastern coast of Fife to walk around in Tentsmuir Forest. Luckily it's a flat walk which is good since going uphill is starting to become a struggle for me. We spent most of the walk ambling up the coast and Nick got some great photos of the landscape. I like this photo he took of me, which gives you an idea of the coastal terrain.

There were a lot of happy dogs running along the coast here and apparently it's a popular sun-bathing spot in the summer. Since we're in the middle of winter, I can't imagine it ever being warm enough to wear shorts let alone a swimsuit! I guess we'll find out this summer.

On Sunday we attended our first rugby game. It was actually my second game ever (thanks to Uncle Ken and Kath who took me back in 2002) but Nick's first and it was Wales vs. Scotland. If Nick were writing this post, he would have said Scotland vs. Wales. We were a divided couple yesterday. Unfortunately for him, Wales whomped Scotland but it was still a really fun game to watch. The game was held in Edinburgh and we went with some friends of ours who live close to the city. However, we spent more time getting to and from the game than it took to actually watch the game! It was still a great experience and I hope that we will be able to experience a game at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff in the next few years. Below is a picture of one of my favorite things about rugby: the side out. They propel one of the players up into the air, cheerleading style, in order to get the ball being thrown in from the side. This picture shows Scotland getting the ball.

More pictures of the weekend's adventures can be seen here.

I'll leave you with a picture of a wee highland coo (or "cow" in English). I haven't heard one moo yet but I'm sure they have a Scottish accent.