home again

The rest of my long weekend visit to France slipped by fairly quickly. We made it back to the climbing on Sunday, so that was two days in a row of climbing. not surprisingly, my arms got more tired faster, but it still went well and was ever so much fun. Want a climbing wall of my own!

Monday linda_linsefors had to work, so I walked her half way to the office in the morning--her route is along the bike path along the river in Grenoble, so there are lovely views of the mountains that surround the city. Then I settled down to my computer and did work well into the evening (when she got home from work I was in the middle of a task, so she happily pulled out her work and settled in with her calculations (she is a theoretical physicist) until I reached a breaking point. Then we went for a walk to the train station to see if we could buy bus tickets for my morning trip back to the airport. It turns out not to be possible at that hour (it was 8 pm when we started walking, and it is about 20 min to get there), but it was nice to get out and stretch our legs. After our walk I packed my bag (easy to do when one is flying carry-on only), did yoga, and we went to sleep before 23:00, which gave a bit of a nap before it was time to get back up again. I started my morning situps at 02:30, and we were out the door to go back to the bus station by 03:00. The bus I needed wasn't till 04:00, but we wanted to be certain I didn't miss it, since the next bus wouldn't be till 05:00, and that would be pushing it to make the flight on time.

We were rather surprised that a bus pulled into the station (and into the parking spot for the 04:00 airport bus) at only 03:25 (just after we got there) and passengers appeared from no where to start boarding it. That bus didn't have a sign saying it was going to the airport, but the people had luggage. So we tried asking, and one of the passengers had enough English to explain "Private", and we waited. Sure enough, that one went on its way at 03:40, and the airport bus arrived at 04:50. It turns out that I was able to buy my ticket on the bus (good thing, since the station wasn't open), and I started on my way. She went home for a nap before work, and I managed to nap on my flights.

I got a short nap between Lyon and Frankfurt, then a really good nap between Frankfurt and Stockholm, since I had three seats in a row to myself, and could lay down and sleep, and then another decent nap on the flight to Luleå, where again I got three seats and could lay down. It was a long day though--I didn't land here till more than 12 hours after leaving her apartment. (ok, so that is nothing compared to some of the traveling some of you have been doing lately, but keen in mind, I didn't leave the EU--heck, I didn't even bring my passport, and didn't need to show ID for any of my flights).

I had just enough time after arriving home to cook up some soup and enjoy dinner before we went to choir, bringing our house guest, K, with us. She sings in a choir in Umeå, and she liked some of the holiday songs we are working on and plans to steal them for her choir. It was fun to see the interesting expression on her face when she realized that one of our songs is in the Sami language and she had no idea how to pronounce some of those weird letters. From when I sit that song isn't any harder than the Swedish ones. But then again, Sami kinda sorta sounds a bit like Finnish, and while I don't speak Finnish I heard a lot of it when I was little, since mom's family comes from Finland.

It is lovely to be home again, and truly wonderful to have hot water whenever I want it. The apartment linda_linsefors lives in has one of those hot water heaters that doesn't heat the water until you are about to use it, and it has something wrong with it such that if you leave it on when not using hot water the pressure builds up to dangerous levels, and if left like that will most certainly break it worse than it already is, if it doesn't actually explode from the pressure. So they have been leaving it off most of the time, and only turning it on when they want to take a shower or feel for doing the dishes. Turning it on involves a pair of pliers and far more twisting of that knob than one would reasonably expect, while bent over at an awkward angle to reach. It is wonderful to be able to get hot water from my sink any time I want!

My only complaint about being home is that while I was gone whomever was supposed to watch the weather and keep it nice and cold must have gotten distracted, because it warmed up to enough above freezing that all of the snow on the roads and walking paths melted and now it has re-frozen again, so the paths and roads are all very slippery thick ice. This was not pleasant getting out of the neighbourhood for my morning walk to Uni. Luckily, as soon as I crossed the main road and got onto the path that will be turned into a bike path next year, the going was good again--it is clear that I am the only person so far this winter to go that way--my old foot prints are still visible in the snow, which is not as thick as it was when I left and now has a crusty top layer, but no other humans have gone that way.

I hope that we soon get a thin layer of slightly wet snow that bonds with the ice to provide traction, followed by colder temps and plenty of thick, fluffy snow to make the world pretty again. However, today was clear and cloudless, so that wish isn't likely to be soon coming.