kareina

 I managed to work productively before lunch, but never made myself return to the computer after eating my artichoke, which was followed by a bowl of popcorn. Oops. Such low energy, but not sleepy,so didn't take a nap, just read. At least ot was the book i am reading for Swedish class, which I am now much further along than we should be for Monday. 

This weekend one of my friends had a birthday party that he called "69+", which I thought was a great name for a 70th birthday. It was scheduled for Saturday evening, and I had promised to help out by baking a vegetarian pie for it. I invited my friend Julia to spend the afternoon with me and then join me at the party.

Therefore I got up on Friday morning, made a big batch of pie crust dough and filled all of my pie plates, and realized that now that Caroline has moved out and taken her big pie plate with her I now no longer have enough in the house to use up an entire batch of pie crust dough (6 cups flour, 2 cups butter, 1 egg, 1 T lemon juice, some salt, and ~3/4 cup water). We have, however acquired an oval Pyrex baking dish with very straight/vertical sides, which was just big enough to use the last of the dough.

So I put most of the pie plates and dough into the freezer for future pie baking convenience, and baked one large pie for the party (filled with grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, beaten eggs and milk with a bit of grated Parmesan cheese, and sprinkled with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds). While that was baking I thawed some left over cooked reindeer, in a sauce of kale, broccoli and coconut cream, mixed it with ground almonds, milk, a little egg, and some rice flour, and poured that over a layer of grated broccoli and zucchini, alfalfa sprouts, shredded kale. I then sprinkled the top with sunflower seeds and sesame seeds.

While that was baking I chopped some apple, mixed it with red currants, then combined 2 cups of oats with 1 cup chopped pecans, some butter, cinnamon, cardamom, and 1/4 cup of sugar, over which I poured the last of the milk in the container and let the oats absorb it a bit till the second pie was ready to come out. Then I pressed the oat mixture over the fruit and baked that too. When it came out of the oven I put the pie with reindeer in it back into the oven to keep warm and went and picked Julia up. We enjoyed the reindeer pie for lunch, then went out and played on the sledding hill for an hour (we were both surprised when we looked at the clock and realized how much time had elapsed), and then went back in and ate the apple-berry-nut cobbler. After desert and a bit more conversation we took a nap on the couch/recliner, and then got up just on time to head to the party.

The party also had a theme of "Det Glada 20-talet" ("The roaring 20's"), which I had forgotten about (and failed to type into the calendar listing for the party (the problem with paper invites is that one needs to re-type things into the calendar, and it is easy to get lazy and not copy over everything). However, many others remembered, and were dressed appropriately. A surprising number of Göran's friends own Flapper's dresses and/or long stings of pearls and/or headbands that look right for that decade (with or without feathers or sequins). One guy was dressed with the right overalls and hat to be perfect working on a train from that era.

Before dinner they had a quiz posted on the walls with questions from the 1920's, only a few of which I could answer (e.g. Charles Lindberg's plane was called the Spirit of St. Louis), and quite a few I couldn't (e.g. what caused the great stock market crash?). Towards the end of dinner they announced the results from the quiz--about six different people/small groups managed to get 9 of 12 correct and were tied for first place, so they drew one at random to get the prize (a bag of snacks).

Early on during the dinner Göran took the time to introduce everyone one present to us, with nice words about each of us and how we met/know him. Then, after everyone had eaten the meal, and we had done some group singing (while Göran played guitar) his wife, Eva (my folk dance teacher), went around the room and assigned us all a number (from 1 to 8), and then told us that each of the eight groups needed to gather and decide how we will introduce Göran to the assembly, and she invited us to tell a story, give a speech, do a song, or dance, or whatever we liked.

My group was mostly people from Luleå Hembygdsgille (As were most, but not all, groups), and we decided to sing about Göran. One of the ladies suggested that we use a tune from a Swedish Folk Song that Göran is very fond of, which I really liked, indeed the phrase "Han heter Göran" scans perfectly to the first line of that song. However, as soon as two of the others said they didn't know that song she immediately refused to let us use that tune. Instead we used one of the songs in the sing-along book that Göran had made for the occasion, though it felt to me like cheating, since we didn't need to change many words (I did find it annoying that she refused to use the first tune "because not everyone knows it", but didn't care that I had never heard the song we did use. But only because I thought that one time they sung it for me was plenty to be able to sing along, so why couldn't they?)

The original song is called "Fia Jansson", written in 1900 by Emil Norlander to the tune of Cachucha (which, in its turn, had been popular from teh early 1800's). There is a recording of it from 1906 on line here. (It also inspired a 1944 film called "Fia Jansson från Söder") The first verse says:

Känner ni Fia Jansson som bor uppå söder?
Hon har förresten två stycken vindögda bröder.
En av dem heter Hammarlund en heter Schröder.
Här skall ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder.

Which means, more or less "Do you (all) know Fia Jannson, who lives in the south? She has, by the way, two cross-eyed brothers. One of them is named Hammarlund, one is named Schröder. Here shall you (all) see a heart which claps and shines." (Followed by several other verses)

The version my group wrote says:

"Vi känner Göran Matteson som bor här i Lule.
Han gillar sång och dans och så allting some kulé.
Dalmanen kom som skattmas hit upp ifrån söder.
Här kan ni se ett hjärta som klappar och glöder"

Which means "We know Goran Matteson, who lives here in Luleå (note: the river is the River Lule, and the town at the mouth of the river, these days, is called Luleå (as the one at the end of the Pite river is called Piteå, and so on), but the older names for these places is without the terminal å, and many locals still use the short form of the name, and it is thus totally appropriate to leave off the å in a song to make it scan and/or rhyme). He likes song and dance and so all things cool. The man from Dalarna came collecting here up from the south. Here you (all) can see a heart that claps and glows".

We then repeated the tune a second time using "Tralla" instead of words, after which Birger explained that we didn't do the second verse with Tralla because we had run out of things to say about Göran, but because of Göran's habit of teaching complicated new tunes to the other musicians by picking up the violin, playing two or three notes, then putting it down and saying that he will just "Tralla" it instead, and then sing the tune so that they can learn it.

Much to my surprise we were the only group to have done a full on song, but one of the other groups did a chanted (rap like) introduction, with finger snapping and vocal back up.

Between the gathering in groups to decide what we would present and the actual presentations they served a ton of very tasty looking desert, but, of course, that late in the evening I was no longer hungry. Then we cleared away the tables and the musicians started playing, and I, of course, danced for the rest of the evening. It was a good chance to keep teaching Julia Swedish Folk dance (she comes from Åland, which is in Finland (though it is totally Swedish speaking), so she had done some Finnish folk dance in school, but no Swedish folk dance), and when she was tired I danced with others, or by myself. The musicians put away their instruments to head home a bit before midnight, so I called it a night, too, and dropped Julia off at home. When I got home I looked at the Frostheim fighter's FB page to determine that yes, there was a practice scheduled for 10:00 on Sunday, so I sent Julia a message asking if she wanted to go, and she did.

She wisely went straight to sleep after that conversation, but I stayed up packing my armour, packing lunch for the next day, and tidying up the house before yoga. Before sleeping I did some math to figure out what time I should leave the next morning to pick her up and still be on time for practice. I woke up a bit after the dawn light was at full bright, and hopped out of bed, put the lunch into a cooler bag, loaded up the car, had breakfast, and started driving. Then looked at the clock, saw that it was only 08:30, which was really early for a 10:00 arrival, so I pulled over in a parking area, sent her a message, and we decided to do the after-practice errands first. So we got petrol, went grocery shopping, and arrived at the practice site at 9:40, just as the one with the key arrived to let us in.

I introduced Julia to the others and explained that while she doesn't know the SCA she has done blunt metal sword fighting with a Viking group in Åland, and could they explain to her the differences. I might have joined them for the unarmoured training, but the first thing they did was a "warm up game" wherin one tries to use a glove held loosely in the hand to hit the other guy behind the knee, and that didn't sound fun to me. so instead I spend 25 minutes practicing hand stands, climbing on the tiny climbing wall in that gym, and other active things, then I took out my gambeson in progress that I haven't worked on or touched at all in many months (years?) and started sewing it again. Now that I have lost my pretty viking coat I need a new one, and this one happens to be cut in a viking coat pattern. It won't be as pretty (it is a gambeson, after all), but why not finish it before I start one in nice fabric?

After practice I dropped her off at home and spent the afternoon reading fiction and napping, and then finally started working on my thesis later in the evening. As it turns out, the several hours I did that night meant that I exceeded my thesis goals for the week. ( time spreadsheet and work details here )

This morning started out with fighter practice. The Kingdom's newest knight is up visiting, since we have an event starting on Wednesday, and he grew up up here, so he and his wife are also visiting family and friends as part of their summer holiday. This is the first time he and I have had a chance to fight, and it was much fun. He is similar in build to my own knight (or, more likely, the build my knight had back when I lived with him, which is way more years than I think it is), and his fighting style is similar, too, which helped me be instantly comfortable with him. He tells me that despite my many years off of fighting it is clear that I know how to throw the blows and move smoothly, that what I need to work on is not so much how as when--get the timing down. It was just he, I, and our home-grown viscount in armour today. Two viscounts and a viscountess, and there was no doubt which of us got the title by inspiration, and which by swinging the stick themselves. Despite my lack of prowess I had lots of fun, and I find myself wanting to train more, and see if, perchance, I can make lord_kjar a viscount by inspiration. It is a good goal. Could take a while, not only because of the vast improvements I need to do, but also because the coronet tournaments here are only once in every nine months.

After training I came home and spent the day in the kitchen making:

* 16 pasties with veg, chickpea, and seeds as filling, all of which have been frozen, some of which will come with us to the event this week, and the rest will await other occasions we need food but don't have time to cook.

* one pie using the rest of that filling (because I was tired of rolling out the pasties at that point) half of which we ate for dinner tonight, the rest is in the fridge for tomorrow.

* two cakes--one beetroot, and one chocolate beetroot--I don't like chocolate myself, so I split the batter in half, and put cocoa powder in one and left the other plain so I can have some. That one got sliced and most of it is in the freezer for when we want snacks later. The chocolate one was left out to share with people coming over to sew tomorrow.

* 12 raspberry filled bread rolls, all of which were frozen to take to the event this week.

Once that was done I took my work computer back to uni, since I had some printing to do. I decided that since we have the event this week and this weekend, and next week is back to work that today was a good day to return that computer to my office. While I was there I discovered that the thin sections I ordered last month had arrived, so I spent an hour organizing them and emailing my boss to tell him that this four thin sections were here when he wants them.

After that I made time to read another chapter in The Hobbit to lord_kjar (we just managed to escape prison in barrels) before sitting down to my personal computer to organize files on my phone. Years ago a friend in Tasmania gave me a ton of SCA dance music files, and when I got this phone I copied them onto it, thinking that it could be handy if we ever want to dance on the spur of the moment I would have the music. However, those files were *not* organized, so finding a specific dance wasn't much fun. The copy of those files on my phone are now organized. One folder for Arbeau dances I know, one for Playford dances I know, one for other dances I know, and one folder for "dances I may not know". That last folder has some tunes I have never heard of, but it also has others that I am certain I have danced, but I don't know well enough to teach it without looking up the steps. Once I had them in folders I also went through and edited out the leading numbers from the file names. Now it is much easier to find the dance I am looking for, since it is now possible to sort the folders in alphabetical order.

but after all that (and typing this) it is now 02:00, and I still need to read my 1000 words of geology and do my yoga, so I had best close this here. Tomorrow we are hosting a sewing day here, and Tuesday we head to site to do set up (the fair opens to the public on Wednesday).

On Friday we went sightseeing because we could. archinonlive was on call last weekend, so this weekend they gave him Friday off. We drove to Storforsen, the largest rapids in all of Europe. The ice on the river is only just starting to break up, so the rapids aren't all that rapid, yet, but one can still tell there is an awful lot of water flowing in that river. Then we drove past Hemmingsmark, where he grew up, on our way to his parent's house in Piteå. We spent the evening visiting with his mother (his dad is out of town visiting grandkids in southern Sweden) and stayed the night there. She had to work on Saturday, so we simply enjoyed a morning of peace and quiet. His parent's house is much quieter than ours, not only because it is out in the country, but also because it doesn't have the subtle noises from the computer server in the closet here. I rather enjoyed having the time away from my computer, too.

Saturday afternoon we returned home and that evening we finally tackled the pile of his boxes that we'd taken out of the server closet before my things arrived. It took all evening but we now have a huge pile of empty boxes, several boxes of potentially useful computer parts that he says he will never use and so we will pass them on to someone else, and only a few boxes of useful computer parts that he thinks we should actually keep. I had the easy job for this project--he handed me stuff and told me into which pile to put it, he actually had to make the decisions about what to keep, what to get rid of to a new owner, and what to toss (there was surprisingly little in that category).

Today was a busy one, even by Sunday standards. We went to fighter practice this morning, and I got into armour for the first time in over a year! This is the 163rd time I have ever been in armour in just over 19 years of "fighting". This means I average around 9 times a year. However, most of those times was back when I still lived in Summits, and I left there in 1994, so that average is very misleading.

This was one of the more delightful times in armour. Not because I did well, but because I had a consort to fuss over me. The first thing we did when we got there was to sew the padding into the knees of my new fighting trousers--that alone would have earned him praise for helping me. But then when they were ready and I went to get into my gear he followed me and assisted me with buckles and straps and just generally made himself actually useful, never mind that he has never seen this armour before today. He also helped me pack it all up afterwards, correctly anticipating where things go. After so many years of my being the consort who does such things it is an amazing joy to be the one receiving the attention and fuss!

Much to my delight, my armour actually passed inspection--19 years old, hasn't been touched in over a year, had been in someone else's possession for a big chunk of time shortly before I left Tasmania, and it was still usable! I even got a couple of compliments on the armour from a couple of the fighters (one of whom has really amazingly pretty armour himself, which made the compliment feel even nicer). My fighting will need work, of course, but it was fun to play a bit, especially as I hadn't really expected to be able to after so long of neglecting the gear.

After fighting most of us trooped over to the shop of one of our fighters and helped him move a nice looking huge kiln he just acquired onto a stand and into the appropriate position in the shop. This was the first time I'd seen his shop, and I have a bit of shop envy...

Then we had just time to head home, grab a quick shower and some food before heading to Uni to preform with the Choir at the big Swap for Change event. After we sang we then took our tokens we'd gotten by cleaning out the clothes he never wears from the closet a couple of weeks back, and went shopping with them. We found a few shirts for him, and far more things that fit me, and we gave away a bunch of tokens to another choir member. Quite a nice deal, really--for every item of clothing one donates one can walk away with an item of clothing. We even got them to throw in some hangers, which is good because we don't have enough. I wish I had had enough time when packing things in Milan to have put some hangers in my boxes instead of abandoning them all.

By the time we were done with that it was already time for the Folk Music session we normally attend on Sundays to have started, so we decided to not worry about that and just enjoy some food at a relaxed pace and show up on time for the folk dance session instead. Dance was, as always, much fun. When we got there we were asked if we might be willing to teach the beginning folk dance class next semester--the person who normally does it will be out of town, and the other people who could do it are already over committed. I really like the idea--I have a pretty good handle on the basics now, and teaching it would truly cement the skill for me, and archinonlive has a good decade experience at these dances and speaks Swedish, so he could do the bulk of the teaching. We have a week to decide if we are going to do it or not. I am, of course, voting "yes" on this one, but since he will have the greater responsibility during teaching, he also gets a larger vote.

Since I didn't really work much yesterday, this morning I woke up early and jumped pretty much straight into uni work. Switched back to looking at the monazite results--this time created a figure showing each monazite grain analysed and what ages each spot on the grain turned out to be. Some of the grains show old cores and younger rims (while others are all one age). I then sent a pdf showing this to S., who will be doing a paper on this with me, as soon as I finish my thesis. He agrees that several of the grains look promising, and sometime in the near future we will try doing maps of those grains to see if we can work out if the 700-800 Ma ages on the rims represent a unique episode of metamorphism, or if they are just the result of the 500 Ma metamorphism overprinting the 1300 Ma core. That took about three hours of the morning, then I needed a nap, having gotten up somewhat too early. I sat back down to the computer after my nap intending to work, but no sooner than I sat down and I had a call via Skype from my lovely sister and wonderful mother. I enjoyed visiting with them very much (though we couldn't use our web cams--my dodgy internet connection couldn't handle it--we could see one another, but couldn't hear words, but without the cams we could hear just fine). Not too long after speaking with them clovis_t and I went into town for the special fighter training session that is happening in conjunction with a visit from the Kingdom Earl Marshal. I very much enjoyed the training session, and the conversation afterwards. Then home, intending to do more work. However, I had an e-mail replying to an query I'd made about a European post-doc position which sounded interesting, stating that this particular position is limited to "early career" researchers, which I wouldn't be if one counts from when I completed my Master's degree. However having done no research whatsoever between that degree and starting this one, I do count, but they'd want documentation showing that I wasn't engaged in research during that time. This reminded me of a letter I'd sent on 18 Feb. asking about definitions of "early career researchers" for the purposes of scholarships for a cool sounding seminar on metamorphism & subduction zones. I never received a reply to that letter (and, a first, thought that today's letter was in reply to that one, but it wasn't). As it turns out, the deadline for that seminar has been and gone whilst I was waiting for a reply from them, so I decided what the heck, and just sent in an application anyway, a few days late, explaining that I'd been waiting to hear back from them, but since I just received an answer to my question from another source,I will apply now hoping that they use the same definitions, and provided them a list of the various jobs I've held during the time I wasn't doing research between degrees. I may not get that scholarship, the deadline having passed, but then again, I might, and I won't know if I don't ask!

Tomorrow I have no non-uni plans, so I hope to make major progress on finishing up the writing associated with both the monazite and the other recent microprobe sessions. Once that is done then I just need to check to see if there is any other data I've not yet summarized in my results section of the thesis, and if not I'll be able to start the discussion and conclusions section. My, that would be nice...