Tagged: tralalala!

05
Oct
2026

ANOTHER MONDAY

Another Monday. An autumn Monday. I saw a sugarbeet on the side of the road a couple of weeks ago, and now the trees are all turning red from the top down. Well, the ones that turn red, anyway. Most of the trees here turn brown (oaks) or yellow (birch) or something in between, and fall soggily to the ground. Fall is a soggy time in Sweden, even when it’s not actually raining. We had two stunning sunshiney days over the weekend but today was solid, thick, cloud cover. It was really windy when I left work, and quite chilly...

25
May
2025

THE SOUNDTRACK OF (AT LEAST PART OF) MY LIFE

During the 90s, in Chicago, I went to concerts and plays, and dance recitals, and festivals, and musicals ALL THE TIME. I have the ticket stubs to prove it. I went to a lot of sporting events as well, which surprised me as I don’t have any real interest in sports, but I have the ticket stubs from numerous baseball, football, and hockey games as well. I’ve been doing a major clean out in the millions of photo albums I have, most of which sit and gather dust over the years, as no one ever looks at them. I figured...

15
Feb
2025

MY MEMORY HAS JUST BEEN SOLD

Right now I’m listening to Spotify’s Discover Weekly from this past Monday, but I haven’t yet put anything on my playlist. I added several songs earlier today just from listening to the radio which I only ever do when I’m riding in Anders’ car. Otherwise I’m always listening to my own playlist. Music has been on my mind a lot lately because of the record albums. I piled all of our albums on the dining room table and went through them to see if there was anything I really wanted to keep, despite the fact that we don’t have a...

10
Feb
2025

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND

During the process of cleaning and sorting out everything in Anders’ uncle’s house, we filled 4 large paper bags with old record albums. Since vinyl is making a comeback these days, we thought there might be a possibility that there was something of worth in them, even though a quick flip-through showed that it was mostly old dansband and trumpet music. Anders decided it was best to take them to a huge used record store in Malmö that has apparently been around forever, to see if there was anything of worth. We went on a Saturday afternoon, lugging the VERY...

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...

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