Happy Halloween...

This morning, it was cloudy and blustry outside, but still quite nice. I tumbled out the door and went for a nice run exploring new running routes and new parts of Nottingham (or Aspley and Strelley as the case maybe). I found a few new sports grounds and parks which aren't too far away and will prove useful for grass running, instead of hard pavement. It didn't really hit me that it was Halloween until I saw a huge black cat sitting on a fence next to the path. Huh, how appropriate. A couple miles later, I saw a sign for the parish church and remembered that Mark had mentioned the church in Strelley so I made my way towards it. It was a beautiful old church, or at least it had been beautiful in its day. There was a newer addition to the building that was in sharp contrast to the gothic style of the church and the older part of the church had had the windows cemented shut and barbed wire added to the edge of the roof. Needless to say, it looked pretty unfriendly. Oddly enough, the sign was well kempt and proclaimed that Eucharist still went on at 10:3o every Sunday. The graves in the church yard turned out to not be that old, dating back only until 1830. The most recent grave was from 1979. (OK, I realize that 1830 was a while ago, but by British standards, that is quite modern) Anyway, I went on my way and finished my run just as it started to rain. A good start to the day.

Psych lecture was fine, but meeting up with Em and Mar in the beautiful Art History building afterwards was much better. I also discovered that the cafe there makes a wonderful mocha. This may have to become a Tuesday tradition. With several topics discussed and two chapters of Oakland's book read, I made my way home in one of the sunny patches of weather. (It tends to change from rainy, cloudy, sunny, and windy - and sometimes all at once - several times each hour). Somehow the rest of the afternoon slipped by and it was time for dinner with our guest lecturer. The guest of the evening was Hetain Patel. He was absolutely fascinating to listen to. He is a British Indian artist who is the current resident artist at UNott. His website is definitely worth checking out:
http://www.hetainpatel.com
It was incredible to be around art that isn't perfectly streamlined with society's ideal of what art should be. It also reminded me that I haven't seen Kim dance in a very, very long time. This is a problem that should soon be remedied. Mom? Dad? We'll have to work on that. The irony of the day was when I was in the Art History building, I was walking to the bathroom and stopped to admire a photograph on the wall near the gallery. It was an artistically posed shot of a man with henna painted on his head and shoulders. I was impressed, but moved on and thought nothing more of it. Tonight, I realized and learned that that piece was indeed by Hetain Patel and the subject of the photo was the artist himself. Neat.

After the lecture, the group tried to figure out some basic plans for Christmas Holiday. It didn't work. Now that everyone is a bit stressed and entirely bored with the logistics of anything having to do with travel, we are finally trying to finish our journals and chronologies for Mark and Carol. Blargh. So, I'm off to work on a bit more homework before bed. Goodnight all.