Home at last!

A quick post to let anyone who has been faithful to checking our untimely postings know that we have returned to Montreal and are happily settling back into chez nous.

Remember Estonia

Loyal readers will remember that H was able secure free cruise tickets to Tallin, Estonia for us back in March. I finally got my act together and posted on the trip. Enjoy!

Göteborg's finest

H and I have finally finished putting together all our posts on Göteborg.

While we hope most of you will remember the lipstick episode (and who could forget that?!), we've also added more material on the urban design and architecture of Göteborg, including a riotous post covering their church devoted to fish. Yes, fish. And shellfish. And mayonnaise. And fish. Yum. And did we mention that it's a church? (OK, so it's not really a church; but they do call it the Feskekörke, which means the fish church.)

If you'd rather skip the serious stuff, you can jump directly to our (always hilarious) commentary on the city and its culture, including the Göteborgeois's potentially unhealthy obsession with mobile homes, xenophilia, highly trustworthy law firms, and overdeveloped sense of direction. We also learned a bit about the demise of the Swedish plan for their own basketball "dream team."

Oh, yes. Almost forgot. Watch out for those mad trams!

Red Hat Challenge complete!

Well, we've finally finished with the Red Hat Challenge. We had a great time doing it, but we're also glad that it's over, as it had been absorbing a great deal of our time and mental energy over the past several days. Our apologies for the dearth of posts recently. We'll now be spending some time filling in all the blanks we've accumulated over the past few weeks.

In the meantime, H would like to me to broadcast a message from from her to all you loyal readers out there--coming right at you from Copenhagen, Denmark:

Whom do I superlove? That's right! It's you!

UPDATE (11 April 2007): We've been promised that we'll have the Red Hat Challenge results by the end of the week (13 April 2007). Believe us--when we know, you'll know!

Goings on in Denmark

Blogging may be a bit light for the next few days, as H and I will be traveling first to København (Copenhagen), Denmark and then to Malmö, Sweden. We're scheduled to depart early Thursday 5 April 2007 and we plan to return late Tuesday 10 April 2007. If we have time and internet access, we'll try to post a little bit, but no promises--we're not likely to have too much time, anyway. Reports on the Danish and Southern Swedes for sure when we return!

Why "Truffle Warren?"

Some of our dearest readers have asked us, quite understandably I think, "Of all the possible combinations of words out there, why in particular did you choose to entitle your blog, The Truffle Warren?" An excellent question, to which we have decided to reply by way of a coquettish smirk and the mildly infuriating answer: "Guess!"

Blog authors can't divulge all of their secrets--or at least, not right away...

Time-travel updates

J has been writing a lot of pre-dated material recently, since we want this blog to serve not only as an entertaining update for our readers, but as a record of our adventures for ourselves. We therefore attempt to date our posts not according to when we write them, but according to when the subject matter happened. For much of our material, of course, it doesn't much matter, but for some it does.

So you don't miss a single exciting word, we've prepared a little summary of the pre-dated material that J's been working on. Organized in chronological order:

(1) During January, J attended the wedding of a college roommate in Long Beach, CA. There, he amused himself photographing the real bearded Santas who had gathered for a convention.

(2) You may remember that upon his arrival, J bestowed upon Sweden a prestigious award for the Most Apt Method for Dispensing Soap--a method perhaps better known as "soap dispenser as teat." We now have a photo of this breakthrough Swedish soap delivery system.

(3) During the first weekend in February, H & J went on an overnight Swedish booze cruise. Surreal? If you have to ask, you obviously haven't read about what happened to us.

(4) On Valentine's Day, H & J attended a dinner at the Stockholm Stadshuset (City Hall), hosted by the Mayor of Stockholm. We learned more than we expected about the state of the art in Swedish livestock management.

(You can still subscribe to our more or less weekly email update; just look at the sidebar to the right!)

Get the Truffle Warren by email

Dear Careful Readers,

You may have noticed--if you've been regular visitors--that our blog has taken on a life of its own and has therefore started to evolve. One change to which I'd like to draw your attention is the addition of a weekly mailing list sign-up, located over on the right-hand sidebar. If you enter your email address, you'll get a weekly (more or less) update of the Truffle Warren... a weekly update as in no more than once every seven days, and nothing but the stubs (approximately the first 750 characters) of all our latest posts.

H jumps for joy upon hearing about our first subscriber.

We promise no junk, no ads, and no lame posts! Nothing but good, clean English prose, original photographs, and links to curious places on the internet. And you can unsubscribe anytime.

Please join our first subscriber (thanks, Mom!) in hearing all about our wacky adventures, delivered in our own inimitable style. We promise to visit many exotic places, meet interesting people, take amateur photographs, and blog about the whole glorious mess of it.

Wookin' pa nub

When J lamented this morning (well, actually afternoon, but a hall party and ensuing fire alarm kept us up late) that not many people are reading, enjoying, and therefore commenting on our blog, I mentioned that he might want to change the permission for commenting so that everyone can comment. We now have a democratic commenting system where anyone who wants to get upon their soap-box may do so. Please, go forth and comment!