Hmm…

Just wondering how things are going. Am I going to have to resort to sending an email?

Good job on continuing to plug away hard at the thesis. I’m impressed with your self-discipline.

(I still want to see photos of the Icehotel. Just so you know.)

Erin, glad you’ve joined the rest of us in winter. It’s hard to believe that VA has had so little snow, when New York and New England have been severely pummeled all winter long. Maybe that’s a reason to live in the south…

More soon from Jukkasjärvi!

When I was 9, I once visited an attraction that was along the same lines: a cave was carved into a glacier, and set up to look like a home. All the furniture was carved from the ice. But no one stayed there, to my knowledge. I think it was in the Mer de Glace, which is in the French Alps.

Weirdly, I know the guy who wrote that letter to the New York Times. He was an astrophysics professor at Williams when I was studying physics there, not long after the Big Bang.

I will see what I can do about putting up some more quotidian photos. I have taken a lot, but I’m very lazy about posting them. I will try.

Minutes ago I read in the New York Times that it may be a few years for really good Auroras: Letter: Auroras Will Return. Indeed, it appears you can get a forecast, and I’m sad to report that the Aurora Borealis forecast for next weekend is as bad as it gets: aurora borealis forecast

That’s not to say that it won’t be gorgeous up there. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, and I look forward to words and pictures about the experience.

Calin: Tell Ian that yes, I did eventually make it into my car. And as far as the relative earnings of garbage collectors (or sanitation engineers, or trash-free environment solution providers, or whatever the hell they’re called these days) is concerned, I don’t doubt that they make a whole lot more than graduate students.

On the other hand, a great deal of psychological research has shown that money and happiness really don’t correlate, at least once you pass the point where you can afford to buy enough food. So that’s a consolation for graduate students, anyway.

So I was standing there in the freezing cold with my soldering iron when a garbage truck went roaring past, down the hill (hope there’s not too much ice on the road…). Suddenly the truck screeched to a halt, the door swung open, and a man with fluffy red hair came running at me waving a blowtorch.

My first thought was “He thinks I’m trying to steal this car (albeit in a non-standard way) and is going to try to stop me with fire.” That really was my first thought, sans parenthesis. But as he approached, he broke into a broad grin. He had seen me with my soldering iron, and said “This will work much better”. I got a little queasy, imagining turning a blowtorch on my car (if the soldering iron was a bad idea, this was a WAY BAD idea), and was actually rather relieved when the torch turned out to be out of gas.

I have to say, that garbage man was an incredibly cheery fellow. I can only hope that I would be able to be as jolly if I had to drive other people’s trash around town. The though made me feel slightly warmer, as I stood there trying to do the same thing to my car.

Calin, I remember those winters in Boston. I remember trying to find my car after a snowfall. Cars look remarkably similar when they’re covered in a half a ton of white powder.

OK, I’m ready to tell the end of the story. See the next comment…