This post is taking a long time to come out, because sitting directly across from me is a man who keeps saying, I love absolutely everything about you, and reaching over to hold my hand (impedes typing). I’ll take it, anyway, even if he is just trying to distract himself from game theory. And then my hands are back in position on the keyboard and I’m all focused when I sneeze, and he yells because my sneezes scare the daylights out of him. And nothing more gets written because we’re losing so much air laughing. I’ve resorted to begging him with an Italian accent, Please-a! Please-a! Let me write-a! But the affection continues . . .

And then Haydn’s first Cello Concerto comes on the radio, and I absolutely can’t write for excitement. That, of course, is followed by the inevitable frustration that I can’t play that fast anymore.

And then Walk points to an equation and says, Al, isn’t this equation awesome? I just love anything with set theory because the symbols are cool. Uh-huh. And then I ask him to re-enact so I can write about it. He does, and the drama continues.

So, I’m throwing this post to the wind. I’ve been wracking my brain to try to connect the photos with a catchy theme, but they are stubborn as rocks. One idea I had was that nearly every picture had water or stone in it. But water and stone is altogether too zen-slash-boring. And then I thought of talking about colorful doors, but I only have one picture of a colorful door. Blast.

Every so often, I blink and say to myself, My goodness, do I really live in Scotland? My home is indeed nestled in grids of stone walls and colorful doors, and that is incredibly amazing. But there is so much more here that I revel in everyday. So, enjoy my uncategorized photos of a town I utterly adore.

To start, here are the famous colorful doors. If you walk along one street, you are bound to see yellow, red, green, blue, white, gray, black, and pink doors. To throw in some past-post allusions, these doors happen to belong to some of my apple-party friends, and they sit right next to the farmer’s market lot. (Bam! Two allusions in one sentence, my friends.)

Speaking of allusions, I found another garret. It surely deserves to be included with the others in the Garret Wall of Fame, and since this blog includes such a wall, here you go:

(Doesn't that just make you want to cradle a cup of tea?)

For three years, I have wondered exactly the same thing you will wonder after looking at this photo. Despite googling, I have no answer. What in the world is a horseshoe doing paved into the sidewalk at the end of our wynd? Suggestions gladly accepted.

Walker used to laugh at the signs in New Jersey gas stations that said, Rose Riot. $9.99! (I, being a true New Jerseyan, was immune to the tackiness.) The yard that sits at the foot of our wynd, across from the unlucky horseshoe, is home to a literal rose riot. Hundreds of these gaudy flowers cover an entire yard.

And apparently, this house is being attacked by another variety of flowers, unknown to un-green-thumbed me. I love the exuberance, if not the suffocation, of this house.

Yesterday, I walked past 66 North Street, the English Postgraduate building that I frequented several years ago, and loved that the door was as tomato red as always. Seen in the window of an English PhD student’s office:

Ah, dissertations, why do you always put on that hard-to-get act?

About the fortieth happy occurrence of my walk yesterday was seeing a polka-dotted bike. Kate Spade would surely approve of this happy union (as would my favorite sister), even if the dots are a bit drippy.

And speaking of happy unions (hey-hey, isn’t this all just connecting so seamlessly?), I documented the spot above Walker and I’s famous three hour talk in March 2009. I'm realizing only now how huge a feat it was to stand in this clime for one hundred and eighty minutes. Only for you, Walk, only for you.

And, only for a celebrity golf tournament would the pampered grass of the Old Course be turned to this. Hugh Grant and Samuel L. Jackson, this was for you.

How is it still so beautiful? The official name of the famous golf club here is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews; how apropros the name. I imagine it looking like this a hundred years ago, sans the white van on the far left, avec parasols and hats.

When you are a poet (I flatter myself), and have the sea to look at endlessly and a dissertation to write, a lot of metaphor fishing goes on. In hours on West Sands, the best metaphor I could ever catch was that the waves were ribbons. Thick ribbons unfurling toward the sand. And on the few days when the ribbons show their bright white backings and align into bold stripes, I cannot believe my fortune.

How awesome is that foam webbing?

I am not a daring person, but I was also once young and stupid. And sometimes you just have to go for a story. I once was convinced to play hide and seek in this graveyard at night. I did, then wimped out and left early. Sad, but true.

Prepare yourself, because we’re rolling toward an ending that I am getting more excited about by the second.

Because now (drumroll), lights are being strung, and sweet log smoke drifts through town. We can feel it in our cold toes and tingly noses. Brass was shining on the radio today, and that can only mean one thing. It’s coming! The season for all things red, green, warm, and comforting, and that beautiful, beautiful word Christmas.

I can already picture the lights strung over cobbled streets and twinkling from stores. I am giddy thinking about coffee shops playing Christmas music and Walker’s coffee being dusted with a chocolate star at Costa. In the next few months, there will be real torches, processions through town, Auld Lang Synes, mince pies and mulled wine. It will get dark at 4 in the afternoon, but the lights will come on, and all will be well.

And now for the let-down encore:
Walk wants me to include this. He thinks it’s funny that a computer is bigger than I am. It’s so not. And how hard-core am I about blogging, right? Two computers, baby.

Yesterday marked my 25th blog post, so here's a thanks for reading and posting. Blogging, readers, comments, and you make us happy.