become what you are

Thursday, Aug. 01, 2002 @ 10:05 a.m.

English Heritage chairman Sir Neil Cossons yesterday promised "a new dawn" for Stonehenge, announcing a £57m visitor centre to replace the dismal facilities used by almost a million people a year.

This time the sun would actually rise, Sir Neil promised; the centre would open in 2006, and not join a shelf of previous attempts over years to improve a site damned in 1989 by MPs as "a national disgrace". For the first time details of funding - from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the government - have been announced. Even the critics agree that the design for the visitor centre, or "gateway" as English Heritage prefers to term it, is lovely. Australian architects Denton Corker Marshall have almost buried the building in the ground in their anxiety not to eclipse the monument. From the air it will show as silver parallel lines in the earth, and from the ground as pewter-coloured metal slabs roofed with turf. A car park will have trees around it for camouflage.

I can’t believe such a famous international tourist spot has been neglected. Apparently they are only going to allow small, pre-booked groups inside the circle, which kind of sucks. But I guess they probably have good reason.

I went to the bead shop yesterday after work. I needed a new cord for my Celtic cross. I go through a different cord every couple of months because I never take it off, I just tie it around my neck and leave it on. So I shower and sleep and go through life in it, and it always winds up breaking. It’s always a few days before I can get to the shop to buy a new cord, and while I don’t have it on I feel naked. I’ve been wearing the thing ever since David gave it to me, and that was at least 4 or 5 years ago now. I should just buy a whole spool of the stuff, so when it breaks I can just cut off a length and put it right back on. I also wanted some Turkish evil-eye beads, but they didn’t have any.

One of the things I saw at the arts & wine festival that I liked but that I knew I could easily make myself were these long necklaces with just 1 large bead on a cord. The guy was charging upwards of $20 for them. I looked at all the beads at the shop, and in practically the last case I looked in I saw the most beautiful Venetian glass bead. It’s about the size of a gumball, round but irregular, and has colored swirls of light and dark orange. It has a few bubbles in it and looks kind of like Jupiter. I strung it on some silver cord with a small rose crystal 3-hole bead, and I’ve been fiddling with it all day. I love being a girl.

Last night I took a shower and used my lavender salt scrub. It was the first time I used that one and it felt wonderful. It almost felt as if it were heating my skin somehow as I rubbed it in. The label says it also contains St. John’s Wort. After I got out of the shower I lay down and put some special tea bags with green tea, rose petals, calendula, and chamomile over my eyes and just zoned out for half an hour. They really did help make my eyes feel better; they’ve been so puffy and scratchy from lack of sleep. Did I mention I love being a girl? : D Also I love being childless; if you have kids it’s like pulling teeth to just scratch out 10 minutes for yourself. I am way too selfish to ever want kids and I like being alone too much. At least I admit it; imagine what a better world it would be if all the lousy parents had been able to do the same.

Graduation is this weekend, but I am not going. After last weekend I am in no mood to put up with that headache. I told C. that the arts & wine festival was all the free time that the school was going to get out of me for a while. I am going to stay in the shack, put my feet up, and eat pudding all weekend. Mmm…pudding…I think I’ll rent that movie Donnie Darko that people keep telling me about.

I finished Weird Like Us, and I’m going to finish the rest of Gormenghast, then shelve it for a while. It is becoming a chore to read it instead of a joy, and I think it’s because I have been slogging away at it for so many months. Plus someone told me that Titus Alone is the worst book of the trilogy. I miss non-fiction and I enjoyed reading Weird Like Us so much that I am going to start reading a non-fiction book after every fiction book I read. There is a lot of stuff in my library that I want to read again, but I also still want to fulfill my resolution of reading all the fiction I always meant to. I am going to read the first Claudine book, by Colette, next. Colette was the first celebrity to go by just one name.

The Fellowship of the Ring DVD is coming out next week and it may finally push me to get a DVD player. I am sufficiently obsessed with that movie to care about the deleted scenes and extra features. FotR, now with 50% more Frodo.

I noticed I haven’t listed any pet peeves lately. Could it be that I’ve actually run out of things to complain about? Good glort, never! Probably I’m just too tired to be annoyed this week.

What is with all the kidnappings of children lately? It seems like every time I turn on the news there is another kid missing. It all started with that girl in San Diego. I wonder, though, if it really is an epidemic, or if the media is just making it seem that way. Every summer they latch on to something weird and blow it all out of proportion. Remember how last summer was “the summer of the shark”, and by Thanksgiving there were a bunch of reports that there had actually been less shark attacks than in the last 10 summers?

Which Archangel are

you? by Xera

Cool, I get to blow my big-ass horn and announce the end of the world.

~S.

frozen + fresh