Skip to main content

Pre-trip ramble


This is Imogen ("Im-oh-jen"). She knows how to have more fun than anyone else I know. She is not coming on the trip. Which is just as well because she also knows how to wreak more havoc than anyone else I know. 


She has no role to play in this trip, but I thought I'd throw her in as an aside since not a great deal is happening on our trip so far (you know, because the trip hasn't actually started yes). And also, her older brother gets to be in my profile picture as well as getting his face in a peer-reviewed publications at the age of five.

Imogen was the 32nd most popular girls' name in Britain in 2011. It has never appeared in the top 1000 in the US. Thus she will be cursed with name mispronunciations for her entire life. Sorry about that Immy. This does not fully explain why Tennessee thought fit to list my nationality as "Ukraine" on her birth certificate (I kid you not). Upon further inquiry, the lovely Tennessee State employee explained, "I couldn't find 'United Kingdom' on my list, so I put the closest country alphabetically I could find... those countries are all the same over there, right?" (I kid you not about that either).
It turns out that there are surprisingly few photos out there that picture a goat and an elk in the same frame. 
The following conversation with four year old Immy, as we drove home through the Valles Caldera one evening, should tell you most of what you need to know.

Me: "So Imogen, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Imogen (without hesitation): "A goat."
Me: "Er, oh, well. That's not really what I meant. What job would you like to do when you grow up?"
Imogen (still without hesitation): "I'd like to be a goat that eats elk."

Comments

  1. erinOctober 26, 2012 at 2:01 PM

    HA! I like the picture. I hope she doesn't have too much fun at home while you're away...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Hello. Welcome to the blog "GordonsBigTrip". A blog about Gordon’s big trip around England and Scotland. Apparently one is not allowed to use apostrophes in the blog URL, so we shall set off on a grammatically incorrect foot. Sorry about that. I am Richard, Gordon’s translator for his 10-day whirlwind trip around England and Scotland . My principal job is to translate between American (Gordon’s native tongue) and English (the language of the locals). I am almost bilingual in American-English, though I sternly refuse to use any 21 st century English popularisms such as “ chav ” Goodness, what a horrible word. I have yet to inform Gordon that I do not speak a word of Scottish, which is a real pity since Gordon has his sights set on having a great time in Scotland. Sorry about that too. Our trip has not even vaguely started (we leave on Thursday November 1 st ), but I need practice “blogging” since I am a quasi- Luddite (I suppose I’m not a full Luddite since I don’...
2 comments
Read more

Bad News for Round-Earthers

The trip has still not started. Shucks. In the meantime, some bad news for all you round-Earthers out there: United Airlines Flight 934 (yes, the very flight that Gordon I will shortly be taking) has definitively discovered that the world is, after all, flat. The amateurish video shows the UAL 934 flight paths from the last couple of weeks. That's right, UAL 934 has proved beyond doubt that Great Circles are indeed not always the shortest distance between two places on the planet. And therefore the world must be flat (I heard someone mutter something about map projections and jet streams, but I'm sure they have no idea what they're on about). I can't really explain what the pilot was doing with that little diversion over Greenland on October 18th though. Perhaps something to do with global warming? Maybe UAL 934 will shortly explode that myth too?
1 comment
Read more

Scotland let the right ones in

Days photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/middles/ . We are in Scotland, a place that reminds us that not only is the US the land of the free and home of the brave, the US is also the land of convenient bathrooms where the light switch is actually in the bathroom. This is not Scotland. It's still the Lake District. Scotland looks a lot like this, except the stone walls are made of the skulls of Englishmen. I waved my US passport at border control (carefully hiding the UK one) as we crossed the border. Or I would have if such a thing (a border control) existed. The first town across the England-Scotland Border is Gretna Green, commonly known as the "Las Vegas of Scotland", though without the gambling, gratuitous nudity, and anything vaguely modern and/or risque ( I'm not entirely joking ). Basically, you can marry at 16 without parental consent in Scotland and Gretna Green was the first accessible town over the border (or something like that). People often go...
1 comment
Read more