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kareinaI ended 2020 with a party to celebrate a decade of life in Sweden, since I arrived here 1 January 2011. Since I couldn't safely hold an in-person party I decided to do it on Zoom, and advertised it on FB. Then, a few days before the party I was looking for something else on my hard drive and noticed that I had a word document with a list of all of the email addresses to which I had sent a group email with my new address when I moved here. This made me remember that I used to send a yearly "what I have I been up to this year" email to everyone in my address book, but I haven't done that in ages.
Therefore I decided to write a decade summary email, and send that out to everyone. It took four days to compile the data and another to clean it up to a consistent presentation, and the result, in bullet point format, came to 13 pages! So the email started with a paragraph about it being ten years in Sweden, inviting everyone to the party (with link), and then saying that the rest of the letter would be more details of what I have been up to, and feel free to skip it if you like, but do please reply saying what you have been up to. I sent this to everyone I had sent the "moved to Sweden" letter to, and to most everyone else that was listed in my SCA gmail address contact list (I pulled both lists into Excel, removed duplicates, deleted obvious non-personal addresses and a few more that I had no clue who they might be and sent it out.
Then spent another hour making note of which addresses bounced so they can be deleted from the list for "next time" I do something like this.
It turns out to have been really worth doing this--some of the people who came to the party I hadn't heard from at all in more than a decade, and it was so nice to see them. There were never more than nine people present at a time, and usually at least 5, so there were always enough for interesting conversations, and everyone got to participate.
in order of arrival we had:
L. (southern Sweden)
K. (Germany)
K. (about an hour south of me)
N. (local to me, but haven't met him yet--one of my friends sent him)
B. (California)
E. (my housemate, who was across town at her boyfriend's house)
H. (California)
A. (Norway)
A. (southern Sweden)
K. (California)
S. (southern Sweden)
D., S & their 3 kids (Ohio)
E. & G. (local to me)
I. (California)
S. (local to me)
P. (about two hours south of me)
A. (UK)
X, M, & their three kids (Wisconsin)
L. (Oregon)
L. (Iowa)
D. (about three hours south of me)
Note: locations given are current, not necessarily where they were when I got to know them)
I have been on vacation all week--Monday I will return to the archives, but I have been busy.
Duke Flieg has published a new book, the last in a series. I have loved all of the books so far, so, of course, I had to get this one, too. However, I have been so busy I have only managed to read a couple of hours a day. In addition to reading I have been working on the web page for summer coronation, attended meetings for the Drachenwald Law Council, and the Frostheim Styrelse (board of directors), wrote a new song, started doing data processing for my 2nd PhD research again, attended an on-line bardic, played on my sledding hill (we have finally gotten enough snow for that to be possible, and 7 days in a row of below zero temperatures, and I am much happier with the weather), made more progress on getting the new computer set up with all of the needed programs, and lots of other stuff I am probably forgetting.
Now I have to head to the post office and pick up a package, so that is plenty of summary for now. The current world events can just go unremarked...
Therefore I decided to write a decade summary email, and send that out to everyone. It took four days to compile the data and another to clean it up to a consistent presentation, and the result, in bullet point format, came to 13 pages! So the email started with a paragraph about it being ten years in Sweden, inviting everyone to the party (with link), and then saying that the rest of the letter would be more details of what I have been up to, and feel free to skip it if you like, but do please reply saying what you have been up to. I sent this to everyone I had sent the "moved to Sweden" letter to, and to most everyone else that was listed in my SCA gmail address contact list (I pulled both lists into Excel, removed duplicates, deleted obvious non-personal addresses and a few more that I had no clue who they might be and sent it out.
Then spent another hour making note of which addresses bounced so they can be deleted from the list for "next time" I do something like this.
It turns out to have been really worth doing this--some of the people who came to the party I hadn't heard from at all in more than a decade, and it was so nice to see them. There were never more than nine people present at a time, and usually at least 5, so there were always enough for interesting conversations, and everyone got to participate.
in order of arrival we had:
L. (southern Sweden)
K. (Germany)
K. (about an hour south of me)
N. (local to me, but haven't met him yet--one of my friends sent him)
B. (California)
E. (my housemate, who was across town at her boyfriend's house)
H. (California)
A. (Norway)
A. (southern Sweden)
K. (California)
S. (southern Sweden)
D., S & their 3 kids (Ohio)
E. & G. (local to me)
I. (California)
S. (local to me)
P. (about two hours south of me)
A. (UK)
X, M, & their three kids (Wisconsin)
L. (Oregon)
L. (Iowa)
D. (about three hours south of me)
Note: locations given are current, not necessarily where they were when I got to know them)
I have been on vacation all week--Monday I will return to the archives, but I have been busy.
Duke Flieg has published a new book, the last in a series. I have loved all of the books so far, so, of course, I had to get this one, too. However, I have been so busy I have only managed to read a couple of hours a day. In addition to reading I have been working on the web page for summer coronation, attended meetings for the Drachenwald Law Council, and the Frostheim Styrelse (board of directors), wrote a new song, started doing data processing for my 2nd PhD research again, attended an on-line bardic, played on my sledding hill (we have finally gotten enough snow for that to be possible, and 7 days in a row of below zero temperatures, and I am much happier with the weather), made more progress on getting the new computer set up with all of the needed programs, and lots of other stuff I am probably forgetting.
Now I have to head to the post office and pick up a package, so that is plenty of summary for now. The current world events can just go unremarked...