Change of Address

Just in case anyone reads us via RSS: the blog has moved to:


http://swedenfromthecheapseats.blogspot.com/


This page will remain up for the time being, although all the original posts have also been ported to the new location/format.


Toodle-pip!

Just like Byzantium, but with more carpet (sellers)

I've been fascinated by Istanbul, née Constantinople, née Byzantium, for years, so it seemed foolish to come all this way and not drop by to say, "Howdy!" Thus, my weekend in Istanbul. I've been doing my best to make it a weekend in Constantinople, actually—nothing against Istanbul or the Ottomans mind you, I just wanted to start with the place that was, and work my way up to the place that is, if you see what I mean.

Not that it's really possible to make that kind of distinction here. For example, I started this morning at Hagia Sophia, the cathedral built by Justinian in the sixth century, the largest cathedral in the world for the next thousand years, which after the Ottoman conquest became a mosque (and, after the declaration of the Turkish Republic, a museum). The result is an odd combination of Byzantine mosaics and Islamic calligraphy, that nevertheless works somehow. And, of course, the dome is truly impressive1.

Anyway, I've hit a few of the Byzantine highlights, but Roman ruins and impressive churches are not the most striking thing about Istanbul. That honor must be reserved for the carpet sellers. There's a carpet shop around every corner in the old city; their ubiquity obviously presents a problem for erstwhile carpet salesmen trying to lure tourists into their shop. Hence, the carpet touts: a collection of eagerly helpful young Turks, each of whom just happens to have "friends" or "family" who just happen to run a small shop where they sell, oh, let's call them "authentic handicrafts."

Now, I'm well aware that this isn't shocking — People taking advantage of tourists? Call the papers! — but what is hard to convey is just how omnipresent the carpet touts are in Istanbul. If you look like a tourist, you can expect to be approached by maybe one per block in the quieter parts of Sultanahmet, while on the streets around Hagia Sophia that number needs to be increased by a factor of four or five. Seriously, it is an incessant stream of "friendly" Turks asking if you have lost your way, pouncing if you hesitate at a corner for even a second, or (heaven forbid) you have the temerity to actually pull out a street map! Frankly, it's exhausting, and it makes the city extremely difficult to enjoy.

Fortunately, there are no touts allowed in the archaeology museum, so I'm off for an afternoon with the worlds largest collection of Lycian sarcophagai.

1 Justinian hired a couple of mathematicians to design his church, neither of whom appears to have had any prior architectural experience. They took a look at the sources, did some calculations, and came up with a theoretically feasible design for the biggest dome in the world. Five years later, there it was, a miracle of engineering—that lasted for all of 20 years before it collapsed. It wasn't until after the conquest that the Ottoman architect Sinan finally managed to get the thing stabilized. As the (most likely insane) Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut (probably) said, "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

School, the Turkish way

ITAP, Turunç

I am in Turunç, Turkey this week, attending a constraint programming summer school. I've never been to Turkey before, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Of course, I still haven't been to most of Turkey, but I can say that the Mediterranean coast is really nice. Turunç is tiny (pop. 2400), and I'm actually not in the village so much as above it—the school is at ITAP, a sort of retreat for Turkish physicists, where they can stare at the sea and think deep thoughts at the state's expense. How did a bunch of constraint programmers wind up here for the week? Couldn't tell you, but I'm not complaining.

The wifi only works from the terazzo, so really I have no choice but to hang out there all day…

The weather's been nearly perfect, so we've had our breakfast (olives, feta, and sour yogurt), lunch (some combination of eggplant and beef) and dinner (soup, salad and chicken, with a cake soaked in syrup for desert) on the terazzo every day. There's a nice ling break in the afternoons, to either hike down the mountain to town—the return trip is draining, err, I mean invigorating—or take a dip in the pool. The national beer (Efes Pilsner) is enough better than Swedish beer to make long evening discussions entertaining. In short, it's been pretty much the perfect conference so far. (Oh, yes, the presentations have been top notch, too.)

Constraint programmers in the sun.

Today we took the afternoon off for a "blue water" cruise. We piled onto a wooden boat and puttered out to a series of lovely little coves, stopping for an extremely salty swim in each, then had a grilled dinner and drinks before heading back to port. The young turks (metaphorically, if you get my drift) stayed in the village to find a bar, while the more reasonable of us have taken the minibus ride back up the mountain to relax by the pool, discussing the network simplex algorithm to the tune of a little Vivaldi.

"Would you care for a turkish coffee?" "Oh, thank you very much!"

Oy, I'm tired. Off to bed for me.

Beer and brats and Brits

Back in spring of 2008, a fika conversation at work had turned to Sweden's princess Viktoria and her betrothal to a fellow named Daniel Westling, who had been her personal trainer at the gym. The Swedes didn't seem to like him too much, and I remembered that they said he "looks like a brat" (brat, with a short 'a', as in spoiled child, not brat with a longer 'a' as in bratwurst). "What's a 'brat', and how can you tell"? I asked, which led to a long discussion of it.

Here's a pretty good description (in English) of what a Stockholm brat is. The short version is that a brat is a sub-class of the young and rich and idle, and even though that article is four years old now, the 'look' of a brat is still valid. But of course I wanted to see them for myself. "Well, they hang out in Stureplan, and I often saw them walking past an English-style pub there that I liked to go to sometimes," said fellow post-doc K., who is partial to things British after spending some time at Oxford. So a plan was hatched, to go and sit ourselves comfortably with a beer (which real brats wouldn't touch, as being too prole), and observe these creatures in their native habitat.

An odd thing that happened on the way in was that, somewhere between Märsta and Stockholm, our train was delayed because, as the announcer said, "there is an un-sober person on the tracks ahead of us." But we were routed around the person, and managed to get to her pub, The Bull and Bear, just after it opened. We therefore got great seats outside, facing the street, and commenced people watching. But it was a little too exposed, perhaps; as K. said, "It's hard to just look at people when they can look back." (Yes, I thought, that's a basic problem in behavioral research, for both the observer and the observed...) We were treated to a Thai parade, and a few brats (see picture above), but there were more tourists than brats. "Perhaps many of them have already gone away to their summer homes," said K.

We discussed the rich, and their odd ways, and I learned some important words pertaining to brats and their specific look, such as "kotlettfrilla." We had lunch and then left this pub to see more of the square, and window-browse at a bookshop, and to see more rich pretty people sitting outside at a restaurant for rich pretty people, and to check out Sturegallerian, a fancy-schmancy mall. If you click on that Sturegallerian link before June 23, you will get a Flash-heavy preview of its current exhibit, "Going Dandy," which is completely appropriate for the desired cliental. (It's hard to tell, sometimes, how much Swedes understand irony.)

We then took a bus to an even more British pub that K. likes, The Tudor Arms, which is small and cramped and cozy, has sports going on several TVs, and is more of a neighborhood hangout than a place to people-watch. And here, also, there were more people speaking English than Swedish. But eventually we'd had enough of beer and brats and Brits, and we made our way in the beautiful summer evening weather to Östermalmstorg, less fancy than Stureplan but still well within the borders of the well-to-do part of town. We took a rather frightening elevator down to the subway (it was shaking a lot) in order to get on the subway back to central station, and then a train home. And on the way back, our train was stopped again because of a person on the tracks, although this time, the conductor apparently didn't feel like giving us an assessment of their sobriety. "This is very weird," said K., "I commuted between Stockholm and Uppsala every day for a long time, and I never had a train delayed because of people on the tracks, and now we have had two in one day."

Boston, Rain

I'm attending a summer school in Boston for this coming week, and I just arrived in Boston this evening, after a week spent visiting my family in north Alabama. The past week has been fabulous—great food, visits with family I haven't seen in years, and lots of tennis and golf (a first for me) in 95°F heat—and frankly, Boston is going to have a hard time competing.

Boston got off to a strong start, though: it was 60°F and raining, and as I stood in the airport T station trying to figure out how to buy a 7 day pass, a traveler leaving the city handed me their pass, good for two more days. After an easy train ride to my hotel, I was beginning to fear it would be difficult to maintain my anti-metropolitan prejudices. If that had been the indicator of a trend, instead of the start of a roller coaster ride, it would have been difficult indeed.

Seeing my room brought me back to reality. I had forgotten that "good quality hostel" is a category quite a bit rougher than "no-frills hotel." Don;t get me wrong, it's clean and the staff are friendly, and I don't need a TV, but I'm old enough that I want my own bathroom. Sigh. And wireless internet in the rooms is only useful if it actually works. A week of only having internet in the lobby? This was looking grim. Feeling a little down, I set off in search of dinner (and shampoo).

After a bit of wandering (through the Boston Pride festival, which was just being shut down for the evening) I managed to find not only an open pharmacy, but then the best quick hamburger place I've ever been to (sorry, Krazy Jim's). My faith in humanity restored, I went back to the hostel for a shower, an episode of Community, and then dozed off to the sound of the strengthening rain storm.

I suppose the waning of the storm made the dripping sound more distinct; in any case, something woke me up before midnight, which was thankfully before the large and growing puddle of rainwater on my floor had made it to my luggage. The culprit appeared to be a rooftop drain pipe that ran down one corner of my room. It took a good 30 minutes for the befuddled night clerk to decide he had the authority to put me in a new, crappier room ("It's a triple, so you'll have plenty of space," he assured me, despite the fact that the only difference between the single and the triple was that they had crammed two more beds into the triple). Whatever. By one I was sound asleep again, and I woke this morning to dry floors.

OK, coffee break's over. Gotta run.

April was the coolest month

Joe just informed me that, if he read the newspaper correctly, it was actually the warmest April in Uppsala in 200 years. Nevertheless, I will stand by my post title. Here is a list of the celebratory things that happened, in reverse order, so as to save the best for last.

5. Valborg. The traditional Walpurgis night here in Sweden, on which bonfires are lit to either welcome Spring or scare away the witches, depending on your view of it. We traveled out to the old Viking-era burial mounds where they have a huge fire, and fireworks, as we've done in years past. Our Swiss friends L. and J. drove, and brought a delicious hot soup with them, a traditional soup for the carnival season made mostly of flour and butter. The hot soup was very welcome, as it was nearly freezing temperatures, and therefore quite crowded around the fire. L. and J. had gone to the continent for Easter with family, so we didn't get to break cascarones over their heads as we've done in the last couple years. No worries—we got them at the fire. It's been probably more than a decade since I've surprised someone with a cascarone, and it was quite gratifying.

4. Sista April. The day of Valborg is the last day of April, which is specially celebrated in university towns in Sweden—the day when the students or anyone who has anything to do with the University goes nuts. In previous years, we've been ambitious enough to make it to the student raft race, but this year, for the first time, it was webcast by the local newspaper, so we watched it with breakfast instead, which is much more relaxed. And having a picnic is also traditional, but this year the weather wasn't so nice—see Valborg, above—so we had our picnic on the floor of our living room. In some ways, skipping Sista April makes us seem more like real townies, but on the other hand it is fun to see the craziness, so I hope next year the weather is better.

3. Easter. We missed celebrating St. Patrick's Day this last March, so we decided to both 'holidays' in one weekend and call it "St. Patrick's Resurrection Day (Observed)". Saturday night we had a Guinness, and home-corned beef (you can't get it in the store here) and cabbage and potatoes, then we had Sunday brunch in which the beef was miraculously revived as hash, and there were Easter eggs and a home-made Danish coffee cake. Since the weather was quite nice we took a stroll over one of the large grassy areas by our house to do our traditional cascarones.

2. Joe's birthday was a few days before Easter, and right in the middle of a very busy time for him, but we had fun that night anyway, with balloons in the window, and pizza and ice cream and cake (home-made pound cake as per request) for dessert. I managed to convince Joe that he really should take the second pound cake in to work, which made him very popular with everyone and especially his advisor, so I'll count that as a win.

1. And last but certainly not least... we always knew that Joe was a nerd but now we have proof. In early April Joe learned that the Swedish Artificial Intelligence Society had chosen his masters thesis as the best in Scandinavia. He has therefore been invited to present that research at their every-third-year meeting, which this year is in Trondheim, Norway the week after next. The announcement was celebrated with a bottle of champagne. Congratulations, Joe! (Please note that, although his advisor was on both the selection and evaluation committees, he won the prize before taking in the birthday cake.)

Geek night at the nerd museum

The Nobel Museum in Stockholm must surely be, on normal days, one of the very most boring museums in the city. In general, I'm all for old-fashioned Museums—give me endless displays of obscure items accompanied by a page-sized placard of information, written in a far-too-small font, and I'm a happy camper. But at this museum, the relics from Nobel Prize winners are perhaps a little too obscure to be of immediate interest to all except the truly devoted. Take the display on Albert Schweitzer, for instance. It consisted of three children's books in Swedish, about Africa. The placard described Schweitzer's work briefly, mentioning that he had given several lectures in Sweden. At the very end, we learn the relevance of the books in the display case: these books were donated to the Museum by the some relatives of Schweitzer's friends in Sweden. See what I mean about tenuous connections to the artefacts?

But a couple weekends ago, it was Culture Night in Stockholm, which meant most places were free to get into, and open late, and having various activities. The Nobel Museum decided to do Space. Here's the text of their English ad:

18:00-01:00
Nobelmuseet (the Nobel Museum)
Weightless groove, live Stormtroopers
and planetary activities
Listen to weightless groove all evening at the
Nobel Museum with DJ-Chekov, mingle with
live Stormtroopers and, if you are childish, you
can take part in the planetary activities.

DJ-Chekov? Planetary activities? Live Stormtroopers?? Who could possibly resist that? (The Swedish text was even better, as it said "living Stormtroopers", and also specified that there would be 'Klingon vodka' in the cafe. They also showed a film, a 50s Swedish movie called "Space invasion in Lapland.")

But at night, with some suitably-colored lighting, and a couple walls of slowly pulsing LEDs, and a crowd of good-natured people out to have fun, and a couple of DJs playing space-themed music, the Nobel Museum can transform itself into a respectable-looking nightclub. Who knew!

We wandered around the displays — ran into the Stormtrooper — learned a little about various Nobel Prize winners — caught the tail end of the "Pictures from Space" slide show. We missed the movie, and unfortunately the 'Klingon vodka' was all gone by the time we snagged a seat in the cafe, and they had switched to 'Klingon gin', apparently in the belief that geeks will drink anything as long as its 'on theme' (yup, we had some, it was fairly nasty). But we had a lot of fun just hanging out, and making fun of the live entertainment, an American with a quite bad singing voice and what sounded like a Casio. Thankfully he finished, and the job was taken over by a couple of young guys who did a much better job of sticking to the space theme, and of playing music that at least one tableful of middle-aged women were happy to bop along to right up until the end. Hey, I closed the Nobel Museum... on purpose... and it was fun! How nerdy can you get?

På hästen

... which means, "on the horse."

While Joe's been 'enjoying' skiing (he still has visible bruises), I've doing doing a little physical therapy. As a part of that, I went out to a local(ish) riding school to try out horseback riding. I have sat up on a horse a few times before in my life — when I lived in Stevensville (9 and younger), the people behind us had a pony and a horse, and the neighbor kids and I would just hop up on one sometimes, and ride around the paddock bareback (we weren't supposed to do it, so don't tell my parents...). And I remember taking a long trail ride in Colorado once, probably also before I was 10.

The point is, I haven't been up on a horse (okay, my ride Felicia, my Irish Tinker, wasn't a horse, really, but a "D-ponny"... which seems to mean nearly horse-sized) in 30 years.

I have to say, though, for pony who claims to be Irish, she sure didn't understand much English. Sometimes I'd her to "go" and she'd say "nej"...

Works in Theory

I think everyone is a little over-anxious for spring now. This morning, Jennifer opted to wear her "spring time in Sweden" shoes—a pair of black leather walking shoes, good for getting rained on, but not for walking on ice—so naturally we got three inches of fresh snow fall this afternoon.

Lest you think unwarranted optimism is unique to us immigrant-types, I will also mention that not 15 minutes ago I heard the distant chimes of the ice cream truck passing by:

Wanna know what's funny about ice cream trucks in Sweden? (Other than the fact that every truck in the country plays exactly the same song?) They don't sell ice cream cones, or popsicles, or anything like that: the trucks sell 1 liter tubs of ice cream. You know, just in case you forgot to get a tub of ice cream when you were at the store buying 4 liters of milk on your way home from work.

Have I ever mentioned that Sweden invented lactose tolerance? That's right: all you dairy eating types are mutants descended from proto-Vikings*.

*As my proof editor also happens to be a biologist, I am obligated to correct myself: adult lactose digestion arose independently in Scandinavia and the Arabian peninsula. So either a Viking or a Bedouin, take your pick.

The Doktorand Who Tried Skiing

Every Whom
Down in Whom-Vale
Liked Skiing a lot…

But the Doktorand,
Who lived 500 km southwest of Whom-Vale,
Thought down hill was rot!

The Doktorand hated down hill! The whole downward direction!
If you want to know why, it won't take much detection:
It could be that his poles didn't function quite right,
It could be, perhaps, that he was skiing at night;
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that it always led him to fall.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His poles or his skis,
(Or the bruises that covered his hands and knees)
He sat there on Sunday Eve, hating the hills,
Gulping glasses of water with his painkiller pills.
For he knew every Whom around Whom-Vale, you see,
Was busy now, planning their Monday morn ski.

"And the bars are closed!" he snarled with a sneer.
"I've been out skiing! I want a cold beer!"
Then he growled, with his Doktorand fingers rapidly typing,
"The internet isn't even fast enough for skyping!"
But, tomorrow, he knew…

…All the IT department girls and boys
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for the slopes!
And then! Oh, the skiing! Oh, the skiing! Skiing! Skiing!

To be continued…

Hat? What hat? I don't have a hat.

I suppose that the national honor is safe once more, as the Swede who won last year's Vasaloppet has just now managed to win it again, beating a Norwegian (who had steadfastly refused to share the lead all day) by less than a second after a 90 km slog. [Update: actually, the rude guy turns out to have been a Czech. The best Norwegian placed fourth.]

So how does that leave the modern state of Swedo-Nordic relations? Allow me to give a brief survey of yesterday's Expressen newspaper by way of illustration. The headline was "Nya Skymfen Mot Sverige: Northugs Hån På Mållinjen" beneath a picture of the incident itself, complete with an added speech bubble in which Northug insults the King, Björn Borg, and Ingemar Stenmark (he didn't actually have time for all that at the finish line, of course, so the verbal insults had to wait until he was interviewed on Norwegian tv a few minutes later). The front page of the sports section breaks down the five different ways that Northug insulted Sweden on Friday (including making a quip about the wife of a Swedish sports commentator). The coverage then continues for all of the next 8 pages, with second-by-second stills of "the insult."

My favorite part, though, is page 11 of the main section, which is wholly given over to a list of all the ways that Sweden is superior to Norway. In the paper's own words, "Expressen har sammanställt listan som får norrmännen at rysa i sina lusekoftor." The list includes things like "Vi är snabbare i luften," "Vi lever längre," and "Vi inreder era hem." In the name of fair and balanced reporting, they go on to list the things which Norway does better: Norwegians destroy the environment with fossil fuels, and they make nice sweaters, plus Swedes do appreciate Norwegian banana-flavored baby food.

It concludes with:

Poor Petter Northug—he is obviously so disturbed at living in an inferior country that he must act like a fool. Don't worry, Petter—not everyone can live in a country as nice as Sweden.

So, how long do you suppose they've been waiting for an excuse to run that page?

I need a new hat

I told my Swedish teacher my "Fel mossa!" story this week, and without hesitation he said, "Nu är det Ski-VM i Oslo och norrmännen är fienden…"

In the meanwhile, things have gotten much worse. Much, much worse. I assume everyone has been keeping up with the events unfolding in Oslo—how could you not, with the constant television coverage?—but in case you missed it, the end of the men's relay is worth watching. Petter Northug, (the Norwegian) is in red, Marcus Hellner (the Swede) in white; Northug's antics start just after he tops the last hill about 35 seconds in, but the real insult comes just after the 50 second mark.



Surely no one noticed that, right? Well, maybe one or two people…

On the bright side, the spring sales have started, so I'm sure I can buy myself a more appropriate hat.

At least I looked a little Swedish

So today marks a real milestone in my life: my first job interview for a non-academic position, and an interview held in a foreign language at that.

When I was offered to have a job interview with Livsmedelsverket, I had answered the phone and then set up the time in English. The potential boss, who called me, and who would be doing the interview along with three others, said that it would be okay for us to have the interview in English. But somehow, when I got there this morning and said hello and a few other words in Swedish to him, he decided that there was no reason not to do the whole thing in Swedish. "Men du får svara på engelska, det går bra," he said.

Well thank goodness for that, at least, because I can muddle through "Hej, hur läget?" and "Dåligt väder idag" okay, but discussing science, or using what some folks might call good grammar, is just a tad beyond my feeble skills at this point. (But I should say thank goodness also for the last few weeks of physical therapy I have been doing, because the therapists have been insisting to do everything in Swedish, with the result that I feel quite a bit more confident about my listening skills than I did even at the start of the year.)

Of course I was told during the initial phone contact that it would be better if I spoke Swedish, so to make up for the fact that I do not, I made up my mind to look as Swedish as possible. And I think I did that pretty well, at least. Everyone else was also wearing jeans and comfortable shoes.

For some reason, I have just now remembered that my father, when feeling playful, likes to credit me with single-handedly inventing the saying "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullroar."

Well, I gave it my best shot, and I think maybe I will get a little extra credit for at least trying in Swedish. And every interview is good practice for the next one. For instance, in the future I will be better prepared for the question "What would you do if you had your day planned out but your boss came to you and wanted you to do something else?"

My answer was "Well, I would probably do it."

To which their response was: "Probably?" (chortles all around the table)

Hmmm. Well, so we'll just see how that goes.

Bad Hat!

Update: I should have payed a little closer attention to my Swedish. The word for hat is mössa, not mossa as I originally reported. Also, the correct translation would be closer to "Wrong hat!"—which is also pretty funny, actually.

---

We've been back from the States for six weeks now, and we're still having fun with all of the little treasures that we brought back with us—clothes we haven't worn in years that suddenly fit and/or seem stylish, trinkets we had been missing, gadgets we had forgotten we owned. We're still in the process of working all of our new/old stuff into our old/new life (March this year will be the month of hanging-things-on-the-walls).

One of my little treasures is my Norway flag hat, purchased out of desperation on a cold boat trip along the Norwegian coast in 2005. I didn't bring it to Sweden originally because, well, it's Norwegian, and at the time I thought it might be a little impolitic. Now that we're acclimated, though, it didn't seem like such a big deal, and I missed it. So this time I brought it along, and I'm glad I did—it actually does a better job covering my earlobes than any other hat I have here, not an insignificant factor when biking along at 20 degrees below freezing.

So, today the last of our Christmas bounty showed up, a package of stuff we'd ordered in Michigan that arrived after we returned, kindly forwarded by Jennifer's parents. More treasures! Instead of coming to our local gas station, though, the box stopped at Uppsala's single post office*, so this afternoon I took off work a little early to go and fetch it before the office closed for the weekend.

On the way out of the building, I passed my co-supervisor in the hall. He glanced at my head, then said, "For a moment I thought you were wearing a Norwegian flag on your hat."

When I avowed that I was, in point of fact, doing just that, he shook his head sadly, and said, "It's no wonder it took you so long to get your visa, then."

Now fast forward to my walk back to the bus stop from the post office. As I slowly made my way down a particularly icy sidewalk, a Swedish woman in her 60s, going the opposite direction, took the time to go a few steps out of her way so that she could shake a finger at me menacingly, and declare, "Fel mossa!"

Of course, last night Charlotte Kalla did suffer an ignominious defeat in the ski sprint in Oslo, the medal eventually going to Marit Bjørgen (a Norwegian), but clearly the blame for that lies with the French. No, I think it's more likely that the Swedish dislike of Norwegians runs deep enough to compel a complete stranger to speak to me on the street, for what must be the third time in three years.

Can you imagine what would happen if I ever mentioned the fact that I'm part Danish? I shudder to think.

*Why didn't it go to the usual place, you ask? Whim. For a postal service, Posten has always maintained an admirable sense of whimsy.

What have we been up to??

Vacation!

Being a "woman of leisure" for the time being, I went home in early December for a nice long holiday vacation in lovely St. Joe, Michigan. The weather was cold and snowy, with an unexpected thaw just before the New Year, so... just like home. Joe, who had classes and employment and pesky things like that, joined us a few days before Christmas.

One of the few disappointments with the trip was that we did not manage to visit Ann Arbor. I-94, as many of you know, can be a right nuisance in blizzard season, and this year was no exception. We are very sorry to have missed seeing people, but next time we visit the US, Ann Arbor is a priority. (And we probably won't try it in the winter again.)

Details... will follow. All is well here, and we hope that all is well for you, wherever you are. Happy 2011, and may we all have a safe, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Rabbit.