A Good Day

On Monday, Emily and I heard some stressful news: the British Airways Cabin Crew union had voted to strike from December 22nd to January 2nd. This would have canceled our flight home on December 23rd. Needless to say, we had a stressful week.

But Thursday was a good day. To start, in the afternoon a judge approved an injunction against the union, which puts the strike on hold until at least February. Great news, seeing as we're both really excited to be coming home for Christmas. And the other good thing about Thursday was the four inches of snow - which really makes all of the cold and windy weather much more enjoyable.

Here are some pictures I took on the way to work Friday morning:

A Spot of Bother

Last week, Borders UK officially went into administration, which is just the fancy British way of saying, "We're broke." The company is bankrupt and is now under the ownership of an administration company. The Cambridge store is closing, along with many others. The only frustrating thing (if things weren't already) is that now that everything's on sale, we're making lots of money (about 3 times as much). So the administration company is actually buying more stock for us to sell, which means it's not just a matter of emptying our shelves but seeing just how much we can milk the situation. On one hand, it means I'll be employed a little longer than we originally expected, but we have absolutely no idea how long that might be. I've been told we could be open for a week or several months. But I'm trying to be thankful for the time that I will have and the new changes that will soon befall our lives. I'm hoping that by the time we leave for Texas, we'll have a better idea of what lies ahead. But don't worry, our Thorton's budget will not be affected by these proceedings. :)

Autumn Arrival

One thing I will never get tired of is experiencing four distinct seasons. I would prefer it if the summer were a bit warmer and sunnier, but I guess that's the trade-off for having a colorful fall. Emily and I went out for a walk a few Saturdays ago to enjoy the weather and take some pictures:

The Pembroke Croquet Lawn

Emily in the Pembroke Gardens

Cam Punters from the Mathematical Bridge

(a) Footpath to the King's College bridge or (b) Lothlorien

Matthew on the King's College bridge, in desperate need of a haircut.

Emily and I continued our Halloween tradition of carving pumpkins, which usually involves at least 30 minutes of pumpkin inspection, followed by several hours spent browsing through carving pattern, and then finally the actual carving. On Halloween night, we set the pumpkins on the ledge outside the living room window, where they could be seen from the street. Unfortunately, at all other times they were kept inside, since we don't have any covered outdoor area. I think the smell has taught us our lesson, and next year we'll be carving much closer to Halloween, and disposing of pumpkins soon thereafter.

Can you guess which is Emily's and which is mine?

Congratulations, but don't tell anybody...

So it's official, for those who haven't heard: I passed my qualification exam, and am officially staying on at Cambridge for a PhD!

Now there's a funny thing about the Cambridge PhD system, which is due to the fact that most PhD students already have a Master's degree when they start a PhD course. All PhD students are admitted for a one-year, probationary course called a CPGS course (Certificate of Postgraduate Study). To qualify for the certificate, you have to submit a dissertation and defend it in a viva. If you successfully complete that, you are approved for the award, and then registered to continue on as a PhD student.

So, today I received in the mail a thick, padded envelope from the Board of Graduate Studies, and inside was the following:

Dear Mr Benesh

I am glad to be able to tell you that the Board of Graduate Studies, on the recommendation of the Degree Committee for the Faculty concerned have agreed to approve you for the award of the Certificate of Postgraduate Study in Physics.

The Board have also agreed on the recommendation of the Degree Committee, to register you as a candidate for the PhD Degree from Michaelmas Term 2008, and to allow you to count towards the requirements for that degree all the three terms during which you were working for the Certificate. The effect of this decision is that no publication will be made of the award of the Certificate to you, and you will not be entitled to receive the Certificate as long as you remain on the Register of Graduate Students, nor subsequently should you submit a dissertation in candidature for the PhD, MSc or MLitt Degree.

So according to that last line, even though I've qualified for the certificate, I won't actually get the certificate, or even any sort of recognition for it, unless I fail to complete the PhD. And the letter that they send me to tell me this comes in a padded, unbendable envelope with cardboard backing, as if this letter is so important that I'll want an uncreased copy. Weird.

No, I'm not trying to advertise for Borders.

I don't know if any of you are Hugh Laurie fans, (actually, I do know, and for the few of you who aren't, you should be) but he's written a book called The Gun Seller. It. Is. AMAZING! ...probably one of the best books I've ever read. It's actually quite disgusting how one man can be so talented in so many fields. Anyway, it's technically a crime novel, but it's ridiculously funny too. At first, I was a little afraid that I would really only enjoy it because it's funny, but his plot development and timing are incredible. He actually got me to pause, consider how things might go one way, and then they went somewhere completely different. It's just ingenious. I don't know if I'm making much sense, but I can't get over how brilliant this book is. He also supposedly has a sequel, entitled The Paper Soldier, coming out 27 September, but that date has been confirmed by no one, including Hugh Laurie himself. So we'll see. But in the mean time, pick up a copy of The Gun Seller; it's got my (and therefore Stephen Colbert's) seal of approval.

Is it too early for cider?

For the past 24 hours, Cambridge has started to feel like Fall. It hasn't been particularly cold, but there's something in a cool wind and overcast sky that says, "Let's go carve some pumpkins." Maybe I'm just getting excited about the holidays already (which is probably not a good thing). Or maybe the act of changing apartments is making me subconsciously want change in every aspect of my life. Either way, I could go for some caramel apples right about now.

A long summer...

Hello again, everyone! Sorry for the long delay between posts, but Emily and I hosted more than half our readership at some point over the summer, and so our motivation for blog updates was somewhat reduced.

We've had a great summer, despite this being our first summer to not have an actual multiple-month break since ... ever. We'll discuss some of our summer adventures with family and friends (and post pictures too), but for now, here's a brief update on us.

Emily's still working at Borders, and still enjoying it. A few weeks ago she was relocated to the basement, working on incoming and outgoing shipments. She loves it there for three reasons (in descending levels of significance): 1 - she doesn't have to deal with customers; 2 - she isn't dependent on the schedule of other people; and 3 - she doesn't have to work weekends. So it's been a nice change. We finally got to spend a weekend together (for the first time since moving here) and so of course we slept in, had brunch, and watched movies all day.

My research is going well, though I'd love to take some time off sometime soon. I submitted my first year dissertation in mid-June, and gave my first seminar to the research group in July. The seminar was well-received (not least of all because I stuck within the time limits); I had several compliments afterward and two people stopped by my lab the next day to see my research.

For the last five weeks I've been running a full-time experiment on one of the group's ten or so cryostats, which is basically a six-foot-tall, souped-up vacuum thermos. One of my semiconductor devices is in the cryostat at a temperature of -459.1° F. The big downside to the experiment is that it has to be refilled with liquid helium every 24 hours, and helium is expensive, so I feel obligated to work at least a little bit on it every day. Luckily, I've been able to connect to the lab and run the experiment from home, which means I only have to go in for an hour or so on weekends.

Coming up, we'll be moving to our new apartment near Pembroke. It's the triple threat compared to our current place: bigger, cheaper, and more central. September 1st is the big moving day, so we've got two weeks to get packed and ready to go. We're pretty excited about the move.

More to come soon!

The Big 2-3

I woke up to the smell of crackling bacon; it's a perfect way to start the day. Matthew made me a huge breakfast of French toast, bacon, and eggs just the way I like 'em (with mushrooms and green pepper...yum). And no proper English breakfast would be without the standard cup of tea, which I had in my brand-new, beautiful tea-for-one set. The rest of day was spent lounging around with my sweetie, reading, snacking, watching movies...all my favorite things. And as a special treat, we found out Cambridge has a KFC. Nothing says "Emily feels loved" like fried chicken. And the cake: let's just say it was appropriately named the "Seriously Chocolate Cake." All in all, it was a pretty good day. But the reason it could be so great was simply because Matthew is absolutely the perfect man for me. The entire day, I kept thinking, "You know me so well. This is exactly what I could have asked for." So lesson learned: Never spend another birthday without my perfect man; he'll take care of the rest. :)

Now you know me a little better...even if you didn't want to.

I am a very routine person. I'm not quite sure how it began, though it probably had something to do with things like practicing and muscle memory at an early age. But since college, I feel as though things have worsened. Without getting into the most severe of my routines (those in the bathroom), everything I do on a regular basis has a regular process and function of its own. And there's actually thought and reason behind every detail of the act. For instance, when I climb into bed at night, I first must make the bed. This is to fix any disheveling from the night before that Matthew thinks he fixed by merely pulling up the covers. Next, I fluff my pillow; it's a feather pillow and therefore does not keep its shape. I then fold down the covers on my side, sit down, and take off my slippers. Next comes the application of Softlips, followed by the setting of my alarm (set the time, make sure it's turned "on", change the color to the next one in the sequence), followed by hand lotion. These last three are particular to this order because after applying my chapstick, I spread it with my index finger, the same finger needed to set the alarm. If I were to reverse these two, I would end up with a minute speck of dust on my lips. Gross. But if I were to set my alarm post lotion, the alarm would feel really slippery in my hands. Also gross. So after these tasks have been executed in the proper order, I can finally climb into bed. Some might consider this to be a sign of OCD or some other ironically named "disorder." And if these actions had no purpose behind them, I would agree. But I feel my reason is my saving grace. There is a point to it all, as there is for this post: my routines are shortening my life. Enhancing, yes, but shortening. As I go about my day (and I say "day" because there is only one stock day that I experience every day...maybe two), the routines of yesterday get melded with today and that of tomorrow, to the point where an entire week has passed and I don't even realize it. It's been a month since we were last home, four since Christmas...When I realized that it's been a year since I graduated, I felt a shift in the space/time continuum that actually involved the ideas of space and time. Have I reached that age where another year goes by and I don't even notice?? Am I...old??? Age 17 to 18 was the longest year of my life. How could I not notice one just as long? It's nice in that it means the time until we're back in the country will go by fast. Only a few blurred months and we'll be out of this tiny apartment. It's an interesting time of the same thing every day, but every day still passes by.....
Yeah, I'm definitely getting old.

Cell phone companies are not smart

Emily and I just changed cell phone plans. We're currently with "3" because they have Skype-enabled phones, which is great, 'cause we can take calls from anyone in the US at any time, and we can call or text each other for free by using the Skype function.

When we first got our phones, the smallest plan we could find (that included a Skype phone) gave us each 300 minutes/texts, 300 minutes for calling other "3" customers, and unlimited Skype for £15 each per month. The initial contract was for six months, which we just completed.

We decided last week that since we had been using nearly none of our minutes and texts, we should switch to a smaller, less expensive plan. So on Monday I called 3 and switched us to a plan that costs us each £9/month and gives us 100 minutes/texts, 100 "3" network minutes, and unlimited Skype. Sounds pretty normal right?

Well, here's the funny part: while I was on the phone with the guy, he said we could either change our old plan to the new one and we would pay a small administrative fee, or he could put it through as an upgrade, which would be free. Apparently, you can only upgrade when you've completed your minimum contract, which we had done, but the best part was that since it went through as an upgrade, today in the mail we received two brand new cell phones!

So we decide to pay this company £12 less every month, and they send us two £100 phones! So now we have two spare phones for people to use this summer while they're visiting, and after that, well, I've got no qualms about selling them...

Our first barbecue!

For the last two weeks, Cambridge has had some fantastic weather - highs in the mid-60s, breezy and sunny. So Emily and I decided we should try out our barbecue and enjoy an afternoon in the garden.

On the menu were hamburgers (with a little Jack Daniel's Barbecue sauce mixed in), steak fries (jacket chips, according to the bag), deviled eggs and British barbecue beans - which disappointingly ended up being beans in tomato sauce, just like every other can of beans in the UK. We still don't know what made them 'barbecue style'.

Emily's action shot of me grillin' it up

Except for the baked beans, it was a great American-feeling afternoon - all of the food was great, and having Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper on the side was a plus. We're definitely going to try this again, especially once we have more people around this summer =)

It only took seven months...

Well, Emily and I have been in Cambridge for seven months now, and we finally got around to being tourists around town. Last Monday we both had a day off for the Easter weekend, and so we decided to brave the crowded streets and visit some old buildings.

First up was King's College Chapel, which, if you've never been, is the iconic Cambridge building.

Here is Emily, attempting to 'squish' the chapel

This was Emily's first time to see King's up-close, and one of her first comments was "I would hate to have to get married here; this aisle is ridiculously long." It's an amazing building, and if you haven't seen it, you should.

Emily made me stand like this to make the picture "less boring"

From there we walked across the bridge and the backs and took some more pictures, like this one:

King's College Chapel, from across the Backs

and then headed next door to Clare College. The first thing we saw at Clare was the Clare Bridge, since we were on the opposite side of the river from the college. The Clare Bridge is home to the stone sphere which doesn't have the famous slice. (This is my preferred way to refer to the interest surrounding the incomplete sphere, because I don't think that something which is merely the space left behind by some other thing should be attributed any fame; there's nothing there, so how can it be famous? Rather, there is quite obviously a famous wedge of stone out there somewhere in the world, and Clare Bridge is well known for not having it.)

I like this picture, because I think it looks like Emily impersonating the world's oldest Pac-Man

We then toured Clare College, which is rather subdued compared to the other colleges nearby, but is still very nice, especially the Hall and the Chapel. They also have great gardens, and you can actually walk on the grass!

Another hundred years, and this path is going to be completely unusable.

From Clare we headed over to Trinity College, which ended up being pretty disappointing. We got to walk through the Great Court, which is pretty huge, but the Hall and the Library were closed to visitors. We did get to see the Chapel, which has statues of Newton, Tennyson and Bacon, which inspired Emily to tell me that if I ever have a life-sized statue of her made, it has to be out of white marble. -- Also, we're planning to go back sometime to see the Library --

The Wren Library -- could you imagine pulling an all-nighter here for a final?

Last on our list for the day was a visit to St. John's College. The Chapel is very beautiful, and we were lucky enough to hear the organist rehearsing when we went through. We weren't allowed to take any pictures though. We did, however, find an outside door that was either built for me, or a short bishop with a tall hat:

Matthew finds his Cambridge niche

We also saw the Bridge of Sighs, which - when I was much, much younger - I thought got its name from the fact that the lowest arch is shaped like a frown.

*sigh*

That pretty much concluded our day, except for one last photo that I think is pretty cool. This is a picture down a cloister, and at the far end you can see across the Bridge of Sighs to the door on the opposite side.

The closest we got to the Bridge of Sighs, thanks to the porter standing guard just of frame.

All in all, it was a very pleasant day. Now we just need to go punting and visit Auntie's Tea Shop, and we'll be true Cambridge tourists!

Emily is a little upset right now.

I have been sick recently. Last weekend, I had some weird stomach bug, so I took Saturday off, hoping to knock this thing out before our trip home. But I guess my day of rest, juice, and Star Wars didn't do the trick because now I think I've picked up a cold. Maybe it's just one giant bout of the flu. I don't know; I've never had it. And now there's the added frustration in that I would feel incredibly guilty for taking another sick day so soon. All I know is that if I'm sick on my vacation home AGAIN, I think I might die of sorrow...or be just so darn mad. Either way, I will not be able to fully enjoy the presence of my favorite people, which needless to say, cuts me to the core. So if you could please pray for my speedy recovery, I would appreciate the sanity it would bring.

A first anniversary adventure

Hello everyone, long time no blog! My apologies for not keeping everyone updated... we'll try and work on that in the future.

This past weekend was our first anniversary, and to celebrate, Emily and I both took holidays from work for Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and traveled up to Lincoln. We took a train Saturday morning, since the previous night we went with a bunch of people that Emily works with to see the new movie Watchmen. (My opinion of the movie: fantastically well done, from a cinematic/artistic point of view. As a movie, eh, not so good.)

Anyways, we arrived in Lincoln just before lunchtime on Saturday. We walked from the station to our B&B and dropped off our bags, before hiking up the hill to the historical center of Lincoln. We happened to pick a good weekend to visit Lincoln, as there was a little fair/carnival going on, with lots of really good food and crafts for sale. Also, all of the tourist attractions were free! So rather than spend money on silly things like museums or castles, we got to buy cappuccino fudge =).

We toured the Lincoln castle first, which was really nice. There were all sorts of medieval demonstrations going on: archery, weaving, cooking, and others. We mostly walked through the various exhibits and took pictures.

Lincoln Cathedral, from Lincoln Castle

After that, we explored the city a little bit, and found some Roman ruins, including this well from the 300s or so:

Emily's comment: "It looks like Jabba's pit monster."

We then picked up some snacks and stuff for dinner, and headed back to the B&B to recuperate and catch up on our TV watching. We thus discovered that the British are just plain better then Americans at making commercials. They are creative and interesting to watch. But I digress.

The next day we enjoyed a full English breakfast, also known as a traditional fry-up. Probably the least-healthy thing I've ever eaten. Two fried eggs, two sausages, two slices of bacon, a fried tomato, fried mushrooms, and baked beans. I was thankful for the orange juice I had with it, as I think my major arteries were planning a secession.

Following breakfast, we headed back upstairs to exchange anniversary gifts. We decided some time ago that it would be fun to stick with the traditional anniversary gifts. Now, according to the internet (the authoritative source for sociological information) the traditional first-anniversary gift theme is paper, and the 'modern tradition' (really, not making that up) is clocks.

Clocks sounded a little boring; at least, there was a lot less flexibility than with paper, so we're sticking to the classics. Emily gave me a really nice personalized desktop stationery set, some origami paper, and a samurai sword letter opener. The letter opener, unfortunately, is in Irving, but it looks pretty awesome. For Emily, she had been repeating to me, on a nearly weekly basis, that she would love to take up painting, so I got her set up with watercolors, brushes, canvas, and two portable sketch/paint pads.

We then headed out to the Cathedral to do some more sightseeing. If we had planned a little better, we would have gone to a service, as it was Sunday morning. Instead, we had to wait behind a partition halfway down the cathedral until the service ended. Here are some pictures:

From the entrance

Looking toward the entrance

The cathedral was great, a really beautiful building. It wasn't too crowded either, which was nice. We had plenty of time to look around at just about everything. One of the coolest things we saw was an exhibition of sculptures for the fifteen stages of the cross called The Forest Stations. Here's #8:


And a closer view:
I have lots of other pictures from inside the cathedral that I thought about posting, but I think I'll stick to one more. This is the choir director's music stand, which of course immediately made me think of Dumbledore:

Which came first?

After leaving the cathedral, it was drizzling a bit, so we walked over to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, which was mostly indoors. It's a very nice museum, with a lot of stuff in it that's been collected over the years, most of it in very good condition. We stayed there until the rain moved off, and then headed over to the ruins of the Bishop's palace. Unfortunately, there seems to be a limit to the amount of interest you can take in ruins over a 24-hour period, and so we were in and out of the palace pretty quickly. We did find a very nice vineyard terrace with a great view over the city, but I forgot to take a picture of it. Sorry.

Something to keep in mind if you visit Lincoln: everything closes at 4:00 on Sundays. We found ourselves shut out of most of the museum/historical sites, and so we headed down to the center of town to find some way to pass the time until we were hungry for dinner. We thought about going to a Waterstone's and reading for awhile, but they closed just as we got there. We then saw a Starbucks in the distance and trekked over there, but could only enjoy thirty minutes of comfy chairs and hazelnut hot chocolate before being kicked out yet again.

So we decided we might as well track down the restaurant we had planned to go to for dinner, in the hopes that by the time we got there, our appetites would have returned. Now, I had done some research before we left, and I found a pub called the Green Dragon (from the Shire? anyone?) that serves a four-course dinner for two for £20, which sounded perfect for our tastes and budget. We managed to find it after briefly taking shelter from a 5-minute hailstorm, only to discover that on Sundays they only serve yorkshire puddings. Dang it.

We thus found ourselves with no plans for dinner, no appetite, and nothing to do. Emily remembered seeing a fried-chicken place from our walk between the train station and the B&B, so we wandered over that way, and ended up near the marina area. The waterside area is really quite large, and we noticed that way over on the other side there was a huge flock of swans. I thought it might be fun to pull out some leftover crackers we had and try to entice them over, even though they had to have been at least a hundred yards away. Apparently we have good taste in crackers, because we got them all to come over.

This is about half of the swans we fed

After we depleted our cracker resources, we decided to get some more food for us, so we picked up a bucket of chicken and headed back to the room. It may not have been a romantic dinner out for our first anniversary, but after living in the UK for nearly six months, it was actually a lot of fun to just eat fried chicken and watch movies.

Here's our room!


And the other side!

And that's about it for our weekend. We had another great breakfast Monday morning, and then headed back to Cambridge. I do have more pictures from the weekend, so I may try and post more of them later.

P.S. - Thanks for all the great cards and notes we received! Emily and I were really surprised at how many we got; we almost don't have enough room for them all on the mantle =)

The Proverbial Walk in the Park

I've decided that Britain looks best in the cool, dark fog of dusk. The sun has just set, and the elegant buildings are lit merely by the pale glow of the street lamps and the mist. My day began cruelly as I plodded to work through the snow that was quickly turning to slush, only to find that almost half of my co-workers didn't dare. I'm surprised by the UK's lack of winter preparation, mistakenly thinking that an inch or two of snow wouldn't actually shut down buses or trains. But this is beside the point. I went to work. And the day was long. The store was quite empty, though the customers that DID come in didn't seem to make the connection that the weather keeping half of the customers at home was doing the same to half of our staff. Needless to say, it was not a fun day. But as I was strolling home, bundled up like Iris Simpkins, I noticed St. John's; for the first time in almost five months, I actually LOOKED at the building. I'll be honest, as it stood there in the fog, I thought I was in the middle of Monty Python and half expected a Frenchman to bend over and fart in my general direction. But really, I was simply fascinated, in a completely inane and unexciting way. I encounter these moments--I am often surprised by them--where I wonder at the beauty and un-Americanness of this place. It's nice to realize that the city wasn't laid out to appease commuters and that the church now buried behind shops and flats stacked on top of each other like Legos would have once been the peak of the area. And this is the point where I sum up all my observances with some pithy anecdote about how insignificant our lives are in the big scheme of things. But that would defeat the point of my merely trivial wanderings of eye and mind.

The Perfect British Sunday

It started out like any other day: My feet pratically froze to the bedroom floor as I got out of bed (not to mention the whole other level of cold experienced when I opened the bedroom door). We went to church and decided to get a paper on the way home. GoodNESS it was cold! And as we were walking through town, we saw snow flurries. No big deal, snow was predicted for the next day (though I was still skeptical). Plus, it was more like a single flur every few seconds than actual "flurries." So we went home, turned on the fire, and cooked up an amazing Brunch. The menu: eggie in the basket with bacon, hashbrowns, crumpets, and of course, good English tea. Needless to say, we had a nice little spread.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reading the paper and trading places in front of the fireplace to stay warm. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, this happened:
We debated about going for a walk but decided not to do so since it started to die down pretty quick. An hour later, it started up again, this time thicker. So we quickly put on as many layers as we could, got all bundled up for a nice stroll in the snow, but by the time we were ready, the snow was no longer falling. At that point, we pretty much gave up since it was getting dark. But then, out of nowhere, we look out the window around 10:30pm to find this:
So of course, how could we resist? We took off our pjs and put on our mittens and ventured into the wonder that is snow. (While we were out, we saw many who did NOT forego the pjs and subsiquently felt sorry for them.) But it was beautiful. We were some of the first people out, surprisingly, so we got a lot of good pictures of untouched snow.



We strolled along the river and into town to find many a college student mid-snowball-fight. We wrote our names in the snow (using our feet) and threw snowballs at ducks. We then came home to our comparatively warm flat and fell asleep exhausted from excited shivering, snuggled up in the cold. A pretty perfect day.

Cycle Skills: How to do a sliding stop

In today's blog post, I'm going to show you an easy way to perform a sliding stop on a bicycle. This is also known as the hockey stop, where you turn at an angle to your motion and let friction between your wheels and the road bring you to a halt.

1. First, load approximately 20 pounds of groceries in the rear basket of your bicycle.
   
2. Next, begin cycling north on Bridge St. If you don't live in Cambridge (the original one), find a street busy with vehicles and pedestrians.
3. As you approach a bus picking up passengers ahead of you, begin to slow down.
4. Now, get cut off by a taxi that had been following you, but now does not appreciate your slower speed.
   
5. Immediately after the taxi passes you, the driver will notice the bus approximately 50 feet in front of him, and will quickly apply his brakes.
6. As soon as the taxi's brake lights turn on, you will have an immediate, instinctive reaction: you will squeeze both brakes as tightly as possible, and begin to swerve to avoid partaking in Britain's free health care system.
7. With any luck, the previous day you will have repaired a flat tire on your bicycle, and after returning the tire to your cycle, you will have neglected to tighten the front brake. Thus, when you engage the brakes, the rear tire will lock in place, and begin to skid, while the front tire warms up from a bit of friction.
   
8. The combination of the rear wheel skid, the heavy load in the rear basket, and the attempt to swerve around an emergency room visit will cause you to rotate quickly and come to a sliding halt.

Now, this may sound like a difficult maneuver to learn, but honestly, it was no trouble at all for me: I got it on the first try. A word of caution: don't attempt this looking for applause - you likely won't get any. However, depending on your proximity to the bus stop queue, you will probably be rewarded with gasps and some German profanity.

What I Learned From Our Trip Back Home

(in no specific order)

1) Neck pillows are amazing.
2) Jordan cries.
3) I really miss all of our stuff.
4) I like central heating and air conditioning.
5) Being sick on Christmas is very sad.
6) I have a new appreciation of toast.
7) I recommend getting married; it doubles your loved ones.
8) I really like flannel pajamas.
9) Texas weather is ridiculous.
and the one that takes the cake...
10) Seeing friends and family only once every few months makes having to say goodbye unbearable.