Pictures from November

Winter sunset from our flat

St. Giles Kirk (dating from the 9th century) at sunset

Post-Christmas shopping smiles

The fake, wall-hanging Christmas tree that came with our flat

Edinburgh’s New Town, dating from the early 19th century

Leith, our Edinburgh neighborhood

Edinburgh’s premier hotel, The Balmoral and the city centre’s main thoroughfare, Princess Street

To the left, the Church of Scotland General Assembly Hall spire. To the right, the castle.

Edinburgh’s Old Town, dating from the 15th century

Cold and windblown on Calton Hill, one of seven hills in Edinburgh

In London Road Gardens, about five minutes from our flat

Moonrise through the trees…at 3:30pm!

Cemetery at local parish church

Now unused ferry station in Leith, Edinburgh

Can you see the albino pigeon?

Ducks on a date

The ‘major’ road closest to our flat, Easter Road–looking south at Arthur’s Seat

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New Job

After that odd outburst of self-reflective blogging, here’s a return to form with a newsy update.  Biggest news is that Jackie got the job with Harper Collins!  She’s now a free-lance editor.  Briefly, the job entails internet research to define and compile entries for a new bilingual dictionary series.  The learning curve is steep and basically requires mastery of forty pages of detailed, cryptic instructions, but, apparently, once the method is mastered, the work proceeds quickly.  We’re immensely grateful for the Lord’s provision. Interestingly, and as so often seems to be the case in Christian living, the timing is (to our eyes) coincidental.  For the past four weeks Jackie has had ample work through the temp agency.  This week she has only four hours. 

Well, turns out that’s all the news from 5/15 Edina Place.  Tune in again for yet another riveting report.

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Blog Philosophy

As only a moderately experienced blog reader, I may be wrong (save the wisecracks!), but it seems to me that there are basically three types of blogs–1) Autobiographical, 2) Subject Specific, and 3) Stream of Consciousness.  In the Type 1 blogs, the author reports on the happenings of his own personal life.  The value of these blogs is primarily maintaining (or maybe forging) social connections. As the title implies, Type 2 blogs focus on a particular subject.  If you’re interested in film, music, Biblical Studies, or even Lego models, there’s a blog for you to enhance your knowledge and engage in discussion.  In contrast to the first two types, Type 3 blogs are less focused.  The author’s interests dictate the content; virtually any subject is fair game, from the weather to Pakistani Christmas presents.  After a bit of reflection, it seems to me that this blog, whether intentionally or not, is a Type 1 blog.  But today I venture a brief foray into Type 3 territory.  Exhibit A:  this post.  This post is characteristic of the “Stream of Consciousness” blogs, as is clear from the subject matter. Rather than report on some tidbit of our Edinburgh living, this post muses on a subject only very tangentially related to any facet of our lives. Really, how important is blog philosophy?  Exhibit B:  the motivation for this post.  When I sat down to post, I only really wanted to mention the “Dance Your PhD” contest.  I came with no story or snippet, just a rather random bit that I found funny.

So, if you’ll follow this link to “Dance Your PhD”, I think you’ll agree that tonight I have fuzzied the blog-type lines. It’s harder to say, now, whether we are Type 1 or Type 3 bloggers.  More importantly, though, if you follow the link, you’ll see why I wish I were doing a PhD in the sciences rather than in the humanities. Spoiler alert:  If I were a science PhD student I could enter my thesis into the “Dance Your PhD” contest and compete with the class acts that you’ll see if you follow the link above.

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