The Daffodils are blooming!!

Hey folks:

It is now March and all around town the Daffodils are just staring to show their little yellow and white faces. Nice to have some color around here after weeks of gray and rain. Things are going pretty good for us here. We have both had a lingering cough from colds we came down with weeks ago. Sadly this has caused my asthma to flare up pretty badly and I have been off running for a few weeks. Not good at all. At this rate I can't seem to stay healthy long enough to ever get on the training game long enough. Oh well. I am going to give it my best shot to get up to snuff in time and if I don't finish my first marathon then oh well I'll try again next year. My goal is to do my first one (sucessfully) by the time I am 25 so I have a few years to make it yet. It would help immensely to have a treadmill indoors though, all this nasty cold rain really puts you off no matter how you're feeling.

Ryan and I have both been quite busy. He's been working many hours at the shop and I have been working long and hard on schoolwork, which sadly is not going to let up until the end of April. Next month night racing will start and so he will begin working three twelve hour shifts a week- From nine in the morning to nine at night. He is not particularly pleased about the long hours but it will be very nice to have such long weekends. We plan to take full advantage of it by making lots of little weekend trips! Next month I am going to be off to Wales and then Brussels, while Ryan to Amsterdam. Then in April to Glasgow. In May we will be making trips to N. Ireland, Cambridge and some of the Western Isles. Yay! So far we have done very little traveling so it is going to be a thrill to get out of Edinburgh for a bit.

I finally started real work on my dissertation, last week. After making some final adjustments to my topic and research plan, I have finally settled on doing an analysis of the normative influence of feminism on US foreign policy rhetoric (and actual policies) from 1995 to 2005. This may sound a bit dry but I believe it is going to be incredibly interesting. Basically, I am going to be analyzing presidental speeches, foreign policy directives, and state department statements (etc.) over the course of a ten year period to see if there is any correlation between the content and languge employed in them and other political developments with regard to 'women's issues.' So, for example, I will be asking things like: did the issues and rhetoric raised by the 1995 world UN conference on women's rights in Bejing have any impact on the way the USA shaped and portrayed its foreign policy (particularly with regard to issues raised at the conference) in the years immediately following? Other interesting questions will be things like, was Clinton or Bush more likely to employ feminist rhetoric? And, when feminist rhetoric was used, did the actual content of the polices in question live up to the talk? I am rather eager to get started. Unfortunately I have several pressing term papers that will be sucking up all my time for the next couple of months.

Other than that, we have been watching lots of movies lately. If you haven't seen them yet, we highly recommend: A Guide to Recognizing your Saints, Babel, Stranger Than Fiction, and Hot Fuzz. We also have been spending a fair bit of time in pubs. The lastest lowdown; Sandy Bells on Forest Road has the best traditional music in Edinburgh, live every night of the week with no cover; and the Balmoral hotel bar makes the best White Russian in town (everywhere else is bound to be extremely lousy as apparently the Scottish do not share Americans' love of coffee cocktails). On the whisky intel: if you can get a hold of it, try Auchentoshan single malt lowland whisky. It is made nearby just outside Glasgow and is amazing. Light, sweet and very mild with a very full flavour and good lingering aftertaste. ten stars.

ok then, Hope all is well in Oregon (and everywhere else)
we love you all!
Alletta (and Ryan)