Here in St. Petersburg it takes a long time to get anywhere. There are too few roads in the city to accomodate all the cars here and the city itself covers quite a large area.

I am currently staying on the north-eastern side of the city. When I leave the apartment it takes me about five minutes to walk to the tram stop. From there depending on how long I have to wait for a tram or trolleybus it can take from anywhere between 10-30 minutes to get to the metro stop. Once I'm on the metro I don't have to worry about traffic jams or delayed trains (The SPb metro is VERY efficient) but it still takes between 20-30 minutes to get to the city center.

Yesterday I went to a big shopping mall on the outskirts of St. Petersburg with my GREAT friends Sanya and Lena.(I was looking for swimming trunks...more on that later.) It took about an hour from I left my apartment to get to the metro stop where I was supposed to meet Lena. After that we had to ride on the metro to the very end of one line and then get on a shuttle bus which took us to the mall (which has one of two IKEAs in the city, by the way). That took about another half hour.

By the time the three of us left the mall it was rush hour and it took us almost a full hour on the shuttle bus to get from the mall to the metro. From there it took me another half hour to get to the center where I was supposed to pick up my registration documents. After finding out that the registration bureau didn't yet have my documents, thus essentially making my trip to the center a total waste, I got back on the metro and traveled another half-hour to the south-west corner of the city to go visit some other friends. After exiting the metro, I got on a mini-bus and rode on that for about fifteen minutes until I finally arrived at my destination.

At the end of the night I got back on the metro and rode on the same line (through fourteen stations) until I got back to the north-east side of the city. That ride alone took about 45 minutes. After that I got on another mini-bus (Mini-buses cost a few more rubles but there are a lot less trams and trolleys late at night so the mini-bus is much more convenient) and rode that for a few minutes and then I finally got home.

All in all, I spent somewhere between 3.5-4 hours yesterday using the St. Petersburg public transport system. And I didn't even leave the city.

Does anybody know where the "OFF" button is for the snow???

Yesterday it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed here in St. Petersburg. After it stopped snowing I had to wait for 30 minutes at the bus stop for a bus to take me to the metro station yesterday evening and then once I had taken the metro into the center of St. Petersburg none of the sidewalks or roads had been plowed or shoveled in the center, thus making it very difficult to walk to where I was going. If this would have been the case in America, I would have complained the whole time about the fact nobody was out taking care of the snow--in fact, I was quite disgusted a couple weeks ago when after an overnight snowstorm in Hartford, my university still had not plowed its parking lots or shoveled its sidewalks by 10:00 AM. However, here not only was I not surprised that nothing had been done to remove the snow, but it didn't even bother me that I had to trudge through it all.

I guess my body still thinks that it's in Connecticut because I'm still having trouble sleeping at the times when I should sleep and being alert and active at the times when I should be alert and active. Normally I haven't had many lasting problems with jetlag, unless we count my very first trans-Atlantic trip to Paris when I was sixteen where I threw up everything I ate for two days after arrival until I ate some McDonalds. After that I felt fine. :) Anyways, the jetlag issue has kind of been frustrating but this morning I was able to sleep till 7:30 instead of 5:00 or 5:30. Progress?

MOSCOW!!!!

Just had an awesome two days in Moscow.

I flew out of New York on Tuesday ad nine uneventful hours later landed in Moscow. During that time I:
-Chose lasagna over chicken for dinner
-Watched Harry Potter 6
-slept for about a half-hour
-stared blankly at the seatback in front of me

I was one of the first people in line for passport control but it didn't matter so much because I then had to wait forty minutes for my checked bag. After avoding eye contact and quickening my pace while walking by the customs officials, I met up with my friend Kamil at the airport and then we got on a bus for an hour to get into Moscow. I had forgotten that every woman in Russia covers from head to foot in fur during the winter time.

The first evening there Kamil and Olya (friends from Moscow) gave me an extra ticket to a DIMA BILAN concert. For all of you who don't know about DIMA BILAN, he's basically the Russian version of Justin Timberlake. He's HUGE here. And I got a free ticket. This was a big deal. Oh, and the emcee for the night was Oksana Fedorova AKA Russia's very own Miss Universe. It was pretty crazy and I was definitely the only American there. To fully appreciate the superstar who is DIMA BILAN, here's one of his videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L0fvNkoL00

He sure can rock a mullet, huh?

Yesterday I finally got to catch up on A LOT of sleep. (Stayed with some friends in Moscow. Five people share two bedrooms in their apartment. With me there were six. It's always a party there.) Last night after having a bit too much fun hanging out in the center of Moscow we might have arrived at the train station a couple of minutes too late to catch my 10:20 PM train to St. Petersburg and might have had to buy another ticket on a train about two hours later. Oops. :) Moscow is great though so I didn't mind one bit having to stay there another couple of hours.

The train ride was tedious. Usually you just fall asleep on the train and wake up in St. Petersburg in the morning but the train was ridiculously hot (about 80 degrees inside the train) and I was put on a top bunk with about 14 inches between me and the shelf above my head. Didn't get any sleep at all. Instead I spent my time listening to NPR podcasts I downloaded before I left and watching movies. My iPod Touch and I have never been closer. On the train there were also these two older women on the bunks below me and once they heard me speak they were all like, "You're from the Baltics?" I then smiled and told them I was American and that set them off on a shower of compliments--"You speak Russian so well!" "Your pronunciation is perfect!" "You're so handsome!" "Do you have a beautiful Russian girlfriend" "etc." And people wonder why I come over here so often...

Now I'm in St. Petes. It's great. Duh.

I'll put up pics from Moscow soon.

Poka!

On your marks, get set...

...but before we say "GO!" here's an update from New York City!

First of all, I have to confess something. I've turned into one of those snobby Connecticutians (My original term for people from Connecticut.) who seem to think in their (very large) heads that they are in all reality residents of New York City when in all reality they live in a completely different state. Case in point: This morning I was flying into New York's LaGuardia airport from North Carolina. There were lots of people on the plane who were on vacation for the holidays in the city. It was too easy to pick them out. As the plane flew by Manhattan, 90% of the passengers had their noses glued to the windows and many started giving a veritable tour of the city (Like they know anything...) from the air. I am sure that for many of them it was a very exciting moment seeing New York City for the first time--It is, in all honesty, quite an impressive sight--and perhaps an appropriate response for one such as myself who is boiling over with Christmas spirit would have been, "I can nostalgically recall the sense of awe and wonder I also felt when I first set eyes on that most impressive and majestic of cityscapes." However, we must remember that jolly and perky as I am during the holidays, Connecticut has turned me into a snob. My instinctive response was more along the lines of, "Geez people, get a grip. It's just the city. Could you maybe try to quit ruining the last five minutes of what was a peaceful flight for me?" So yes, although it is a full two hours for me to drive to NYC from Hartford, I too have joined the ranks of Connecticutians who get annoyed by "outsiders" who come in and invade "my" city.

The highlight of my day was sock shopping--I am after all from NYC and we must carry on with our everyday lives while we live in this behemoth of a concrete monstrosity. I got on the bus at LaGuardia which took me to the subway which brought me to the place where I'm crashing tonight (Thanks Caleb and Patty!) and then I got back on the train to midtown. I went to Macys, got too annoyed by all the "outsiders" crowding the aisles of the store, and then went across the street to H&M to buy socks so that I can now add some dark socks into the mix of all the white ones I packed for my trip.

I then walked up to Rockefeller Center to see the big Christmas tree (which, by the way, I always thought would be bigger) "because I had to" and took the obligatory self-portrait in front of it. I felt embarrassed to get my camera out. "Outsiders" were everywhere (I think there were probably more tourists in Manhattan today than I've seen even in the summertime.) and I felt like I was condescending to their level to pause for a moment to take a picture in front of one of "their" iconic Christmas landmarks. I mean, good grief, I'm FROM the city, remember? I can't wait till the holidays are over so I can get back to life as a regular resident of Connecticut, I mean, New York City.

...

My camera cord is at the bottom of the abyss that is my bottomless backpack. The posting of the self-portrait will have to wait. Now don't let yourselves get impatient about it like us New Yorkers...

Flight from JFK leaves tomorrow afternoon around 4:00. See you on the other side...

My Hotel History

I have stayed in a hotel by myself a total of four times in my life. Two of those times happened within the last week. It is becoming a habit to take a photo of every hotel room I stay in by myself. Here is the photographic evidence:

Hotel #1: Near the airport in Rome. It was free because my flight was three hours late from Moscow, causing me (and about half the plane) to miss my connecting flight to Naples. Upside: There was free dinner and breakfast as well. Downside: The airline didn't return my suitcase to me that night, leaving me with basically a toothbrush and an iPod and an extra change of underwear for the night.



Hotel #2: Tunis, Tunisia. After 26 hours on a ferry and sharing a taxi into the city with a nice couple from the Netherlands, I found this little place near the train station in Tunis. The owner of the hotel was really nice and the only person I met in Tunisia who spoke English. The night before I left he asked me to help him get to America to help him find an American wife. Somehow I lost his email address...Oh yeah, and my room was the only room in the hotel to have a shower. It didn't have a toilet--but it had a shower.



Hotel #3: Motel 6. Laramie, Wyoming. After 12 hours of driving I pulled up to the world famous Motel 6 in Laramie, Wyoming at 4:00 AM. I proceeded to sleep for five hours and then got up and kept driving. It was right next to the freeway and the walls were really thin. (read: it was hard to fall asleep because of all the noise.)



Hotel #4: Motel 6. Kearney, Nebraska. When I decided that after 12 hours of driving that I really didn't want to drive through the night in torrential rain amongst lots of road construction and large trucks on the freeway, I got a room for the night in Kearney.



It was pretty nice.

A few history lessons from Washington D.C.

Just yesterday I got back from a quick trip to Washington, D.C. to visit some family. As I toured through many of the landmarks of our nation's capital I learned lots of fascinating things about America that I would like to share with all of you now.

--The Capitol building in Washington D.C. was not originally called "The Capitol." In fact, it didn't even have a name. When the dome was placed on the building, many people commented how it looked like a cap. (You will recall how some of the early baseball caps had spikes coming out of the top--these were later used as a model for the military helmets used in World War I.) Eventually, many people began to regularly comment on the size of the cap by saying, "Wow! That cap is tall." However, because of the accent used in America at that time in the 19th Century, regular Americans often failed to pronounce the letter "s", so it actually sounded more like Eliza Doolittle proclaiming, "Wow (guvna)! That cap i' tall!" Eventually from this phrase, the word "Capitol" was formed and has remained to this day.

--It is a commonly known fact after the failed attempt of the Pony Express, the United States Postal Service relied much on the passenger pigeon to deliver the mail from one end of the country to the other. However, the passenger pigeons were good for target practice as well as delivering parcels, and the last one was shot extinct in 1914. This caused a mail crisis. This crisis was solved though when the US government ordered in the importation of 300,000 camels from Egypt to be used as the primary source of distributing mail throughout these United States. For a time, the camel flourished and herds of camels freely roamed the mid-western United States. President Woodrow Wilson assured the American people that the camel was destined to become "the new bison--only we won't kill them off this time." Sadly, the tragic outbreak of Camel Flu in 1918 ordered for the immediate extermination of all camels within American borders. The age of the mail-carrying camel was tragically cut short.

--The Supreme Court was originally called the "Greatest Court." However, early Supreme Court Justice William Cushing of Massachusetts was such a fan of Supreme pizza from Pizza Hut that he would bring in leftovers to the court everyday to eat at lunchtime. Throughout his life, he constantly tried to get the official name of the court changed to the "Supreme Court," but everyone in Washington just thought he was silly. When Justice Cushing died in 1810, the remaining justices honored Cushing's witnesses and began to refer to themselves as the "Supreme Court."

--The well-known motto of the United States, "Out of Many, One" is actually a translation of the often heard Latin phrase "Carpe Diem." Who knew?!

--In the United States Capitol building there is a large statue of the early Hawaiian King Kamehameha donning a bright gold robe. The use of the gold is of course to symbolize the massive gold rush to the western US that occurred in the middle of the 19th Century. Seeing as Hawaii is are most western state, the sculptors at the Capitol thought it only appropriate to have King Kamehameha don a golden robe to remind us all of the American Gold Rush.

My HUMBLE abode (emphasis added)

Since probably only 5 other people besides myself have ever seen the little glorified room that I call home, I figured I would invite you all on a grand tour here on my blog. You will note: the extreme lack of furniture, the sparse wall decorations, the warm beige wallpaint, and not much else. Enjoy!!!!

A few things NOT found in Iowa...

A couple months after moving here I made a few observations about things missing from Iowa that I had gotten used to in Utah where I did my undergrad. Here are those observations...

In Iowa there are no...
-Mountains. The off-ramp to the freeway is about the closest thing you'll find to a mountain here.
-Carls Jr. They have a sort of Carls Jr. equivalent called "Hardees" but the menu is completely different and severely lacking.
-Permanent music building. Thank you Flood of '08.
-I've never heard somebody here say, "I hate my instrument." If I had a nickel for every time I heard that during my undergrad, I could pay my rent for a year.
-I've never seen my orchestra conductor have to tell the orchestra members to stop talking during a rehearsal (i.e. orchestra members are quiet/respectful during rehearsal.) Once again, if I had a nickel...
-Massive room in the library dedicated to LP recordings...or the viola...or the harp...
-Firewalls blocking the use of YouTube on campus
-Free barbeques on campus in the middle of the day :(
-No crazy Utah drivers!!!!!!!!!

25 Things All About ME!

This is a repeat of something I got tagged to do on Facebook yesterday...I just can't get enough of spreading my influence through cyberspace.





1. I have eaten at McDonalds in 9 countries. I hope to make it an even 10 this coming summer.

2. Last summer over the course of 10 days I traveled through Germany by plane, by train, by bus, by tram, by car, by motorcycle, by bicycle, and by moped...I think I'm only missing a boat ride.

3. When I was in elementary school and jr. high I was absolutely obsessed with the spelling bee. When I was in sixth grade I missed the word "piccolo" in the school spelling bee (how embarrassing, right?--I spelled it "piccollo") and was awarded 4th place. The top three got to go to the county bee and I was extremely outraged because the girl to whom they awarded third place misspelled her word in the same round that I did, but had drawn a later number so she got out "after me". According to the official rules,however, when this happens the two spellers are actually declared to have a "tie" and a spell-off is supposed to occur, in this case to determine who would win third place. There was no spell-off. Immediately after the bee I went directly to the principal, found the rule in the rulebook that specifically stated there should have been a spell-off and DEMANDED that they follow the rules. He pretended that I was misinterpreting the rulebook and didn't do anything about it. I went home and cried for hours. No joke. I'm still a little bitter, if you can't tell... The next year I did better--3rd place in the county bee. I misspelled "abdicate." (I spelled it "abdocate.") That was a long entry for number 3, so moving on...

4. In rereading this note I found that I skipped #4...I haven't grown an inch since I was 15 years old.

5. I love the Russian language and still study it on my own every day. This week's vocab list includes "aardvark", "acorn", and "acupuncture."

6. I have never lived in the same place for more than 5 years.

7. I am the only one of my grandfather's natural grandchildren that is not a twin.

8. The most gratifying and beneficial part of my undergrad experience was my employment at my school's music library.

9.I took my first steps in a library. Now I work in one.

10. Iowa is probably my favorite place I have lived in the US. No joke. Even though everything that could possibly have gone wrong since I moved here has gone wrong, I absolutely love living here. It will be hard to leave.

11. I have been to 13 foreign countries, but never to Canada.


12. I shared a bedroom in a hostel with two girls from Denmark and a girl from Montreal for two nights last summer. They were all taller than me.

13. When I was in elementary school I was obsessed with the Chronicles of Narnia. I would watch the BBC live-action film version of the books with the neighbor kids constantly. We knew them so well that we would act them out verbatim beginning-to-end in our yards.

14. My feelings concerning the last year of my undergrad and the following months can best be summed up by the first three tracks on the Dixie Chicks album "Taking the Long Way." I think Natalie Maines and I would be friends.

15. Over the course of this decade I have only been in the USA for the 4th of July four times.

16. I was always the youngest kid in my class until I got to the 10th grade.

17. I spent over eight hours on a train last summer sitting next to a drunk Russian who accused me of being an American spy. (This accusation came after he thought for the first four hours of the train ride that I was from Latvia.) His logic for determining that I was a spy was based on the fact that I spoke Russian and don't drink alcohol.

18. When I was in kindergarten I was reading at the 3rd-grade level but my teacher wanted to hold me back because I had "trouble using scissors." Thank you South Dakota education system. (In the end, I still went on to the first grade.)

19. When I was in eastern Germany and in Russia last summer I pondered a lot about the fact that 20 years ago our countries were bitter enemies yet here I was hanging out and living among my German and Russian friends. I thought a lot during this time about our grandfathers, who all probably fought against each other during World War II. I am sure that they (our grandfathers) would have been very proud to see their grandchildren two generations later together as friends. That experience made me feel very close to my grandfather who fought in the war but died before I was born.

20. I don't have a problem eating a slab of solid pig fat (it's a delicacy in Russia) but I think that drinking milk straight out of a glass is DISGUSTING.

21. The longest I have gone without a haircut is eleven months.

22. I have an amazingly insightful, funny, and poignant blog. Read it! (heintz57.blogspot.com) :)

23. i drive a 1990 Buick Park Avenue. I call it the Albino Rhino.

24. I have stuck my feet in the Mediterranean from both the European and African sides.

25. Despite the reassuring efforts of many, I still feel that I have not accomplished anything of real value with my life. This pains me sometimes.

Things that happen to me when it is 30 below zero...

-my nostrils stick together when I inhale rapidly through my nose (quite enjoyable).
-My left eye starts this weird little twitch and I get momentarily scared that my contact is going to pop out.
-I let my mind get boggled by thinking too much about how it could possibly be 110 degrees warmer in LA than it is in Iowa right now
-I get asked questions about driving a car in anarctic-like temperatures that I have no idea how to answer
-my lower thighs (area right above the knee) start freezing to a point that it feels like they're burning
-When I leave my apartment in the morning with my hair still wet, I like reaching back and feeling the frozen curls that stick out under my beanie
-I wake up in the early morning and the first thought that pops into my head is "I don't want to go outside."
-The end of my nose starts tingling and I immediately become paranoid that it's frostbite
-I get the weird desire to stick my tongue to a metal pole...
-I have nothing to do at night other than sit at home and watch "House" because I can't muster the determination to open my front door and feel the instant chill.
-I give in and turn up the thermostat from 68 to 70.
-And finally, I get really rather sad when I think that this will probably be the only insanely cold Iowa winter that I'll get to endure

German Coast Guard????

I've shown this to actual Germans and even they thought it was funny!!

guilty as charged........

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/19-travelling/

OK, first off: click on the title of this post, which will take you to the link that I just pasted on here. Read the linked article and then return hear to read my ever-so-insightful commentary on the matter.

K, assuming that you just did what I told you to do, you can now continue to read the rest of my wisdom which I am so willing to disperse.

Things the article of this blog accuses white people (more directly: me) of:

-"travel is not only beloved but absolutely essential in their development as white people." True.
-"Every white person takes at least one trip to Europe between the ages of 17-29." Easy. Try three with a fourth one in the works. And let's not forget that little "warm up" trip at the age of 16.
-"During this time they are likely to wear a back pack, stay at a hostel, meet someone from Ireland/Sweden/Italy with whom they have a memorable experience, get drunk, see some old churches and ride a train." Well, I had memorable experiences with two girls from Denmark, which is practically Sweden I suppose. As far as getting drunk, well...not quite, but I do have a funny story from Paris Trip '01 that deserves to be told at another time. (Don't worry for all you faithfuls whose jaws just dropped--I was completely oblivious.) 'Yes' to backpack. 'Heck yes' to hostels. And 'yes' on the trains.
-"they return to North America with ideas of writing novels and screenplays about their experience." Does keeping a blog about your trip(s) and then constantly blogging about it/them for months to come count?
-"Upon returning home, they will also find an affinity for a particular beer or liquor from a country they visited." OK, they were a little off on this one, but I do have Paris Trip '07 to thank for helping me find Cola Lite (aka Diet Coke).
-"The second type of white person travel is Third World. This is when they venture to Thailand, Africa or South America. Some do it so that they can one up the white people who only go to Europe." Um, duh...plus it looks really cool to have stamps in Arabic on your passport. It totally wins the chicks over...oh wait.
-"white people like to believe they are the first white people to make this trip. As such, they should be recognized as special and important individuals." I've always known that--thank you Captain Obvious.

The Epic of the Measuring Stick

What an eye-catching title for a blog post, don't you think? The following post will someday be compared to the great epics of our time---Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, The Mighty Ducks--take your pick. It will also undoubtedly join the ranks of the great Hollywood screenplays (Casablanca, On the Waterfront, She's the Man--once again, take your pick), but lucky enough for all you readers, you are the first people to ever become familiar with the Epic of the Measuring Stick--you are the proud, the few.

It all started with a measuring stick and three spoiled kids from an unnamed university.



(Not actual measuring stick. The real one was a shiny silver aluminum.)

Previously mentioned spoiled children had been given an all-inclusive trip to the Mediterranean coast of Italy to give presentations at a library convention of all things. One of these spoiled children (we'll call her "Darcy") borrowed a metal measuring stick from the library of previously unnamed university (for your convenience, we'll just refer to it from now on as "BYU") to aid her in a poster she had designed as part of her presentation.

Our story will begin in Naples where the measuring stick had an eventful week sitting in its hotel room eating truffles and witnessing the literal meltdown of a computer (there will be some great CGI for this in the movie) but like all good things, the vacation had to end. Darcy had the unfortunate circumstance of getting to go backpacking through Italy with her father for two weeks following Naples (poor thing) and didn't have room for the measuring stick in her backpack. (Looking back on it, there wouldn't have been room for an entire computer either---did you plan that explosion for your own convenience, Darcy????) Because of this, the responsibility was dealt to me to assure that the measuring stick made its way back home to the BYU library halfway around the world. It was a responsibility I was willing to accept, but little did I know the looming trouble this would bring upon me. (At this point in the movie-version there will be some element of foreshadowing--maybe a new leitmotif in the score or some clever camera angle. We're still working out the details.)

My path after Naples became that of a solo journey. With the measuring stick tucked safely away in my suitcase, the two of us found lodging for several nights with two female travelers from Denmark, but unfortunately, it was not to last. (That's the closest this epic will get to having any form of a love story--don't worry, the screenwriters are planning on spicing up that part of the screenplay in order to boost the movie to at least a PG-13 rating. It's a marketing thing.)

Then an unexpected disaster struck (It always does in an epic, right?) This will rank right up there with the disastrous moments of all epics--Scarlett loses the farm, Maximus is deceived and arrested by Commodus, Harry decides to abandon Lloyd in Nebraska and walk home to Providence, and now to add to those epic moments.....THE WHEEL ON MY SUITCASE BROKE.

The plot thickens.

The next path of my journey involved riding a train to a nearby port city of Salerno where I was to board a ferry by myself that would take me across the Mediterranean to the northern African country of Tunisia. Little did I know that the walk from the train platform to the ferry port would take me over two hours and during this epic walk (Which of course ranks among the greatest of all epic journeys--like Rose and Jack crossing the Atlantic, Moses leading the children of Israel out of bondage, and the Three Amigos on their quest to find El Guappo.) During this arduous and taxing foot journey, the left wheel of my previously (and deceptively) reliable suitcase gave out and broke off. This left me with no other option but to drag the suitcase the rest of the way in the hot sun to the ferry port.

Here is where we reach a major point of decision which will really illuminate the inner strength of my character.

When I reached the ferry port, I realized that I had a smaller duffle bag packed inside my suitcase. In a moment of desperation, I began to unpack the essential items out of my suitcase and place them in the duffle bag. Everything that didn't fit would just have to stay abandoned forever on the coast of Italy. However, when I got to the bottom of the suitcase, there lied the measuring stick. No matter how I tried, the measuring stick simply would not fit into the duffle bag. Having always considered myself to be among the most reliable and honorable of all human beings, I decided that I simply could not fail Darcy and not deliver the measuring stick back to its proper owner. So slowly I placed all my items back in the broken suitcase, zipped it up, and proceeded to drag it behind me with much effort for the remainder of my journey. What dedication. What mental toughness. What strength of character. (It is now that I realize that once this hits the big screen, I will most definitely be ranked among the greatest of all the noble Hollywood characters--Aragorn, Oskar Schindler, Nacho Libre, etc.)

The journey continued for the measuring stick with a long ferry ride across the Mediterranean to Tunisia, where it resided for several days before flying back to the states. Upon return to Utah, preparations for an upcoming cross-country move overshadowed my original priority of returning the measuring stick to the library and so while it was so close to its home, the journey of the measuring stick was not yet complete. Off it went through the cornfields of South Dakota and Iowa where it rested for several months, all the while awaiting my return to Utah.

(During this whole time, Darcy waited patiently to be reunited with the measuring stick. Several flashback sequences will show Darcy back in America which display her feelings of longing and yearning for the measuring stick to make it back to her safe and sound. Following the unparalleled success of my side of the story in theaters, a spin-off film of Darcy's side of the story will be produced. Both will be unprecedented landmark achievements in the history of film.)

Finally, on January 4th, 2009--more than five months since the measuring stick and Darcy parted ways--the two were reunited in a most joyous moment. Darcy looked kind of like this when she and the measuring stick were together again for the first time.



This will be an ending forever embedded in the minds of audience members everywhere. Watch out Scarlett O'Hara--there's a new Georgian belle that's going to steal the hearts of moviegoers everywhere.

And with that, the epic has drawn to a close. See you at the Oscars.

Happy New Year from ABBA