I'm Off to Norwaypost

I'm heading off to Bergen, Norway in the morning. I'll be there in time for Jan Rune Holmevik's doctoral defense, and I'm told that I'll get to try Reindeer steak for the first time in my life at the party afterwards. I'm giving a talk on Collaborations in Electronic Writing (which I haven't prepared yet, but that's like almost a week from now) to Jill Walker's Web design and Web aesthetics class, and I anticipate I'll get to see some fjords as well and Jill just may beat me at Scrabble. At the end of the trip Jill and I are going to spend a couple of days in Copenhagen, where I'm looking forward to seeing Susana Tosca and meeting Lisbeth Klaustrap.

It's been a restful break. I caught up with old friends and family in Chicago (including one great night at a jazz club with almost all of the Rettberg cousins) and also watched the entire fourth season of the Sopranos on DVD.

This weekend, Nick Montfort and I worked on Implementation and my brother Eric visited (and was quite pleased to get a receptive personal email from a luminary at one of the grad schools he applied to, which bodes well for him).

My only regret is leaving my cat here for so long. Maestro has a great catsitter who has bonded with him intensively and insists on visiting him more often then I'm paying her to, but he's brooding even now as I pack my bags.

I'm still putting the finishing touches on my syllabi, but I did manage to close my reappointment file. Eager students can look for those syllabi Sunday the 18th or so. I did decide to add one book to the senior seminar, Calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler.