Vacation time!

Le cours de francais

Finally Lisbeth succeeded in getting a transcript from UCSB so she could find out what her final grade in French ended up being. And you know what? ..it's A+.

So if she can only find a job in Geneva that primarily requires her to count to 1000, tell people about her everyday activities, and which colours her clothes are she's super qualified!

The Summer Camp Visitor is Guest-blogging

It is a great honour for the summer camp visitor to be allowed to guest-blog on this famous blog! I have been ordered not to blog too positively since Lisbeth and Tue don't want to run the risk of getting more summer camp visitors - so I just want to say that it isn't all that pretty over here, the sun sets early and I even have to wear a shirt at night. The bike is flat, it costs $1.25 just to take the bus to Santa Barbara, they're feeding me too much mexican exotic food (e.g. cactus), I have to maneuver the mattress by myself every morning and every evening, and I'm only allowed to swim in the great waves of the Pacific Ocean together with an adult. So all in all it's actually not much fun being here - good thing I'm going home on Saturday...

King Squirrel and co.

Today has been an exiting day at Lisbeth's desk.

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The garden's Mr. Squirrel who has ruled autocratically and brutally kept other squirrels out of the garden, has seemingly eased on his principles and let another squirrel eat peacefully on the lawn several times. Compared to the eagerness and increased frenquency with which he still drives all other squirrels out of the garden, we presume that the accepted one is a girlfriend.

And she does look adorable, doesn't she?!

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Bluff

Goleta is growing towards the west - some developer got the brilliant idea of throwing in a lot of identical units smack in the middle of some lovely nature. Apparently they have somewhat of a look-but-don't-touch attitude towards nature as this is a gated community effectively blocking anyone who might otherwise absentmindedly stroll from the area out into the wilderness surrounding it.
Or maybe not so effectively after all - it does seem a tad amateurish that the walls keeping the dangerous wildlife at bay have huge cracks in them well before they're done building most of the houses.
That doesn't seem to stop them from busily selling off the units. Personally we're a bit sceptical about buying into something that actually called "bluff"...

While we're waiting..

Well, these days we don't get round to much more than working: Tue on campus and Lisbeth these days at home by the desk in the living room.

However, we do eat lunch together everyday on the bench behind Tue in the picture on the right. Biking to campus for lunch gives Lisbeth a perfect excuse for enjoying the nice weather and this arrangement also makes sure Tue get out of the lab at least a little bit every day.

The Pink Wonder

Hey, Lisbeth has gotten herself a new bike! In comparison to her previous bike this one has some pretty desirable features:

• Brakes that work - in general just very cool, right?!
• It's a man's bike - women's bikes around here are just too short for a semi-tall Danish gal.
• A (very) recognisable colour - we don't expect to see up to three bikes of the same brand, type, and colour as this one.
• Beachcruiser handles - so Lisbeth can mix in with the college girls in the area. All she needs now is an Ipod, a mini-skirt and Ugg-boots.... or perhaps not!
• Front basket - refers also to the comment above plus it allows Lisbeth to bring other types of bags than just backpacks. Furthermore, the basket is very suitable for bringing a whole gallon of orange juice back from the super market.

That this splendid bike has been acquired at this exact time (which is primarily due to the fact that Sarath wanted to sell it this week) has the added advantage that our arriving 'summer camp visitor' has something to ride as well. Thursday this week Troels is coming for a visit as it is - which could mean that we will open for the phenomenon 'guest blogger' in the near future. Stay tuned!

A capacious mailbox

Are you fed up with the mailman never being able to fit the box containing your new mail order sombrero into your mailbox?

If so, maybe you should consider getting yourself a more capacious mailbox, e.g. like this one.

At first glance it might be difficult to gauge how large this mailbox is, but the attentive reader will no doubt upon further inspection notice how efficiently it conceals the fire hydrant immediately behind it.

The base doesn't look too robust though so the mailbox might have a limited capacity for heavy packages.

Cheers!

It seems like we don't do much besides work, cooking, laundry etc. these days which makes it so much more satisfying to have the fact that we actually live in the country of sports and the derived fan culture confirmed. Where else would you bike past a cheerleader summer camp on your way to uni?!
Unfortunately we didn't bring the camera the morning they were dressed in their show outfits practising their 'towers' but if the camp continues we shall make another attempt at perpetuating their efforts.