Tagged: tralalala!

19
Feb
2024

MUSIC IS LIFE ITSELF*

It’s music drought time right now on Spotify’s Discover Weekly. I don’t know what time of year most artists release new music, but everything being suggested to me is at least 10 years old, if not 30 or more. If I wanted to listen to Diana Ross or Linda Ronstadt, Spotify, don’t you think they’d already be on my playlist? I guess all the new music hit before Christmas. So, it’s a perfect time of year for Melodifestivalen. If you’ve never heard of it, you haven’t lived in Sweden. It’s a series of competitions during February and into March, where...

17
Dec
2022

READY SET GO

Today is my first day of a 2-week vacation, if you count weekends as part of vacation. I’m off work until January 2, a whole new year. So it’s the start of something, and the end of something: another year. I’ve been counting down the days at work until vacation started and this last couple of weeks nearly did me in. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to hitting the wall before. Add medical issues on top of work stress, and other things, and it’s been a LOT, this year. So, I’m not sad to see the end...

13
Aug
2022

ANOTHER ONE AROUND THE SUN

It was my birthday on Wednesday. Not a big one, unless you count that fact 58 is a pretty big number. But I mean it didn’t end in a zero or a five. Two more years until the next “big one”. Which I’m kind of not looking forward to, to be honest. Anyway, it was a nice birthday, despite the fact that I worked all day. Anders was away but came home that afternoon, Karin came home for dinner, so all 4 of us were together all evening. I picked up Thai food from our favorite takeaway place in Lund,...

23
May
2021

YOU HAD TO BE THERE

We watched the entire Eurovision 2021 final last night and in the last half of it, during the voting, the four of us were texting madly in a group chat. Martin, in Detroit, wasn’t able to watch it as he, my mom, and my sister, were in the midst of taking boxes and furniture to my mom’s storage unit an hour away. So he was very engaged in us keeping him up-to-date in real-time on how the voting was going. Karin was watching it at a friend’s place. The following conversation took place AFTER the final results were announced (much...

22
May
2021

SHOTS, SHOOTS & SONGS

Yesterday, Anders saw on the news that hospitalizations of patients with COVID, who have received their first vaccination shot (here in Sweden, at least), were on the rise. Maybe no one told them that 1) it takes 3 weeks for the first shot to reach full effectiveness and 2) it takes TWO SHOTS (for most of us) and a couple more weeks after that to be fully covered. I get that people are increasingly willing to take risks because they are so tired of the restrictions of the past year and a half, but HOLD OUT. Anders got his first...

03
Mar
2021

EASY LISTENING

It’s kinda nice, since we can’t go out to restaurants (or don’t anyway, which amounts to the same thing), to feel like I’m getting several gourmet meals a week, since we’re getting 3 HelloFresh dinners every Saturday and I live with a gourmet chef. Or at least a husband who likes to try new things and loves to cook. Win-win for everything but my waistline. Tonight, he made mushroom risotto with fresh al dente green beans…it was super yummy! Creamy and crunchy in just the right combination. So far, there have only been two recipes that we thought were sort...

03
Dec
2020

I WAS DREAMIN’ WHEN I WROTE THIS

I follow my college roommate’s daughter Erin on Instagram; in fact, she has two accounts and I follow them both (along with her mother’s, of course). One of them is her professional account (she’s a content developer) and the other is personal. She’s older than both my kids, and we’ve seen her and her brother along with her parents (who met in college; he was also a friend back then, and still is, though he’s not on social media) every time we’ve been home in Michigan for the last 23 years, so even though it wasn’t often, I still have...

16
Oct
2019

MY POWER’S TURNED ON

Caught in the work squeeze again and it’s getting me down. Even the free Fridays are only sorta kinda helping. Urgh. We’ve made a ton of progress on the bedroom renovation and are moving back in officially tonight, though it’s not 100% finished. Anders took last Thursday and Friday off and spent both days painting. On Saturday we went shopping and picked out a ceiling fan that works better with the decor than the previous one did (which is being moved to the living room). I spent a great deal of time putting dresser drawers together and we finished assembling...

06
Aug
2019

TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF AND MAKE A CHANGE

I seem to be on a Tuesday posting streak. I just looked at my calendar and saw that, with this post, I will have posted for 5 Tuesdays in a row. But the streak stops here, because I won’t be home next Tuesday, and I probably won’t be thinking about posting, because as of 4 pm this afternoon, I’m FINALLY on vacation! Only for 1.5 weeks, but whatever, I’ll take it. I didn’t mind working all summer, and I got a lot done, especially on projects I had no time to prioritize during the first half of this year, but...

28
Jan
2018

I NEED ANOTHER WEEKEND

I didn’t even go outside today, not even to take trash out, and I don’t regret it one bit. This month has been hell on wheels work-wise, and yesterday was busy and long, so I took today as a much-needed down day: sleeping in late, reading, lazing about, watching a movie, doing a few small things about the house, and bird-watching from the couch. I even took a late nap, and now I just have Bron to look forward to in about an hour, and then it’s back to bed for me. Hopefully that will go some way toward recharging...