counting down

Only one more week of term - yay. I gave my last real lecture in Language in Society class on Wednesday and it sucked big time. Nothing like going out strong...

This weekend we will do some Christmas baking. My goal this year is to gift to the neighbors before they gift to us - hah - take that Mormon housewives. We may even do Christmas cards this year.

Picture from the Holberg Prize Ceremony

Here is my father and Crown Princess Mette-Marit in Hakons Hall at the Holberg Prize Ceremony.

Two pictures

We loved the signage.

Us on the train from Flom to Myrdal.

Off season in the fjords

Much updating needed after a gorgeous day and a half on a fjord trip. We still aren't really over the jet lag and this became a problem when we crashed in Flam for 4 hours late afternoon and woke up to find that there was nowhere to eat that was still open apart from the brewery which was serving a $100 per person fixed menu dinner that included trout and cured meats which didn't appeal to either of us. We ended up with a beer sampler and talked them into serving us the dessert from the fixed menu. Surprisingly satisfying.

Two Oslo pictures

Craig found a new friend.
On the fjord front early morning.

It's 5:49am in Oslo

Should have taken the full dose of ambien... Craig was up at 4 and all showered and beautiful with nowhere to go by 4:45. At which point I admitted defeat and so here we sit waiting for the starting gates on the morning buffet to open at 7am. There are some mighty tasty morsels for the early bird. Immediately after it is off to the station for our train to Bergen. Just so you know, while I write this, Craig is dipping into his book on greatest criminal defense arguments and has just shared with my tired brain a thrilling disquisition on 14th and 4th amendment rights. Will try to upload some pictures now.

yikes

So, some of my colleagues got funding to bring three artists to campus this fall and I assigned my students to attend one of the three performances. Tonight was the final one - Adelina Anthony, performance artist, doing her show: La Angry Xicana. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to suggest that they be sure that they wanted to choose this of the three shows, but half way through when she was doing a graphic bit about sex and I was looking at the short blond hair of my oh so returned missionary student two rows ahead of me, I thought, hmmm. I mean I know I am supposed to be all about pushing boundaries and helping youth explore their identities but I am not good at it which is why I became a linguist. There are no provocative movies to show, no problematic texts to discuss. Call me a coward. I remember when a new book came out for teaching third year Russian that had a theme for each chapter and had clearly decided to move beyond the traditional topics of 'home' 'education' etc. and so this book had a sex chapter and I just couldn't do it. There aren't many people I want to discuss sex with and my students are nowhere near the short list.