Happy Chinese New Year!

From Google Image

May your life take off this year to new heights like the prancing horse in the picture!  May it carry you to where you wish to go!  For my part, I think I'm due for some distant travel this year; not sure what life has in store for me.  I'm hoping Kirk might be invited out to give a paper somewhere in Europe, say, Germany, for example, so that I can tag along and put my German to practice.  This semester, instead of going to classes, I've been meeting with a German Ph.D student once a week to practice German.  It's been working out very well so far; we meet at a coffee house across from where I've been working. Hope our friends in the south have not been too adversely affected by this new cold blast from the North Pole.  It no longer bothers us when the temperature is in the teens.  We've definitely grown accustomed to the cold, especially, now that we're well insulated by the inimitable "Canada Goose" parkas!