Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 14:02:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Regressive planning.

Sorry to have kept you all waiting so long :)  As a bonus for waiting so
long this one is relatively short.

Well, I've been here for 3 months now so, per my schedule for the past two
years, it must be time to either fly back to Toronto, or fly back to
Vancouver, but I cannot tell which because although I miss my dog, I also
have the urge to stay up all night and install hard drives :)  It is
slightly amusing how one gets used to a schedule, no matter how
unscheduled it may seem.

Well the news for this chronicle is that there has been another change in
the schedule of my whereabouts.  It was decided that there is not yet
enough work in Vienna to keep me occupied, so after my week long visit to
Rome, Feb.18, I will be returning to Neuchatel.  I may still be going to
Vienna, but not until after the beginning of April.  What this really
boils down to is I get to stay in a city of 35000 where I can read the
street signs and cereal ingredients but cannot speak to anyone, instead of
moving to a large metropolis where I cannot read the cereal packages but
know at least 5 people who speak English and would have a fair chance of
performing daily activities in English.  Oh well, it's not like Vienna was
in the plan when I first moved here anyway.

The excitement level here in Neuchatel is pretty much the same as usual.
For excitement last weekend I fasted for 36 hours.  I don't think I have
seen the sun since the new year started (except for in Rome).  The
temperature is fine and I even think Winter is considered over with, but
being right on the lake next to a mountain, we are in this continual fog
bank.  One day I managed to see across the lake, but that was a rarity.
If I get organized enough (i.e. if I get out of bed early enough) on the
weekend I will catch the vernicular up the mountain above the clouds.  

Something I forgot to mention about my trip to Vienna that might be of
interest to those of you who hate lining up for movies is that although
the movies cost the equivelent of $10-$12, you do not have to line up.  In
fact, it is like going to the real theatre.  You buy pre-assigned seats
with different prices depending on where they are.  You can phone ahead
and make reservations too.  So if you decided to go to a movie while
eating lunch one day, when you get back to work you just phone up the
theatre, make a reservation, show up 15 minutes before the movie starts
and you're in.  The pricing scheme also means that if you do show up
without reservations just before the movie starts, it is entirely possible
that there are still good seats left because all the cheepskates will have
bought cheaper seats. 

My Mother sent me this absolutely fantastic radio headset thing.  The
reception is so good that I can pick up one station clear across 75% of
the AM band.  You know it's got to be a fine piece of equipment when you
can do that.  Even igonoring this technical problem, the radio bands over
here are totally polluted - too many stations in too small an area.  One
thing I have noticed though is that even though there are country stations
here, the country music is all in English, which is good because it means
it's not infecting the other languages :)  The other cool thing I have
found is a 24 hour polka station.  This is cool because I can listen to
the same songs the oompa-band in my head plays without having to close my
eyes.

For those of you who don't get mail from either of my male siblings (who
have been including this is their mail sigs) I have created a Sanderson
family web page.  For anyone who cares to see it, it is at
"http://users.uniserve.com/~scs/"  I was not going to tell everyone until
my parents had had a chance to see it (their browser died and it is taking
a while to get a new one organized) but they are just taking too damn
long.  It's nothing too exciting, but atleast it's bringing my family into
the 90's.

Bogus Statistics Time:
For all of you who think I write way too much email, you're probably
right, although you should note that these broadcast letters are only
about 7% of my total mail.  My mail storage has just passed the 1.5 Mbyte
mark.  This includes incoming and outgoing mail.  I was going to attempt
to figure out how much of it has actually been outgoing, but that was too
much work and I think it is fair to say well over half.  I ran the word
counter to see how many words are in there and it is aproaching the 250000
mark spread over 33000 lines.  Now I concede that there is a bunch of
bogus header information in there but even if you take off 12 lines for
each of the 740+ pieces of mail, you still have 24000 lines, which is 480
standard pages, which is 160 pages per month.  So, I should be able to
write my thesis in less than two months :)

Okay, so everybody who gets this letter is now in a contest.  The contest
is to see who sees the first outdoor, natural budding flower.  (Trips such
as to Mexico or Rome do not count.)  Now I realize we can no longer bug
certain people about their weather (i.e. Mr. & Mrs. Linn) but there are
people in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Boston who we can still tease incessantly
:)

Good flower hunting,
Aaron de Neuchatel