17/2/09

I went to Highgate Cemetery in the afternoon. It seems like all I do is going to cemeteries now. This one was cool, it was another old one with huge monuments, much like Graceland in Chicago. Most of the graves date from the early to mid 1800s. And it was a cold, damp, dark day, perfect for cemetery weather.

Most notably, there was a giant monument for the tomb of Karl Marx. Basically just his massive head on a column. It was pretty cool though, I kept thinking to myself that I was hanging out with Karl Marx since there was really no one else around.

It also made me think of all the other ridiculous tombstone there and what I wanted mine to be like. After my pool party funeral, I want to have a statue of me giving the 'number one' sign like I do for my fantasy baseball shirts and it should be inscribed with "Greatest Human Ever." It really wouldn't be too far out of line with some of the other ones.

It was a nice hour or so walking around, although it took me a while to try to find it and it was a decent tube trip away.

I came back home and ate before I went down to Harrow to book a hostel for Amsterdam with the Americans. Harrow is about 20 minutes away on the Tube, and it cost me a whopping £6.30 to get out there (I have jeans cheaper than that). But it's a whole different world. It's quiet, big open spaces, it feels like a real college campus. I'm really glad I didn't go there for the journalism classes, I'm much happier down in Central London for sure.

Their buildings are really nice though, mostly new. There's a real artsy vibe down there, since it's well, mostly students in the arts. We went to their library and looked around on Hostel World for a place. It's surprisingly expensive to stay there. We ended up finding a really cool place though. It's a boat. I think that'll be really awesome, assuming it doesn't sink or anything like that. It's in a good location too. The idea is that we'll spent Sunday night in the airport since our flight is at like 6 anyways so we'd hardly sleep there, so it saves £25.

I wandered around the campus for a while before coming back. I got an email back from Brian saying that my freelance rate is going to be $75 per column. That's pretty awesome, especially for 370 words, a solid 20 cents a word (or four times as much as I make with Real Detroit). If I end up doing it weekly, that's $300. I'm excited.

I decided I was going to go to bed early since I didn't really have much sleep lately.