Yearly Archive: 2014

07
May
2014

THINGS I AM THINKING ABOUT

The yellow of the rapeseed. The horses out back. The black cat that hangs out on the neighbor’s porch across the street but never seems to get let inside. The fact that the lilacs are almost here. ALMOST! The way the sky went blue and the clouds went puff and the rain went away. The way the lights bends down to bless us in the evening. The funeral for Anders’ father. Weight-loss. Walking. Surgery. Eye infections. The fact that Karin stayed home with a sore throat again today for the 45,589,382,411th time this year. The fact that I have to...

01
May
2014

ALWAYS TOO SOON

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks since I last wrote anything, with work filling up my brain and renovation projects at home squirreling in around the edges. Last weekend we did a big shop at IKEA and bought 3 new bookshelves for the computer room to replace the ones that have moved out to the garage storage. And yesterday I picked up another one from my friend Debbie, a skinnier model. So that made 3.5 new bookshelves to fill and organize. I started earlier in the week but finished it up today and everything looks nice and new and...

26
Apr
2014

A ROOM FOR GROWING UP IN

Anders recently finished renovating Karin’s room, and we bought new bed covers, pillows and frames for her wall. There are still some small details to finish, but they’ll get done when they get done. Just to indulge in a little bit of nostalgia, this was Karin’s room when we first built and moved into this house: THEN, in 2009, when she was in the midst of her kick-ass karate ninja career, we re-did her room completely, and it was SO COOL: BUT NOW! She’s no longer a girl. She’s a young woman. With sophisticated tastes and a decided interest in...

24
Apr
2014

MUSIC SO NICE

I’ve been obsessed with Spotify lately…I went through the million lists of all the songs on all my mixed tapes from college and after (80s! 90s!) and added all the best stuff. Since then I’ve been haunting the Discover and Browse functions and the app We Are Hunted which finds trending music mentioned on social media. Lots of good stuff out there. Still, several artists that I love aren’t on Spotify or only have limited selections of their work available. I’m looking at you, Peter Gabriel. Where is General Public? And Grace Pool? And Loey Nelson?? And why isn’t Vienna...

20
Apr
2014

WALKING ON SUNSHINE

So far, this has been an absolutely wonderful and relaxing long weekend and there’s still the rest of this evening and all of tomorrow to enjoy of it. Karin is up in Gothenburg, participating in the Future Cup Invitational, as goalie for her team. They are playing in the semi-final game tonight, but we can hopefully keep track of the match progress live on the website. They won their first 3 games and she only let in one goal, so she was sounding quite happy when I talked to her a couple of hours ago. Yesterday, we had some good...

17
Apr
2014

20 YEARS

I can still remember lots of details, though some things, like conversation or what we were wearing, have faded over the years. I wasn’t really interested in dating, but agreed to for a friend who was sure she had found the perfect guy for me: “He’s European! You lived in Europe!” I drove out to Linda and Nick’s townhouse where we met, and we all went out to dinner at some suburban Chinese place, and then we rented movies and went back to their place. After the first movie, Linda and Nick fell asleep on the sofa and we stayed,...

14
Apr
2014

SHE WORKS HARD FOR THE MONEY

I love spring in Sweden. It’s not just the daffodils everywhere or the way the fuchsia glows in the lengthening light or the sheen of green that pours itself over every rolling hill. It’s the SHORT WORK WEEKS. Easter is super late this year, and because of it, I have this to look forward to: This week: 3.5 days of work Followed by a: 4.5 day weekend Followed by: 4 days of work Followed by: 2.5 days of work Followed by a: 4.5 day weekend And then at the end of May? Another 2.5 day work week, followed by ANOTHER...

11
Apr
2014

WHAT’S UP

It is such a long time since I posted that I feel like the veriest tyro. A blogging beginner. Again! Today was spelunking day, and on Monday I got sick with a massive head cold. …NOOOO. I was determined that NOTHING was going to hinder today’s appointment so I medicated and rested and took half a day off and another morning, and by today I was fine, though a bit stuffy in the nose, still. Compounded by allergies, I am ALWAY stuffy in the nose, so I figured I could get away with it. Off to Landskrona we went, and...

30
Mar
2014

WEEKEND REDUX

There went another weekend…we lost an hour of this one so it went even faster than usual. Friday night was Pie Night, and it was mmmmmmmmm pie-awesome. We had fewer people than the last couple of years, mostly due to a few last minute drop-outs, and unfortunately they were all supposed to bring savory pies, so we were a little short on the dinner side of things…so much so that I very nearly ordered a couple of pizzas (hey! it counts!). However, it all worked out. We had 5 pies for dinner to choose from: Anders made a delicious chicken...

22
Mar
2014

SPACE CADET

This past week was pretty intense. Anders left last Sunday for a business trip to Italy all week and one of my team members went on vacation, which meant that there were 2.25 of us handling all the Marcom requests that come in from the entire company (plus 2 people dealing with video and illustrations, but I’m talking about EVERYTHING ELSE), and the .25 is an untrained temp who is filling in for the US graphic designer who quit last month. But my other teammate wasn’t able to pull her usual weight as she was trying to finish a huge...