Oh, many, many things

To start, we signed a lease on a new property starting at the end of January. The street can be seen here (cut-and-paste, sorry, the blogger linking system won't accept a long URL):

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=101a+st.+stephens+street,+edinburgh&layer=c&sll=55.958777,-3.204313&cbp=13,71.54,,0,-1.49&cbll=55.958624,-3.204892&hl=en&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=101B/8+St.+Stephen+Street,+Edinburgh+EH3+5AB,+United+Kingdom&ll=55.958624,-3.204736&spn=0.003592,0.009055&z=17&panoid=vQl7JmUCLqBGEwUBBXyHkw

The most important characteristics of the new flat are that 1) it is newer, only 10 years old or so, and thus employs modern thingys like insulation and double-glazed windows, and 2) it is only 2 blocks from the kids' school along level roads, so no more treks up and down "big hill" (as we refer to Gloucester Lane).

The kids' received their follow-up Hanukkah and solstice gifts-- they were especially grateful for the legos and sylvanian toys.







Kenna's winter term holiday starts tomorrow, Taran has a half-day tomorrow. Then there is no school until 11-Jan. I've no idea what we are going to do with them...

I marked exams for one of our bigger entrepreneurship courses. It is fascinating to mark exams in the UK which are so dramatically different from exams, and marking processes, in the U.S.

We had planned to all go to London the first week in January as I need to be there for work, but our accommodations fell through and so it will just be me going from the 4th to the 7th. Lynn has had a thousand playdates for the kids, so I've no doubt that once Christmas is passed the extensive social calendar for the kids will resume. Lynn also managed to secure a sledge (sled) for the kids, which are in short supply this winter, so the kids' should have a chance to hit the local slopes in the next week or two, as there is no indication that the snow is going anywhere soon.

Speaking of which, the main thoroughfares across Edinburgh are incredible black slushy messes. There is a preference to use grit (which is, amazingly, not sand, but some sort of red small-diameter gravel) rather than salt whenever possible, presumably because of the risk of damaging the streets and historic facades. There is salt used in many areas where it's just impossible to clear the ice otherwise, but most of the streets and sidewalks in the city centre are about 1/2 to 2" deep in a sort of muddy mushy gravelly sludge that appears to have nowhere to go. The temperatures are hovering just around freezing, and the sunlight is so weak (and only around for a few hours, and even then rarely OVER the actual rooftops) that there is no melting action the way there would be in Wisconsin even on really cold days. So the slush is here to stay, for now.

Lynn was even able to arrange an evening at a pub for me with some of the dads from the neighborhood. It's fun to be able to talk politics when it doesn't really matter to the other people, other than as a source of fascination. It was good to be out for a pint.

If you've not been paying attention to college football, then you should know that Stanford - #4 in the country (?!) - is playing in the Orange Bowl, while UW-Madison - #5 in the country (?!) - is playing in the Rose Bowl. My dad and I went to the 2000 Rose Bowl in which Madison beat Stanford, and my guess is this the closest those two will ever come to competing in a bowl game again. If it weren't for the Rose Bowl's being the non-AQ team bowl this year, they would have played... though I'm a bit far this time to go.

I'm sure there's a lot more that I haven't covered, so I'll try to set aside a little time each evening to try to get caught up.

Oh-- we made it to our first solstice in Edinburgh! Though the weather won't be warmer for a while, yesterday was as dark as it gets. Yesterday the sun rose at 8:40am and set at 15:40 for a whopping 6 hours, 57 minutes and 31 seconds of total possible sunshine, but at a maximum altitude of 10.6 degrees :)