Blog post dedicated to Me

One of my utterly fantastic friend dedicated a blog post to me. It is not everyday that this happens, or any day for the matter, so one must soak it in and share with all.

This is me touching Loch Ness. Those three rocks, arranged in a somewhat straight line, really bone plates on Nessie's back. Notice the ripples behind me, consider how close I came to seeing or being eaten by Nessie?

National Pie Day

Oh, the things I learn from reading other blogs. Today is National Pie Day and I call on young and old to have a piece of pie in honor of this esteemed day.

Now if only there were an international pie day, or year. Life would be better. That thought led me to google if there was an international pie day, which did not return any favorable answers for this kinds of pie


but it did for this kind of pi


My search did lead me to this website that lists all the various food holidays.

Yesterday, January 22 was National Blonde Brownie day.

January 1-31 is Prune Breakfast Month, Oatmeal Month and National Soup Month.

The day I am looking forward to the most is Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch Night which falls on August 8th. Make sure you get that one on the calendar.

Random Pictures

When I retire, I am retiring to this place:


Yes, I really am retiring to this place. Beautiful all year round. Is it bad to already think about retirement when I don't have a job? Something has to give me hope.

This photo is of a drawing my little brother James did and entered into a contest at Utah Valley University. He came in second place. He is an amazing artist, who works very hard to develop his talent. I am proud of him.

It is probably redundant to post the picture here, since the majority of my faithful blog readers are my family, and they have all seen this photo already, but somehow I think James' win is made all the sweeter by me posting it on my blog. James is that true?

And this photo is from tonight's sunset. The contrasting colors are not captured properly by the photo, but they were brilliant, IMHO.

Looking for Work

You might consider this job.

What exactly is Kirsten doing in Edinburgh?

Some of you might think I just travel around taking pictures or video since my blog doesn't really talk about much more than that. But there are times when I sit around and ponder such questions as:

"What is the purpose of law? Is there a realm of morality which is not the law’s business or is the law properly concerned with moral principles?"

I am sure you could all right pages upon pages to answer that question.

I turned in the last of my papers for the first semester on Wednesday morning, and the papers that I write and submit make up the entirety of my grade. No participation grade, no presentation grade, just the grades on my papers. I will not know how I did for approximately 2 months. How can that be possible, since in the U.S. most professor have a 72 hour deadline for getting grades turned it because they know if they don't they won't have a moments peace from the all the students hounding them to know their grades? Not how things are done here in the UK.

The papers that I submit are submitted anonymously. Every student is given an exam number and that is the only identifying information included on the essay. The essays are first read and graded by your professor and then they are sent to a second reviewer outside of the university who is familiar with the subject area and therefore qualified to asses the work submitted. The second reviewer's task is to grade the work and to either support what the professor suggests as a grade or the reviewer can say the mark given by the professor is either to lenient or to harsh, meaning they have a say in the final grade given to your paper.

The grading system is also a bit different. There is still a scale of 1 to 100. If you get a score between 50 ad 60 then you are doing fine, nothing to be worried about. If you score in the 70's then you have the potential to graduate with distinction, something that is supposedly coveted, but as one of my professors has said, who is going to know whether you graduated with distinction or not? If you can get between and 80 and 100 then your paper is practically publishable.

All very interesting to say the least. I am still trying to decide which grading system I like better. With the system here there is no incentive to attend class, so I understand much better what people meant when they said you don't have to attend classes in the UK, but I figure if you are paying for it, you might as well show up and learn what you can from the readings and the professor.

And the token blog picture. This is Old College, where the School of Law is housed. This is also the first University of Edinburgh "campus". There is a lot more of the building than what is shown here. But what is shown is the School of Law offices and classrooms.

The first snow of the New Year

I have only seen snow one other time since coming to Edinburgh, and was on my way to class and didn't have my camera with me. Luckily, today I was home and the camera was handy. I took some pictures, but they don't really show the snow, so I did a quick video. It has stopped now and none actually stuck to the ground, so it is not like what most of you have back in the states, but it was the white stuff, I promise.

Happy New Year from Edinburgh

Fireworks always make me happy. Hope your New Year's was equally exciting.

The 11:00 p.m. fireworks


The general crowd