Sudokus

Hello world. I’ve been promising to post on this blog for a year now, and I already feel certain that I will not live up to the high standard that Tiff has set with her posts. I mean, I haven’t been cooking fresh rabbit, I have yet to strike up a friendship with a scientific attaché from any embassy, I haven’t been hit on by Egyptian taxi drivers (aside from the old guy who placed his hand uncomfortably high on my leg)…

That’s not to say life hasn’t been interesting. As you probably know from reading our blog, Tiffany and I have been racking up frequent flyer miles at a dizzying rate, and since I’m not in the Princeton area code enough to make an apartment worthwhile, I’ve been mooching off our friends Helen and Charlie for the past year. I’ve gotten more work done than I expected to be able to and less work done than I wanted. I’ve seen more of Tiffany than I expected, and FAR less than I wanted. I (we) have one cat more than I expected, and perhaps one less than I want (stay tuned). All of this adds up to a certain disequilibrium that has been a little unsettling in recent months.

You may think to yourself, “come on!” You’ve been scuba diving, traipsing through Italy, causing international incidents in Jordan: just enjoy yourself. It’s true that I have no real complaints, but here is a story that explains a little of my frustration…

From the tender age when I was weaned off diapers, I quickly learned that the bathroom is a place to be entertained, not a dreary closet where you do your business and move on to greener pastures. Perhaps a novel, or the latest Sports Illustrated, or nowadays my laptop playing the latest episode of the Office. But in the past few years one activity has come to trump all the rest: I refer, of course, to doing a Sudoku. In fact, when I was visiting my friend Tristan in LA, I would frequently excuse myself to “go do a Sudoku.” Tristan, not realizing that I had a printed stack in ready supply, assumed that this was a euphemism for doing a number 2, and adopted the phrase for his own personal use. (This terminology has spread like wildfire: Mats’ parents, upon hearing this story, immediately started using it, and I hoping the rest of Scandinavia will follow).

Anyway, I was sitting in our Bed and Breakfast in Long Island last weekend, doing a Sudoku in both senses, and I got stuck. It was rated “Normal” in difficulty, which I usually find straightforward, but I was sitting there trying to fill in numbers until my legs went dead. Finally resorting to trial and error, I realized that there were in fact TWO solutions to the puzzle! That’s criminal! (To make it more difficult, I didn’t bother reflecting the picture below ☺)

All of this is meant to say that things have not been working out quite right the last few months (e.g., hookers in Milan or getting stuck on a rock in Jerusalem). I fly home from Sweden on Wednesday, and the movers come to pack and load our stuff for Stanford on Thursday, and all I can say is I don’t want any surprises. Despite my gripes in this post, one very very good thing worked out just right this summer. Here’s hoping the wedding will be as wonderful.