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Frostheim Jul
Dec. 16th, 2017 11:23 pmToday was Frostheim's annual Jul event, a nice, low-key potluck dinner at the same Gillestuga where we do folk dance each week. I had baked an apple pie yesterday for it, and since it is easier to do a big batch of pie crust at once, I also filed a large pie plate ready to fill with broccoli, eggs, and cheese today, and then set three more dough filled pie plates into the freezer for later use. I was up way too late last night, so I had a lazy morning.
The only thing productive I did in the morning was to set up the new humidifier, now that the cartridge for it had soaked for 24 hours. When I turned it on it told me that the humidity level in the house was 24. Now, 11 hours later, it says 34. I am hoping that the crack that runs across the front of the dulcimer will close back up again. It is usually hard to see in the summer, and quite gaping in the winter. Right now it is still more than 1 mm wide, but then the humidifier which is already running is in the living room. They shipped the other one separately, and it didn't' arrive till a day later, so its cartridge is soaking now, and we can turn it on in the office (where the dulcimer is living these days) tomorrow.
Around 13:30 I decided that perhaps I should head out and shovel a little snow (not that we had much new, but if one keeps on top of it, it is easier), so I put on my coat and boots and opened the door, to David, who was just arriving. So instead of shoveling snow I just took down the compost, picked up the mail, and chatted briefly with the neighbour* who was out lighting candles at the base of his drive, presumably to mark the house for a party later. Then I went back in and helped David make the broccoli pie and gathered up the few things I wanted to take with me for the event before changing into my jester costume.
David and I pulled into the site at exactly 16:00, when the site was supposed to open, to discover that the Archers were already there, and that some other group had been in the hall setting up for their party there tomorrow. So we took down their decorations and cleared away the stuff they had on the tables, and we called the woman in charge of bookings and she said that she would contact the other group and let them know that we had cleaned their stuff out of the way for our party.
With so many of us to do the work it took only a few minutes to change from a balloons everywhere (I think they are celebrating a baptism tomorrow, or perhaps a wedding--the site is a very short walk from the old stone church) to medieval banners, and those of us who were there already were sitting down to eat by 16:47. More people arrived later, and there was pretty much always someone eating. The other Phire members didn't start to arrive till around 18:00, and, of course, they needed to eat before the show. I did my yoga as a warm-up starting just after 19:00, and by the time I was done they had the outside set up and ready for the fire show, so first Ellinor and I did our Acroyoga performance inside, and then everyone went out for the fire show. After the performances and more visiting (and more food for those who wanted it) we did some dancing. People started trickling out kind of early. Once enough had departed the rest of us went into cleaning mode, and were done and ready to leave site by 22:43, at which point I sent the other group an SMS to let them know we were done. They replied hoping that it wasn't too much of a problem for us that they had set up before we got there, and I assured them that it was fine, but we felt bad for them that they had to do their work over again, and at 23:45 they replied that it wasn't a problem, it went faster the second time, and they were already done.
Tomorrow we will head out to visit David's parents, and then there is one more week of work before the Christmas holiday. My friend Linda will arrive on the 26th, and Stephanie and her family on the 29th. I am looking forward to seeing them all. Come January life will get really busy as I start the new PhD program for real.
* The neighbour tells me that it is quite different working at Uppsala instead of LTU--they have much more bureaucracy (no real surprise, the Uni in Uppsala was founded in 1477, so it has had plenty of time to build up a serious bureaucracy, while LTU wasn't founded till 1971, and didn't become a full University till 1997, so it has some work to do to catch up with the paperwork levels). I still find it funny that he spent 15 years living in Uppsala and commuting to LTU, and then finally bought a house up here, and a couple of years later got hired away to work in Uppsala and commute from here. When David and I first bought our house he was still living in Uppsala, and when I told him that I liked having a place that feels kind of like living in the country, yet is only 4 km from the office, he said "that's too close!" and told me how long he had been commuting from Uppsala. A couple of years later the big house on our street came up for sale, and he bought it, making him a couple hundred meters closer to campus than I.
The only thing productive I did in the morning was to set up the new humidifier, now that the cartridge for it had soaked for 24 hours. When I turned it on it told me that the humidity level in the house was 24. Now, 11 hours later, it says 34. I am hoping that the crack that runs across the front of the dulcimer will close back up again. It is usually hard to see in the summer, and quite gaping in the winter. Right now it is still more than 1 mm wide, but then the humidifier which is already running is in the living room. They shipped the other one separately, and it didn't' arrive till a day later, so its cartridge is soaking now, and we can turn it on in the office (where the dulcimer is living these days) tomorrow.
Around 13:30 I decided that perhaps I should head out and shovel a little snow (not that we had much new, but if one keeps on top of it, it is easier), so I put on my coat and boots and opened the door, to David, who was just arriving. So instead of shoveling snow I just took down the compost, picked up the mail, and chatted briefly with the neighbour* who was out lighting candles at the base of his drive, presumably to mark the house for a party later. Then I went back in and helped David make the broccoli pie and gathered up the few things I wanted to take with me for the event before changing into my jester costume.
David and I pulled into the site at exactly 16:00, when the site was supposed to open, to discover that the Archers were already there, and that some other group had been in the hall setting up for their party there tomorrow. So we took down their decorations and cleared away the stuff they had on the tables, and we called the woman in charge of bookings and she said that she would contact the other group and let them know that we had cleaned their stuff out of the way for our party.
With so many of us to do the work it took only a few minutes to change from a balloons everywhere (I think they are celebrating a baptism tomorrow, or perhaps a wedding--the site is a very short walk from the old stone church) to medieval banners, and those of us who were there already were sitting down to eat by 16:47. More people arrived later, and there was pretty much always someone eating. The other Phire members didn't start to arrive till around 18:00, and, of course, they needed to eat before the show. I did my yoga as a warm-up starting just after 19:00, and by the time I was done they had the outside set up and ready for the fire show, so first Ellinor and I did our Acroyoga performance inside, and then everyone went out for the fire show. After the performances and more visiting (and more food for those who wanted it) we did some dancing. People started trickling out kind of early. Once enough had departed the rest of us went into cleaning mode, and were done and ready to leave site by 22:43, at which point I sent the other group an SMS to let them know we were done. They replied hoping that it wasn't too much of a problem for us that they had set up before we got there, and I assured them that it was fine, but we felt bad for them that they had to do their work over again, and at 23:45 they replied that it wasn't a problem, it went faster the second time, and they were already done.
Tomorrow we will head out to visit David's parents, and then there is one more week of work before the Christmas holiday. My friend Linda will arrive on the 26th, and Stephanie and her family on the 29th. I am looking forward to seeing them all. Come January life will get really busy as I start the new PhD program for real.
* The neighbour tells me that it is quite different working at Uppsala instead of LTU--they have much more bureaucracy (no real surprise, the Uni in Uppsala was founded in 1477, so it has had plenty of time to build up a serious bureaucracy, while LTU wasn't founded till 1971, and didn't become a full University till 1997, so it has some work to do to catch up with the paperwork levels). I still find it funny that he spent 15 years living in Uppsala and commuting to LTU, and then finally bought a house up here, and a couple of years later got hired away to work in Uppsala and commute from here. When David and I first bought our house he was still living in Uppsala, and when I told him that I liked having a place that feels kind of like living in the country, yet is only 4 km from the office, he said "that's too close!" and told me how long he had been commuting from Uppsala. A couple of years later the big house on our street came up for sale, and he bought it, making him a couple hundred meters closer to campus than I.