Tagged: obiterphotos

20
Dec
2010

LET NOTHING YOU DISMAY

I bought Christmas presents for my in-laws today: theater tickets to see Madame Butterfly at the Malmö Opera in January. All I have left to get are a couple of small stocking stuffers and I’ll do that tomorrow or Wednesday. Everything else is done, except wrapping. And even half of that is done already! Cookies have been baked (4 kinds: Rice Krispie Holly Bars, Reindeer poop, Holiday balls and tonight, frosted sugar cookies) and all the cards were mailed last week. We haven’t received several envelopes/packages that are supposedly en route, so I sure hope they get here in time!...

26
Nov
2010

‘TIS NEARLY THE SEASON

It’s been snowing for several days. We’ve had the big fat flakes, the tiny polka-dotted blizzard conditions, full-on rain mixed with snow, which is the literal description the Swedes use for sleet. I wasn’t exactly excited by the first snowfall this year because I had to drive in it, twice. People get stupid in cars the first time the snow falls. They slow WAY down, they brake too hard, and some of them still have their summer tires on. I’m coming around slowly to enjoyment…it just seems too early for snow! Karin has been out sledding on the hill at...

23
Nov
2010

PERFECT PISA

I was in Pisa in the early 80s, as part of a choir concert tour. We were a busload of high school juniors and seniors, traveling around Italy for a week, sleeping on the floors of gymnasiums and churches and singing at various military bases. I have lots of fun memories of that trip, augmented by a travel diary and photos but after this week in Italy I realized that most of my memories had frayed and tattered around the edges. Things I thought I remembered had softened, blurred, sometimes been completely skewed by the passing years. We only stopped...

21
Nov
2010

SUNNY CINQUE TERRE

After 3 days of drizzle, downpours and cloud cover, the sun finally broke through and lit up Italy for us. We took the train from Rapallo about an hour south to Cinque Terre. After consulting the guidebook, we decided to skip the northernmost village of the 5 coastal towns that make up Cinque Terre and started at Vernazza, which was touted as the “most quaint”. Our plan was to walk around town, eat lunch and when we were ready to move on, hike the mountain footpath to the next village south. But after alighting from the train and stepping into...

12
Nov
2010

FAIR & FASCINATING FLORENCE

One thing that mesmerized me in Italy was the feat of engineering that is the autostrada (motorway) through the northern Apennines down to Liguria along the west coast of the country. Italy was the first country in the world to begin building motorways. The ones that we used to get from Milan to Genoa to Rapallo and the ones to Florence and Pisa have lovely names: The Motorway of the Flowers and the Blue Motorway. To distract myself from the rather narrow lane widths and the high-speed (130km/h limit for cars) race-car driving style of our fellow motorists I concentrated...

09
Nov
2010

RAINY RAPALLO

Apparently the time to skip Italy, if you want to avoid the tourist jam is July, August & September. What luck for us, then, that we chose to go the first week of November. The weather could have cooperated just a teensy bit more, but we had some sunshine at the end, so we were happy, and after all, rain in Italy on vacation is better than rain at home, right? The place we stayed was an apartment building up the hill in the west coast town of Rapallo. It belongs to the parents of my colleague, Sara, another love...

26
Sep
2010

AUTUMN BOUNTY

This has been a lovely, busy weekend. Karin had a soccer tournament in Halmstad all day Saturday. They played 7 games (short games of 16 minutes in several cases) and came in 3rd. She spent the night with one of her teammates, though I doubt either of them got much sleep 🙂 Martin and I were supposed to go to the Gothenburg Book Fair as part of an AWC event but the other 3 members who had said they might go backed out, so instead he and I ended up going into Malmö. We hit two bookstores, and found several...

05
Sep
2010

GOLDEN DAYS

It’s been a busy, yet strangely relaxing weekend, and one that has gone by far too fast. Anders arrived home just in time for dinner on Friday evening, and after he had been thoroughly greeted and handed out presents and started unpacking he came into the kitchen where I was finishing up dinner preparations, took a look at the meal in progress and said, “I’ve been in China for 3 weeks and you’re making rice??” HAHAHAA!! Oops! Karin had come home with a tale of woe about her day being ruined because they had had korv stroganoff for lunch at...

24
Aug
2010

IN WHICH BAD THINGS ARE MADE UP FOR BY GOOD THINGS

This has been kind of a stressful week…it’s week 2 of 3 of Anders being gone. So far, I’ve had to deal with my son’s Xtreme After-Party Vomit Splatterpalooza in the middle of the night on Saturday (too much cake & excitement, apparently, as I know he wasn’t sneaking the Slushie Margaritas) and my daughter’s spillage of Compound W ALL OVER THE MIDDLE of the living room chair. AAGH. On the plus side I’m inordinately proud of myself: first because I didn’t throw up as well during the horrendous clean-up aftermath and second because I didn’t strangle Karin, especially since...

17
Aug
2010

IT IS NOT ONLY FINE FEATHERS THAT MAKE FINE BIRDS*

I’ve always been a collector, especially of small things. I’ve had shadowboxes to corral them in since I was a girl. Other than being wee, there wasn’t always a unifying theme to the things I collected, though small animal figurines keep showing up in every grouping. Some of them were outgrown as I got tired of them or lost interest: the dogs I adored as a child, the cow-themed things I had for awhile after college, the thankfully short pink flamingo phase. The only real collection in my house that is worthy of the name is in the moose bathroom,...