summary of my 2012
Dec. 28th, 2012 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have enjoyed reading year end summaries/holiday letters from some of my friends and family this week, and it has inspired me to try to see if I can summarize my 2012.
In January I started the year by attending the traditional weekend of short courses run by the local folk music and dance group. The class David and I signed up for was folk singing, and we spent the weekend learning a variety of traditional Swedish folk songs. It was much fun. The following week I travelled to Boliden (2.5 hour drive south of here, so I stay in their visitor accommodation there) for work (collecting rock samples to be analysed for my research project), and as soon as I got home, David and I flew to Scotland.
He had a two week long course in Glasgow that he was taking for work, so I decided to bring my computer and come along. We flew in on a Friday, got a rental car, and spent the weekend exploring the highlands and staying in B&Bs. Then we went to Glasgow, where we rented a "self-catering room" for the duration of the course. We paid a fraction of what his colleagues paid for their expensive hotel rooms, and we had a kitchen well enough equipped that we were able to get all of our food from a grocery store and eat things I like. While he was in class in the day I did work for my research, and we were able to enjoy evenings together.
During the next weekend there was an SCA dance event in Edinburgh, so, of course, we took the train over for it, and got to have lots of fun visiting with old friends and new and dancing.
The second week of the course was more work for me and class for him, with the result that he got a perfect score on the final exam. Our final weekend in the country we met up with SCA friends and explored a castle and a museum.
Total for the month: 19 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first week of February was our final week in Scotland, and was summarized above. The second week I stayed home worked, attended classes for the next term of Swedish for Beginners (I had taken the first couple of classes between Jan-May of 2011, but since the Uni assumes that the students who need the course are all one year exchange students, the next class in the series wasn't available till the term that started in January, as those students would have started the series in August). I also had the first in a series of appointments to get new hearing aids.
The third week of February I spent another 4 days in Boliden for work, but managed to attend Swedish class on the Monday. The next week I had only a one day meeting down there, so I managed to attend class both times that week, and the last few days of the month I got to stay home.
Total for the month: 9 of 29 days sleeping away from home.
Four of the weekends of March David and I drove down to Skellefteå (a 2 hour drive south) to help his brother Gustaf and Gustaf's wife Jenny fix up their new toy—A huge old style bus that had been converted to a motorhome by the previous owners, but which needed most of its interior re-done and cleaned up (the previous owners had kids, and had used the bus lots) and also needed a bit of repairs to the heating system and possibly some other engine stuff, too. In addition to working on the bus every weekend we also worked on medieval costumes for the two of them, so that they could attend their first SCA event—Double Wars, Drachenwald's largest event.
The other weekend in March I didn't go to Skellefteå to work on the bus, but David did. Instead I flew to France, where I attended a conference for four days. I came home with a slight cold, which was easily shaken, and I was feeling good again on time for the following weekend's trip south for bus work and costuming. The last week in March I also spent in Boliden for work, and since it is only 30 minutes from Skellefteå I just stayed there, Gustaf and Jenny picked me up and took me back to their place for the weekend, and David met me there.
Total for the month: 17 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in April David and I drove down to Umeå (a three hour drive south) to join our friend Linda for a weekend class in Kontact Improv (a weird, but fun, mix of dance, yoga, and massage) which was also a workshop on being a Clown. She spent the following week visiting us in Luleå, which was fun.
The second weekend was back to Skellefteå to help Gustaf and Jenny with more bus and costume work, and the following week I was back at Boliden for more work/sample collecting. The final weekend of April we actually stayed home, and performed with our choir on Sunday and participated in a local gaming con on Saturday, which was nice.
Total for the month: 12 of 30 days sleeping away from home.
The first of May is a holiday in Sweden, so even though it was a Tuesday, David and I went down to Skellefteå to help Gustaf and Jenny finish up work on the bus and on their costumes, but we were actually home that weekend (Gustaf had to work). The second week of May I spent seven days in Cyprus for work. For my current job, which is research based, I am also meant to spend not more than 10% of my time on teaching duties (never mind that my official title is "assistant lecturer"), and this trip was my first "teaching" assignment. One teacher, one PhD student, and I, accompanied 9 undergraduate students on a series of field trips to view the rocks in Cyprus. The geology there is world famous because a fairly complete package of former ocean floor (ophiolite suite) has been uplifted and exposed on land there). I didn't do much "teaching", my duties were mostly to drive one of the three rental cars. I was glad that I used to live in Australia, so I already knew how to drive on the left.
While I was in Cyprus David, Gustaf, Jenny, and a handful of SCA folk took the now completed bus for the long drive down to southern Sweden for Double Wars. I was very disappointed to have missed the drive down, having spent so much time helping them get ready for the trip, but one doesn't turn down one's first "teaching" assignment on a job, even if it means going somewhere hot and roach-infested, and missing a fun road trip in much better weather back home.
However, I didn't miss the full journey. As soon as I got home from Cyprus I swapped luggage and boarded a train south, arriving at Double Wars only 2.5 days after the others, so I still had four days to enjoy the event. The road trip home was so much fun. I like traveling in a huge motor home and being able to alternate between lying down in a bed and sitting around the table chatting with friends and working on projects (or eating). Yes, due to the slower speed limit for busses the trip takes a full 24 hours (Sweden is a long country!), but it was a fun 24 hours. The final week in May we actually spent at home, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Total for the month: 14 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first week of June my friend Vandy arrived for her visit—she had come to Sweden (from the US) on time for Double Wars, and visited some other friends in the country before making her way north to visit us, so we took her on a bunch of tourist adventures, but arranged them to be day-trips, so we could sleep at home each night.
Our folk dance group performed for Sweden's National Day on 6 June, and again the following weekend for Spelmansstämma, the largest folk music festival in this part of Sweden. I strongly recommend that weekend as a time to visit Luleå for any of my friends who enjoy folk music and dancing and wish to see performances or participate in dancing or music jam sessions. Our friend Linda came up for that and stayed to visit a few days thereafter, and it was fun to have the company (and to be at home for it!).
The last weekend of June David started his summer vacation, so I also took some time off of work and we spent the first bit of it at home relaxing and recovering from all of the travel the first half of the year threw at us.
Total for the month: only 1 out of 30 days sleeping away from home!
The first few days of July David and I drove to Norway to get me my mountain fix. We drove to Lofoten, where we camped and visited the Viking museum. I strongly recommend this as a destination! I only wish we had had more time to spend there, but it was necessary to hurry home to get ready for the huge local SCA event/demo at Hängnan, which takes place the second week of July.
For four days we are open to the public (plus one day at each end for set up and tear down) during the day, showing the world the cool medieval stuff we do, and in the evenings we enjoy a closed SCA event atmosphere with dancing, singing, games, story-telling, juggling, theatre performances, etc. The SCA share of the take from admission fees we collect from the public is what funds the local branch the rest of the year (and the open air museum at Hängnan also benefits from the arrangement. However, after doing this for many years in a row, the shire of Frostheim has officially decided that we will not be running the Medieval Days for the public this coming year, we are going to enjoy a year off, and perhaps we may even send a bus load of us down to Germany for Drachenwald's 20 year anniversary event. It is still too soon to say if that will happen, and if it does if we will join the trip, but it sounds fun.
The last week of July our friend Linda came up for one last visit before she moved to France to start her PhD in theoretical physics, and while she was here I managed to finish up the last of the edits requested by the reviewers of the paper I wrote based on my own PhD research in Tasmania and it was finally accepted for publication, four years after completing the research and writing the thesis. (if anyone wants to see a copy of the paper, titled The Cambrian Metamorphic History of Tasmania: The Metapelites, let me know—I can share up to fifty copies with people, and therefore have a link I can give you so that you can access it without going through a paywall if you don't have access to that journal on your own or through a uni.)
Total for the month: 7 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home, but five of them were in my own pavilion, only a 20 minute drive from home, so it kind of felt like being at home anyway.
I got to spend most of August at home; my only trips were only a short weekend visit to Umeå at the beginning of the month, and a mandatory work "retreat" at the end of the month. David, however, was gone for a week long course in the middle of the month, and while he was gone I managed to do something wrong to my back at fighter practice which took a number of weeks thereafter to get completely recovered.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend of September I flew to Stockholm, where I met my mother, who had flew over from Seattle, and together we went on to Copenhagen, Denmark, where we visited her cousin Jay (son her mother's brother), his son Peter, Peter's wife Maya, their son Josh. Mom had met them before, but it was my first time meeting them, and I really enjoyed the visit. Like me, Peter has an interest in crafts and history. One of the highlights of the trip was heading to the Stone Age outdoor museum to look at the displays and try our hands at various Stone Age crafts.
After that short visit Mom and I came back to Luleå, and the following weekend we took her for day trips sightseeing and brought her to a local gaming convention, where she got to play The Daughters of Verona, which she really enjoyed.
The third weekend of September we drove to Finland to visit some cousins of mom's dad. This is the same group we went to visit back in 2010 when she visited me in Italy, and we had just as much fun with them this time. I may have even had more, since the older cousins don't speak much English, but they are fluent in both Finnish and Swedish (since many of them had moved to Sweden in the 1960's looking for work—our family didn't start out as Swedish speaking Fins), so now that I am able to speak some Swedish I could communicate with them much better, and, of course, David found it easy to speak with them.
I would have loved to have stayed longer that trip, but duty, in the name of work, called, so we left mom there to continue enjoying their hospitality and meet even more cousins, and we returned home. Then we went back for her the following weekend.
During that week David and I went to look at a house that was for sale in the country only 4 km from the university, and liked it, so we made an offer. It was accepted, so when mom returned to Luleå the outgoing owners agreed to let us bring her over and let her see it before she flew back to Seattle at the end of the month.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 30 days sleeping away from home.
We spent most of October waiting to hear when we would get our house. At the time we signed the papers agreeing to the purchase the outgoing owners said that they hoped to be done packing and moving out by 1 November, but they couldn't guarantee that they would achieve that goal, so to play it safe the paperwork said that the closing of the sale would take place "latest 1 December". So as October started we knew that we would be moving in one or two months, and had no idea which it would be.
This was the month we added an additional activity to our already busy schedule—class to learn to play Nyckleharpa, which meets every other Monday evening. David took to the instrument very quickly, since he already knows how to play violin, so he had bow technique already, so it was a simple matter of knowing which keys to press to get the sounds he wants. I, on the other hand, have never really learned to play any instrument. Yes, I bought a hammer dulcimer at the end of last year, and had managed to learn a handful of songs on it, but that isn't much. Luckily our teacher's wife also plays, so most lessons he would stay downstairs with the other students, and they would learn several new tunes and play them together, and I would go upstairs with her, and she would work me slowly through learning one tune. The first four sessions I learned one tune each time, and had time to practice often between classes. Then life got busy, and I quit making time to practice more than once or twice in between classes, and my progress slowed down considerably.
Since I was still feeling like I had been traveling too much all year I managed to limit October's trips to only one partial week at Boliden for work.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in November we attended a gaming convention in a town a few hours south of here. The following Monday we signed the last piece of paper and got the keys to our new house.
Much to my delight the outgoing owners left it clean—we didn't have to do anything before moving in, though I did give all the kitchen cabinets a quick cleaning anyway, they didn't need it. That week we started moving over boxes of kitchen stuff a few at a time, and unpacking them and putting them away straight away (and bringing the extra boxes back to the apartment to be re-filled). That Friday David's brother Gustaf drove up from Skellefteå with his huge, fully enclosed, trailer, and we brought over everything else in four trips. I stayed at the house while they went back for the final load of stuff and started kneading bread dough and chopping toppings, and as soon as we hand unloaded the last box from the trailer we put homemade pizza in the oven and enjoyed dinner together in our nice, big, kitchen, enjoying the view out the window.
The last weekend of the month was a local SCA event where everyone just stayed on site, rather than going home in the evenings. It was much fun. The queen, who is originally from Wisconsin, was up for the event, and we both laughed when we discovered that we have both been out of the US long enough that we think that the American accent is harsh—neither of us hears it in ourselves, but boy did we hear it in the other!
Total for the month: 4 days out of 30 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in December was very full with a choir performance, an SCA demo to entertain the people in line waiting to buy their tickets for the Hobbit, and trying to finish up building the last few shelves and things needed to unpack the final boxes so that we would be completely moved in. It took till 01:30 Friday night/Saturday morning the second weekend in December before we managed to finish the last of them, but we accomplished the goal—everything unpacked and put away before the housewarming party on Saturday, 8 December.
The party was fun, with people stopping in for short visits all day—there were usually around 8 people here at any given time, but which 8 people they were changed often. Then the third week in December our friend Linda flew back from France to spend her holidays with us, and David took some much needed time off of work (in addition to moving house his work load had also increased as the year wound to a close). Linda and I, on the other hand, spent her first week here both working on papers for publication. She on a new paper, and me on the one from my research in Italy—six months after I sent my boss down there the last draft of the paper he finally got back to me with a huge list of comments and lots of additional things for me to do on that project. With luck I can get it done in the next couple of weeks and can call that project complete.
We are just back from a four day trip to the house of David's parents, down in Piteå. Three of his four siblings were there this year, along with their partners and children, so there were 15 of us gathered to celebrate winter and life. It was very nice—time to just relax, be social, or read a book, or play in the snow. Everyone in his family is truly delightful, and I was happy to be there. Then the brothers and their wives who hadn't yet seen our house (as they live in southern Sweden) followed us home and we fed them homemade pizza and cookies.
There are still a few days left of the year, but we have no plans to go anywhere else, so I feel safe to say: Total for the month 3 days of 31 sleeping away from home.
That makes the total for the year 102 days sleeping away from home, or 28%. I hope that 2013 has more time at home; I like home, and like it even better now that "home" is a house of our own with a view that is naught more than fields and trees and lots of beautiful snow!
In January I started the year by attending the traditional weekend of short courses run by the local folk music and dance group. The class David and I signed up for was folk singing, and we spent the weekend learning a variety of traditional Swedish folk songs. It was much fun. The following week I travelled to Boliden (2.5 hour drive south of here, so I stay in their visitor accommodation there) for work (collecting rock samples to be analysed for my research project), and as soon as I got home, David and I flew to Scotland.
He had a two week long course in Glasgow that he was taking for work, so I decided to bring my computer and come along. We flew in on a Friday, got a rental car, and spent the weekend exploring the highlands and staying in B&Bs. Then we went to Glasgow, where we rented a "self-catering room" for the duration of the course. We paid a fraction of what his colleagues paid for their expensive hotel rooms, and we had a kitchen well enough equipped that we were able to get all of our food from a grocery store and eat things I like. While he was in class in the day I did work for my research, and we were able to enjoy evenings together.
During the next weekend there was an SCA dance event in Edinburgh, so, of course, we took the train over for it, and got to have lots of fun visiting with old friends and new and dancing.
The second week of the course was more work for me and class for him, with the result that he got a perfect score on the final exam. Our final weekend in the country we met up with SCA friends and explored a castle and a museum.
Total for the month: 19 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first week of February was our final week in Scotland, and was summarized above. The second week I stayed home worked, attended classes for the next term of Swedish for Beginners (I had taken the first couple of classes between Jan-May of 2011, but since the Uni assumes that the students who need the course are all one year exchange students, the next class in the series wasn't available till the term that started in January, as those students would have started the series in August). I also had the first in a series of appointments to get new hearing aids.
The third week of February I spent another 4 days in Boliden for work, but managed to attend Swedish class on the Monday. The next week I had only a one day meeting down there, so I managed to attend class both times that week, and the last few days of the month I got to stay home.
Total for the month: 9 of 29 days sleeping away from home.
Four of the weekends of March David and I drove down to Skellefteå (a 2 hour drive south) to help his brother Gustaf and Gustaf's wife Jenny fix up their new toy—A huge old style bus that had been converted to a motorhome by the previous owners, but which needed most of its interior re-done and cleaned up (the previous owners had kids, and had used the bus lots) and also needed a bit of repairs to the heating system and possibly some other engine stuff, too. In addition to working on the bus every weekend we also worked on medieval costumes for the two of them, so that they could attend their first SCA event—Double Wars, Drachenwald's largest event.
The other weekend in March I didn't go to Skellefteå to work on the bus, but David did. Instead I flew to France, where I attended a conference for four days. I came home with a slight cold, which was easily shaken, and I was feeling good again on time for the following weekend's trip south for bus work and costuming. The last week in March I also spent in Boliden for work, and since it is only 30 minutes from Skellefteå I just stayed there, Gustaf and Jenny picked me up and took me back to their place for the weekend, and David met me there.
Total for the month: 17 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in April David and I drove down to Umeå (a three hour drive south) to join our friend Linda for a weekend class in Kontact Improv (a weird, but fun, mix of dance, yoga, and massage) which was also a workshop on being a Clown. She spent the following week visiting us in Luleå, which was fun.
The second weekend was back to Skellefteå to help Gustaf and Jenny with more bus and costume work, and the following week I was back at Boliden for more work/sample collecting. The final weekend of April we actually stayed home, and performed with our choir on Sunday and participated in a local gaming con on Saturday, which was nice.
Total for the month: 12 of 30 days sleeping away from home.
The first of May is a holiday in Sweden, so even though it was a Tuesday, David and I went down to Skellefteå to help Gustaf and Jenny finish up work on the bus and on their costumes, but we were actually home that weekend (Gustaf had to work). The second week of May I spent seven days in Cyprus for work. For my current job, which is research based, I am also meant to spend not more than 10% of my time on teaching duties (never mind that my official title is "assistant lecturer"), and this trip was my first "teaching" assignment. One teacher, one PhD student, and I, accompanied 9 undergraduate students on a series of field trips to view the rocks in Cyprus. The geology there is world famous because a fairly complete package of former ocean floor (ophiolite suite) has been uplifted and exposed on land there). I didn't do much "teaching", my duties were mostly to drive one of the three rental cars. I was glad that I used to live in Australia, so I already knew how to drive on the left.
While I was in Cyprus David, Gustaf, Jenny, and a handful of SCA folk took the now completed bus for the long drive down to southern Sweden for Double Wars. I was very disappointed to have missed the drive down, having spent so much time helping them get ready for the trip, but one doesn't turn down one's first "teaching" assignment on a job, even if it means going somewhere hot and roach-infested, and missing a fun road trip in much better weather back home.
However, I didn't miss the full journey. As soon as I got home from Cyprus I swapped luggage and boarded a train south, arriving at Double Wars only 2.5 days after the others, so I still had four days to enjoy the event. The road trip home was so much fun. I like traveling in a huge motor home and being able to alternate between lying down in a bed and sitting around the table chatting with friends and working on projects (or eating). Yes, due to the slower speed limit for busses the trip takes a full 24 hours (Sweden is a long country!), but it was a fun 24 hours. The final week in May we actually spent at home, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Total for the month: 14 of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first week of June my friend Vandy arrived for her visit—she had come to Sweden (from the US) on time for Double Wars, and visited some other friends in the country before making her way north to visit us, so we took her on a bunch of tourist adventures, but arranged them to be day-trips, so we could sleep at home each night.
Our folk dance group performed for Sweden's National Day on 6 June, and again the following weekend for Spelmansstämma, the largest folk music festival in this part of Sweden. I strongly recommend that weekend as a time to visit Luleå for any of my friends who enjoy folk music and dancing and wish to see performances or participate in dancing or music jam sessions. Our friend Linda came up for that and stayed to visit a few days thereafter, and it was fun to have the company (and to be at home for it!).
The last weekend of June David started his summer vacation, so I also took some time off of work and we spent the first bit of it at home relaxing and recovering from all of the travel the first half of the year threw at us.
Total for the month: only 1 out of 30 days sleeping away from home!
The first few days of July David and I drove to Norway to get me my mountain fix. We drove to Lofoten, where we camped and visited the Viking museum. I strongly recommend this as a destination! I only wish we had had more time to spend there, but it was necessary to hurry home to get ready for the huge local SCA event/demo at Hängnan, which takes place the second week of July.
For four days we are open to the public (plus one day at each end for set up and tear down) during the day, showing the world the cool medieval stuff we do, and in the evenings we enjoy a closed SCA event atmosphere with dancing, singing, games, story-telling, juggling, theatre performances, etc. The SCA share of the take from admission fees we collect from the public is what funds the local branch the rest of the year (and the open air museum at Hängnan also benefits from the arrangement. However, after doing this for many years in a row, the shire of Frostheim has officially decided that we will not be running the Medieval Days for the public this coming year, we are going to enjoy a year off, and perhaps we may even send a bus load of us down to Germany for Drachenwald's 20 year anniversary event. It is still too soon to say if that will happen, and if it does if we will join the trip, but it sounds fun.
The last week of July our friend Linda came up for one last visit before she moved to France to start her PhD in theoretical physics, and while she was here I managed to finish up the last of the edits requested by the reviewers of the paper I wrote based on my own PhD research in Tasmania and it was finally accepted for publication, four years after completing the research and writing the thesis. (if anyone wants to see a copy of the paper, titled The Cambrian Metamorphic History of Tasmania: The Metapelites, let me know—I can share up to fifty copies with people, and therefore have a link I can give you so that you can access it without going through a paywall if you don't have access to that journal on your own or through a uni.)
Total for the month: 7 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home, but five of them were in my own pavilion, only a 20 minute drive from home, so it kind of felt like being at home anyway.
I got to spend most of August at home; my only trips were only a short weekend visit to Umeå at the beginning of the month, and a mandatory work "retreat" at the end of the month. David, however, was gone for a week long course in the middle of the month, and while he was gone I managed to do something wrong to my back at fighter practice which took a number of weeks thereafter to get completely recovered.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend of September I flew to Stockholm, where I met my mother, who had flew over from Seattle, and together we went on to Copenhagen, Denmark, where we visited her cousin Jay (son her mother's brother), his son Peter, Peter's wife Maya, their son Josh. Mom had met them before, but it was my first time meeting them, and I really enjoyed the visit. Like me, Peter has an interest in crafts and history. One of the highlights of the trip was heading to the Stone Age outdoor museum to look at the displays and try our hands at various Stone Age crafts.
After that short visit Mom and I came back to Luleå, and the following weekend we took her for day trips sightseeing and brought her to a local gaming convention, where she got to play The Daughters of Verona, which she really enjoyed.
The third weekend of September we drove to Finland to visit some cousins of mom's dad. This is the same group we went to visit back in 2010 when she visited me in Italy, and we had just as much fun with them this time. I may have even had more, since the older cousins don't speak much English, but they are fluent in both Finnish and Swedish (since many of them had moved to Sweden in the 1960's looking for work—our family didn't start out as Swedish speaking Fins), so now that I am able to speak some Swedish I could communicate with them much better, and, of course, David found it easy to speak with them.
I would have loved to have stayed longer that trip, but duty, in the name of work, called, so we left mom there to continue enjoying their hospitality and meet even more cousins, and we returned home. Then we went back for her the following weekend.
During that week David and I went to look at a house that was for sale in the country only 4 km from the university, and liked it, so we made an offer. It was accepted, so when mom returned to Luleå the outgoing owners agreed to let us bring her over and let her see it before she flew back to Seattle at the end of the month.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 30 days sleeping away from home.
We spent most of October waiting to hear when we would get our house. At the time we signed the papers agreeing to the purchase the outgoing owners said that they hoped to be done packing and moving out by 1 November, but they couldn't guarantee that they would achieve that goal, so to play it safe the paperwork said that the closing of the sale would take place "latest 1 December". So as October started we knew that we would be moving in one or two months, and had no idea which it would be.
This was the month we added an additional activity to our already busy schedule—class to learn to play Nyckleharpa, which meets every other Monday evening. David took to the instrument very quickly, since he already knows how to play violin, so he had bow technique already, so it was a simple matter of knowing which keys to press to get the sounds he wants. I, on the other hand, have never really learned to play any instrument. Yes, I bought a hammer dulcimer at the end of last year, and had managed to learn a handful of songs on it, but that isn't much. Luckily our teacher's wife also plays, so most lessons he would stay downstairs with the other students, and they would learn several new tunes and play them together, and I would go upstairs with her, and she would work me slowly through learning one tune. The first four sessions I learned one tune each time, and had time to practice often between classes. Then life got busy, and I quit making time to practice more than once or twice in between classes, and my progress slowed down considerably.
Since I was still feeling like I had been traveling too much all year I managed to limit October's trips to only one partial week at Boliden for work.
Total for the month: 4 days out of 31 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in November we attended a gaming convention in a town a few hours south of here. The following Monday we signed the last piece of paper and got the keys to our new house.
Much to my delight the outgoing owners left it clean—we didn't have to do anything before moving in, though I did give all the kitchen cabinets a quick cleaning anyway, they didn't need it. That week we started moving over boxes of kitchen stuff a few at a time, and unpacking them and putting them away straight away (and bringing the extra boxes back to the apartment to be re-filled). That Friday David's brother Gustaf drove up from Skellefteå with his huge, fully enclosed, trailer, and we brought over everything else in four trips. I stayed at the house while they went back for the final load of stuff and started kneading bread dough and chopping toppings, and as soon as we hand unloaded the last box from the trailer we put homemade pizza in the oven and enjoyed dinner together in our nice, big, kitchen, enjoying the view out the window.
The last weekend of the month was a local SCA event where everyone just stayed on site, rather than going home in the evenings. It was much fun. The queen, who is originally from Wisconsin, was up for the event, and we both laughed when we discovered that we have both been out of the US long enough that we think that the American accent is harsh—neither of us hears it in ourselves, but boy did we hear it in the other!
Total for the month: 4 days out of 30 days sleeping away from home.
The first weekend in December was very full with a choir performance, an SCA demo to entertain the people in line waiting to buy their tickets for the Hobbit, and trying to finish up building the last few shelves and things needed to unpack the final boxes so that we would be completely moved in. It took till 01:30 Friday night/Saturday morning the second weekend in December before we managed to finish the last of them, but we accomplished the goal—everything unpacked and put away before the housewarming party on Saturday, 8 December.
The party was fun, with people stopping in for short visits all day—there were usually around 8 people here at any given time, but which 8 people they were changed often. Then the third week in December our friend Linda flew back from France to spend her holidays with us, and David took some much needed time off of work (in addition to moving house his work load had also increased as the year wound to a close). Linda and I, on the other hand, spent her first week here both working on papers for publication. She on a new paper, and me on the one from my research in Italy—six months after I sent my boss down there the last draft of the paper he finally got back to me with a huge list of comments and lots of additional things for me to do on that project. With luck I can get it done in the next couple of weeks and can call that project complete.
We are just back from a four day trip to the house of David's parents, down in Piteå. Three of his four siblings were there this year, along with their partners and children, so there were 15 of us gathered to celebrate winter and life. It was very nice—time to just relax, be social, or read a book, or play in the snow. Everyone in his family is truly delightful, and I was happy to be there. Then the brothers and their wives who hadn't yet seen our house (as they live in southern Sweden) followed us home and we fed them homemade pizza and cookies.
There are still a few days left of the year, but we have no plans to go anywhere else, so I feel safe to say: Total for the month 3 days of 31 sleeping away from home.
That makes the total for the year 102 days sleeping away from home, or 28%. I hope that 2013 has more time at home; I like home, and like it even better now that "home" is a house of our own with a view that is naught more than fields and trees and lots of beautiful snow!