Tagged: wonderfulworld

10
Jul
2026

SUMMER SERENITY

I don’t really mind working the summer months, though it’s not fun watching almost all of my colleagues take off for 3 or 4 weeks of vacation at the same time. Because I took 2 weeks early, the rest of my summer vacation doesn’t start until the beginning of August, though honestly, I’m considering changing to taking all the Fridays during the fall off again. Even if I take the 2 weeks in August, I can still probably take off most of the Fridays in the fall as I will still have 2 weeks, plus another week of rollovers that...

30
Jun
2026

GOING GOING GROW!

Our garden is going gangbusters this time of year, and some things are doing better than we’ve ever had it. The potatoes (3 rows of 3 different kinds) are nearly as tall as I am, and they are all blooming right now, which means potatoes soon. They weren’t ready for midsummer since we were so late planting them. The new snap pea seeds that Anders planted after about half of the first planting didn’t show, are all sprouting out of the ground now. The feathery tops of the carrots are a foot high, and the onions (white and red) have...

17
Jun
2026

CRUISING TO THE NETHERLANDS

We left Arromanches in the morning of June 6 (the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings) and headed north. Our plan was to swing over to Étretat on the coast. I had read about a place with lovely gardens on the cliffside above the town. However, due to the tiny country roads that led up the coast, it was nearly a 2.5 hour side trip that we couldn’t really afford as we needed to be in Bladel, The Netherlands latest by 9 pm. When we got to Étretat, it was sunny and beautiful, and while parking the car near the...

16
Jun
2026

GOLD BEACH, MULBERRY HARBORS, AND LESSONS IN HISTORY

I was a military brat, and as such, most of what I learned about WW2 in high school was from an American perspective. I knew the name of Omaha Beach, but very little else about the D-Day landings or the military operations of the war. I read a lot of books about the resistance, the holocaust, and the lives of ordinary people living through the war, and as an adult have educated myself much further with movies, books, documentaries, and other sources of historical information. I’ve been to Berlin when it was still behind the wall, and I’ve been to...

15
Jun
2026

NORTH TO NORMANDY

The day we left Saint-Malo and headed north to Mont-Saint-Michel was quite cloudy, but no rain was forecast. We arrived at the parking lot on the mainland just before noon, which was later than I would have liked, but we weren’t in any hurry. We knew there would be a lot of people on the island, but were hoping that because it was off-season that it wouldn’t be TOO crowded. You can either walk across the bridge that leads from the tourist center and the parking lots or take the free shuttle that runs every 12 minutes. It takes about...

14
Jun
2026

ROADTRIPPING TO BRITTANY

Brittany and Normandy, or more specifically, Saint-Malo and Mont-Saint-Michel, have been on my travel wishlist for a very long time. I first heard and fell in love with wartime Saint-Malo in the book All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out, it’s amazing. Mont-Saint-Michel has been on my list even longer. Having had not so great experiences traveling in France when I was young, however, meant that the Normandy coast was always pushed aside in favor of other destinations. I also wasn’t super interested in visiting the D-Day beaches and all...

10
May
2026

ZOOMING FORWARD

I may have to do some rethinking about my new year’s challenge of writing a letter a month. I’ve been struggling to decide who to write to for May. I wrote a short list of people (that haven’t already received a letter), and it made me realize how little contact I have with old friends and relatives these days. Social media just doesn’t cut it. Friendships that I once would have said were solid have become tattered and unraveled over the many years. In some cases, I haven’t seen a friend except once or twice since we moved to Sweden,...

01
May
2026

DOUBLE RABBIT RABBIT RABBITS!

Two days in a row where I’ve had occasion to say “Rabbit rabbit rabbit” …that only happens once a year, if at all. Today is May 1st, a holiday here in Europe (it’s Labor Day) and yesterday was Valborgsmässoafton, or Walpurgis Eve in English, which isn’t a day off, but is cause for a traditional celebration here in Sweden regardless. That makes today a double holiday as it is also the feast day for Saint Walpurgia, who would probably be astonished and gratified to learn that her name is still a part of the calendar and that many parts of...

26
Apr
2026

A BIRD IN THE HAND

I don’t consider myself a birdwatcher, though I very much enjoy feeding the birds that come to our yard through the winter, and watching them. I’m always thrilled when we get one of the woodpeckers, and it’s exciting to see a chaffinch, a new bird that we hadn’t seen before. Normally we get blue tits, chiffchaffs, European robins, blackbirds, and tree sparrows. We get wood pigeons and mourning doves, and the aforementioned woodpeckers (Great Spotted). We get pheasants. And we get the big “blacks” including crows, jackdaws, ravens, rooks, and magpies. I scare the jackdaws and crows away when I...

24
Apr
2026

PUZZLING BEHAVIOR

March and April will apparently be very bare of blog posts, the way things are going. If I don’t give myself a good kick in the butt as it’s already April 24th and the end of the month is LOOMING. I’ve been so busy with work and coming home completely drained every day, with zero motivation or energy (no thanks to jetlag last week either), and not wanting to sit at the computer after a full day of sitting at the computer, because my neck and shoulder are starting to hurt, and by the time I get home I just...

July 2026
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