Wow, thanks for those pictures, Mom. We were so tan once! It took me a while to figure out where we were sitting in the one -- our twin apartments with D and J in the U district seem like an eternity ago! Good times, in all.

Excited to hear that people are getting tickets! It will be great to see you all!

For Agata's birthday / international women's day (march 8th) we are going away for the weekend to a resort spa in a town outside of Warsaw. They were having a 'romantic weekend' special -- massages and all that. Should be interesting, although rather weird.

Miss you all bunches. I've been quite busy lately but it's hard to say exactly with what; working a little, screwing around a lot, but on hobbies so I haven't been watching or reading anything. Kind of a shame, really. But I must confess I don't understand how people find the time to read large numbers of novels. Maybe it's my attention span, but I realized the other day that I can count the number of novels I've read cover to cover, not for school, since the age of 16, on my fingers and toes... and maybe with one sock still on. It's such a time commitment! I remember five or so years ago I read Middlemarch -- that took pretty much all my free time for several months.

Man, suddenly I feel very uncultured for a doctoral student. Better get cracking.