Lizardek

11
Jul
2026

3 THINGS

3 things I’m enjoying right now: Our own produce, including cherries, cucumbers, potatoes, and tiny baby carrots Sunny summery days that so far have not been too hot (except once) Re-reading old sci-fi and fantasy favorites 3 things I am thinking about rather too much of the time: Aging My weight Work, when I’m off The last 3 really good NEW books I read recently: The Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen Before Dorothy by Hazel Gaynor 3 recent addictions: Anton Berg’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt bars Chewy strawberry balls Fresh fruit 3 things on...

10
Jul
2026

SUMMER SERENITY

I don’t really mind working the summer months, though it’s not fun watching almost all of my colleagues take off for 3 or 4 weeks of vacation at the same time. Because I took 2 weeks early, the rest of my summer vacation doesn’t start until the beginning of August, though honestly, I’m considering changing to taking all the Fridays during the fall off again. Even if I take the 2 weeks in August, I can still probably take off most of the Fridays in the fall as I will still have 2 weeks, plus another week of rollovers that...

06
Jul
2026

PARTIES AND PROVISIONS

And suddenly half the year is gone. That means the light is receding as well now, and the days are growing shorter, but la la la la I can’t hear you. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter if it’s always cloudy anyway, and we’re back to cool temperatures and lots of rain. We actually got SO lucky this past Saturday for the 4th of July because the entire week had been forecast as rain, and as we got closer to the day (and the big party we were hosting for the AIC), we were watching the weather changing while biting our nails....

30
Jun
2026

GOING GOING GROW!

Our garden is going gangbusters this time of year, and some things are doing better than we’ve ever had it. The potatoes (3 rows of 3 different kinds) are nearly as tall as I am, and they are all blooming right now, which means potatoes soon. They weren’t ready for midsummer since we were so late planting them. The new snap pea seeds that Anders planted after about half of the first planting didn’t show, are all sprouting out of the ground now. The feathery tops of the carrots are a foot high, and the onions (white and red) have...

27
Jun
2026

I’M MELTING, I’M MELTING!

Being this hot this long turns me into a wicked witch. I almost wish someone would douse me with a cold bucket of water. It’s been in the 90s for 2 days (34C today) and I don’t know how anyone stands it in countries where this is the norm or worse. How do people stand it?? I have minimal clothing, ceiling fans, and a regimen of opening and closing windows and blinds as the sun moves, to block the worst of it, and I’m still cranky and sweaty. I’ve managed to do a few things today, but if I had...

19
Jun
2026

GLAD MIDSOMMAR!

It’s midsummer eve and a public holiday here in Sweden. Midsummer is celebrated across Northern Europe and the Baltic countries, but I think Sweden is the only one that celebrates the eve of it, per typical Swedish custom of celebrating holidays the day before. The actual solstice isn’t until Sunday. After weeks of pretty cold temperatures and lots of rain last week, today arrived HOT and sunny, nearly 30C, which is too hot for me, given that there isn’t much of a breeze either. I slept in, while Anders went early to a fish store in Landskrona where he got...

18
Jun
2026

AND BACK AGAIN

We left The Netherlands behind and drove on the autobahn most of the day through Northern Germany to Lübeck. The autobahn is both scary and thrilling. For most of it there is no speed limit (it slows down to 120 kph near the cities and sometimes slower in construction zones, of which there are many). Anders set the cruise control and was clipping along at 130 kph most of the time, and there were still cars constantly whipping past us in the left lane. They must have been going well over 200. CRAZY. At one point, as we were nearing...

17
Jun
2026

CRUISING TO THE NETHERLANDS

We left Arromanches in the morning of June 6 (the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings) and headed north. Our plan was to swing over to Étretat on the coast. I had read about a place with lovely gardens on the cliffside above the town. However, due to the tiny country roads that led up the coast, it was nearly a 2.5 hour side trip that we couldn’t really afford as we needed to be in Bladel, The Netherlands latest by 9 pm. When we got to Étretat, it was sunny and beautiful, and while parking the car near the...

16
Jun
2026

GOLD BEACH, MULBERRY HARBORS, AND LESSONS IN HISTORY

I was a military brat, and as such, most of what I learned about WW2 in high school was from an American perspective. I knew the name of Omaha Beach, but very little else about the D-Day landings or the military operations of the war. I read a lot of books about the resistance, the holocaust, and the lives of ordinary people living through the war, and as an adult have educated myself much further with movies, books, documentaries, and other sources of historical information. I’ve been to Berlin when it was still behind the wall, and I’ve been to...

15
Jun
2026

NORTH TO NORMANDY

The day we left Saint-Malo and headed north to Mont-Saint-Michel was quite cloudy, but no rain was forecast. We arrived at the parking lot on the mainland just before noon, which was later than I would have liked, but we weren’t in any hurry. We knew there would be a lot of people on the island, but were hoping that because it was off-season that it wouldn’t be TOO crowded. You can either walk across the bridge that leads from the tourist center and the parking lots or take the free shuttle that runs every 12 minutes. It takes about...

July 2026
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