I always thought weather in Cincinnati was slightly unhinged, what with the foot of snow one day and the shorts weather the next. Scotland may not have the temperature schizophrenia, but the sunshine can turn to wind and rain in the time it takes to go to the loo.

We wake up today to sunshine and sea air, as it were. The wind was low, which is a miracle around these parts anymore, and sky was clear and blue. Immediately, we think: Zoo. We had been trying to hit up the zoo sometime when it was sunny so that photos would come out a bit better. Somebody up there, however, must have something against the place (which I can understand, considering some of the rather hostile politicking going on concerning the zoo and its use of resources; for once, I am on the side of the government... ask me about it if you're interested), because as soon as the suggestion made itself known in apartment 3F1, clouds rolled dutifully in and it began to rain. Sigh.

I did have to get to a library to pick up Water for Elephants for my bookclub, and because the library system is so accommodating and efficient, I had to travel all the way to the other side of town to find it (ask me sometime, too, about how much I hate the Edinburgh libraries). Luckily, Morningside turned out to be rather charming, and Jonmikel and I spent the morning and early afternoon putzing around and exploring unknown lands. our adventures took us almost to the base of the Pentland Hills, which we vowed to conquer on our next outing to the south, and then on to the Blind Poet, one of our usual haunts back in the Uni area, to catch what would turn out to be our first full rugby game: England vs. Scotland in the 6 Nations thingy. The Blind Poet is a small place with a younger crowd, and rarely crowded, so it seemed the perfect place to try and figure out the rules. As far as I can tell, the rules are: kill whoever has the ball, and if you have the ball, run. Whoever has called American football homoerotic has never watched a game of rugby. Men in short shorts and tight shirts piling up on top of each other to grab a hold of someone's ball, with lots of tugging and pushing... I even saw a guy almost pull another man's shorts clear off in a scramble to stand up.

And it all moves so fast. Scots, and those who enjoy rugby, often criticize American football for being so slow, what with the whole "moving 2 yards down the field and then stopping to talk about it some, moving another yard and stopping again, and then actually moving backward and stopping to wonder what went wrong" thing. But it is interesting that Scottish people may be more fanatic about their sports, but watching a sporting event, at least for us pub goers, is only 2 hours out of a day. In the States, watching sports, baseball and football specifically, isn't just a 2-hour spot set aside to drink and be merry. It's an entire day's worth of activity. A football game can last 4 hours, and that doesn't include pregaming and postgaming. For Americans, sports is an experience: you get the cheap beer and the hot dogs and pizza and the foam fingers and the peanuts and the half-naked guys painted with various logos and the ice cream in little batters' hats and chest bumping. And cheerleaders! Where are the cheerleaders in Scottish sports??? There is a whole set of sights and smells and tastes and emotions that surround American sports. It's watching the pre-game show and going out to dinner at Skyline afterwards (a blatant Cincinnati reference for those of you from elsewhere) and then heading to the bar to watch all the recaps and fight about who is the better player. In Scotland, its beer and people getting so drunk they don't know when to clap, and when that hour-and-a-half or two hours is over, everybody goes back to their lives as per usual. Though I must admit that aside from certain Bengals-Steelers-Browns rivalries, in the States you would never see people standing outside a bar in pouring rain peeking through the windows to watch a game because every other bar was packed to the sidewalks. In that, the Scottish are wildly more dedicated.

But Scotland beat England, which I think surprised everyone to no end and which meant free beers for everyone in every bar in Scotland. The game was brutal (one guy actually laying unconscious on the field for a number of minutes) and muddy (it was either sunny or torrential downpour the whole game, and the field and players reflected this), but in all quite fun and bloody, as any good sport should be. The beer was good, too, which confused my poor, "used to Budweiser on game days" mind immensely.