Anna of little.red.boat collects animal noises in other languages and has a friend who collects the phrase, “I want to buy some Velcro,” for what to me are unfathomable reasons. Since one of my sophomore year college roommates, Nancy Paz* taught me how to say give me a kiss in Polish, I’ve collected the phrase in as many languages as possible. You never know when it might come in handy. I have them written down on a little slip of paper in a treasure box, a list that includes Arabic, Finnish, and Greek. Off the top of my head, without...

It wasn’t roses…it was an orchid. I like orchids a lot but I can usually only keep them alive for a few months, which makes me sad. This is a really cool orchid, too, I’ve never seen one like it. It has a purple, triangular pocket and a fangy fringe of points hanging down to cover it. My picture of it isn’t nearly as spectacular as the orchid prints that redpirk posted today, though! 🙂

We were just told that salary discussions which normally take place in April, with raise payouts starting in June, will be done in September this year, with payouts starting in October. Describing my mood at work immediately after as not happy would be rather an understatement. Good thing my darling husband will be cheering me up with flowers and dinner out for our 8-year wedding anniversary tonight.

I got the dying camera to squeeze out once last gasp, shuddering and choking all the way…just so I could take pictures of the rock and post it here for posterity.

Red poppies and cheerful oxeye daisies have sprung up everywhere, they’re waving in the breeze. The rapeseed blossoms are failing, but their smell still overwhelms. The uniform green of summer has swelled across the land. Lilacs are everywhere, white, lavender, and deep purple, they smell so good. Summer weather is here this weekend, it’s warm and sunny, with cloudless skies. Yesterday I power-walked with Karin. I told her before we left that she had to keep up with me, but as you might have guessed, by the end it was I who was keeping up with her. She chose the...

I’ve never been particularly brainy when it comes to numbers. The best thing about arithmetic for me as a child, was that to remember how to spell it, you said “A rat in the house may eat the ice cream.” This illustrates perfectly how my brain works. As far as I know there was nothing unusual about my mathematical abilities up until 5th grade, at which point I ended up with a severe mental block due to story problems and my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, who gave me much abuse about being out of school for 3 months with...

So far, this has been a wonderful day!! Got up early, drove down to Klagshamn and met the rest of the girls who were driving instead of taking the train over to Denmark to the new gigantic shopping center. We got there just after 10 a.m. and it was, as promised, GIGANTIC. A real American-style mall! We split up fairly quickly as there were 6 of us with varying missions and I actually power-walked around the mall floors for an hour by myself before I started shopping for real. My missions were soccer shorts for Karin, a baby gift for...

We had a nice discussion about fairytales at book group last night even though some people seem to be awfully vague on the definition of fairytale and kept referring to current children’s literature as “well, it’s a fairytale to ME” as if that made it okay. Apparently, not everyone continues to read fairytales and folktales as adults, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? *boggle* Although, I did a little mental inventory of the people in the room and the ones who don’t read any “children’s” literature at all? Not the ones I hang out with or want to hang out with. Hmmm…...

What the interview was? A slap with a big ol’ cluestick. Which I apparently needed. Oh, not in the way you may be thinking, after my flippant remark about “godlike confidence” but the fact that it made me walk around for hours afterwards re-evaluating the appreciation I have for my CURRENT job. Despite all the crud I’ve been upset about regarding the open landscaping particularly and other things generally, I think beating this job in any of several dimensions would be difficult. I actually think the interview went quite well, and it was obvious they were impressed with my work...