it's been quite a while, yeah i've been lazy in addition to being busy. so. first things first, mom and dad came over here for christmas (it was really wonderful to see them) and then matti and i were sleddog dog handlers and occasional drivers. we worked for the company that petteri, one of matti's friends from the army, runs with his dad. petteri's dad was in charge and we helped out. working tassu taival was a lot of fun. we woke up early in the morning, fed the dogs and then got ready to go to where busloads of russian tourists were literally shipped in to us. then we gave rides (about 400m rides) and they paid 20eur each... talk about spending money liberally. the job included room and board and we got along really well with petteri, pekka (the dad) and yevgeny (the russian helped guy). we tried to have runs at two separate sites but the weather was poor overall so after a while we concentrated on one spot where we could take snow from the piles in the parking lot and shovel where we wanted to go... talk about a sad winter in finland