quick takes!

- 1 -

I got a Swedish dentist. It was a little confusing, but I managed to get an appointment for later this month. I actually called three different places. The first one answered a lot of my stupid questions about 'how dentists in Sweden work' and then they told me there was a six-month wait for an appointment. No thank you. The second one was the clinic closest to my house, but it is very small, and I had a very hard time understanding the woman, so eventually I just said something about how I would 'have to think about it' so that I could hang up. Third time's the charm.

- 2 -

Next week I go to Austria for a conference. This is the 'big' conference of the year in Europe, similar to the big conference I used to go to in San Francisco every December. It will be interesting to see what kind of overlap exists between the two communities. I'm also excited to play tourister in Vienna. Anyone got any good tips for me?

- 3 -

OH MY GOSH THERE IS A CONTRA DANCE IN VIENNA WHILE I AM THERE FJAILENALEINKNZK.EKSIBNAEIL.NELIGNIALGN;AEI!!!!!

- 4 -

I also get back in time the following Saturday for a folk dance in Uppsala :)

- 5 -

The snow and ice are nearly entirely melted, certainly enough for me to safely ride my bicycle. There are maybe three ice patches on my commute though, so I've been holding off (mainly for fear of unforeseen ice patches while riding). I figure, I've managed to not ride my bicycle for this long, so I may as well wait until the risk of falling on ice is completely gone. Once I return from Austria though... then it is back on my bicycle!

- 6 -

I found this pin on pinterest which talked about choosing words to describe yourself (it also describes the process of how the author narrowed down the choices). I'm considering tweaking my 'about' page to incorporate the words I chose.

- 7 -

Just now, when I opened blogger, I saw that my total number of page views of all time was a palindrome. That made me happy.

______________________

THE END

Jen and others have got more!

Cupcakes are all the rave.

I know this because there are entire television shows devoted to them. While in San Francisco I saw a special cupcake place at the up-scale mall food court, so I decided I would try one. I had a hard time choosing my flavor. It was a debate among oreo, coffee toffee, s'mores, and raspberry lemonade.

I chose:

Coffee toffee!

It was a last minute change, as I had thought I had decided on raspberry lemonade, but then I saw that the raspberry lemonade had cream cheese frosting, and I usually prefer the sugar-sugar frosting. With hindsight I probably should have stuck with the first choice. The coffee toffee was much better on paper than in reality. It was also reported to me that oreo was amazing, so even my third choice probably would have been a better one.

Don't get me wrong -- I ate the entire cupcake (even though it had toppled over, despite the excellent carrying case design). And it was good. But I was kind of hoping it would be better than any cupcake I ever could have imagined.

As it turns out, this little cupcake stand, Cako, is going to be on Cupcake Wars (see above note on popular television shows devoted to cupcakes) today (or maybe tomorrow?). Sadly, I don't think they will win.

The view from here

It is AGU time, and this photo gives a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Technically I took this photo yesterday. So far I haven't resorted to blogging during people's talks, but there is an entire afternoon of talks left!