Welcome Valley News readers! I saw the article online from my friends’ house in San Francisco. I’ve been here since Thursday morning. I just came out for a quickie meeting with some folks from the Internet Archive and I’ll be home on Monday morning. If anyone’s curious, I really don’t have a “friends only” LiveJournal, so please don’t feel like there is some secret blog you don’t know about. I haven’t seen the pictures yet, if anyone wants to send me copies of them, I’d love to see them. More trip reports once I get back.

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Hey my Mom is in town! She’s asleep right now and even though I grew up in a hideously cold house, I have turned the thermostat up a few degrees just so it’s maybe not quite so icy here. We had one of the neighbors over, a guy I met through Ola named Chris, and I made some soup/salad/bread meal and he regaled us with stories about leaving the family farm in Massachusetts and running away to New York City in the 40’s where he eventually became a window dresser at Macy’s and went to Parsons and lived in the Village. Chris can sometime be a bit of a monologuist, but if I’m in the right mood — as I was tonight — I find him fascinating and hilarious. He also made a pecan pie and I can listen to anyone talk about anything with enough good pie in front of me.

Mostly I’m just happy to have my Mom back, happy and game for anything in her fun sort of way. The last year was annoying for me, but it was hellish for her with a cancer diagnosis and surgeries and a lot of “hurry up and wait” crap. However, she seems to have come through it with a slightly adjusted attitude, a mildly more positive outlook, some nutty stories about radiation treatment that crack me up (as they are supposed to) and in mostly good health.

I kick off the 2007 travel year possibly as early as next week, but definitely in a few weeks from now where I go to Manhattan, Kansas to talk to some librarians about Library 2.0 stuff and then to AUSTRALIA with my SISTER for TWO WEEKS. Yes I’m excited. At the same time, Ola will be heading to Kiribati which means that we’ll be closer together when I’m in Australia, geographically speaking, then we are now. I hope she sends me a postcard.

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What a crazy week! The week ending today started last Friday when the 2007 MIT Mystery Hunt began, at noon. From that point until about 2 am Sunday morning, I was puzzling. I posted some details on Vox but the specific are this: we came in second, I helped a little, it was terrificaly fun, I want to be a better puzzler. I haven’t stayed up all night in a long long time, though the fact that I routinely stay up until 3 or 4 am was a big help to the team, I think. So, Friday and Saturday were the same day, for me.

Sunday I drove home late. As soon as I got home I realized I had left my laptop cable at Kate’s house. Fortunately I always have a spare…. laptop. Kate mailed me the cord, but having almost a week of stuff happening on a backup laptop is like some sort of lost time thing. I was out of it all week.

Monday I swam and spoke to a reporter from USA Today about my “breaking up in the age of social software” post. She is writing a story that she was hoping to get into the Valentine’s Day issue (they say there is no such thing as bad publicity) but it may be written some other time. I think she was a little dismayed that my breakup was not a series of minor and major disasters and stalker-like bad behavior, what can I say?

Tuesday I got into a small accident on my way to work. I am fine, the car is fine, no one else was involved, just me and some ice. Stan came over to look at it once I drove it to work and said it looked okay. I had the car checked out today and it will need a new headlight and a new grille (grilles on Hondas are teeny). My mechanic scraped and pried off the broken parts, stitched up the cracked bumper with a series of zip ties, said I was very lucky and told me to come back for the headlight next week. I am currently driving an illegal (i.e. one-headlighted) car. Somehow this makes me feel like more of a Vermonter. Forrest and Kelly took me out to dinner to celebrate my soft landing, they are crazygreat.

Wednesday I got interviewed and photographed by two nice guys from the Valley News. Channing, the photographer, has a blog and a website. Alex Hanson, the reporter, doesn’t (or it’s a secret). I talked about blogging and the digital divide and Vermont and Romania and had a really fun time. I still feel weird being all “blah blah me and my interesting stories” even when it’s the express purpose of the conversation, but the last eight months or so has been all about being around people who haven’t heard them all before. I find everyone else fascinating too, interviews are a hard time to explain that.

Thursday was a normal work day which meant helping people with their computers and PowerPoint slides and scanners and typing tutors and whathaveyou. I got a lot of bills paid and spent some time on the phone with Kate buying a lot of plane tickets. Our trip to Australia starts in five weeks and will include Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and a road trip! So great. Last time I asked people if they wanted postcards. This time I will not because postcards seemed to take forever to select and write and were somewhat spendy to mail. So this time, remind me, and I’ll send you a “Howdy from Australia __your name here__” photo which will probably be more fun anyhow, for both of us. This is the most money I have ever spent on travel, ever. My travel is mostly going to be reimbursed since this is a work trip for me. Mom and Dad and Cindy pitched in for Kate’s travel which was very nice of them.

Today I got the good news from the mechanic, saw Rick and Sarah at the Equal Grounds cafe in South Royalton did some more swimming with Kelly (up to 3.7 miles for the week, 10.5 for the year, oh my god I am becoming that “let me tell you about my gym” person. I apologize in advance). Then Kelly and I did errands which is one of those dopey things I like to do. I came home and made some killer risotto, completely trashed the kitchen, and am trying to figure out whether tonight is a better night for cleaning the place up, or…. not. My guess is I’ll go with “not.”

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I’m still a little woozy from the weekend. I feel like maybe I’m getting just a little bit old to pull an all-nighter, but when someone signed me up for the 2-10 am “puzzle devil” shift, how could I say no? I’m practically nocturnal here anyhow, so it was not much of a stretch.

So, we came in second by about 90 minutes. Once I learned that another team had won the Mystery Hunt, I decided to try to go home and get caught up on sleep. Little did I know that my team was hot on the trail of the solution and called it in almost before I was back to Kate’s place.

The good news about being second is that you get to participate in the hunt the next year. The poor winners — a team named Doctor Awkward — have to BUILD the hunt next year which I think will be a lot of work, albeit fun work. In the meantime, I have some time to bone up on puzzling and see if I can hone my skills enough to be a benefit to the team in ways that aren’t just organizational next year. Here are some links.

• The puzzles from this year’s hunt.
• The MIT Mystery Hunt main page.
• My post about the Mystery Hunt on Vox.
• A few pictures of the hunt from me on Flickr and a few from other people.

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I’m off to the MIT Mystery Hunt (more at Wikipedia) this weekend. This will be the first time I’ve participated locally and the first time in a while that I’ve participated at all. No ALA conference in January and no boyfriend on school vacation equals time for puzzling and the first trip out of town for me in 2007! This will mean more than two days away from my precious pool, but I stored up some swim miles so I should be fine. Only 114 miles to go. Watch me become slowly insufferable about this as the year goes on, watch me. I made a packing list for the hunt. For the first time in a long while my packing list does not include “notes for talk” or “dress pants” and for this I am grateful.

This is not to say that there won’t be travel and work and dress pants in the future. Next month I’m going to Manhattan, Kansas to talk to librarians about Library 2.0 and maybe go to a teeny MetaFilter meetup. At the end of February Kate and I are going to Australia where I’m going to give a talk in Perth and a talk in Adelaide. If we’re lucky we’ll get a mini road trip in before we come back a few weeks later. Meanwhile I am watching my things not pack themselves while I am typing, so I should attend to that. Wish me and team Codex Ixtlilxochitl luck!

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Check me out.

• I made a little video of the crazy rushing river by my house.
• I went on a walk during the crazy weather that claims to be spring or even summer but is really WINTER, I swear it.
• I went bowling, cosmically, with a bunch of friends up in Barre. Not once but twice, I got a strike when the head pin was some sort of weird glowing color and won myself a soda. You can see my newish haircut in that photo.
• I got some great stuff at the local thrft store.
• I swam two miles in two days at the pool. You’ll have to trust me on this one. I am 2.41% of the way to my goal and my butt hurts.
• Next weekend I’m heading to Cambridge for the MIT Mystery Hunt. This will be the first time I’ve been actually in town instead of working remotely.

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