Author: lizardek

21
Jan
2016

SEASONAL BLING

Oh hi there! Here I am with nothing to say. Okay, I have something to say…let’s see if I can dig it out of the inner recesses of my brain. It’s beautiful here today, but OMG so cold. It was -9C when I left for work this morning and despite the fact that sun was shining and the entire sky was this pale, translucent pinky lavender blue all day long it was FREEZING. With a capital BRRRR. The fog was laying low over the fields all last night which meant that this morning everything was covered in inches-long hoarfrost. And...

17
Jan
2016

BUSY BEE BEATS SUPER SLUG

Aren’t you glad for weekends? I am. It’s so necessary to have a couple of days of downtime, where I can do what I need to do, whether that is relaxing and being a total slug or getting all kinds of things done and being a busy bee or some sort of mixture of the two. That is often the case, actually. Today was beautiful, sunny and blue, but very cold. I was productive all weekend; the last load of laundry is in the dryer, the house is clean, the advent lights are down and put away, the plants are...

14
Jan
2016

THE STARS LOOK VERY DIFFERENT TODAY

I was sad at the beginning of the week and I’m even sadder now, after hearing about first David Bowie, and then today, Alan Rickman passing. Both at 69, far too young, and both from cancer. Fuck cancer. It seems everyone loved them, these two very different men. They touched many lives in many ways, for many, many years. A friend of mine from college introduced me to Bowie’s music, along with plenty of other great artists who I had never listened to up to that point. I fell immediately in love with the passion and color of his lyrics...

10
Jan
2016

THE PERFECT MIX OF FOOD AND FUN

Warning: when you’re working on healthy eating and attending WeightWatchers, maybe working on a recipe book of your family favorites is not the best idea. Holy smokes, I’m ravenous now. I’ve been formatting and cutting and pasting recipes all day into the template I’m using for our family recipe book. What a fun and drooly way to spend my very last day of holiday vacation! I was actually a bit worried before I started that I wouldn’t be able to find enough recipes to make a substantial book. Ha. HAHAHA! Turns out, we have a LOT of family favorites. Years...

07
Jan
2016

THE GOOD COUNTRY

I had made a comment to Anders some time ago, that my VW Jetta seems to want to go around 140 k/h, and he agreed…his VW feels the same. He said it was because that is approximately the speed you drive on the autobahn and the cars seem to be engineered to that comfort zone. 🙂 During our road trip through Germany, I got to drive a couple of times on the autobahn, and I’ll tell you what: I loved it. Drivers in Germany drive like you’re SUPPOSED TO DRIVE. They go fast, they stay to the right except when...

04
Jan
2016

WHAT TO DO WITH A WEEK

What should one do with an extra week off at the tail-end of the holidays? Write a mile-long to-do list, of course. If you’re me, which I’m guessing you are glad you are not, after hearing that. To be clear, my to-do list has things like “Watch Downton Abbey’s Christmas episode” on it, as well as “iron clothes” so it’s both things I want to do and things I need to do. I’ve already crossed off 7 things and started two others. We denuded the trees of decorations yesterday and Anders chopped all the limbs off. Both trees were dry...

03
Jan
2016

A WEEK AWAY

I finally finished reading The Goldfinch today…I’m probably the last person on the planet. It was REALLY good, and hard to put down, while I was supposed to be hanging out with family I never see. I thought about it all the time I wasn’t reading it; definite sign of a good book! It’s our book group book for January but we’re not meeting until the 21st, so I should probably write down some of my thoughts about it, since my memory is sieve-like these days. We got home last night after another grueling day of driving. We left rather...

25
Dec
2015

RETROSPECTIVE

hristmas Day is here and I have a pocket of time in between all the items on the to-do list, so I thought I would sit down and fire off my yearly retrospective. I know it’s a little early, but we are leaving super early tomorrow morning and I won’t be back until after the new year, and I don’t want to post my retrospective for 2015 in 2016! We’ve had a lovely Christmas, with much time spent with Anders’ family, celebrating his mom’s birthday (and her return home), Christmas Eve with her yesterday and the whole family tonight for...

23
Dec
2015

EK FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER

How in the world has it come to this? Writing a Christmas letter for 2015 when I swear I JUST WROTE THE LAST ONE?? Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess! 2015 has been full and busy. Anders had lots of traveling for work, though Liz didn’t have any, for the first time since 2007. 🙁 He went on a ski trip back in January with work colleagues, to the Czech Republic and then again with Karin in February for a week in France. For work, he went to China twice, Thailand, Italy twice, and Germany, most often for...

22
Dec
2015

FINAL COUNTDOWN

Done! Done and dusted! I went shopping after work, for TWO hours at the biggest shopping center in Scandinavia. It was bad but it actually wasn’t as bad as I was dreading, so that was good. And I found a store that sells American candy and junk food like Cheetos and Pop-Tarts that I didn’t know existed. I walked around it drooling. I may have restrained myself. I may not have. I’ll never tell. I was only shopping to get the last stocking stuffers I needed to make sure everyone’s stockings are thoroughly stuffed, and I succeeded so now the...

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