We have a few calendars dotted around the walls of our flat. Outlook haunts my desktop with its little boxes and reminders. In England some people call their personal calendars a diary. I suppose this is a pretty good name for a calendar. If you look back over all those little boxes you can catch a glimpse of the stories and reflections that make up a year. So here's a list of some of the calendar entries which made up our 2007.

January 5 - Tim's parents arrive for a visit. That they came to the north of England in January is a true testament to the peculiar nature of parental love. My mother bought bagpipes while visiting Edinburgh. Soon after returning home the Washington state legislature passed a new law. Political parties nearly came to blows. The Scottish Tourist bureau lobbied hard, but caved when their haggis import rights were threatened. In the end it was agreed that if allowed to fall into the wrong hands, bagpipes are dangerous. All persons considering the purchase of bagpipes are now required to go through a full background check and a forty-eight hour waiting period.

February 17 - President's Day party. When people leave their homeland they often develop an instinct to congregate around patriotic holidays which would ordinarily pass without much fanfare.  Americans are particular suckers for any chance to get together to eat an assortment of pies, reminisce about home, and of course, whinge about the strangeness of England. Given that whinging is a very English thing to do I suppose we simultaneously proved we were assimilating well.

March 19 - Do the laundry. I am the laundry man in our house. I suppose there must have been other days in January and February where I did laundry, but for some reason I had to schedule it this month. This makes me wonder whether I did in fact do any laundry in January and February. It's possible I took up nudism for the new year, but then gave up sometime in March. I've been trying to convince Barbie of its merits for years now.

April 2-4 - Barbie is away at a  conference. The conference was for higher education academic administrators and managers and took place at the University of Nottingham.  She's still a rock star and continues to thrive in her work at the University of Manchester. Next year she will be "acting up" as head of teaching and learning in the School of Environment and Development to cover a maternity leave. At first she wondered if she was supposed to mouth off in meetings and maybe graffiti the bathroom, but then she was informed that "acting up" at the university just means taking on greater managerial responsibility.

May - It seems very little happened in May which makes me wonder if May actually happened this year.

June 6 - Meet Graham to discuss writing. Looking  back over the calendar there were a few meetings with my doctoral supervisor so far this year. I don't tend to put my writing schedule on my calendar, but in June this changed. I had written three chapters on Barth by June to follow on from the four I had written on Heidegger the previous year. I was now on the fourth chapter on Barth's book on Anselm. Now the way it works is I turn something into Graham, he writes his comments and suggestions in the margins, and then I revise. I scheduled "Revise Anselm" for the rest of June. This was a difficult chapter, but this essay has now been accepted for publication in Modern Theology so maybe all that work was worth it. 

July 19 - Barbie's family arrive from LA. This was the first trek of the Alvarez-Sandoval clan to England. It was July so of course it rained. A lot.  It was like the weather newscasters were reading from the book of Genesis.  In fact, England had the most rain and subsequent flooding in recorded history. In case you were wondering recorded history goes a ways back in this country. Given Barbie's family are from LA English rain was just another tourist novelty. We braved the rapids in Manchester and tried to give them a flavour of our life here. We took everyone up on a six story ferris wheel overlooking the city.  We found out Barbie's mom really is afraid of heights.

August 24 - Wales castle day. We live only a few hours drive from another country called Wales. We visited Caenarfon  and Conwy. When we toured Scotland a few years ago, Barbie began collecting decorative silver spoons. Not to be outdone, Wales has their own assortment of decorative wooden spoons. Some of them now sit on a shelf next to our army of stuffed bears. We have bears from Scotland wearing kilts and playing bagpipes, a bear from Ireland in a rugby polo, a bear from San Antonio in a cowboy hat, and a host of other more anonymous bears. One has odd fur over his eyes that makes him look like he has a bit of an attitude. They sit their quietly, but I don't actually think they get along very well. At night when the lights are off I think maybe they begin dueling with the spoons to decide who sits where on the shelf. I sometimes check for smile marks in the morning.

September 10 - Send visa renewal to the Home Office. UK immigration policy is enforced through a part of the government called the Home Office. Evidently, the country's borders are controlled by people who work from home. As I drop my application off I imagine a woman named Cindy validating my application from a fold out IKEA desk in her flannel pajamas. When it comes back I open it expecting tea stains and biscuit crumbs on my passport. Instead the wrong year was typed on my visa. Cindy needs to drink her coffee. This was a rather detailed and elaborate process so it definitely made it onto the diary. We were now at the end of our three year visa to stay and do my PhD in Manchester. The original visa didn't take account of the write up year. Although I had hoped to be done in September it wasn't time to leave Manchester just yet.

October 11 - Meet Graham. Barth's Anselm book is now behind me. Chapter nine is under way. The Church Dogmatics in one chapter. Frick. Hoping to be done with Barth by Christmas. He is now the orangoutang on my back. Planet of the Apes was on TV the other day. The one with Charlton Heston not Marky Mark. It somehow took on new meaning.

November 2 - Tim's birthday. I had an algebra professor once who had a sign hanging over his clock. "Time will pass. Will you?"

December 25 - Happy Birthday to Barbie, Barbie's Dad and Jesus. She doesn't look it, but Barbie is 11 months and 8 days older than me. Her dad doesn't look it, but he's seventy something. Not to be outdone Jesus is "begotten not made" and eternal. Most people just say he looks thirty something.