kareina

When I left off on posting mom had just died and my sisters and I (and Beth's dog, Max) went to go walk around Greenlake together. It was a good walk, with lots of good conversation, and just what we needed just then. That was Tuesday, the 4th of December (which I only know because I just looked it up, not because I am able to remember dates; I am not).

The next day (Wednesday) we sisters and our Aunt Barbara (mom's oldest, and now only surviving, sibling) went out to get pedicures. I have never had a pedicure in my life, and never wanted one, either. But when my sister explained that one sits in a massage chair while someone plays with your feet I decided that I was in. (I live for foot rubs! (among other things).) When we arrived we were instructed to choose a colour, and, of course, I picked a darkish blue. I considered going even darker, but Amber warned me that in her experience colours often come out darker than they look in the bottle, and I didn't want nails that look like they have been hit with a hammer, so I settles for only darkish. Of course, it turns out that this particular bottle dries a bit lighter, and when dry the blue has almost faintly greenish overtones, so it isn't nearly as pretty as it was in the bottle.

They didn't tell me till after we were done that if I had said something after seeing the colour on toe number one I could have asked them to take it off and do another colour, but that didn't occur to me, and I didn't want to complain when we are supposed to be bonding. I asked if snow flakes were an option, and they said yes. Amber suggested they might have decals. I don't know if they did or not, because the lady just took a bottle of white nail polish and drew snowflakes on my two big toes free hand. Unfortunately, she comes from a warm country (the Philippians I would guess) and now lives in Seattle, and somehow never got the memo that snowflakes have six-fold symmetry, so she drew them with eight arms, which meant that they are so crowded together it was hard for her to squeeze in the side branches and fluffy bits, but they look ok, and it is easy to tell that they are meant to be snowflakes. She did add a coating of glitter over the top of the flakes. While we were there Amber told me that she has some travel pads of nail polish remover that she would send home with me so I could clean the polish later, there being no point in buying a bottle of nail polish I will never need again. However, we forgot about that before she flew back to San Francisco. However, I kind of like the idea of just letting the paint grow out, and seeing how long it takes before the evidence is gone. It is only a little embarrassing to be seen with painted toe nails (and then I am more embarrassed if it is seen by strangers, who will be more likely to assume that painted nails are normal for me).

Later that day my friend Josie came to visit, along with her partner Lightfoot. He was hungry, so she and I accompanied him to a restaurant, where he had some sushi, and she and I just drank some miso soup as we didn't fel for tea with caffeine. Afterwards we went back to Beth's house, where I taught them a bit of acroyoga in the living room (and my aunt Barbara was very impressed to see me balancing on their upraised feet, etc. That was the evening my brother in law, Beto, had made a flann for dinner (which I hadn't eaten, as it was too late in the evening. However, there was a bit left the next day, and I had it for second breakfast, and liked it so much he promised me one for my birthday.

Thursday was a run errands and hang out with sisters and my younger niece, Lucia (11 years old, who had been given permission to miss a couple of days of school because she was so sad to have lost her beloved grandmother; her big sister, Anahi, at 14 preferred to distract herself with being busy, and went to school) day, including a walk in the dog park (where Lucia and I climbed the big tree on the shore of the lake), since it was the last full day we would all be together. Friday, we all went out to lunch together, and then Kirsty and Amber went back to the house to get their luggage and headed off to the airport, Kirsty to return to Melbourne, and Amber to San Francisco. I, on the other hand, met up with my dear friend and adopted cousin Jen and her husband Shelby for tea and delightful conversation at a tea shop, and a bit later my SCA sister Carrie arrived and took me out to her place in Hobart (we had no idea there was a Hobart in the Seattle area!) for dinner and to see the house and meet her dogs (which are tall, slender creatures with bit pointy ears that look more like deer than dogs). Then she brought be back to Beth's place in the U district. We did try stopping by Mat and Kay's place on the way home to say hi, but they weren't in.

On Saturday two more of my beloved friends came to visit. Shannon, whom I met when I lived in Eugene, and Paul, with whom I lived when I was in Ashland drove up to see me and take me out for an early birthday lunch/dinner. They arrived around 13:00 and we hung out and chatted for a bit, and then took a half a hour walk to a Thai restaurant (we had asked Beth for recommendations, but the Thai place she used to enjoy doesn't exist anymore, so she checked reviews on line, and that one was well recommended), which had very yummy food, with the veg perfectly steamed so that the broccoli wasn't overcooked. Then we walked back to the house, hung out for a bit, I showed them the movie The Arranged Marriage that my sister Amber made years ago (a documentary about our parents and how their daughters fixed them up with an arranged marriage) then Shannon got her massage table out of the car and gave me a massage. By then we were tired, so we went to sleep. Since Paul currently has both arms in a cast after having had a driver suddenly pull out in front of him when he was driving a motor scooter, he choose to sleep on the couch, where he wouldn't be hitting anyone with the casts during the night, so Shannon and I took the giant air mattress.

Sunday I woke up earlier than the others and did my yoga and had first breakfast, then when they got up I made some baking powder biscuits to share with them for my second breakfast. Then my SCA sister Clover and her husband Chris arrived, and we four went out to the same Indian restaurant that I had been to with Martin the day before mom died. The food was yummy, and the company delightful. After food we dropped Paul and Shannon back at the house so that they could return to Portland, and Clover and Chris went out to Woodinville for Tania and Mike's house concert with Felecia and William.

We arrived a good hour before the concert (even after stopping at a local distillery for C&C to buy some whisky), before the sun had set, so we got to see a glimpse of the the really pretty grounds before we went into the house (but it was raining, so we didn't do any exlporing). When we walked in the door the owner of the house, Alisaundre, was explaining to Tania that she recognised my name. Back in 2015, when I first ran Norrskensfesten I had asked on the SCA bardic list if anyone wanted to come to northern Sweden to teach a bardic class. Most people who replied said some variant of "oh, I wish!", but Alisaundre said "I could skype in". So she and her daughter did, and it was a fun class. She gave us a tour of the house, which is truly beautiful. They have a few rooms down stairs that they rent out as an Air BnB, and there is a little kitchenette there that the guests can use. They also have the gaming suite down there. The entry level floor is where the various living rooms and kitchen are, and there are bedrooms upstairs. I remember seeing her post photos of it to FB a year or so back when they were first purchasing it and planning on all of the things they would be able to do with it, including house concerts. During the tour she mentioned that the goal of having this amazing house and property was to make it a resource for all of their communities: Poly, Pagan, and SCA. After giving us the tour she introduced us to her husband, Leith, who hadn't joined in for that skype bardic class. However, he is also a bard, and, in fact, was the An Tir bardic champion the year Crian and I lived in Vancouver. I remember being introduced to him at Kingdom level event that year, though I don't remember what, if anything, we might have talked about during that brief meeting. I do remember his intense blue eyes and the fact that he was wearing the Bardic Champion's cloak.

Mike and Tania had told me that I would like Felecia and William, and they were correct. I chatted a little with them before the concert, and more during intermission and afterwards, and they are both delightful people I hope that our paths cross again. The concert itself was amazing, as I knew it would be. The four of them team up every winter to do a series of concerts, and it is so clear that they love what they do, and they harmonise so well together. I took the best seat in the house, the corner of the couch closest to the musicians, and sat down with my sewing project. Leith came and sat next to me, and a third person (Chris?) sat beyond him. During the first part of the concert, in between songs, I commented to Lieth that I have been in love with Tania since I was in high school, but when Felicia and William opened their mouths to sing I just lost my heart two more times.

The first bit of intermission Leith and I continued to sit on the couch and chat with one another, but then I got up to go ask to play Tania's dulcimer (we have the same kind) and visit with the musicians, and meet some of the other guests (it was a small crowd, and everyone seemed like interesting people I would enjoy knowing). When we sat back down Leith sat even closer to me than he had before, and asked to see what I was sewing. I showed him the viking coat in progress (just seam embroider left to sew, and I need to decide what to do in the way of clasps, but it was a good coat to wear during the trip). Then, after showing him the Ösenstitch (#b in that photo), though I do it backwards compared to that drawing) I am using on the seams I put down the sewing and he and I enjoyed the rest of the concert while holding hands and cuddling a little, which made an amazing concert even better.

After the concert there was time to visit more with the musicians, hosts, and guests for a while before they served dinner to those of us who were still there. They have one of those sous vide things, so there was a ham cooking the whole time the concert was happening, but it wasn't possible to smell it at all till they opened it. Even though many of my friends seem to be very happy with theirs, I hadn't really seen the point, since most of what I cook is something I can do quickly and keep busy with the whole time it is cooking so that being hungry while I wait for food doesn't bother me. However, for something like a house concert, where people want to focus on the music and not the smell of cooking food, it is perfect.

I, of course, wasn't hungry that late in the evening, but I happily sat and drank my water and visited with the others as they ate. Eventually Tania, Mike, Felicia and William had to go--they had a ferry to catch to get home. After they left Chris, Clover, Leith and I went out to the hot tub for a bit of bardic. I was kind of surprised no one else joined us (Alisaundre had a cold, so she couldn't join us), but just the four of us was nice too. Clover and Leith traded lots of songs, and I shared a few in Swedish. Leith has memorised quite a number of period French and other language songs. I would love to get him to Drachenwald to meet Kaarina! Then Chris and Clover had to head home to get some sleep before work the next day (they had an hour's drive), but I opted to stay. When we went back into the house everyone else had gone, or, in the case of the four or five others who live there, gone to their rooms, so we sat in one of the small living rooms and Leith played guitar and sang me some more songs, before showing me to the Peacock guest room and then retiring upstairs to his own room a little before 01:00. All of that music and good company after midnight made for a beautiful start to my birthday Monday.

I was in too good of a mood to sleep straight away, so I called David and we talked for a short while. Then I slept for almost three hours, and woke back up full of energy and joy, so I chatted with friends in other time zones on messenger for a bit, and went back to sleep and slept for another three hours, getting up at 08:00. I enjoyed breakfast with Leith and one of the housemates (whose name I didn't catch), and then I got a ride in with him to the microsoft campus where he works, arriving at about 10:00. My sister met me there and we ran some errands together, and then went back to the house where she made Beto's flann recipe for my birthday dinner:

Beto’s Flann

Ingredients:
3 eggs beaten
1 bar of cream cheese (8 oz, or 250 g)
1 can (12 fl oz or 354 ml) evaporated milk
1/2 can (full can is 14 oz or 397 g) or less of sweetened condensed milk
A bit of liquid vanilla.

Directions:
* Caramelise 1/2 cup sugar in a pan over medium heat
* Quickly pour melted sugar into the bottom of a loaf pan
* Cream cheese with 1 cup of warm water in the blender.
* Add the rest of ingredients and blend it all together.
* Set the pan in a larger pan containing water (not deep enough to get any water in the flann pan, of course.
* Bake (both pans together) at 350 F for one hour
* Let it cool for an hour before putting in the fridge
* Give it four or five hours in the fridge
* Invert onto a platter right before serving
* Garnish with fresh berries (we used raspberries!)

While that cooked and chilled we hung out together, I started some spaghetti sauce for dinner (containing tomato and kale with ground walnut, almond, sunflower seeds and she introduced me to her preferred cloud resource for project management and to-do lists (which I have since adopted for myself and downloaded the phone app).

Then she took the train to meet Anahi in the city center, where she attends school and accompany her from there to an audition, and I borrowed the car to pick up Lucia from school and get her to her Broadway Bound rehearsal (Beto was at work, so Beth was glad to have me there to help make the logistics work). Then I went home and enjoyed some spaghetti for my dinner early, and when everyone was home from work, auditions, and rehearsals they sat down to dinner and I jumped straight to desert. Good thing too--Lucia loves raspberries as much as I do, so it was good to get my share first, before she got to the Flann. Before they would let me eat Beth decorated it with candles (12 of them for my 5th 12th birthday), they sung to me, and I blew them out. I didn't even think of making a wish, and the first one that comes to mind as I type isn't possible, as we have this bad habit of living time in a linear manner.

After dinner, since I was flying out really early the next morning, I gave the girls Christmas presents. This is the first time I have ever given them something, since I live far away, am not a shopper, am too lazy to post stuff, and don't actually celebrate Christmas or give gifts to anyone. But it felt right to do so at this time. Beth told me that the girls love ear rings, and there had been much teasing back and forth between us for me being a geologist who loves pretty minerals, and them thinking rocks are boring and preferring organic stuff. Therefore we went looking for some nice ear rings with stones or minerals in them, so that I could give them something that would remind them of me and the banter. I knew that Anahi's favourite colour is yellow, since she had mentioned that when she found out that I don't really like yellow as a colour (but on that point there was no teasing, we both just accepted that the other has different taste--there is never any accounting for taste). So when I saw the bright yellow amber ear rings I couldn't resist buying them for her. We tried searching the store for ear rings that said "Lucia", but didn't spot any. The store clerk, undaunted, looked through the overflow stash, and found another pair of amber ear rings in a dark orangish red but in the same shape as the pair for Anahi. Lucia's favourite colour changes now and then, but she has loved that colour in the past, so I picked up both pairs.

Before giving them the gift I told them that I had considered giving them some crystals, because I am so fond of them, but since they don't like minerals I got them something organic instead. Anahi asked "what, did you get us food?", but when she opened the box she squealed in delight about loving the colour, and they both loved the joke. Lucia though her ear rings were nice enough, but she wasn't as enthusiastic as Anahi was, which was no surprise, but there hadn't been time to go looking in more stores in hopes of finding something better.

But now it is after midnight (oops!), and I need to do my yoga and get some sleep so that I can be at work at 08:00 tomorrow, so I will have to describe the trip home and the loot I brought back on another occasion (if I remember).

It has been an emotional couple of days as the news from Seattle alternates between scary and encouraging. Luckily, I haven't had to spend that time alone. Yesterday, when I felt I had done enough work I went over to Villiam's apartment, where we baked Melting Moments cookies, a Cloud Berry Pie, and a Orange Cake, all of which he will take to Phire this afternoon for practice. That got us to late enough in the day Seattle time that my sisters were finally awake, and they encouraged the suggestion that I fly over as soon as I could. So I borrowed his computer and had a look, and there were actually some tickets at fairly reasonable prices leaving the next day. However, I was pretty certain I would need my passport number to book them, so I hopped on my trike home and settled into the computer to book the flights. Doing so made me somewhat nervous, since my family has a bit of a tradition of people booking flights to go see a sick relative, but having them die before the flight could get there, meaning there is a small voice in the back of my mind saying "if you don't book the flights she will enjoy a full recovery". However, I also know that my mom has an amazing ability to recover from stuff that would have killed someone else, and she is just contrary enough to break a tradition if she doesn't think it is a good one. So flights booked.

It did take way longer than usual entering the flights into google calendar, in part because my focus wasn't where it normally is, but in part because I was also talking on the phone with David and carrying on typed conversations in FB Messenger. Since David would be getting up really early to pick me up at 05:00 to take me to the airport I didn't ask him to come over, even though I needed a hug. Instead I sent Villiam a message and asked if he were available to come over. He was, but needed half an hour to finish up what he was doing, which gave me time to update my finances with the price of the plane tickets and the other spending that had happened in the past day or three, send emails to those of my colleagues who need to know that I will be gone, etc.

Normally when Villiam is over we work on projects, play music, juggle, or something. Yesterday we just sat on the couch, me curled up in his lap and talked. Exactly what I needed, and it was perfect to restore me to something more like my normal emotional equilibrium. He went home at 22:40, and I went back to doing useful tasks on the computer for an hour and then talked on the phone with Hjalmar (my other unrequited love, who is in Lund just now doing research for his Master's degree) for a good 40 minutes. Eventually I shut down the computer, finished packing, and tiding up the house a bit, did my (unusually short) yoga session, and went to bed for a 45 minute nap before time to get back up and head to the airport.

David arrived just before 05:00, but which time I had finished packing food from the fridge into my backpack for the flight, and we drove to my office, where I picked up the computer and left a note on my door saying "Seattle, åter 13 Dec", and we drove to the airport. While there he took a moment to use my computer (which I hadn't turned off yet) to check dropbox and his password protected file to look up the password he uses for the Kindle account so that we could get my phone access to it again, so I would have books to take with me. Then he went on his way and I cleared security, without remembering to empty the last 500 ml of water from my backpack, but just put the bag through the xray without thinking of it, and they didn't say a word about it. They did use the little paper thingie over my phone baldric checking to be certain I hadn't been playing in explosives with it recently, but, of course, I hadn't.

Since I knew that Stockholm now has the bus from terminal 4 to terminal 5 which means one doesn't have to go through security again in Stockholm, I re-filled my camelback with a generous amount of water before the flight. I had just time enough to download the books I wanted into the Kindle app on the phone, but not the one audio book, it was only partway done when it was time for boarding. The flight was empty enough I had my row of three seats to myself, so I lay down and slept comfortably for most of the flight, and then got yet another turn of good luck: our flight came in at the international terminal, so those of us with connections to international flights could go out the front door of the plane, while those leaving the plane in Stockholm or with a domestic connecting flight (most folk) used the rear door (which I guess lead to a bus to go to the other terminal).

As soon as we landed I got an SMS from SAS advising that my flight to New York has a new departure time of 13:40 (instead of 12:25), so I made a point of asking at a service counter, but she assured me that I would still have 1.5 hours in New York to clear customs and get to my next flight, which, with a US passport, should be enough time. But I think I will plan to walk briskly.

My sisters tell me that mom is doing better, and the prospect of so many visitors seems to have really perked her up. Her big sister arrived already Monday night from Alaska, I will get there Tuesday evening, and my step sister Kirsty will arrive from Australia on Wednesday during the day. This will be the first time we four girls have been together since 2010, which makes this trip extra special.

I have heard from many friends in Seattle who want to see me when I am there, and am looking forward to that, too. I don't know if I will manage to see everyone, that depends on how mom is doing, as she gets first dibs on my time, but since she has healing to do she will need to rest regularly, and then, perhaps, I can go play with my SCA family as well. Some of them will want to see mom too.

Now it is 10:00 and I think I will go do some yoga and see if I can find a nice corner for a nap before my next flight.

As some of you may remember, my mother lives in Seattle with my sister, her husband, and their two daughters. This year my sister and her family had decided that it was time to spend the holidays in Oaxaca, Mexico, with his family, but my mother opted not to join them on that trip (mom can handle very basic Spanish, but can't follow a conversation that is actually interesting). Instead she planned to spend her birthday (19 December) in San Francisco with my step-sister and then return to Seattle for the rest of the year.

I am told that she had a fabulous birthday party in San Fran, involving foods from pretty much everywhere she has ever lived and lots of singing and playing of both guitar and banjo (yay for musical guests, one of whom went to high school with me--his mother and mine used to be really close, but, sadly, she died some years back). However, before flying back to Seattle, she got the call that her little sister in Milwaukee had suffered a stroke. After consultation with various family members it was decided that her big sister would fly from Alaska to Seattle, mom would fly back to Seattle (and pack warmer clothes than she had taken to California), and then the two of them would fly back to Wisconsin more or less together (I think they actually got different flights, but close enough to the same time to share transport to and from the airport).

Sadly, such plans take time to enact, and it turns out that while mom and her big sister made it to Milwaukee safe and sound, they got there about an hour after their little sister had died. This is at least twice now that someone in my family wasn't able to hang on until the people flying there to say good bye were able to arrive. When my step-dad died he did so while two of my sisters were flying to Australia to see him. But death happens when it will, and while we can do things to bring it sooner, it is damned hard to deny or put off, never mind that we have a medical industry dedicated to learning more and more ways to do just that. Then again, quality of life matters--while "not dead" is an amazingly awesome goal in and of itself, one also needs to be able to enjoy living in the body--what we really need is to get to the point that we can deny death in such a way that the survivor has a body which will let them do everything they would wish to be alive to do...

So, now my mom is in Wisconsin, with her one remaining sibling (they lost their brother to a brain tumor many years ago) and I don't know how many nieces, nephews, etc. (mom's little sister had three kids, all of whom have lots of kids each, and Wisconsin is also where her brother's son and his large family live, and where one of her big sister's five kids lives). I hope that the visit turns out to be one that is full of joy and laughter amid the shared grief and mourning, and that the visit becomes a treasured memory for her.

I really want to go post a "good bye" note on my Aunt's FB wall, but her kids haven't shared anything publicly yet--right now there are only "good luck" and "heal well" kind of notes on her wall, and I don't want to say anything in public till her kids are ready to do so. Which, given the time zone difference won't be for many hours anyway--it is still the middle of the night there.

Really puts this cold that has been bothering me into perspective--I may be low energy and coughing out ick, but my brain works, and I am not likely to die. This doesn't stop me from wanting to be back to 100% already, mind you.

With midsummer past, and C back down to Gothenburg for a bit I had expected that we would make a bit more progress on the earth cellar in the evenings after he got home from work this week. However, it turns out that one of his brothers has his vacation now, and took the opportunity to drive up from the south a really big lorry with an open back that almost looks like an oversized dump truck, but it doesn't dump. Instead its sides fold down so that one can put stuff onto and off of the bed with a fork lift. Since he was doing the drive anyway, he took the opportunity to bring us some tree parts--he had cut down an oak, a cherry, and an apple tree on his property, and since he knows we want to build musical instruments he offered the wood too us. We gladly said yes, but our circular saw can't cut things more than 4" tall (I have no idea why these boys, who live in a metric country and normally use centimeters, chose to refer to wood thickness in inches, but they did), so his brother pre-cut the oak trunk into 4" slabs, and loaded up the chunks + the smaller unsliced trunks and branches and brought them north.

The boys have been discussing for quite some time (possibly years since first mention) cleaning up their dad's property at Hemmingsmark. They grew up in that village, and when the kids were grown and their parents decided to move to a house they built themselves overlooking the water near Piteå they sold the part of the farm the house was on, but kept the largely forested (+ a couple of small fields) property across the street. Their property on the water wasn't that big, and didn't have a lot of out-buildings, so the Hemmingsmark land was where they stored stuff (three old shipping containers full of things the kids left behind when they moved out, and stuff the parents weren't using anymore, plus things like the tractor and digger which also were stored there, and where they took the wood they cut from their other forest properties to chop and spit it into firewood to keep the house warm in the winter. However, in addition to storing stuff that might once again be useful, there had also accumulated a few piles of things that won't be useful (including a very old shed that had collapsed from age).

Now that their parents have moved to a beautiful old farm, with plenty of property and outbuildings they have decided to quit storing stuff at Hemmingsmark, and to move the heavy equipment to the new farm, too. Therefore it is finally time to do the cleaning up and organizing of the Hemmingsmark property.

Therefore, after lord_kjar got off of work on Monday we drove down there (75 minute drive) to help the two brothers who had been hard at work there all day. We arrived on time to be given the task of taking off the extra roof that had been over the gap between two of the containers, which provided a dry place to store the cut and split firewood to keep it dry before moving it to the houses where it would be burned.

So up the roof he and I went. He has done lots of on-roof related tasks over the years--they built their parent's last house, and have done more than one re-roofing project together. Therefore, after we took off the corrugated metal over roof exposing the widely spaced wooden boards nailed crosswise over the old telephone poles, which stretch from one container to the other, he continued to move rapidly and with confidence, using his crowbar to pull nails out of the boards from a standing, and bent over position. I, on the other hand, have only ever been on roofs to enjoy the view (but that fairly often--mom couldn't keep us kids off of the roof, even after my sister managed to hurt herself pretty badly by slipping when she was climbing down the tree). Therefore instead of standing up to use the crowbar, I sat down on the boards for better stability, and then pried up the nails. This, of course, meant that he managed to pull far more nails than I did (we won't discuss the fact that his longer muscles + testosterone means that he would have still pulled them faster, even if he had been sitting down and couldn't move as fast from one to the next), yet he still appreciated my help--together the job was done faster than he could have managed it.

That first evening we had time only for that, loading the above mentioned nice wood onto the trailer, and discussing the plans for the next night. Then it was home, arriving around midnight, which meant that by the time yoga was done and we were ready for bed it was 01:00.

Tuesday we both went to work, and then again went to Hemmingsmark, where he and I removed the old straw from an old shed, took the rest of the way apart the above mentioned collapsed shed and sorted the components into keep (corrugated metal roof pieces), add to the growing bonfire pile (the old wood), and trash (the tarp that had been nailed over it some many years back), loaded the boards from the roof we had disassembled yesterday onto our trailer to take home to use in the extra shed that we are planning on putting up here (we bought the logs for it the autumn before last, but haven't had a chance to set it up yet--that one will likely be where the forge lives when we get to it), and gathered up more stuff to add to the bonfire pile. In the meanwhile his brothers used the digger to pick up pieces of the old broken huge piece of heavy equipment (too broken to even guess what it had been, but it is larger than the digger, which is huge) onto the back of that above mentioned truck to haul away to where one disposes of large scrap metal. This took long enough that it was 12:30 before we got home.

Wednesday we had planned on heading there again, but at the last minute they sent him to Jokkmokk for work, so he didn't get home from work till almost 22:00, after which he had to spend some time at the computer doing paperwork to close out cases he had been working on this week so that accounting could do their month-end tasks.

Thursday afternoon was ( clean the water pipes day )
Today being Friday, and my normal day off, I returned all of the stuff to that room, slightly better organized than before, finished building a set of pattens, and did lots of laundry. It isn't yet decided if we are going to Hemmingsmark again nor not tonight. I kind of hope we stay home. I still have a few things I want to do to get ready for the SCA event that I will be heading to next week. On the other hand, all of that time driving back and forth means that we have been making great progress reading aloud from Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. He is really loving the story (we are past most of the major plot revelations now--just a few last complications to deal with), and I am enjoying it even more on the second read than the first, and I really liked the first (I have always been an addicted re-reader, and this story lends itself very well to multiple reads). Once we finish it we can buy the next in the series, and this time I can read it out loud on my first read, which has the advantage in that we can pause and speculate together how things will turn out, since neither of us knows.

Sometime back when regular access to the internet for normal folk was young one of my first cousins, in Wisconsin, received an e-mail from a guy in Sweden with the same last name, wondering if they were related. My cousin didn't know, so referred the question to my mother, who had been updating the family tree. Mom and the guy in Sweden compared notes and determined that their grandfathers had been brothers (which makes them second cousins). Years later mom and my step dad did a round-the-world trip, which included a stop in Sweden to meet that guy and his family (his parents had moved there from Finland in the 1960's), and they really enjoyed the trip. Years thereafter mom came to visit me while I was living in Italy, and we contacted her second cousin to see if they wanted another visit.

He had since moved to Finland, and suggested that we meet at the old family home in northern Finland, so we did, and had a great time. Now (nearly two years later) mom is once again visiting me for a month, so we decided to go back and visit the cousins in Finland once again. This time we were close enough to drive.

Therefore we set out from Luleå on Friday around mid-day, and five hours later we arrived in Oulainen. The couple we stayed with are an aunt and uncle of that first contact person (which makes them first cousins to my grandfather). They used to live in Sweden, so lord_kjar and I spoke to them in Swedish, and mom did her best to use Finnish. Fortunately, two of their daughters also visited, so we had people who could translate Finnish for us. They are all delightful people, and it was a joy to stay with them.

On Saturday we went to the home of another cousin, where we met tons of other relatives and ate lots and lots of good food. On Sunday we went to the home of another cousin, and met more family, and ate more good food. I feel very lucky that we liked everyone we met and had much fun visiting with them.

Both lord_kjar and I made progress on our nålbinding projects, which fascinated our family, none of whom had ever seen it before. One of the cousins (who is the same age as my mom, but is actually her father's first cousin) was so interested that I did my best to teach her how. However, she doesn't speak English or Swedish, so it was a bit of a challenge as I could really only demonstrate (anyone who has links to good Finnish Language web pages on nålbinding are welcome to let me know so that I can send them to her).

Mom enjoyed her visit, so we left her there. We will go back next weekend to collect her. With luck she will be a little better at Finnish than she was when she arrived. (She spoke Finnish as a child, but once her grandparents died when she was 7 years old her family largely quit using that language, so she doesn't remember all that much of it.)

On the drive home I read out loud to lord_kjar from The Wise Man's Fear. This is the first time either of us have read this book, and we haven't had a chance for me to read to him since before mom arrived, since we have been so busy, so it was nice to get a number of chapters in to it. It amused us both that he reduced to a couple of sentences a series of adventures that other authors would have devoted a full novel to. We are looking forward to reading the rest of the book, though we may not have time till we drive back to Finland next weekend...

I am pleased to report that for most of the drive wherein I wasn't reading aloud he and I spoke to one another in Swedish. I am getting better at it...

I have been meaning to post about my adventures over easter weekend, but haven't spent all that much time on the computer since then, so haven't gotten to it. However, I know that I have taken too much time to get to it because my mother sent me a facebook message asking about the trip. (Note: oddly enough, I can't actually access FB today, so I couldn't reply to her there if I wanted to. Is anyone else having issues with FB?)

( Easter weekend adventures, including a train trip, family visits, and a gaming con )It wasn't until Sunday evening that we finally got around to actually playing in a role-playing game instead of board games and card games. Part of that was the fact that I am limited to games running in English, and not everyone is interested in running them in English, partly because we were having fun with what we were doing, so didn't really look all that hard for role-playing games. But since it is a role-playing game con, we thought it would be fun to participate in one.

The one we played is called "While the World Ends" (or "Medan världen går under" in Swedish). It was written by a friend of ours, so we travelled 19 hours each way to play a game with someone who lives within walking distance. However, the game was much fun, and totally worth the trip. ( a description of the game mechanics for this game plus some of our story )

This was my first experience in "story based" roleplaying games, and I quite liked it. Unlike traditional role playing games, which have complex rules (usually focused on combat), this game had very little need for dice, and only six-sided dice were needed at all. The emphasis was on creating an interesting story. I have always described myself as a reader, not a writer, so I was a bit sceptical before the game began. However, as it turns out, the cooperative nature and the formula for the start makes it easy for even non-writers to participate in the creation of the story and to enjoy the process. I started out content to let the others come up with the first scenes, but once I'd seen how it worked it was easy to become inspired as to what sort of things my character might try to do to achieve his goal of getting the job in the lab, and then suggest scenes in which he could try them. Perhaps all those years of reading have paid off.
( I bought some books )

The train ride home was just as nice as the trip down, and involved some hanging out and chatting (I am rather enjoying being involved with someone with whom I can spend nearly every waking hour of a long weekend, and we still have plenty to talk about on the journey home), some reading, and lots and lots of sleeping.
( this week's adventures and fitness goals )

On Friday mom and I flew to Finland. We left my apartment at 08:00, flew to Helsinki, and changed planes for the flight to Oulu, which is near the mid-point (north to south) of the country. We were met there by my mother's second cousin, who had driven the seven hours north from the Helsinki area just to pick us up. He took us the 100 km south to the home of one of his aunts, where we stayed for the weekend. We arrived at their house at 20:00, so not quite 12 hours of travel, given the one-hour time change.

A number of other relatives were there, and they greeted us with "a light snack", which consisted of karjalan piirakka, complete with the egg-butter accompaniment, and thin pancakes with strawberry topping. Since my sister (who did her high school exchange in Finland, had told me that I had to try the karjalan piirakka while I was there, it was delightful to be served them as soon as we arrived. The evening was spent getting to know the small group (~8) and trying to learn their names. Mom had the advantage there, as she'd met some of them back in 2002 when she visited some of them in Sweden (many Fins moved to Sweden in the 1960's looking for work, a number of our cousins included--a few of them have returned to Finland in the past few years).


Saturday morning I went for a walk with one of the cousins--there is a lovely trail that starts near their house which is a lighted ski-trail in the winter, but is still a hiking trail just now. Then we joined the more extended family at the Tyyskä house. In the old days in Finland it was the houses which were named, and families took their names from the house. The original house is no longer there, but the replacement, built in the 1950's is still there, still occupied by family, and still in good shape. There were around 30 of us there for a noon meal, which was mostly yummy baked goods. The older folk didn't speak much English, but there were enough from the younger generations who did who were happy to translate.

The differences in the generations are amusing--my mother's grandfather was the eldest child in his family, and the people we met on this trip are descended from a couple of his younger siblings, who stayed in Finland when he moved to the US. Because of the difference in ages between those siblings, combined with differences of when they choose to have their children the "aunts and uncles" we met this trip are all the same age as my mother, but their children, who are the same number of generations removed from the common ancestor as my mother, are mostly younger than I am.

While at the old family home they took us to see the old "smoke sauna" they still have, and compared it with the more modern stove sauna, and the even more modern electric sauna. The "smoke sauna has no stove pipe--the fire is built in a large box, which has rocks on top, and the smoke works its way out between the rocks. As a result the walls are black with soot, and the room smells quite smoky. I don't think I'd care to use that one! The next sauna has a wood stove, with a stove pipe, so the smoke goes away, and the walls are nice, clean, bare wood. That stove also is covered with rocks, which retain the heat and help heat the room. It is necessary to replace the rocks every few years as they loose their heat capacity with repeated use. The electric sauna is more convenient, but all agreed that it wasn't as nice.

After the lunch party broke up we were taken to see the house where my mother's father had been born. His parents moved to the US twice. Once before he was born; his elder brother was born in the US. Then they returned to Finland for a few years, and my grandfather was born there. Then, when he was two years old they returned to the States, this time for good. One of the older uncles says that he can recall his parents getting letters from mom's grandfather when he was young. However, mom has no memory of her grandfather ever mentioning family in Finland, so she was rather surprised when a Finnish cousin (living in Sweden at the time) contacted her to see if they were related (he'd been given her address by the son of mom's brother, who still has the surname Tyyskä, since my cousin didn't have a copy of the family tree, but knew that my mother did).

We returned to the house at which we were staying on time for the evening meal, at 16:00. Can I tell you how very pleased I was to be visiting people who like their meals on the same schedule my body wants them? So many people in other places think that the evening meal should be hours later than that, but I need my food early! Many of the people who had been to the afternoon gathering made it for dinner too, and a few others who hadn't been able to attend the afternoon as well. It was a delightful evening full of good food, good company, and good music. After most people went home they warmed up the sauna, and we took turns enjoying that relaxation (their sauna is inside the house, and rather small--two at a time is actually a very reasonable number for that sauna, though I would have prefered more company).

Sunday morning we had time for more visiting with our hosts and the other family who had been spending the most time with us before we had to return to the airport for the flights home. Even though it was such a short visit both mom and I felt amazingly welcomed, and like we fit in and belonged. I want to meet my cousins Carola and Carina, who still live in Sweden--their mother says I not only resemble them, but have some of the same gestures and patterns of movement. We were all sad when it was time to leave, and tears were shed from more than one eye. I'm so glad we went, and I look forward to keeping in touch with these delightful, kind, generous people.

Most of the photos are on mom's camera, and we don't have the cable to get them off of that, so sharing them will have to wait till she returns to the US next week...

Needless to say, I made no progress on my uni work while there (though I did remember to read my 1000 words a day each day--I'm up to 277 days in a row this time--that is 70% of the days that have happened since starting my post-doc, and 25% of the days since I decided to start reading 1000 words of geologic literature a day). Today I managed to make some progress on my speech for an upcoming talk, and made a new MgO tube for the next experiment I will run. I've got about an hour left available this evening for work before I need to head home--it is important that I be on day shift next week, so I will start this week, and see if I can keep to the schedule.

Or perhaps it is the computer issues. Or perhaps having lots of work to do and job applications to complete. Whatever it is, I have not been posting as often as I once did.

So, what have I been up to? My mother arrived on Saturday afternoon. I took the bus out to the airport to meet her, and we took the train to the city center and then the Metro home from there. That gave me enough time to finally complete both my three-fingered gloves and my fingerless gloves that had been nearly done since returning from the Textile Forum. Our entertainment of the evening was cooking dinner (I had the foresight to leave bread dough rising so that it was ready to bake when we got home) and a short stroll around the neighbourhood.

Sunday morning we did a bit of sight-seeing in the city center before we went to a bbq hosted by the other SCA family in Milan. They had some non-SCA other guests, and a very pleasant time was had by all. Having finished my two nålbinding projects in progress the day before, I started a new one from the beautiful dark blue baby llama wool that followed me home from Vienna. The highlight of our morning sightseeing, for me, was heading up to the roof of the cathedral to admire the view of the Alps. Since it had rained heavily on Friday and Saturday the air was clear, and the full range was very visible. Mom choose to relax and people-watch on a bench while I went up the roof; she isn't fond of heights. She commented "even seeing those people up there gives me vertigo". Then she pointed to the roof, and I realized that we could, in fact, see people up there--much to my surprise, since we were standing on the far side of the cathedral than the part of the roof I have normally visited. Accordingly, when I reached the roof this time, instead of ignoring the short side-passage with the sign pointing to the lift (elevator for the Americans in my audience) I decided to walk down it. Much to my surprise, the passage went further than I'd guessed, and led not only to the lift, but to the whole other half of the roof. So I wound spending a good 30 minutes up there exploring the parts I'd not yet seen, as well as returning to my favorite part (the highest part they will let us access) and admiring the view). Luckily mom enjoyed her people-watching, though, perhaps, not as much as I enjoyed my time "up".

Monday and Tuesday I worked during the day, with slightly longer than usual lunch breaks to spend with her, and in the evenings we worked on my CV and cover letter for one of my job applications. Today I submitted that application--it wasn't actually due till Friday, but I don't like leaving such things to the last day, and I am scheduled to use the microprobe tomorrow. Then I looked at the calender, and saw that two others are due on Monday. Since we are planing on heading out of town on adventures this weekend, I decided that I may as well apply for them today, too. Now that I've done the major revisions of the application packets for the one I submitted last week, and the one I did early today, it was a fairly easy matter to assemble relevant paragraphs and edit the job-specific info to make two new application packets. Perhaps if the other two were in as desirable a location as the first I would have taken a bit more time with them. But at least all three sound like fun jobs. This brings my total to 12 positions applied to since 30 June, and 8 more with due-dates between 15 Oct and 10 Dec. It will be interesting to see how many lead to interviews. I'm not as hopeful for the ones summited earlier, but I feel that the recent packets were quite good, and I would be surprised if none of them make interview stage. Then again--it matters just as much who else is applying, so anything is possible.

My progress report for the week: Welded shut a capsule for my next experiment on my first try, and it felt easy. Temperature really does matter. Don't bother trying to do this in the summer--wait till it cools off, the stress of failure isn't worth it, and you won't get one to work, anyway. Still need to do one more, but then again, we already decided that we wouldn't run the next experiment till we see the results from the last, and I'm not scheduled for more microprobe time till tomorrow. I guess this means that I had better do more welding on Friday morning before mom and I pick up our rental car and head to the Schnals Valley (where I lived for a week during the Textile Forum).

We decided not to go to Cairo--my cousin there is doing a lot of travel for work just now, so wouldn't have been available to properly host us, and the temperatures there are, he reports, still around 95 F. However, the following weekend we are flying to Finland to visit family--descendants of her grandfather's brother, who remained in Finland when her grandfather moved to the US. She's met one of them before (with whom we've made the arrangements), but this will be my first time to meet any of them.

After a delightful visit with cousins in Copper Center I drove back to Wasillia with my cousins K. & R. on Christmas Eve. We left there about 15:30, so as evening was coming on, but it was still light enough to see the mountains when we left behind the broad valley of the Copper River basin and started up into the hills. After we passed Gunsight Mountain (I am ashamed to admit that I'd been driving past that mountain for years before I made the connection between the name of the peak at that distinctive square notch in the peak which resembles the notch in a gun used for sighting) we stopped at a pull out so the boys could fire a few tracer shots from their .50 caliber. They shot at the bluff on the far side of the river (checking the topo map when we got home, the bluff was about a mile from the highway at that point). Since the bullets were moving directly away from us they looked to be moving rather slowly, in a pretty red arc (though I know that were they coming towards us they would have been moving much to quickly to avoid if we were unfortunate enough to be in their path). One of the shots hit the top of the bluff and ricocheted back up into the air for a bit. It is really kind of impressive that tool users are able to throw the functional equivalent of a rock for such a great distance, really. Pity that the only two reasons one might do so are 1) for the fun of seeing it fly (like we did) or 2) to cause harm to another (sadly, the reason the technology was developed). Soon after we returned to the road we passed the cute little octagonal cabin that I loved as a child--I'd make up any number of stories about living in it and enjoying the mountains every day, instead of just driving through them once every month or so to see family up north to entertain myself as we drove. A bit further south we passed a small peak with the official name of Lion Head Rock, but which my cousins always said looked like a nipple, but my sister and I, who must have been hungry when first we saw it, thought looked like a chicken drumstick laying up against the side of a hill (the photo in the link isn't quite taken from the correct angle to show that illusion--I couldn't find one taken from the correct spot, and it was too dark for me to take a photo whilst driving). No matter what one thinks it looks like, it is easy to tell from looking at it that it is what is left of the core of an old volcano, like Pilot Rock in Oregon. Funny that I never noticed that before, even though I have done this drive a few times since I started studying geology. It took my cousin mentioning in conversation that is what the peak is, about an hour before we passed it on the way up to get me to say "yes, that is exactly what it looks like!". When I was young the four-hour drive seemed to take ages, but now it seems pretty quick, and it took little more time before we were passing King Mountain, and not much longer there after before we were back at K's house in Wasillia.

We enjoyed a quite Chirstmas Eve with his wife, sons, and a friend of theirs who is visiting from the lower '48, and I got to sleep by 01:00. I heard him and his two-year old moving by 07:30, and though I could easily have gone back to sleep, I decided that since I was sleeping on an air-mattress in front of the tree, I should probably get up so that when they were ready to unwrap presents I'd be out of the way. Cousin R. came back out to enjoy Chirstmas dinner with us, as did K's wife's dad, step-mom, and two dogs (both of whom are as quiet and well-mannered as K's dog). We had a lovely feast, at which I ate more than I should, and during the course of the day I stitched up a small Christmas tree ornament for them. They were pleased to receive a hand-made gift, and I had the fun of making it. I took photos, but, alas, I left the connecting cable for the camera in Italy, so sharing it will have to wait till I return next month. After dinner I got a ride with R. back to Anchorage to the home of my SCA brother, who owns his own house (purchased two years ago, when he was only 20). I may well wind up going to stay with other folk between now and when I fly to Fairbanks, but since there is a guest room here I've unpacked my suitcase into the closet--if I go spend a day or two elsewhere I'll just take a change of clothes in my carry-on luggage, rather than dragging along everything, including the costumes brought for events.

They've bid me to make myself at home, and gave me free reign in the kitchen, so I baked more braided bread today. I love having friends and family who will let me do that.

While I've called a few people, no one has been home, so it looks like I'll probably make it an early night and catch up on my sleep, and see if I can finish shaking off the hint of sniffles that I've picked up in my travels.

I arrived in Anchorage on Monday afternoon, after a pleasant flight wherin I accomplished more sewing on my winter coat in progress, getting the cuffs and collar attached (thus making it much more wearable!). Before boarding the plane I enjoyed one of those "small world" moments which is so common in Alaska. A woman sat down next to me in the boarding area, and we got to chatting. I thought she looked kind of familiar, and just then she shifted her boarding pass so that I could see her name. Causing me to say "wait, I know you!". She is the mother of one of my highschool boyfriends, and one of my friends on Facebook. I wouldn't have recognized her name if not for the latter--she changed back to her maiden name after her second divorce years ago, but when I knew her she was using the surname of her children's father. She told me that she thought I looked familiar too, and had been thinking to herself that I looked to be about the same age as her kids, and wondering if I had attended Steller.

I was met at the airport by a friend with whom I had attended highschool. He and I didn't really get to know one another then--he was several grades ahead of me, and I idolized his circle of friends, but didn't hang out with them. However, we've gotten to know one another via facebook, and he'd sent me a message saying that if I made it back to Alaska I should come visit, so I took him up on it. I'm glad I did, I had much fun hanging out with his family. They let me play in the kitchen, baking them an apple pie on Monday after dinner. I do them they way my aunt taught me, piling fresh sliced apples more than twice the hight of the pie plate and covering them with spiced sugar and a bit of butter before doming the pie crust over all. Then bake a short time in a hot oven, to get the crust to solidify in place before turning the heat down and letting the apples cook down till they just fill the shell bottom. They've got a *nice* stove/oven. After the pie went into the oven we played Settlers of Cattan till after midnight. (There are advantages to visiting during school holidays--the kids are permitted to stay up late if they are behaving themselves and being pleasant company.) On Tuesday I baked a particularly soft and yummy braided loaf of bread, using buttermilk for the liquid. Tuesday afternoon I went for a short walk to admire the view--it is so nice to be back in Anchorage and have the lovely Chugach Range for a backdrop. I'm also overjoyed to be some place with real snow again. Tuesday evening I went sledding for the first time in at least a decade. Fun! I should really do this more often.

On Wednesday morning I was picked up by my cousin R., and we drove out to Wasilla to his brother K.'s house. After a brief visit there we three drove up to Copper Center (about four hour drive north) to the home of their brother S. I truly enjoyed that drive--the mountains through which we drive are beautiful. We used to do that drive quite a few times a year when I was a kid, since my cousins lived in the Sourdough area. Even when I was little I'd spend the drive with my eyes glued to the window admiring the beauty of the mountains.

We arrived as S.'s wife K. was finishing up some holiday pies, and she let me make the bread dough for the breadsticks for her holiday party today. Since she had a half gallon of cream in the fridge I opted for a rich loaf--I used two cups of cream, two of milk, two eggs, and some hot water for the liquid, added about a half a stick of butter, a spoonful of honey, and enough flour (mostly white, but some whole wheat) to make up enough dough for six loaves of bread (she's expecting 43 people for tonight's gathering). We three pans of breadsticks, and then I showed her how to make crescent rolls with the rest of the dough. Again the bread came out very soft and yummy, and we've eaten a fair few of the rolls already, and guests aren't expected to start arriving for hours.

I won't see the arrival of the guests. K., R., and I will be driving back to Wasilla this afternoon so that K. can spend Christmas with his wife and sons. R. will be flying out on Tuesday, and I'll probably be spending time with friends in Anchorage after Christmas and before I fly to Fairbanks on the 30th. Now I just need to contact people and make arrangements for where I will be going next. Sure hope they let me do baking wherever I wind up, too, I'm liking having access to better ovens than the tiny toaster oven I've got in Milan.