Autumn Campaign

My astro-traveler's autumn campaign comes to an abrupt end with my landing in Venezia, after a rather lively month spent between Scandinavia and the US.

An interesting oh-so-northern-european appetizer kicked things off in Stockholm, where while not quite losing my underwear as Dr J reportedly did over the summer it was nice and all, with Old Town dining and catching up with colleagues and projects from all over the place. And then it was down "south", on the evening train to lovely Malmoe to (barely) catch up with sweetest Emma, and finally, across the channel through the tunnel I had seen being built, I finally got back to Copenhagen, where it all got started oh-so-long ago, and back to Erik & Aase's place, talking (non-)religion and (mostly) science with long-forgotten passion.

The US of A greeted me with my first "Smallville" episode and said goodbye with a frantic search for a few Doritos bags throughout LAX. In the meantime, sparse and unrepresentative bits from the south-western US campaign have included:

• warming up while sitting at the tables by Chandler's canteen at lunchtime
• catching up with lovely Stella and her (admittedly unnerving!;-) science drive
• Socorro's Capital bar (aka *the* bar of Socorro!:-)
• Thanxgiving at an Holiday Inn in El Paso with Dr Wagg
• walking along the peace-sign-shaped VLA
• watching the snow storming Albuquerque from atop the Plaza Inn
• disturbing thoughts & dreams brought along by Chris/Alex/Sean/Eddie & their Into The Wild
• finally discovering where the Huntington is on a sun-kissed saturday afternoon jog

And when the jogging finally took me into San Marino city limits on a cloudy saturday night and on the fences I started seeing post-thanxgiving Christmas decorations, I realized it was time to go back where Christmas comes from, or sort of, anyway.

Throughout, my listening mostly to sweet and moody soundtracks admittedly hasn't done me much good, but the cinema and the jogging (not to speak about the science... oh, and the book-shopping of course!;-) have been great!;-)

985 California East

Qui a Pasadena, il sole spezza un po' troppo sporadicamente le nuvole grigie che ci accompagnano il resto del tempo. Ancora niente pioggia, ma un fresco autunnale che si spezza giusto quando c'e' il sole, e li' sembra invece quasi primavera. Qui, nell'appartamento dietro l'angolo dall'istituto, dove ci si rifugia a ore "qualsiasi" per riprendersi un po' dal jet lag, capita a tratti di voler addirittura accendere il riscaldamento. Qui, an ocean (plus a continent and a half, for that matter) apart", capita di guardare vecchi film, ripetendoseli distrattamente tra se' e se' mentre si sonnecchia quasi senza fissare lo schermo, e non sembra nemmeno passato troppo tempo...