Yearly Archive: 2007

03
Mar
2007

IN THE COMPANY OF SLUGS

Martin called his father from fritids (after-school daycare) on Thursday to announce he was running a fever. Anders picked him and took him home, where he slept from 1 p.m. until 5 that evening. He had a fever on and off the next day, home from school, and slept a great deal of that day away as well. By Friday night Karin had picked it up, and even Anders was dragging and not feeling himself. They got up at a decent hour this morning, though Martin was restless and awake until well past midnight and had breakfast at 8. I...

01
Mar
2007

AND YET SINGS, KNOWING SHE HAS WINGS

Birds are everywhere here. I suspect I notice them more now because there are so few other creatures out and about in this grey and snow-scabbed landscape. Some days ago, in the space of a short while, birds made their presence known to me in various ways. We were in the car, driving to the home of a couple that live far out in the country, who had promised the kids good sledding in the company of their son. I saw: a fat black-and-white magpie sitting alone in the black branches of a skeletal tree, his shape silhouetted against the...

24
Feb
2007

WHAT WE REMEMBER FROM CHILDHOOD WE REMEMBER FOREVER

When I was in high school, my dad made an art portfolio for me to keep all the pieces I was bringing home from my art classes. I was already planning on majoring in art when I got to college and I took a lot of art electives during my years in high school and wasted a LOT of paper. I still have several of the callligraphy pieces I did, a woodcut, an etching, copies of the pen and ink drawings I sold at the base bazaar, ink renderings of Linda K. Powell animals (which are pretty good if I...

22
Feb
2007

SOCK IT TO ME

Pow! Well, we didn’t get 2 feet of snow…exactly, but winter certainly arrived with a bang overnight. The snow we have gotten is the tiny and dry powdery crystal kind that swirls about and glitters in the streetlights without doing much about getting down to business and sticking. However, since the wind is blowing at blizzard strength, the snow we do have is piled in drifts here and there; up to 2 feet in places. In other places, not so much, just a dusty white coating. Since the winds and the freezing temperatures had been polishing the surfaces of all...

21
Feb
2007

THOSE WHO KNOW NOTHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES KNOW NOTHING OF THEIR OWN*

Translating isn’t that hard when you’re working with familiar or simple texts. I do it all the time at work (not to mention in my brain) and I do it on the fly at bedtime whenever one of the children brings me a Swedish book for a bedtime story. However, even when “fluent” in a second language and well-versed in word choice and use, turns of phrase and styling, translation work sounds a lot easier than it is. I handle a lot of translations during the course of my work every week. I don’t do them myself; we have an...

20
Feb
2007

OH SURE, NOW IT COMES

We’re supposed to get TWO FEET of snow tonight and tomorrow. TWO FEET. That’s 24 inches. 61 centimeters. Oh geez! It’s up to my knees! I don’t know whether to be pissed off or pleased as punch about it, given that in the former’s favor the mild temps and increasing daylight has me longing for real warmth and spring flowers, and in the latter’s favor we’ve had nearly no snow at all this winter so it would be kinda nice to have a little bit. It would have been nicer if it had come in January, when one thinks it’s...

19
Feb
2007

WHO NEEDS BULLETPOINTS WHEN YOU’VE GOT ASTERISKS?

A link on an art blog that I check in on now and then was recommending a certain ezine: Get lost for hours and hours! And I thought, who has hours and hours? All you people who have hours and hours to sit and peruse the archives or issues of any website, where do you find the time? I mean, if you don’t do it for work? Okay, I spend hours and hours on the computer, but I’m usually in the middle of 3 or 4 projects: website maintenance, newsletter editing, spider solitaire, book editing, inventory updates, music editing, reading...

16
Feb
2007

HOW I WONDER WHERE YOU ARE

We borrowed a nearly full-sized eletric keyboard from my friend Debbie for Martin to practice on for the next several months while he’s taking piano lessons. I brought it home late last night and set it up on the dining room table.* Martin headed straight for it when he got home from school. It has 99 song and style settings, allowing you to change the pitch and sound-style of the keys to just about anything you can imagine except quacking duck. It’s got harp, polka, rock-and-roll, softbeat, tango, and honky-tonk to name just a very, very few. It rocks into...

15
Feb
2007

THIS THAT AND THE OTHER

Another Reason to Love Sweden: Today I went again to the pharmacy, to pick up the prescription I had dropped off on Tuesday. They had sold out of the medicine I needed that day so I had to come back. Because I had requested to fill the last 2 months of the prescription (normally, they only let you fill one at a time) due to the trip to the U.S., I had to show my travel itinerary as proof that I was actually going to be out of the country and therefore unable to wait. I had another reason for...

13
Feb
2007

NOT GIVING PEAS A CHANCE

Why I Love the AWC: Because I can send out an email to the 123 members asking if there is anyone who would like to take 2 cans of Campbell’s Green Pea (shudder) soup off my hands and 5 minutes later get not one, but 2 responses that yes indeed, there ARE people out there that would be happy to have them. (update: FOURTEEN FIFTEEN people have responded so far) One of my colleagues was in New York last week, and while emailing about work, he offered to bring me back something…I asked about my disappearing shampoo, but he couldn’t...

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