Category: general

Since I rarely have the luxury to sleep until I wake up naturally these days, it’s rare that I remember any of my dreams more than fleetingly. But I had another “house” dream last night, this one quite pleasant. I’ve been having house dreams since I can remember, although the house is never the same, and sometimes isn’t really a house. The first one I remember clearly and the only one I’ve ever repeated involved a long low golden stucco type house with endless rooms full to varying degrees of fallen leaves. I wasn’t alone, but don’t remember how many...

Since I had almost nothing to do today at work, I spent the majority of the day surfing around LiveJournal, and then looking for beautiful things that I could possibly use in creating some sort of physical 🙂 journal or altered book type-thing. I have so much STUFF lying around, stuffed into drawers, hidden in notebooks and portfolios and boxes, some of it ought to be able to be put to good use. I looked at a bunch of scrapbooking and art supply sites too and discovered that 1) there are a LOT of things out there, 2) I’m coveting...

I’ve GOT to do something about my working environment in the office. When I first started at Ericsson, I noticed fairly quickly that I was developing strained muscles in my shoulders due to the fact that I was working on a right-handed desk and I’m left-handed. But I use the mouse with my right hand so whenever I had to write while working on the computer (which is frequent) I was pulling to the left and creating quite a strain. I also tend to sit with my left leg curled under me, which throws me to the left even more....

Some people may not believe this, but one of the few things that I really dislike about our new house is the dishwasher. Not just because it doesn’t do a good job (or as good a job as I would do), or because something is wrong with it and it has to be re-started several times during the wash cycle, but because IT’S THERE. It’s taken away one of my guilty pleasures: washing dishes. Oh, I admit it’s nice to have it the morning after a big dinner party, but otherwise, on a daily business, I miss my suds. There’s...

I’ve spent the morning looking up altered books on the web, and I must say I don’t know whether to be intrigued or appalled. I guess I have a deeply ingrained feeling that books should not be harmed or destroyed or “hurt” and some of the things I’ve seen are perilously close to all three. On one hand, I can see the attraction in taking an old, unloved, unread book that is headed to the dump and using it as an artistic background, but a great deal of the altered book examples I saw used famous, worthy, classic books. One...

Not so much going on in the office today, despite my boss being back from vacation. One can only surf the web so much, I’ve found. But I have some things to look up and find more about: ephemera sheets, altered books and scrapbooking fabric bit names. We live “out in the country” and are surrounded by farmland, and all the fields right now are full of either amber waves of grain or haybales. What is it that is so comforting about the sight of a golden field dotted with huge perfectly rolled balls of hay shining in the late...

Tired, a little grumpy, hot, mostly. It’s been a long day and too much of it was spent sitting in the car (forgot the damn cake and had to go back for it, long traffic jams to/from beach) and in the sun at the beach which is always exhausting, for some reason. 2 friends left messages to say happy birthday, otherwise haven’t heard from anyone. 🙁 Don’t know why that bothers me a bit, since I don’t consider this a fun birthday, but it does. Stuffed ourselves silly on chinese food at the in-laws, which was really good. I always...

Ugh, another year older. The numbers on these birthdays are nothing to celebrate, says me. That said, Anders did a lovely job of coming through on the sparkly side. I got woken up this a.m. by two way too bouncy children, and was given a gorgeous fuchsia-pink potted begonia (from Martin & Karin) and, from Anders, a beautiful bracelet from Viking Kristall made of peridot beads with a larger oval pearl in the very center. 🙂 Happy Happy! Yet another bee-oo-ti-ful day and we’re headed to the beach, even though the beach is not my #1 choice for birthday destinations....

Been musing about house-color trends and meanings lately. Our neighborhood is brand new, and the 40 houses in it are all nearing a sort of completion on the outside as their owners frantically use the remaining Swedish summer to paint, pave and landscape. What has been particularly striking, to my American eye, has been the choices of colors used for the exterior of the homes. In the States, it seems that the overwhelming trend, starting maybe some 10 or more years ago, was that houses would look more stately and elegant if they were done in natural earth tones. So...

Got the sun in my eyes…! Can’t beat The Carpenter’s for making me feel like a relic of the 70’s. It’s another blueskycloudless scorcher of a day here in Flyinge. We have nearly nothing on the agenda except, since tomorrow I inch closer to 40 by a year, the following: Anders: buy Liz presents Liz: bake a cake and frost it Anders: buy Liz more presents, preferably sparkly ones I have other miscellaneous housecleaning things to do, and Martin’s room still needs to be organized but no stress about any of it. I’m trying to figure out why I really...