kareina

The best part about working half-time is that I get Fridays off (why work five 4-hour days, when I can work four 5-hour days?). This means that I get an extra day on the weekend to accomplish whatever needs doing. Today I:

*washed my bed sheets and underwear
*cleaned out the gutters on the house (boy, did that need doing)
*put the deck furniture into the shed for the winter (we are into rainy autumn weather now, we probably won't need it again before the snow flies)
*cooked a yummy lunch for myself (kale, broccoli, zucchini, broad beans, carrot, garlic, alfalfa sprouts, almonds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, eggs, butter, and a hint of curry spices)
*made a bread dough to bake tomorrow for the Frostheim picnic
*read an amazing short story (if you haven't read it yet, read the prequil first)
*cooked 7 liters of black currants down to 3.5 liters of jam
*finished the painting on the bridges of my hammer dulcimer
*vacuumed

By the time I was done with that it was 17:00 and David was home from work, so we carried the extra desk downstairs, where it will have its top replaced with Caroline's nice table top before it is taken to the apartment so they will have a pretty table, with raise-lower legs. Then our friends Birger and Siv from the Luleå Hembygdsgille dropped by for a visit, and I showed her some of the wool fabric I have left after having used some for costumes for me, and she liked both the brown/indigo wool and the light blue/grey wool twill enough that she bought both. She plans to make a viking dress before Norrskensfesten to go with the broaches she bought at the Lofotr viking museum in Lofoten this summer. (I really need to go back there!)

After they left and David went to the other house took the time to clean up, package up the jam into plastic containers for the freezer, and then sat down to the computer to tell the world (via FB) how wonderful the story I read today was. Seriously, while I love all of hrj's writing, Hyddwen (and Hoywverch, which I read on Wednesday) were even more my cup of tea than usual. I think it was the delightful blend of very traditional story telling and classic tropes with a powerful loving relationship of a sort which might have been unexpected in such a time period, but instead felt totally natural, normal, and right. I wish I had read this story while still in high school. Sadly, she hadn't gotten around to writing it that long ago.

After that I updated the Norrskensfesten spreadsheet to show the latest registrations, and worried for a bit because we have only 22 people registered so far. Then I checked last year's spreadsheet, and as of 15 September we had only 21 people registered, but by the time the event happened that had grown to 100 people, so perhaps we will yet get enough to cover the cost of the hall (not that it truly matters--Frostheim can afford the site if we don't, but it is nice if an event doesn't lose money). Of course, the fact that this year the event is two weeks earlier than last year means that I can't really compare the same date, but I am trying to let these numbers comfort me anyway, since worry never helps.

Now I should do my yoga, gather a few things to bring to the picnic tomorrow (especially wool, as it is likely to rain, at least some), and get some sleep.

Years ago I was such a good correspondent that I replied to all of the messages in my personal in-box on a daily basis and either deleted or filed every message promptly. An empty in-box was a normal state of being. Then I started that PhD project and a backlog started up. There have been a few occasions in the past 6 years when I actually managed to reply to everything and empty my personal in-box, but they are no where near as often as I would like, nor have I managed to keep it empty for long. Tonight, at long last, I managed to empty my in-box--this is the first time since moving to Sweden that I have done that, though I have gotten close a couple of times. It is such a good feeling.

I was most amused that the reaction of clovis_t to hearing that my in-box was empty was to send me an email saying "Mwahahaha, your inbox is no longer empty.". However, I replied to that one promptly, filed the letter, and it is once again restored to the pristine whiteness which is so dear to my heart. I think I like having an empty inbox almost as much as I like receiving email from friends, so I guess I win either way--either it is empty, or someone is sending me messages.

However, I must confess that this major accomplishment took most of the evening--time I could have been spending working on that paper. Sadly, I didn't even open the file today. I did some sewing, I read some fiction in Swedish, I went to my doctor's apt (can I add an aside how nice the health care system is in this country? Almost as soon as I had a Swedish Personal number I received a letter telling me that I have been booked for an appointment with "gynekologisk cellprovskontroll and giving me instructions as to how to change the appointment on line if the day or time didn't suit me. So no need to even book the appointment! They did charge me for it--a total of 150SEK (about €10.50)), and created a new email address on lord_kjar's server.

Why did I need yet another email address? It might be that I don't. But I found out from two different people that I didn't receive important, time-sensitive messages they had sent me recently, and there was no sign of the missing messages on gmail in the spam folder or in the in box, and they hadn't been downloaded by Eudora. Since the problem could be my address it was worth trying to create a new one. In the process of creating that address and telling Eudora how to find messages sent there I accidentally set the program to downloading over 200 messages sent to a long-defunct address. I have no idea how I accomplished this--my old sca.org address was discontinued by the SCA Inc ages ago. Once it ceased to exist I told Eudora not to bother trying to download those messages anymore, since it just gave error messages whenever it tried. I haven't attempted to download mail to that address in over a year, but somehow, tonight I managed it. Now, of those 200+ messages most of them were SPAM, but there turned out to be about 8 messages that were actually meant for me. I replied to all of them (explaining why it has taken so long to reply), and while I was at it started replying to other old messages which I have known about. Over six hours later my inbox was empty, but I had sent quite a few messages, so I rather expect new ones waiting for me when I wake in the morning. Perhaps I will actually reply to those promptly...

I've accomplished several more crucial tasks towards settling into Milano. With luck I'll get them all done soon and can commence doing the work for which I've been hired. I suspect that it will be much more interesting than the bureaucratic stuff I've been dealing with, and I am ever so grateful to my colleagues here who have been running errands with me and translating as needed.

Today's accomplishments:

* paid for the deposit and first month's rent (this involved taking two buses into the city centre, where the other portion of the university is located, going to the housing office, taking forms from there across the street to the bank, depositing the money, and bringing in the stamped forms back to the housing office)

* obtained a local bank account into which my pay check will be deposited, once they start doing that (not before the end of the month, apparently; I'll be living more frugally than usual until then). (This involved walking perhaps two blocks past my apartment--I may not like cities, but there are some advantages.)

* Lunch! (The folk in our research team eat lunch together most days. It was kind of fun to sit there and try to make out where one word stopped and the next begun when they spoke Italian, and it is appreciated how often they switched to English to include myself and the German PhD student in the conversation.)

* obtaining a "numero di dodice fiscale" (works like a tax-file (Australian) or social security (US) number--this involved an early morning trip to the office, arriving five minutes before opening to discover a huge, noisy crowd waiting outside the door. At 9:00 the door opened, and the first 50 names from the sign-in sheet whcih had been outside the door were called in. The person who explained this to us was #68 on the list. The sign-in sheet had disappeared inside, so we left, and returned again an hour before closing, when we were helped fairly promptly surrounded by peace and quiet. Hard to believe it was the same place.)

* put the "numero di dodice fiscale" and the bank account numbers onto the form for the direct-deposit (alas, there are a few questions on the form for which we don't yet know the answer, so it will have to wait till tomorrow).

* learned how to access journals via this library's web page. (This one is actually directly related to work!)

Still to be done:

* acquire a health care card (now that I've got the "numero di dodice fiscale")

* pick up the forms from the post-office to complete my visa paperwork and get it extended for the full term of my contract

* obtain a local ID card

* find out what my e-mail address and password are for the account at this uni.

* find out what I'll be doing for work

The paper for which I am listed as the second author has been officially accepted ! Therefore look for "Petrology of the eclogites from western Tasmania: Insights into the Cambro-Ordovician evolution of the paleo-Pacific margin of Gondwana" to show up in the journal Lithos sometime soon...