Hi Everybody, and happy "Spring." As I write this it is snowing outside (again) and intends to do so for the next week. In typical Bozeman fashion, we've seemingly had as much snow since the ski resorts have closed than we did all winter. It's funny how people's tolerance of, and patience with, the white stuff changes when those chairlifts quit running. In short, we've had it.

That's not to say that I didn't get to enjoy the winter part of winter. Obviously the bulk of our energy and decision making revolved around the newborn. He's not so newborn any longer - all of four months old now - and he's a baby just full of smiles and laughs. I think the only time I've ever heard him really cry (instead of fake fussing/crying sounds to get attention) are when he's had his shots, and just the other day when he decided to skip a nap and completely lost it just in time for his regularly scheduled second nap of the day. Quinn is still intensely in love with him, very helpful (she's the official house gopher) and I really couldn't imagine her life right now without a little brother. He loves watching her and just cracks up whenever she plays with him. Soon he'll start crawling and his reign of terror will begin. I have a feeling we got off easy with Quinn's (non-)propensity to cause mischief and he might make up for it.

As far as Little Miss Quinn is concerned, she is now approaching her third birthday, and she has the capacity and enthusiasm to tell you all about it. Quinn is suffering almost as badly as Sabrina Re: the weather. She has taken to pushing all of the mobile furniture out of the living room and literally running circles in the now-evacuated space. It is eerily reminiscent of old-school-zoo animals confined to enclosures which are too small for them. Poor kid. When she is not desperately burning off extra calories Quinn has an ongoing love-affair with her brother, elephants, dinosaurs, drawing, her baby-dolls, The Sword in the Stone, and all-around "being a kid."

These past few months have seen some fairly dramatic changes in our lives. The first big event came in late January, when I applied for a post-doctoral research position in the Washington DC greater metro area. Honestly, what I thought I would get out of this process was practice: Practice so that when I was applying for the next round of such positions I would have "all of my ducks in a row." What I did not anticipate was actually getting the job. Nonetheless, I got the call in early February that they were offering me the position and after some deliberation we decided it was the right thing to do. This raised two challenges: One; I had to have a doctorate in order to work as a post-doctoral researcher. Two; Sabrina will not be done with her thesis in time for us to leave together. Sadly, this means I'll be leaving Bozeman in November, and she will have to remain until...as soon after November as possible, whatever that means. This is going to be tricky - especially with her trying to finish up, but D.C. is one of the few places where we can both hope to find the kind of work that we've each been preparing to do for the past decade, and the sooner I complete a post-doc the sooner we can start thinking about permanent positions. I grow weary of this transient life. I'll be sad to leave Bozeman, I'll be really sad to leave my family, but this was a "do not pass this up" opportunity and I'm excited about the job. Needless to say, this should be an interesting chapter in my yet-to-be-written autobiography. Of course, to even have the opportunity I had to finish my thesis and that became an obsession around mid-February, while Sabrina and Milo were away to Mobile for Alydah's birthday.

The mid-to-end of March saw me taking a (probably ill-advised) trip to Utah for the now annual weekend ski-off with Eli. I had a much more mellow drive to and from the Salt Lake Valley than he had experienced earlier this year. It was a quick trip as he's been stock-piling his time off for this summer and I had a dissertation to write. I drove down under sunny warm skies on a Friday. On Saturday it was once again sunny and warm, and we had a pretty laid-back day at Snowbird getting sunburned, drinking out-of-state beer, and watching an extreme-skiing contest between ventures scouring the mountain for some soft snow. Sunday was not as sunny but still quite nice, and we went to Snowbasin to do some extreme skiing (see photo). It was pretty fantastic setup: Ride a tram to the top, traverse for a few hundred yards through a back-country gate, and then ski ~3,000 feet of relatively untouched terrain back to the chair-lift at the bottom. At this point I was feeling pretty confident so we went from there to the south end of the resort were I received Eli's patented "just outside your comfort circle" treatment. We wrapped it up with leisurely turns on seemingly endless groomers in the warm warm sun and a post-ski parking lot beer. It was glorious. Unfortunately, it was also a bit melancholy as this somewhat symbolized the end of my winters in the mountain west for the foreseeable future. Sniffle. There could be no better way to go out, though, and I'll try to keep these weekends with Eli on-going. As he pointed out, flights from DC to SLC are pretty cheap, and actually take less time than the drive from Bozeman to SLC , so we could be on to something.

Returning from Utah was not as trivial, but I managed to sneak in just before a pretty significant storm. I reacquainted myself with Sabrina and the wee- bits and then mentally prepared myself for the coming binger of work. The skiing was my last dose of "messing around" before my thesis defense which was scheduled for mid-April, and the subsequent dissertation submission deadline which was a mere week after my defense. I had already begun putting together the dissertation but it was now time to buckle down and commit, or risk missing the deadline ergo missing commencement. What followed was one of the most intense and unpleasent working experiences of my life. There wasn't a lot of sleep, I was writing with one hand and finishing the research critical to the thesis with the other, and right down to the wire to boot. In fact, the last results came in the day before the defense. Yikes. I had managed to whip myself into a completely neurotic state in the final days only to find the defense totally, well, manageable. I gave a talk, we discussed some details, I drank champagne, and then some beer, and then some sushi and scotch, and then more scotch, and then some more. And then I watched golf for two days (the Master's saved me) and played with road bikes on my new bike stand (thanks Sabrina!). Ta-da! The next week was spent making revisions and fixing the formatting to appease the graduate college, and just like that, graduate school ended and I became Dr. Littenberg.

And not a moment too soon! A few days after the submission deadline we were graced with the company of brother Owen and sister-in-law Hope (Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, too Quinn and Milo). They were 2/3 of the way through driving the great triangle across the country while they were on leave from the Army, after successfully completing a year in Iraq. Their voyage took them from Fort Hood (Texas) to Long Island (Hope's place of origin) to Buffalo to Bozeman. It was pretty nostalgic/amusing for me as I received updates on their progress along I-90. Their voyage geographically mirrored the fateful journey that I embarked upon in a U-HAUL nearly six years ago when I moved to Bozeman, the very voyage that spawned the mass-email updates which have been my means of keeping in touch with the rest of the world. Between Chicago and Bozeman there are only a handful of things which could serve as landmarks if you wanted to keep somebody posted on your progress, consequently all of their status checks were places which I remembered - fondly is not the right word, but it is the first one that comes to mind. Fortunately for them they experienced no mechanical failures and they were able to make the trip in two days. Owen and Hope are putting a stamp on the Eisenhower highway system! From here they continued on to SLC (to see Eli) and back to Texas. On the way they bought a house in Tennessee (where they will next be stationed). This is obviously a fairly ambitious itinerary, and while they have successfully seen a lot of family, they were only able to play with us for a few days. We made the best of it: We went down to Yellowstone, Quinn took them to the museum to see the dinosaurs, we ate gigantic steaks, had a light-saber duel, and did some good old-fashioned visiting. On their last day in town it up and snowed a foot and a half - Hope was psyched until she had to go outside - and the storm fortunately was mostly done with by the time they had to embark on that dreaded Bozeman to SLC drive which seems to have a prominent role in these updates.

Currently we are company and (for the most part) anxiety free. The semester is wrapping up, the days are getting longer, and thoughts turn to when the weather is nice and free time is a bit more accessible. Next weekend we have some much anticipated company as it is my last graduation - I've been going to "school" non-stop since 1986, I even know all the words to Pomp and Circumstance! Check it out: Daaaah Dah Dah Daah Daaaaaah Daaaaaaah, Daaaaaaaaah Dah Dah Dah Daaaaaaaaaaah. Impressed?

And now, as I put the finishing touches on this update (which I've been working on intermittently throughout the day) it is still snowing. Blast. Quinn's doing laps, and I think I might go to the garage and do the same on a bike. Somebody go outside after they read this for me, would ya?