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I was sad when it warmed up to +8 C towards the end of November and what little snow we had largely melted, leaving only patches of crusty ice here and there. We still had no fresh snow by Reengarda's Lucia Fest, held this year on Sunday, 8 December. The site opened at 10:00 for crafts day, but we had to swing by Skelleftehamn on the way in, to pick up some things at Keldor's dad's house, to take to him (K's dad) at the hospital, so it was well after 11:00 before we arrived, and pretty much directly after we did Åsa said that she was going to head over to the winter market, and did anyone want to come along. That sounded fun, so I joined her. We drove over to part near the church, and took the bike trail from there to Nordanå, the open-air museum with a variety of historic buildings located near the city museum. The market was so well attended that it was hard to see what was for sale in the booths for the dense crowdes, but we managed to get close enough to see your usual assortment of Christmas market stuff, like knit hats and gloves, candles, Christmas themed goods, and, interspersed, the occasional something interesting, like one of our friends selling handmade glass beads (Viking style) and cute little glass birds and goddess figures (Åsa bought one of the birds), another couple of shire members selling candied almonds (and taking samples into the crowd, offering single almond tastes, and the opportunity to buy more in the booth), and a guy selling knives and kosa, the cute little traditional wooden scoops, both of which have decorated horn handles, and all of which are lovely.
After the market we returned to site and I settled into a sewing project, and I also served the pound cake to celebrate my upcoming birthday (the following Tuesday). Around 16:00 we set up a table and arranged the potluck food contributions nicely on the counter, and had a small feast. A bit later I found myself in a corner talking research with Styrmir, who showed me the paper he has published on how to use Principal component analysis and K-means clustering as tools during exploration for Zn skarn deposits and industrial carbonates, Sala area, Sweden. This has become one of his most cited papers, and many of the people citing it are in very, very different fields than geology (sure, biology, I get that, but linguistics was surprising. At least I think that "k-means variations analysis for translation of English Tafseer Al-Quran text" must count at linguistics). From this we infer that he must have done a better job at explaining how one uses this approach than most, and thus he's getting the citations.
I completely forgot that it was a Sunday, and was absorbed in the conversation, so I was a bit surprised when people started packing up to go. It turns out that it was later than I thought, so it was after 22:00 before we went home. Good thing I had no meetings on Monday, and could work from home, since I would up needing a nap in the middle of the day. On tuesday I did have a meeting, so I took the bus in. The others were running late that day, so Johanna and I were the first to arrive for our regular weekly group meeting, and it came out in conversation that we both had our birthday that day, and agreed it was a wonderful day to be born. Normally after our Tuesday meeting we adjourn to fika and enjoy cardamom rolls and conversation, and I had been looking forward to that as a fine way to celebrate the day itself. Alas, the others had to rush to another meeting, so it didn't happen, and it never even came up in front of the others that two of us had a birthday that day.
Having been inspired by the conversation with Styrmir on Sunday, on Monday I wrote to the guys at Iolite to see if I could get help setting up proper automation for data reduction, so I can re-do all of my data reduction using the exact same settings, so I can then try that principal component analysis on my data. I suggested that I would be happy to then be a co-author for a paper explaining how to do the automation, or, if they prefer, just a chapter in their documentation. They replied that they are interested, as they've been wanting to get that working and more users using that approach for a while, and asked me to send them an example experiment and a description of what I have been doing.
The week slipped by quickly. I worked from the office three days, and made it to the climbing wall all three days, and made some progress on stuff for the archive project, and finished up the initial set up for another couple of data management plans for researchers. Friday evening I did a video call with a friend in the states who had been stressing about needing to do a pre-recorded video job interview, and not knowing how she would answer the questions. So we chatted, and I interviewed her, repeated back to her what I heard her saying, and which parts I thought were good, and encouraged her to try again if I thought she could probably come up with a better example to fit the question. Then I sent her the recording of the video, woke Keldor, who had sensibily been sleeping on the couch, and introduced them briefly before saying goodnight and doing my yoga so we could go to bed and get some sleep.
Saturday I got up early and baked a pear, pecan, cheese and carrot crumble as my potluck contribution, and packed everything that should have been packed the night before, if I hadn't been busy. Then we drove up to Luleå, and went first to the home of my beloved apprentice, Ena, and her partner. She had baked fresh bread, and also offered cheese, tomato, and lunchmeat to go with it, so we had a delightful couple of hours hanging out, drinking tea and eating yummy food and talking with them before we took our leave and headed over to the Gillestuga for Frostheim Jul. It would have been nice to take them with us, but they have always had tendencies towards being hermits, and the pandemic really reinforced that, plus some recent health issues that make it less appealing than it once was to head out. But it was so wonderful to see them, they are such delightful people.
We arrived at the event just on time for the dancing at 16:00, and I happily danced (long dances and a little Swedish folk dance) till 17:00, when it was time to set up the tables for the feast. My beloved folk dance teacher, Eva, and her husband Göran came to the feast, and it was wonderful to catch up with them. As much as I enjoy living in Lövånger, I really also miss living in Luleå and my friends and regular activities there. After the feast we were among the last to leave site after cleaning up, and a small group of us went over to Styrmir and Kakwkylla's house, where we three who had come up from Reengarda were staying. The seven of us sat up talking for a few more hours. I finally got so tired that I had to do my yoga a bit after midnight, but then got to talking again, and didn't get to bed till well after 01:00.
Sunday morning I slept in (and needed it!), got up, did a little training with the Pilates app to get my hips to feel better, and then joined the others for breakfast. Around noon we went over to the archery hall and started setting up for the day's event. They had many holiday themed archery contests planned. The first was to shoot at some Christmas wrapping paper, without hitting any of the santas, but it was ok to hit the angels and children. It has been so long since I have tried archery at all, and I have never really practiced, so I was pleased that I could hit the paper at all, and laughed to see that I failed in my mission to spare Santa--in fact, my arrow gave him a lobotomy. We also shot at balloons, and gift wrapped packs of candy, and at weird holiday themed AI art showing "monsters": dragons, christmas goats (this is a thing in Sweden) octopuses, gryphons, demons, and hamsters all doing battle with guys in armour. The "monsters" all had little red santa hats on. That round the person in charge would announce which sort of monster we should shoot, and everyone fired at once, gaining points for hitting the correct type of monster, but minus points if they hit any of the guys fighting the monsters.
It was a fun afternoon, and some of our friends who couldn't make the feast the night before were able to attend on Sunday, so it was good to see them. Around 16:00 we helped with cleaning the site, and then headed south to Antnäs to pick up a 3D printed dragon that Peter had made so that Keldor can try using the form to make steel dragons in a contrasting colour from the background (two different steel powders with different carbon content). It will be interesting to see how that goes. Then we continued on to Skellefteå, dropped Vyria off at home, went grocery shopping (where we ran into a friend), and then went home.
We had planned to load the car, put things away, and head to bed early. But first we decided to play a game of Qwirkle (I won!), and then he saw a cool photo on FB--a blacksmith in one of the groups he is in had made a "Christmas tree" from some unfinished knife blades. This inspired us, and we were suddenly laying out fabric on the floor and covering it with all of the knives, axes and unfinished blades we could find, plus the spear and Bat’leth. The result was so large that it was hard to photograph. First we had to bring the ladder upstairs, and then take the photo from as close to the ceiling as possible, in order to get everything in. Then I took the photo to the computer, cropped out the rest of the floor and added a border and decorations:
While I did the computer work he put away all the toys, and discovered that we'd missed a few knives--when we took knives out of their sheaths, a couple still in their sheaths got mixed in the pile of empties. Oops. They would have been a nice addition to fill out the lower branches. Maybe next year...
But, doing that silly and fun art project meant that we got to bed later than we should have, and I was glad to work from home on Monday. I was even more glad, as we finally got snow! So I got my exercise on Monday shoveling snow, and did a bit more today. I truly love winter! I hope it sticks this time. Can we please have no rain till at least April? Please?
After the market we returned to site and I settled into a sewing project, and I also served the pound cake to celebrate my upcoming birthday (the following Tuesday). Around 16:00 we set up a table and arranged the potluck food contributions nicely on the counter, and had a small feast. A bit later I found myself in a corner talking research with Styrmir, who showed me the paper he has published on how to use Principal component analysis and K-means clustering as tools during exploration for Zn skarn deposits and industrial carbonates, Sala area, Sweden. This has become one of his most cited papers, and many of the people citing it are in very, very different fields than geology (sure, biology, I get that, but linguistics was surprising. At least I think that "k-means variations analysis for translation of English Tafseer Al-Quran text" must count at linguistics). From this we infer that he must have done a better job at explaining how one uses this approach than most, and thus he's getting the citations.
I completely forgot that it was a Sunday, and was absorbed in the conversation, so I was a bit surprised when people started packing up to go. It turns out that it was later than I thought, so it was after 22:00 before we went home. Good thing I had no meetings on Monday, and could work from home, since I would up needing a nap in the middle of the day. On tuesday I did have a meeting, so I took the bus in. The others were running late that day, so Johanna and I were the first to arrive for our regular weekly group meeting, and it came out in conversation that we both had our birthday that day, and agreed it was a wonderful day to be born. Normally after our Tuesday meeting we adjourn to fika and enjoy cardamom rolls and conversation, and I had been looking forward to that as a fine way to celebrate the day itself. Alas, the others had to rush to another meeting, so it didn't happen, and it never even came up in front of the others that two of us had a birthday that day.
Having been inspired by the conversation with Styrmir on Sunday, on Monday I wrote to the guys at Iolite to see if I could get help setting up proper automation for data reduction, so I can re-do all of my data reduction using the exact same settings, so I can then try that principal component analysis on my data. I suggested that I would be happy to then be a co-author for a paper explaining how to do the automation, or, if they prefer, just a chapter in their documentation. They replied that they are interested, as they've been wanting to get that working and more users using that approach for a while, and asked me to send them an example experiment and a description of what I have been doing.
The week slipped by quickly. I worked from the office three days, and made it to the climbing wall all three days, and made some progress on stuff for the archive project, and finished up the initial set up for another couple of data management plans for researchers. Friday evening I did a video call with a friend in the states who had been stressing about needing to do a pre-recorded video job interview, and not knowing how she would answer the questions. So we chatted, and I interviewed her, repeated back to her what I heard her saying, and which parts I thought were good, and encouraged her to try again if I thought she could probably come up with a better example to fit the question. Then I sent her the recording of the video, woke Keldor, who had sensibily been sleeping on the couch, and introduced them briefly before saying goodnight and doing my yoga so we could go to bed and get some sleep.
Saturday I got up early and baked a pear, pecan, cheese and carrot crumble as my potluck contribution, and packed everything that should have been packed the night before, if I hadn't been busy. Then we drove up to Luleå, and went first to the home of my beloved apprentice, Ena, and her partner. She had baked fresh bread, and also offered cheese, tomato, and lunchmeat to go with it, so we had a delightful couple of hours hanging out, drinking tea and eating yummy food and talking with them before we took our leave and headed over to the Gillestuga for Frostheim Jul. It would have been nice to take them with us, but they have always had tendencies towards being hermits, and the pandemic really reinforced that, plus some recent health issues that make it less appealing than it once was to head out. But it was so wonderful to see them, they are such delightful people.
We arrived at the event just on time for the dancing at 16:00, and I happily danced (long dances and a little Swedish folk dance) till 17:00, when it was time to set up the tables for the feast. My beloved folk dance teacher, Eva, and her husband Göran came to the feast, and it was wonderful to catch up with them. As much as I enjoy living in Lövånger, I really also miss living in Luleå and my friends and regular activities there. After the feast we were among the last to leave site after cleaning up, and a small group of us went over to Styrmir and Kakwkylla's house, where we three who had come up from Reengarda were staying. The seven of us sat up talking for a few more hours. I finally got so tired that I had to do my yoga a bit after midnight, but then got to talking again, and didn't get to bed till well after 01:00.
Sunday morning I slept in (and needed it!), got up, did a little training with the Pilates app to get my hips to feel better, and then joined the others for breakfast. Around noon we went over to the archery hall and started setting up for the day's event. They had many holiday themed archery contests planned. The first was to shoot at some Christmas wrapping paper, without hitting any of the santas, but it was ok to hit the angels and children. It has been so long since I have tried archery at all, and I have never really practiced, so I was pleased that I could hit the paper at all, and laughed to see that I failed in my mission to spare Santa--in fact, my arrow gave him a lobotomy. We also shot at balloons, and gift wrapped packs of candy, and at weird holiday themed AI art showing "monsters": dragons, christmas goats (this is a thing in Sweden) octopuses, gryphons, demons, and hamsters all doing battle with guys in armour. The "monsters" all had little red santa hats on. That round the person in charge would announce which sort of monster we should shoot, and everyone fired at once, gaining points for hitting the correct type of monster, but minus points if they hit any of the guys fighting the monsters.
It was a fun afternoon, and some of our friends who couldn't make the feast the night before were able to attend on Sunday, so it was good to see them. Around 16:00 we helped with cleaning the site, and then headed south to Antnäs to pick up a 3D printed dragon that Peter had made so that Keldor can try using the form to make steel dragons in a contrasting colour from the background (two different steel powders with different carbon content). It will be interesting to see how that goes. Then we continued on to Skellefteå, dropped Vyria off at home, went grocery shopping (where we ran into a friend), and then went home.
We had planned to load the car, put things away, and head to bed early. But first we decided to play a game of Qwirkle (I won!), and then he saw a cool photo on FB--a blacksmith in one of the groups he is in had made a "Christmas tree" from some unfinished knife blades. This inspired us, and we were suddenly laying out fabric on the floor and covering it with all of the knives, axes and unfinished blades we could find, plus the spear and Bat’leth. The result was so large that it was hard to photograph. First we had to bring the ladder upstairs, and then take the photo from as close to the ceiling as possible, in order to get everything in. Then I took the photo to the computer, cropped out the rest of the floor and added a border and decorations:
While I did the computer work he put away all the toys, and discovered that we'd missed a few knives--when we took knives out of their sheaths, a couple still in their sheaths got mixed in the pile of empties. Oops. They would have been a nice addition to fill out the lower branches. Maybe next year...
But, doing that silly and fun art project meant that we got to bed later than we should have, and I was glad to work from home on Monday. I was even more glad, as we finally got snow! So I got my exercise on Monday shoveling snow, and did a bit more today. I truly love winter! I hope it sticks this time. Can we please have no rain till at least April? Please?