I’ve re-installed the latest version of the software, and I’ve done what I could to restore the existing posts. However, there are still issues and configuration settings that need to be updated. Please bear with me as I try to bring the thing back online.

So now let me preface this post with my favorite Yuri Gagarin story:

Back in college, I once went to a party and randomly met a guy named Yuri.  I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly (How many people named Yuri have you met in the Midwest?), so I tried to clarify.

“Yuri?  As in Yuri Gagarin?”  He didn’t reply right away and was giving me a strange look, so I added, “You know?  Like the first man in space.”

“Yes, I know who Yuri Gagarin is.  It’s just that you’re the first person who’s ever made that connection.”

Yuri and I didn’t really hit it off, so I didn’t see him again for a few months.  Eventually I bumped into him again, and it turned out we had a mutual friend.  Not knowing that we had met once before, our friend made the effort to introduce us.

“This is my friend Yuri.”

“Right!  Like Yuri Gagarin!” I laughed, figuring it was an easy way to point out that we’d met before.

“Wow!” he replied.  “You know, you’re only the second person to ever make that connection?!”

Sometimes when I tell this story, I still get a blank look when I mention Yuri Gagarin.  I always assumed he was a household name, which I suppose he is, in the right context.  Apparently Yuri Gagarin came up a little more often in our household while I was growing up.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen The Right Stuff.  I started watching this film when I was so little that I couldn’t sit through the entire movie or completely understand what was going on.  For years I think I assumed that the shuttle astronauts still went through that test of blowing bubbles into a tube with floating ping pong balls.  Even years later, when Apollo 13 came out and I was much older, I just couldn’t fully get behind Ed Harris’s character.  After all, what was John Glenn doing working in mission control?

Strangely, seeing the film’s clips of the failed rocket launches over and over acclimatized me to the image of rocket explosions.  I’ve heard from other people my age that seeing the Challenger disaster on television was a poignant childhood memory.  While I remember the event, it didn’t phase me as much as it did my classmates.  I can only assume that it just didn’t look all that much different from those early failed test launches I’d seen over and over.

A few years later, our elementary school Explorations class (our skip-recess-once-a-week-in-favor-of-more-learning gifted class) focused on a space exploration theme (which may have led in some small part to my best friend‘s lifelong astronaut obsession).  We learned about the space program and its history, and we did all kinds of cool things like driving across town in order to create a scale model of the solar system.  My end-of-year project was on commercial products developed from NASA spin-offs, and I’ve never been able to look at a handheld vacuum cleaner in quite the same way. (Did you know that Dustbusters were first developed to collect moon rocks?  Now you do.)

I’m pretty sure that was the only time I actually studied the space program in school, but somehow it kept creeping into things that I was doing.  The last bit of my space exploration history was fleshed out while working on a stamp collecting project for 4-H. (Yes, I collected stamps and researched space exploration for 4-H.  It’s not all pig farming like some people think!)  I put together a collection of commemorative stamps outlining the history of space flight from the first rocket launches up to the most recent shuttle missions.  It even included an actual stamp that had been up in the shuttle — a Christmas gift from my parents.  The project involved writing 20 one-page summaries explaining the different phases of space exploration (to accompany the related stamps).  This probably wasn’t the way most high school students spent their summer afternoons, but I was willing to go the distance for that frilly purple ribbon and the satisfaction of winning.  And all these years later, I guess I have a better-than-average knowledge of early space exploration history to show for it.

Well, that and an amusing anecdote to share on Yuri’s Night.

For years I’ve been answering this question, “An icebreaker to the North Pole.”  What an incredible chance to explore more of the Arctic and to reach one of the coolest (literally and figuratively) spots on the world map.  Unfortunately, the trip is well out of our price range, so it remains a dream.

How does one reach the North Pole?  The process involves a two-week journey on a seriously heavy-duty ship that plows its way through the icy Arctic waters from Murmansk, Russia (up near Kirkenes) to the top of the world and back.  Quark Expeditions has been offering this sailing for years, along with their array of more traditional Arctic and Antarctic Expeditions, and for years I’ve been longing to go.

However, this year as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, they’re giving away a free trip!  I felt that I owed it to myself to enter and to do the best job I could to collect votes and possibly win my dream trip.  The five entries with the most votes will continue on to the next round, where they will be judged by the company, and one winner will be selected.

Help me get to the North Pole!
Vote for my entry!

It’s free and safe to vote, but you have to register a valid email address (or connect via Facebook) in order to prevent ballot stuffing.

If I win, I promise to post a fully detailed recap of the entire trip, complete with plenty of photos from the top of the world!  So vote, get your friends/family to vote, and then read the blog this summer to enjoy the trip with us!

So the holiday didn’t come as such a surprise, and when my friend Kathryn strong-armed me into taking a day off to help her prepare a proper Thanksgiving dinner, I willingly acquiesced. Besides, Kathryn is a pretty good cook, and somehow I’ve made it through my entire “adult” life without having ever cooked a Thanksgiving dinner.

How did that happen? In retrospect, the first few years on my own the idea of prepping a large dinner wasn’t really a high priority. I do remember one Thanksgiving spent in n Austin, when our project at work was under pressure, and anyone who didn’t already have plans to leave town was tasked with working over the holiday. That year, I spent Thanksgiving Day at my desk, nursing a terrible cold! And not long after we moved to Beijing and began life as ex-pats.

While it’s traditionally an American holiday (especially since the Canadians all celebrate a month early), in the ex-pat community, Thanksgiving tends to take on a very international flavor. In Beijing, we managed to get all the ex-pats at work together for a Saturday Thanksgiving (no Thanksgiving Thursday/Black Friday holidays in the international community) that included Brits, Indians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Turks, and even a few actual Americans. Here in Norway, the ex-pat community is better integrated, so Thanksgiving tends to pass under the radar even more.

And so, fate and coincidence have intervened to keep me from ever needing to know how to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Until now.

Kathryn convinced me to take the day off with her, and together we made a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was mostly Kathryn cooking, and me hanging out, drinking wine, and assisting with a few hard-to-screw-up tasks like tearing up bread for stuffing and mixing up green bean casserole.

Lucas should be leaving work soon, and he and Dee will come to join us. Two pies are baked, the turkey is in the oven, and the rest is all lined up to finish before dinner. The only thing that would make dinner better is if we didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow. Some people get up early to hit the Black Friday sales, but we have to drag ourselves away from the turkey coma to show up at the office.

(PS – It seems I finally got the app working to allow me to post from the iPad!)

When I created my personal website over 10 years ago, it was my way of letting my friends and family know what I was up to, no matter how far away I moved. It was easier to publish my latest news online rather than sending a note to everyone, and for those who might be curious what I’d been up to, a simple Google search would turn up the site and thus answer their questions.

I started this year with a personal goal to post more, and I did rather well for a while. However, circumstances quickly put an end to that noble effort, and it has been months since my last post.  Looking back, I’ve tried to come up with the reasons for this, and I have a few theories.  At first my rhythm was destroyed by my frequent business trips to Houston, which kept me busy both while I was there (catching up with friends, shopping for things to carry home, etc) and while I was here (catching up on work, making up for time away, etc).  But this wasn’t the whole story.  I think the two biggest factors in my reduced blogging habits owe more to technology than scheduling.

First, the widespread adoption of Facebook provides a simple and well-followed platform for micro-blogging.  There’s no longer a reason to create a blog post with a few brief sentences or photos to share our latest adventure.  A quick status update easily shares an activity or event, and photos of friends can be tagged to let them know they’ve been uploaded.  This leaves the blog for more lengthy posts but also raises the bar a little.

The other thing keeping me from posting is the very thing enabling (I hope) me to post right now.  I pre-ordered an iPad when they first came out, and I’ve been using it incessantly ever since.  In fact, I rarely even use my laptop at home anymore.  If I can’t do something on the iPad, it probably isn’t getting done.  (If it’s extremely important, I can still do it from my work computer.). Blogging is one of those things that isn’t especially easy on the iPad.  I always like to find photos and pictures to illustrate my posts and to make them more aesthetically pleasing, and I don’t really have a good way to do more than the most basic photo editing on the iPad.  Also, I’ve had some problems posting from the device.  This, combined with an increase in my use of Facebook and my busy schedule has led to many months of website silence.

Assuming this post actually works (without too much trouble), I’m hoping to rekindle my posting regularity.  It will likely come with fewer images, but I guess it’s better to post something plain-text than to post nothing at all.  And there’s always a bit of a barrier to re-entry when posting for the first time after a long silence.  I always feel like that first post needs to be more worthwhile for some reason.  Like I can’t break the dry spell with something frivolous.  Yes, it’s silly.  But the hiatus is over, and hopefully I can continue to find something to write about! 

A final note: It seems I’m still having trouble posting from the iPad. The WordPress app isn’t working at all for me, and there are some annoying things about the web interface. Oh, well. At least I’ve ended the post coma.

I’ve been a sappy sentimental tourist in Europe before, and I vaguely (but fondly) remember the first time I heard someone playing La Vie en Rose along the Champs. I remember wondering where all the anti-accordion sentiments I’ve heard over the years came from.  While it may not be the most beautiful of instruments, surely it deserves this reputation less than other more irritating instruments (I’m looking at you, piccolo).  On the contrary, the accordion provides ambiance and atmosphere.

I got to thinking that maybe it was simply a problem with over-exposure.  If you have to listen to accordion music all the time, whenever you’re out and about in a European city, then perhaps you do just get sick of it.  Vigelands Park has its fair share of accordion players, especially in the summer, and so I’ve had a chance to put this theory to the test over the past few years.  Every day that it’s sunny, we load up the grill bag and head to the park.  More often than not, there is an accordion player hanging around busking for spare kroner.  I find that I don’t mind this.  Quite the opposite, I continue to enjoy the ambiance and the music lends a hint of the old-fashioned to our modern lifestyle, reminding me of old Audrey Hepburn movies where Europe was a far-away land of fantasy,  rather than an everyday reality.

However…

This year all of my accordion tolerance has finally been drained.  As I said, the instrument itself is not to blame.  Rather, I have finally been exposed to shameful accordion misuse.  Our entrance to the park has fallen victim to the worst accordion player I have ever heard!  I cringe whenever I walk past, and I even have fleeting fantasies of kicking over his little container of donations (no huge tragedy, since he appears to earn no more than one or two kroner per hour) to force him to stop playing for a little while.  I’ve also considered paying him a few hundred kroner to go away, but I fear this might just encourage him to come back.

Imagine the accordion equivalent of the worst American Idol audition, and play it on a continuous loop.  That should give you the basic idea of what this is like.  He “knows” only three songs:  Für Elise, The Godfather theme, and the Chicken Dance.  And none of these he plays at all correctly or particularly well.  He knows a few bars of each and repeats them endlessly until awkwardly transitioning into the next one.  On one occasion, he played his adaptation of the Chicken Dance non-stop for at least ten minutes straight.  The Chicken Dance is far from my favorite tune under the best circumstances, but after ten minutes of an out-of-tune accordion rendition I was about to pull my hair out.  Since this guy plays right across the street from our apartment, he is almost impossible to avoid.

To remedy this kind of problem and to preserve the good name of the instrument, I think someone needs to introduce an “Accordion License.” You can only play in public if you have undergone extensive training and passed a rigorous exam in order to prove that your accordion playing will not harm the general populace.

But first, since I have a large American audience that has the misfortune to not watch Eurovision, I’d like to share the actual 2010 winner, a pretty decent* song by Lena from Germany:

She definitely has a Lily Allen vibe about her. Her voice? Her dress?

But she wasn’t the only sound-alike performance this year. Belgium’s Tom Dice was definitely channeling some John Mayer.

And now, the WTF Winners!

I had a tough time deciding on my WTF champions this year, because most of the acts were all very much in the middle of the pack.  The truly bad performances were just people who couldn’t sing without auto-tuning, so instead of making you raise a confused eyebrow, they just made you groan.  There were a lot of acts this year that were clearly going for the goofball vote, and in this category, I’d like to offer an honorable mention to both Estonia and Lithuania (watch it to the end for their brilliant, shiny finale).  They each had us laughing for days, and we were all sad that they didn’t make it to the final.  Surprisingly, both of my WTF choices this year actually made it through the semi-final round!

2010 Eurovision WTF Runner-Up:
Moldova – “Run Away” by SunStroke Project and Olia Tira

(If the video gets pulled, search YouTube for Eurovision Moldova 2010.)

I actually really like Moldova’s performance, and it can really get stuck in your head.  The bizarre wardrobe and crazy makeup are certainly a little left-field, but it’s the fabulously obscene saxophone player that makes them the runners-up in the WTF category.  (We’ve all been joking about the sax player for days, and his solos have since been looped into a single video, introducing the concept of “saxrolling” in the same vein as Rickrolling.)

2010 Eurovision WTF Winner:
Serbia – “Ovo je Balkan” by Milan Stanković

The hair!  The song!  The backup dancing!  The androgyny!  W.T.F.?

Serbia actually came in 13th!  Out of 39 entries, that’s pretty good!  This just goes to show that people clearly have different tastes, because this is one act that I just did not get.  At all!  I could never quite tell how much of it was farce and how much was semi-serious.  I found the crazy robot-dancing bridesmaid strippers on turntables extremely distracting.  I do find it amusing, but not in the way that I would vote for it.

And that’s what I love about Eurovision!   There’s really no standard formula for success, because you just never know what people will vote for!

I really don’t have any idea what’s going wrong, because if you look at the feed in IE, you see the full text of the posts.  In my hours of research, I have learned that Firefox truncates all feeds, but the information is clearly there, since IE is picking it up.

I have tried tweaking some of the scripts.  I have tried upgrading WordPress.  I have tried yelling at the computer.  Nothing has worked.

So much for “Really Simple” Syndication!

Even after hours of searching and trying various solutions, the only hint I have found that looks at all promising is to redirect my feed through FeedBurner.  That isn’t optimal, but if it works, I guess I’ll just deal with it.  Perhaps it’s a Google conspiracy, since they own FeedBurner (*thinking about dumping my Google shares on principle if that’s the case*).

Unfortunately, this means that you’ll probably need to update the feed in your reader to use the FeedBurner URL:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/megdesk Like I said, it’s not optimal, but at least it seems to work.

I would have been happy if either team won, but congratulations to New Orleans and to Drew Brees.

Unfortunately the game aired from midnight to 4am here, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I came to work fully expecting to be talking about the Superbowl with a few interested colleagues. Especially since this was the first year that the Norwegian TV network actually showed the game.

However, I failed to realize that Saturday night was Norway’s national Eurovision final, and more importantly that today at 9 am the Eurovision tickets went on sale! If you recall, Norway won the Eurovision contest last year, and that means it will host the contest this year.

I love Eurovision in all of its cheesiness, and I really want to go, but the tickets sold out in 20 minutes this morning.  Luckily, there are still seats available for the two Semifinal competitions earlier in the week, and since not every country makes it to the finals, the semifinals are where the true gems come out.  It wouldn’t be Eurovision without the embarrassingly bad performances!

So our lunchtime conversation today skipped over the Superbowl and went straight to Eurovision and the highlights (or rather, the lowlights) of past Eurovision performances.  I re-watched my Eurovision WTF Award winners from last year and they continue to make me laugh, but I got to thinking about some of the other performances.  I remember the worst acts for being horrible, but there are some other songs that continue to get stuck in my head, even though the contest was over 9 months ago.  I feel like those songs deserve a little bit of recognition for clearly doing something right if I still remember them.

First, there’s the super-enthusiastic girl from Moldova.  Apparently the Moldovan government couldn’t actually afford to send her to Eurovision, so she paid her own way.  They offered to cover some of the expenses if she made it to the final, which she did (we even voted for her).  Although the story itself is memorable, I quite like the song.  It’s just so happy and high-spirited, and I get “Hai la hora, hai la hora din Moldova!” stuck in my head even though I don’t know what it means.

Also, after reading Eric Weiner’s depressing account of Moldova in his self-indulgent travel memoir, I like watching the original video for the song, which shows a completely different portrait of the country.

Then there’s the Iceland entry.  If the Eurovision vote was limited to 10-year-old girls, Yohanna would have easily walked away with the top prize.  She’s dressed like a Disney princess, and the stage setting screams Lisa Frank with a dolphin diving through a cloudy night sky.  But in spite of all that, it’s actually a decent song, and she performs it well.  And after a little too much Gammel Dansk at Midsummer, I was dancing around Victoria’s apartment doing a crooning Yohanna impression.

And finally, there’s Romania.  Romania almost made it into the WTF Awards, but I just couldn’t pin down what they did wrong.  The dancing-fairy theme is a little weird, and the singing in the live performance is pretty bad, but listening to the original recording (with all of its studio magic), I actually really like the song.  It’s still Euro-Pop, but it has that great girly energy of a song that makes you want to go out dancing.

By the way, if you’re curious to see what Norway is sending to the Eurovision competition this year (and what didn’t make the cut), Michele has a great recap of the national final that I missed!