kareina

I am still managing to read now and then, and appreciating the fact that others have started posting more often, but I have been just busy enough that I haven't posted at all.

Part of that is my new, half-time, short-term job. I am working at Norrbottens Museum Archive, processing boxes of archives that have been turned in, mostly by clubs and similar organisations. My first day was 15 March, which was the last day that the library and archive was open to the public. They wound up closing their doors earlier than many other organisations in Sweden because some of the staff was out sick (given the at that point still early stages developing situation with a growing pandemic they have a strict policy of not coming in if one feels any symptoms at all), and that didn't leave enough people to man the desk, so they decided to just switch to no public access. They did still permit researchers from the university to come in, but I don't know if any were taking advantage of that option, since I was in the empty library room busily sorting stacks of papers into piles by category, and then sorting the piles into smaller piles by category, and then sorting those piles into date order (oldest on top), so that they could be catalogued, put into archive boxes, and set on the shelf in the store room until someone wants to look inside the boxes.

The first day there were four of us working together--my boss and I, another girl who started her first day then too, and a lady with lots of archive experience. We worked in pairs and discussed which things went in which pile, and why (they have a list with the codes. Group A is for meeting minutes, agendas, etc. While group G is financial records. Since all of this is in Swedish, and my colleagues speak only Swedish on the job, I am getting lots of chances to practice. Indeed, some of the categories on the list I understand in Swedish, but have no idea what the English equivalent term might be.

When I interviewed I asked which half-time hours they prefer I work, and she said that they were flexible. I told her that in my other half time job I had been in the habit of working four 5-hour days a week, and wondered how that would work for this one. She said it was fine, and in fact, wrote that on my employment contract. However, on my first day I discovered a catch with that. When one works more than four hours one is obliged to take a non-paid half hour lunch break, which means that if I start at 08:00 I can't go home till 13:30, which makes it harder to also get in my hours for my university half-time job. Oops. Luckily the job is interesting enough that those hours just kinds slip by.

The routine we have fallen into is arrive at ~08:00 and go to the library and start sorting papers until a bit after 09:00, when the boss sticks her nose in to suggest that it is fika time. Then go to the lunch room, eat a short snack and either chat with the other 3 to 5 people present, or check my phone for messages (depending on if they are also looking at their phones or chatting today), then back to the sorting till about 11:15 and stop for lunch (again either chatting or reading), then back to work till 13:30. The first few we did she and I worked together, sorting different piles,and then working together to do the data entry, but now we each have our own archives to sort.

The few days I went from that job to the university to work there a few more hours, before I started seeing more and more of my friends in other countries already being obliged to work from home. At that point I thought "wait, I strongly prefer working from home, why am I going into the office on days I am not in the lab running experiments?", and I brought my computer home. Since then I have only gone to my office at uni when I needed to meet a researcher to run experiments. (Which has happened three times in the past two weeks, with two different researchers.)

However, the other parts of my life were changing only slowly. I have continued to meet Johan for acroyoga every morning before work, and really don't want to give that up. I accept the fact that if he gets sick I have a high chance of getting whatever he gets, given how much hand holding is needed when one is being spun around on someone's upraised feet. My folk dance group only decided to stop meeting after last Sunday's session (to which only five of us showed up), and the Herrskaps Dans group continued meeting too for a while, though they have finally stopped (which I think is wise, given that one of our leaders is well into his 80's), but I would up missing their last two sessions because I needed the time to do stuff on the computer. Choir met las week (only eight of us present, and we kept reasonable distance from one another), but was cancelled this week because our director had to be elsewhere, and students had exams anyway. There is talk of trying to meet next week, but we will see if it happens. Phire, the student jester group I am part of, is continuing to meet for training, and even still doing group juggling, though, I suspect, that they are washing their hands before and after these days, and not as many of us are hugging in greeting as we used to do. Johan and I did our acroyoga sessions at the Phire training today and last Friday as well, and I certainly made a point of washing my hands before and after touching juggling balls.

We are tentatively planning on meeting Monday morning as usual, but will keep an eye on the situation and see if it is still permitted by then. We normally take the weekend off, and this time it is a good idea. One of the times today we failed to get him into side balance on my upraised feet he slid down between my upraised legs, which were positioned a bit further to the right than they should have been, and in the process my right leg was pushed out to the side a bit faster and further than the muscle on the inside of my right thigh was really happy with. No pain just existing, but when I walk or do certain movements the muscle tells me that it is still sulking about how it was treated. I will give it a hot shower later, and rub on some topical muscle ache reliving medicine and see how it goes.

Sadly the SCA event I had hoped to attend last weekend got cancelled. Even though at only 50 or 60 attendees it was well within the then permitted limit of 500 people, the people in charge decided that it was safer not to risk it. Pretty much as soon as I heard it was cancelled I wrote to the Crown and asked them if we could do a virtual event instead. I would happily put on my costume and sit with a sewing project in front of the computer and hang out with other SCA folk, and even court would be fun. They replied that I was not the only person thinking of this, and they would see what could be done. But the week between that conversation and when the event should have been was much too full on busy with learning my new job, and trying to keep on top of the other job, and everything else I was doing, and I didn't manage to contribute anything to making a virtual event happen that weekend. However, at the end of that week I saw a post from the Kingdom Seneschal looking for a Deputy in charge of making virtual meetings and courts happen in Drachenwald, and I promptly wrote to volunteer.

As a result I have been even busier--working on writing the guidelines on how to make them happen and still be official, so that awards can be given, etc. I didn't manage to make it to bed before Midnight all week, and still got up early enough to meet Johan for acroyoga at 07:00 before work, and then worked both jobs and worked for the Kingdom, and repeated. In between there I did get to attend the Nordmark virtual business meeting last Sunday (which would have happened at the event, if it hadn't been cancelled), and I have done video calls with a number of other friends, so I am making progress on sewing projects, too. But now the guidelines have been sent to the email list and turned into the webminister to publish on the web page, and as soon as I have a url for that it can be posted to FB and otherwise be distributed.

This weekend will be the virtual court which would have happened at last weekend's event, and I am really looking forward to a chance to see everyone. A small group of us did a quick test run of the system this week, and we think it is going to work well.

We are living in strange times, and they are likely to get stranger, but, at least for now, my friends are pulling together and working to strengthen connections on line, and I hope that part is able to continue, no matter what else happens.

I think she was just cleaning out her closet...

Some time back my mother mentioned that she had put a package in the mail for me it hopes that it would arrive by my birthday, and to let her know when it got here. It still hadn't arrive by Friday before my birthday, but on Monday there was a letter in my box saying I could pick the package up at the local post office (which is a counter and back room within the local grocery store). I had also forgotten my glasses case at work, and we needed a couple of things from store, so that evening I took the car and drove in, picked up the spare glasses, got some groceries, and found out that the fine print on the letter, which I hadn't actually read, said that I could pick up the package on Wednesday at the earliest, it was in Sweden, but hadn't gotten this far north yet.

Tuesday morning was our Lucia performance, followed by a dermatologist appointment. Back in May, when things were a bit stressful (because in addition to work and many personal projects, I was also busy with tasks for running our Medieval Days event at Hägnan this summer, and O. was dealing with yet more deaths in his family) some odd red spots appeared on my waist. When they were joined shortly thereafter by a bunch of friends I booked an appointment at the local health clinic, and when I told the doc there that I didn't know what they were, but I was certain they weren't psoriasis, as I have had that on my knee since high school, and these are very different, he said that psoriasis can take different forms, and it was the easiest guess as to the problem, so he gave me some sort of corticosteroid creme and sent me on my way. I was skeptical, but dutifully tired if for some weeks, during which it got a bit worse, so I quit using the medicine, contacted the dermatologist's office to get on the waiting list, and continued with my busy life. They said their earliest possible appointment was in December, and I said I would take it.

Luckily, those spots have been clearing up on their own--some have faded, and none of them are red and angry looking anymore. Even so, there were enough of them left that the dermatologist was able to identify it as "Lichen ruber planus" in about 30 seconds. She assured me that it isn't contagious and said that it should continue going away on its own. Then, since I had mentioned the Medieval Days at Hägnan as a factor in stress when the spots appeared, we spent the rest of the appointment talking about her niece, liadethornegge, whom she correctly guessed I would know, and looking at her flicker album of SCA events. I love living in a small world.

After the appointment I decided I was sleepy, and went home for a nap instead of going to work. I really needed that day off. Could have used another, since I didn't really accomplish much at work on Wednesday, either, and wound up going home after only about half the time I should have been there. But then I remembered the package, so, being curious, off I went to the store. Luckily, the package wasn't heavy, and was small enough to fit into the cloth grocery bag I had with me, so it was easy to carry home.

I was, of course, starving when I got home, so I took time to eat before opening the box. It contained a large blue/black cotton scarf covered in silver skulls, an old leather bracelet with her name (Norma) on it (the note said that it was proof that she used to be skinny, and, indeed, the bracelet fits my tiny wrist, so if it fit her she would have had to have been pretty small), another bracelet made of a bunch of pennies glued together (that I remember from childhood), a little green puff ball toy with a single eye (was it always a cyclops, or had it suffered a tragic accident over the years), a couple of boxes of Q-tips (I still had one left from her last visit--the brands they sell here aren't as soft, but I think I have enough now to last for years), a couple of jars of Carmex (I used to blend it 50-50 with something else as a lotion for the psoriasis on my knee, until I moved to Australia, and found the lotion I have been using on it ever since), a button/pin with a photo of her mother's parents, a couple of antique wooden curtain rod ends, and perhaps a few other odds and ends that I am not remembering just now. I think she must have had fun packing the box, and her closet must be much cleaner now.

Today I made up for how little work I accomplished Tuesday and Wednesday, and didn't get home till 17:00. Luckily, we had planned to do pizza for dinner, and my past self was kind enough to leave a bread sponge on the counter, so I put the pizza stones into the oven, turned it on, started kneading bread dough, and by 17:54 I was enjoying home made pizza with artichoke heart, broccoli, spinach and kale. Yum! And half of that pizza is left to enjoy tomorrow. lord_kjar and C, of course, put quite a few more ingredients onto theirs that I wouldn't eat (e.g. mussels, mushrooms, store bought meat balls, cheese that melts), but each type of pizza left overs got packed into a different type container so we won't get them confused tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have planned housework, finally washing the tablecloths from Norrskensfesten (before we need them for Frostheims Jullegille on Sunday), and running errands, with Phire practice and "mys" in the evening. Saturday I will do a massage trade with a friend, and on Sunday we drive south for lord_kjar's niece's baptism, and then return north again to attend the above mentioned Jul potluck.