kareina

It has been busy around here. Let me sum up:

I had till the 18th of June to submit my comments in reply to the evaluation for the project proposal I had submitted with my job application, which meant that most of my energy the week before Spelmansstämman went to working on that, so that it was mostly done and sent to my supervisor for feedback before the weekend. This meant that I was able to enjoy the event. Concert Friday evening (14 June), during intermission I was part of the Herrskaps Dance performance, in my new dress from 1795. I am happy with how it came out. Not pretty, as that style never is, but looking right for the style. I even did my front hair in ringlets sticking out from under the bonnet. After the concert we went to the dance, where I danced every dance (other than the ones I missed as I was using the toilet) till 23:00, when it was my turn to flip burgers for an hour. Then home, yoga, shower, and sleep and get up again the next morning at 08:00 to get ready for the day.

Saturday (15 June) I attended the song workshop at 10:00, and our folk dance performance was just after noon (the audience reacts audibly to my cartwheel at the end of Røros Pols, and "flying" with David at the end of Slang Polska, which I think it kinda cool), the rest of the a lot of time just relaxing and listening to music, working on sewing projects and chatting. Then I went home for food and rest, and returned on time to help out with the beginning Swedish Folk dance at 19:00, and then danced the rest of the evening till my turn to flip burgers at 23:00, followed by heading home, yoga, shower and bed.

Sunday I had thought to go back to the event, but then I realised that I really ought to finish up my list of relevant course work to be turned in with the comments in response to the evaluation and pack for my flight and try to tidy up the house a bit, so I stayed home and took care of all that.

I landed in the airport at Uppsala at 22:30 that night, and David's big brother picked me up and took me back to their place. They gave me a bed in the basement, which was great as it wasn't too hot down there.

Monday through Thursday was busy with classes for the Things that Matter 5: Material Culture for the Digital Age course, which were fun and informative. Monday evening I joined my classmates for the free dinner, but since I didn't expect to be hungry that hour I brought along a plastic box and just put all of my food straight into the box so I could have it for lunch the next two days. The other evenings I just went back to the house and enjoyed hanging out with Johan and Johanna.

The class was scheduled to go through to Friday morning, but, of course, I flew home Thursday evening, so I could participate in the Midsummer dance performances. My flight was delayed just enough that there wasn't time to head home before heading to the train station to pick up Nick and Jes, friends from Australia who have been travelling in northern Norway. After we got them we stopped at the grocery store to stock up, went home and spent a bit of time visiting before they went downstairs to sleep, and I unpacked, did yoga, and went to bed.

This morning I woke up early enough to do a workout (I didn't even try to do one while in Uppsala) before the others got up. Then we had enough time to hang out some before packing lunch and putting on costumes. I loaned Jess my spare folk dance skirt, the pretty apron I made for Kim's wedding, a shirt, and shawl. David arrived to pick us up just as we were ready to head out the door, which was perfect.

Even though there was no official midsummer brunch this year, many of us dancers and musicians brought out own food and ate together anyway, which was fun. Then we quickly cleaned up and went across the street to the park, where we did the mini parade in, raised the pole and danced all the traditional dances around it, did our folk dance performance, and then went into town to the other park, where we did it all again, plus some of us changed costumes and did the Herrskapsdans performance too. Sadly, the sun came out just on time for that last one, so we got rather hot and sweaty. After the public went home we set up tables in the hall and had a traditional midsummer dinner to celebrate 60 years in a row of Luleå Hembygdsgille doing the midsummer celebration at the park.

After dinner David, Caroline, Nick, Jess, and I had a nice time sitting around and talking in the living room, and I did yoga. When the others went back to the apartment and downstairs for the night I took a moment to catch up here.

Tomorrow I have another Herrskapsdans performance at 13:00, and hope that we can get in some sort of other adventure before or after that, but it is supposed to rain...

Today, despite going to bed after 01:00, I still woke up early enough to shovel a little snow before I really had to head to work (and only managed that because I opted to take the bus). Today was the first lab day of a PhD student who wanted to know which phases in her sample contain vanadium, so we did tiny maps of her samples. This process was complicated by a repeated weird error, where the laser would drive the sample stage to the new location, and then just sit there for a while, doing nothing, and then display a notice explaining that it had timed out while waiting for the stage to move. Of course, when it does this in the middle of an experiment then the ICP-MS sits there waiting for the laser to fire, which it isn't going to do, because of the error, which means that I needed to stop the experiment each time (though now, many hours later, and much too late, I can't help but wonder, what would have happened if I had just manually fired the laser, would the ICP-MS would have been happy and then gone on to do the next step?), which then triggered another problem we have always had--if one stops the ICP-MS experiment in the middle, and then tries to resume it, the ICP-MS will send a signal to the laser to move to the next spot, which the laser will do, and then the ICP-MS will flash an error message complaining that it couldn't move the laser and it will then shut down the experiment. I know from experience that the only way to get the ICP-MS out of this loop is to re-start the computer. These issues combined in such a way that we spent a total of 7.5 hours in the lab, running three maps, each of which would have taken only 25 minutes if everything had gone smoothly.

By the time I was done I was DONE, and just wanted to go home, but it was only a bit more than 1.5 hours till Phrie practice was meant to start, so I decided to just relax in my office and look at mail for a bit, and then I was inspired to take the time to write up notes about how the experiment had gone, before I forgot, which meant that I wound up arriving at practice about 3 minutes late. At first it looked like it would be a quiet day, since there were only three of us at that point, but as I was finishing warming up a new girl arrived who asked about the Aerial Silks. Villiam volunteered to go get them from storage, and while he was gone she and I started doing Acroyoga. She had tried a little Acroyoga years ago, but claimed to not remember much. However, she has done lots of climbing and Aerial silks, which means that she has the core strength and flexibility needed, and she had no problems flying or basing anything we tried. Then she showed me some stuff on the silks. I need to train for them more. There was one thing, where one crosses the fabric behind one's back and then wedges one's upper body between them which I know is possible, as I saw her do it, but I couldn't get to work--I could get my head into that space, but I didn't have the strength (or the trick of it) to get my arms through so I could get my shoulders through. Oh well, next time!

I was having so much fun at practice I nearly forgot that I was supposed to leave early so I could get to Herskapsdans. Luckily I remembered at just the right time, so was able to head out the door and go pick up David's car from the apartment and drive out to Gammelstad, where I arrived just as we were starting to dance. I really love that dance style--dances from the 1700's. The ones we are doing are from a handwritten dance manual that was written by a man who lived here in Luleå and took the time to write both the sheet music and the dance steps for a number of dances. That manual was found back in the 1990's in a dumpster outside of a house that was being demolished, and it was rescued and, eventually, gotten to dancers who were able to use knowledge of other dances to work out what the descriptions were meant to convey.

While dancing tonight I realised (probably again) part of why I am so fond of the style--it reminds me of Hole in the Wall, which was the dance we did at my first ever real SCA event, in 1982. The recording they had at that event was a long one, which meant that those of us who had never done it before had time to figure it out and get it working, and I fell in love with dancing then and there (I had never really done any dancing before then). It was years later than I found out that Hole in the Wall is actually from the late 1600's (nearly 1700's) and that is why it is so different from all of the other dances we do in the SCA. However, I still love the dance, and if anyone at an event requests it, and the musicians are willing to play it, I will still teach it, but I do specify that it is NOT period. I am willing to do some out of period things at events, but only if it is made clear that while it is taking place at the event, that doesn't mean it is medieval.

I shouldn't be surprised that they day was so busy, life just is. Tuesday was leave the house at 07:30, work till time for Phire training, then acroyoga and juggling, followed by choir, and finally home at nearly 21:00, where we discovered that there had been a long enough power failure during the day to use up the UPS that is attached to the server, which had then shut down, but not long enough to drain the UPS attached to my computer (which was still on). I hung out will David till after 22:00, then checked email and spent more than an hour finishing up an application for some travel funding to attend a couple of conferences in the spring.

Monday I had the car at the house, which meant I had time to do a half an hour workout before work. At work I had an email from the technician who had been here, and who sent me the replacement parts to install on Friday, who gave me a suggestion for one more thing to try, and IT WORKED! Helium now flows through the line again, and I can use the laser to run experiments. In celebration I ran a couple of maps that my boss wanted me to do for her. They didn't finish till 18:00, at which point I walked home and spent the evening doing useful things, like updating my finances and paying for SCA events I have registered for, and working out how I will get to Crown (car pool with a friend from Skellefteå).

The weekend was delightful. Linda L. was in town, so she came over on Saturday and spent the night and went back to her partner's parent's house on Sunday. It was so good to see her. We hung out and talked and cuddled. We traded massage, I curled up with a book while she and David worked out some old issues and got themselves back to being friends again. I read out loud to her (hrj's short stories Hoywverch and Hyddwen, which, even after several readings, some out loud to others, I still feel are two of the best short stories I have ever read. (Note: the link to podcastle.com on the above link for Hoywverch will actually take you directly to the published version of the story, but on the above link for Hyddwen, if you click on the podcastle.com link it takes you to the most recent podcast they have done, and you need to copy-paste (or re-type if you prefer) the name of the story to search for it there.)

On Sunday I finally finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I very much enjoyed. I did notice one thing which felt to me like a dropped thread (stop reading here if you haven't read the book and don't like spoilers). The story states that Strange's mother had died three days after going out walking in bad weather, just like his wife. However, it turns out that his wife had actually been replaced with a chunk of black oak, which died and got buried in her stead while she went off to Lost Hope to spend her life dancing at endless balls. When Strange arrived at Lost Hope he winds up talking to a woman who seemed familiar to him, and who complained that she had been there dancing, etc. for "four thousand years" (at which point we are treated to a footnote explaining that in the fairy culture that phrase means only " a very long time", and that they mostly don't actually measure time at all). I am very convinced that this woman is Strange's mother, and I was rather disappointed that this thread wasn't cleared up by the end of the book, but we are left dangling, with no way to confirm or deny this assumption. What do the rest of you think?

I wound up staying up too late again last night. Right as I was ready to put down the computer and do yoga I was suddenly inspired to copy some more of my journal posts from on line and into Scrivener. Sure, there may be a way to just import them, but I am having fun taking them in one at a time and glancing at them as I do, adding key words, and, where I had had links, making certain to copy in the link address as well. I now have all of my entries for this calendar year in Scrivener (and am typing this one here in the first place, and then will post it when done. But by the time I got the last of this year’s posts copied it was around 01:30, and there was yoga still to do before bed. Oops. So I didn’t wake up till after 08:00, which was fine, since the plan for today was to work from home till my 11:00 meeting with my advisor in Durham, which still gave me some hours to accomplish stuff before the meeting. And then a bit more, as she wound up not being available till 11:30 after all. As soon as the meeting was over I grabbed a quick bite to eat and hurried in to Uni, where I met our new post doc and my boss’s nephew and took them to the lab and ran a laser experiment. The boy is 15 years old, and he is spending the week following his aunt and as many of her colleagues as will make time for him around and getting a picture of what it is like to work at a university. He will need to write up a report of his time here, and I suspect that his teacher will wonder just how many different businesses he went to, given how many different people she has found to share parts of their day with him.

However, taking time to explain what was happening as I set up the experiment meant that the experiment didn’t finish running till 16:15, so I was late to Parkour (which starts at 16:00). Johan met me there, so we did some acroyoga and some of the vaulting exercises of the Parkour session. When that was over I had just time to walk past the store and pick up a few groceries and head home, where I had almost 10 minutes to relax before time to go to the Herrskaps dance class, which was, as always much fun. We had live music this time, since it was the last class of the term, and that was nice. One of tonight’s dances was called “Den 57de Januarii 1762” (The 57th of January, 1762), which I think would be a perfect name for the dance book that they are going to publish of these dances.