I am … unhindered by talent

Several people have asked about “culture shock” upon returning home, and for me at least there really hasn’t been much (I’ll let WeatherGirl and Sub-Evil speak for themselves). One thing that has been really amazing, though, is the peace and quiet here.

The photo above is from a few years ago, but it’s representative of what it’s been like being back. The roads (and sky) are wide and quiet, and peddling my bike down a big empty street seems kind of otherworldly after a year in a much more crowded part of the world:

The other huge difference is the damn mosquitoes. Didn’t really miss them while we were gone, and wasn’t too thrilled to see them again (in vast quantities) upon our return.

Oh, and burritos are much better in Minnesota than in the UK (and much better in Texas than Minnesota). Really. Much better.

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We’re back in Morris, Minnesota, sleeping in our own beds for the first time in 10 months!

We arrived late Tuesday after a long, but generally uneventful trip. (Well, uneventful if we ignore a bit of a rush transferring in Chicago that contributed to WeatherGirl leaving her iPods on the plane there. But still, generally uneventful.) Jess Larson was super generous and drove us and our sixty zillions Tons O’ Crap (TM) back to Morris, and for this we are incredibly grateful.

We were thrilled to find that the house was in wonderful shape, and are very grateful to Rebecca and Joe (our renters) for taking such good care of our home while we were away.

All the major utilities have been restored, including Internet and DirecTV, so the family is unlikely to revolt :-). Sub-Evil has been catching up with his friends as much as he can, but many are out of town so it’s a process that will dribble on for a while. Now we plow into the unpacking of suitcases and boxes (both the ones we left behind 10 months ago and the ones we shipped last week) and the restoration of the flotsam of our lives. (We defrosted and cleaned the chest freezer since it was nearly empty, and today I shoveled all the mature compost out of the composter so we could start filling it up again.)

It was a great year abroad, and it’s nice to be home again.

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As far as I can tell, most of the major news outlets have yet to report the details of yesterday’s Democratic Caucus results from Stevens Country, MN. The county DFL chair Peter Wyckoff has, however, sent out the results, allowing me to fill that key gap. Arguably the best news of the evening is that there were 540 total votes, which is way up from 192 votes in 2004. Not being in Morris, I don’t have anything concrete to say about the reasons for this, but an increase in participation is almost certainly to the Good.

As far as those silly candidate like things go, Obama pretty much cleaned up in Stevens Country, mirroring his success in Minnesota in general:

It’s hard for me to make a lot of immediate sense out of the results nationwide as they seem extremely scattered. One thing that I think is interesting, though, is that Clinton only carried more than 60% in one state (Arkansas - her previous home), while Obama carried 8 states with more than 60%, two of which were over 70% and one (Idaho) with a whopping 80%! OK, I realize that 80% of the handful of people in Idaho aren’t going to swing a national presidential election, but the fact that he carried so many states so strongly does seem to speak to larger questions of electability in November.

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