kareina

 Today I managed to re-gather all of the documents needed to get access to the shire bank account as kassör (treasurer/exchequer). The same information we sent them in August which they never got. Now I just need to get signatures from all the other relavant shire members and we can try sending it in again.

 The first few days of the week I had to commute to the office due to meetings, but the office is in a state of transition. The library at the uni is being renovated, and now that they have finished the roof they are ready to start on the indoor sections that include our offices. This means that the uni had to find other offices for us, and the result is a couple of corridors in another building, but most of us are going to wind up in large shared rooms, with up to 10 of us sharing a space. So at Wednesday's departmental meeting our boss explained that we will all need to be extra considerate of one another in the shared space and try not to make unnecessary noise. He reminded me that there are a number of small enclosed rooms available for telephone calls, and there are a variety of meeting rooms we can book, and we can always have walking meetings if needed. I don't think any of us are particularly looking forward to the new space, with the possible exception of Theresa, who tried to encourage the others in the research data group to join her working in the office on Monday and Tuesday, saying that when the movers show up to collect her things she will just pick up her notebook computer (which is all she ever uses--no external monitor at all) and walk to the new office. The rest of us have packed up the cables for our external keyboards, mice, and monitors etc. into boxes, which have been labeled as per instructions, taken our notebook computers home, and we will work from home until the movers have had time to move our desks, monitors, and packed boxes. I welcome the excuse to work from home!

Monday morning's meeting wasn't held in our corridor, but rather in a meeting room in the library of the Umeå Uni Art Campus, which is down by the river. So I took the morning bus one stop further than normal, to the University Hospital, and then had a lovely 20 minute walk down the hill. That was a half day planning meeting to work out what our group priorities are for this spring. Even though we had a break for fika, with some yummy pastries provided, by the time we were done I was starving, so I went straight to the staff lunch room of that library and warmed up my soup. My colleagues presumably went up the hill together, I didn't see them again after that. After eating I walked up the hill, chatting with Keldor on the phone as I did. Just as I got to the University Hospital at 12:30 and precisely as I reached the specific bus stop that my homeward bound bus stops at, it pulled up to the stop.  I had been wondering if I should check the bus schedule and see if there was a bus soon, or if I should go up to the office and do some archive work till my normal 14:30 bus. This lovely coincidence of the bus appearing without my needing to wait even 20 seconds, I hopped on it, and worked on the bus till I got home 1.5 hours later.

On Monday just after I got home from work I got a text message from the city water works saying that we shouldn't use the water from the taps until further notice, not for drinking, not for food prep, and not even for washing. They referred us to the web page or the customer service number for more information. It turns out that they had discovered evidence of a break-in at the Lövånger water treatment plant, and since they couldn't know the motivation, they had to assume that someone had done something to contaminate the water, so they sent samples off to the lab for testing and told us not to use the water, and that boiling it wouldn't help. Therefore they set up some water tanks at several locations in the area for people to come fetch water. Keldor and I were both skeptical of there being anything wrong with the water--we both assumed that anyone trying to poison all of the inhabitants of a small town would be a good enough mastermind criminal as to not leave evidence of a breakin. However, it was convenient for him to stop at his dad's on the way home, pick up an extra large camping style water holder, fill it, and bring it home for drinking water. I opted to do the dishwashing with local tap water, but then rinse them with the water he brought home, but used his water for drinking and cooking. This felt like a reasonable compromise between the gut instinct of "there is nothing wrong with our water" and "but it doesn't hurt to take precautions till the lab sends back the results".

On Wednesday after our morning meeting I got an email that said that my examiners have finally finished checking my corrected thesis, and they are happy with it, so they recommend the degree be awarded; please upload the final copy of the thesis to the University Library thesis repository as soon as possible, and when that is done my name will go on the list for the next degree ceremony. Needless to say, I promptly abandoned my plans to stay on campus and work till the 14:30 bus, but immediately packed my things and headed towards the bus stop. It being a little early for the 12:30 bus I stopped at two cafes on campus to see if either of them had a tempting pastry that would be a good thesis celebration treat, but nothing looked interesting. So instead I walked over to the University Hospital, and, it still being a few minutes before bus time, went into the cafe there. They had a pecan cheesecake that looked good, so I bought a piece of that to go, and happily ate it on the bus before settling in to work.

Once home I clocked out of work early and sat down to my home computer to upload my thesis to the Durham library thesis repository. Then I spent the evening mailing the link to lots of people who had said they would want a copy when it was done. 

Thursday I happily worked from home (and attended the meeting via zoom), finished painting the ceiling in the living room, and baked some yummy purple bread rolls. One of our friends once gave us a big jar of purple flour that is really tasty in bread, but the bread has unpleasant crunchy bits, so I hadn't used it in quite a while. I noticed it again when I did the great pantry cleaning on Sunday evening, and considered tossing it, but I opened it, and smelled the flour, and it smelled really yummy and not the least bit stale, so I just transferred it to the next size down jar, as the jar wasn't full. I asked Keldor what kind of flour it is, but he couldn't remember, so I had him ask the friend who had given it to us, and the answer turns out to be häggbär, which I had never heard of. The Swedish web pages I found mentioning it said that they are small, black stone fruits with a bittersweet taste and an astringent effect on the mucous membranes of the oral cavity. However, they are not poisonous and can be used for juice and liqueur if they are harvested when frostbitten. In the past, they were used to give wine and liqueur a beautiful red color or as a brandy spice. However, our friend gave them to us for baking, so I clicked through the Wikipeda entry to find out that they are Prunus padus, known as bird cherry, hackberry, hagberry, or Mayday tree, and that it is a flowering plant in the rose family. It is a species of cherry. So I asked google for bird cherry recipes, and found someone who makes a cake out of a 50-50 blend of wheat and flour made from dried bird cherry. That blog post said that people are always surprised that there is no almond extract in the cake, and that the almond flavour comes from the pits, which are dried and ground with the fruit. It said that one needs to sift it to seperate the large bits of the pit, and this made so much sense to me. Both why I thought the flour smells so wonderful, as almond is by far my favourite nut, but also why the texture of the unsifted flour in bread wasn't pleasant.

So I tried sifting it, and the bread rolls turned out amazing! That evening my friend Joakim planned to drop by on his way north, so I timed the baking to be done a little before he arrived, and wrapped the basket in towels so that they rolls would still be warm for him, and he liked them too. The only down side to this flour is that you don't see the visual change in colour when the rolls are done, as they are already so purple, so you have to trust the nose alarm, and thump the bottom of the rolls or you risk burning them.

Today I also worked from home, and after work I replied to messages from people thanking me for the link to the thesis. One of the email exchanges triggered a connection in my brain, and I suddenly realised a direction I could try looking for funding to do an archaeology PhD building on my master's research. I had seen earlier this week a notice in the university news about a funding agency that helps researcher and an industry partner hire a PhD student. At the time I thought of my interest in working as an archaeologist with the Lofotr Viking museum, so I sent an email to them, and to J. at the Umeå archaeology department, asking if there might be interest in pursuing that funding, with me as the potential PhD student, and offering to help with the application. Today J. replied saying that I should never give up my quest, but saying that the funding situation isn't bright, and that he has failed to receive that particular funding on other occasions, so it isn't easy, and requires an external partner with a good enough budget to cover half the student's salary. I haven't yet heard back from the museum, but I think they are more interested in collaboration that doesn't cost salary. However, when writing the email to the co-author of the paper I wrote last year I suddenly remembered the nice people who work for the manufacturer of the Laser Ablation machine, and the ICP-MS that I used when working in the laser lab at LTU.

They were both very helpful teaching me to use the equipment. The ICP-MS guy had done his PhD at LTU developing ICP-MS techniques, so when he finished the degree he landed a job with the ICP-MS manufacturer and has happily worked there ever since. 

Today I have sent them both an email, letting them know that I had finished the degree, and where they can download the thesis and data files if they are interested, and sent them a newly updated CV. I described the funding opportunity, explained that it needs an industry partner, and asked if one or both of their companies might be interested in putting together an application with the Umeå University Archaeology department, with me as the potential PhD student. I mentioned that in exchange for funding half my salary at University rates (which are much cheaper than industry pays, but I didn't feel the need to point that out--they know) they would get my focused attention for the three months of internship, acknowledgments for their company in all of the publications arising from the research (a typical PhD by publication dissertation would need at least four journal publications, plus assorted conference publications), and additional exposure for the LA-ICP-MS methodology in the Archaeology community.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere, but if one doesn't ask it really won't, so it is worth a shot. 

The other good news of the day is the message from the city that the Lövånger water tested good and we can drink it and everything again. So Keldor celebrated by taking a long bath as I typed this.

 Thursday I spent the morning doing archive work--data entry recording the information recorded on the outsides of the folders for the various cases the attorney handled. Then I went over to see the eye doc at the university hospital, where they tested everything on my eyes again, and the doctor even did one thing I don't recall ever experiencing before--placed a glass lens directly against my eye and looked through it into my eye. They confirm what had been suspected last week, I do have glaucoma. Not the normal version, wherein one has high eye pressure, but the other kind, with normal eye pressure. Apparently my kind progresses much more slowly, and takes longer before there are any symptoms, and has likely been there, slowly developing for a few years before an optometrist noticed any hints of a problem. With normal glaucoma the usual treatment is to lower the pressure in the eyes to slow down the effects. This isn't so needed when the pressure isn't high.

Instead I will be one of the lab rats in a study to see if certain B-vitamins can help. With luck I will get the vitamins, and they will help. Or perhaps I will get the placebo, and it will help anyway, because I am enough of an optimist to believe. Or perhaps it makes no difference to me personally, but they get enough data from the study to help others. Either way, I will be seeing the eye docs often. Really often. They promise that if my eyes start getting worse they take me out of the study, and start other forms of treatment. However, the doc seemed optimistic that I will keep my sight for the rest of my life. I hope he's correct, I have way too many hobbies that require eyesight. 

Friday I worked from home, and then switched to thesis corrections. I also met a soapstone carver through FB and we started corresponding, and it looks like we will be co-authoring the experimental petrology paper on how well soapstone cooking pots hold heat and keep water boiling that I have been wanting to do for ages, but lacked the pots. He has the pots, and wanted to do the experiments to better teach his customers how to cook with them, so why not work together? He does really beautiful work!

Saturday morning was our fortnightly zoom call with my sisters, and the first time in weeks that all four of us made it, it was good to catch up with them. I had planned to spend the rest of the day doing thesis corrections, but Keldor got up around the time my call finished, and we decided to clean the garage and make room to bring his car in, so he can finish fixing it. He's been driving my car for weeks now, as he waited to get another part and deal with the bothersome bits. I am not really clear about what bits he's changed out, and what still needs doing, but it has to do with the breaks and how they attach to the wheel...

by around 16:00 on Saturday we had found better places for everything that has made the garage an unpleasant room to walk through, the floor was clear and swept, the work bench empty, and the car brought in. Then he celebrated by watching a movie, and I sat down to the computer and did thesis corrections. Sunday he'd planned on doing car repairs, but he woke up with a fever and sore throat, so he spent the day on the couch, sleeping through (and occasionally watching) movies, and I did thesis corrections. I also started an early draft of the paper with my soapstone friend and shared the document on OneDrive. 

Today I worked from home and was really productive. Keldor, feeling much better, went to work. After work I baked some homemade crackers and he did a little work on the car, and then I settled in to doing more thesis corrections. Now I have taken the serious proofreading and checking all the references cited all the way through the end of chapter 7. Only three more chapters to go, and then I can start working on the figures...

We are closing in on a year since I submitted the thesis. Do you think I will manage to get the corrections done and the document re-submitted before a full year has passed? My deadline, from the university perspective isn't till March, but I would so love to get it done sooner. Of course, this coming weekend we will head to Sundsvall for Glötta Gillet, and we have plans for three weekends in December already. This explains why I have started working on it in the evenings, instead of only weekends we aren't traveling...

 My thesis examiners tell me that they liked my thesis. They liked it!!!! They say "Pass", and gave me the choice if I want them to call the list of corrections "major" or "minor". When they heard that I am about to be starting a full-time job, they said that they will described them as "major corrections", so that I will have more time till the deadline with which to accomplish the changes. (It is 3 months allowed to do "minor" changes, and 8 months to do "major", and they feel that their list falls kinda in the middle between the two.) So, sometime in the next 8 months, after I get them my corrections and the paperwork crawls its way through the system, I will be able to officially add "MPhil, Archaeology, Durham University" to my list of titles.

They will give me the full, official, list of corrections in the next week or so, but we went through the thesis chapter by chapter, and they told me what they liked, and what they think needs fixing, and I agree with their viewpoints, so I can already start doing some of the corrections before the list arrives. One of the biggies, is chapter nine--the research paper in preparation, which I had hoped to already have submitted, but for which I am still awaiting the final comments from my co-author. I had moved it into an appendix before submission, to bring the thesis word count down to a more reasonable number. After I submitted my primary supervisor said that she really felt that the paper needs to be in the main thesis, and please put it back. So I contacted the people in office where the submissions go, and they said that it would be ok to resubmit with that change, so I put it back, fixed all chapter and page numbers, and re--submitted it the next day. My examiners suggest that I put that paper in the appendix, that it adds nothing to the overall narrative of the document. This I will happily do. If I am really lucky my other supervisor will get me those comments, and we can submit it, and then the appendix will list a submitted paper, rather than an "in preparation" document...

I worked 212.2 hours in December in order to get my thesis done on time to submit on the 30th. The last week was especially intense (ramping up: 9:44 hours on Thursday, 15:11 hours on Saturday, and 16:47 hours on Sunday), as my supervisor didn't have time to start reading it and making suggestions for improvements till after Christmas. However, she is very good with her suggestions, and kept adding them for several days, during which time I was doing the work to make the changes as fast as I could, while she kept reading and making suggestions... which meant that I wasn't able to complete the full list of suggestions, which means that my examiners are very likely to ask for corrections before I pass. I can cope with that. Done enough is beautiful for now.

This has been an interesting document to write the whole "your funding is up, you failed to bring in new funding, so now it is write the thesis this term or you start paying tuition out of your own pocket" thing meant that everything got really compressed. In terms of Durham regulations, I still have a couple of years half-time left to do the work. I don't have that kind of budget though, so nope. Done.

So to write it, I came up with a document structure, wrote the outline, and started writing sections. Saw how little time was left, went back to other sections and stuck in a little rough skelton-level text to seperate the some of the headings from one another a bit, then went back to work on the hard science parts that are the meat of the thesis. Got one section more or less done, and fleshed out a little of the skeleton bits. Then went and worked properly on another hard-science sections. Then tossed a little more meat towards the exposed bones in the archaeology sections, before working on the final hard science bit and getting it properly done, intending to go back and do a read-through and figure out what more needs doing to properly round out the barely fleshed over (and in some places bare bones) parts, but... that was when my supervisor started making suggestions, starting with the archaeology chapters, so the suggestions were very much along the lines of "you need more analysis here", and "why have you cited so few of the important papers here--add the rest" kind of level. This made deciding where to start easy, I started from the beginning and worked through the suggestions as fast as I could. Then, when she sent me the "done" note, I jumped to the discussion and conclusions sections, and did all of those changes before jumping back to the middle and continuing working, right up to the point where I really, really needed to just compile out of Scrivner and check the Word document for issues with headings and figure numbers. At that point I check my word count totals for the sections, and I was at 62K words for the thesis itself, not counting figures and tables, references, or appendix.  The web page I had last consulted had said that the MPhil is max 60,000 words, so I decided to move the research paper draft from Chapter 9 to the appendix, which brought the total to 54k words. Then I did the compile and check for issues with headings and figure numbers.

Solved those issues, and finally got a good copy.  Then it was just formatting and sticking in the appendixes, which had already been compiled to a good version weeks ago, and adjust the page numbers so that before the introduction they are i, ii, iii, etc., and then it goes from page 1 at the Introduction, and keeps counting across the borders to the appendices.  I managed to get it to a clean pdf and submitted around 20:00, and sent my supervisors an email, with a link to the pdf for their records, letting them know I had moved the paper, and why.

The next morning I woke to an email from my main supervisor saying that it was a shame I had moved the paper draft, as it had important and well developed discussions, and the examiners don't have to read the appendix, and the paper is a better length with it, as it should be "around 60 k words, and without it, it is a little short". That was a Sunday, so no human would have seen it yet, so I decided to make a new pdf, with the paper back in place as Chapter 9 and upload it as well, along with a note about my supervisor preferring the version with it as chapter 9, and I would leave it to the admin office which version is given to the examiners.

Having spent a couple of hours doing the clean up of the compiled document to fix the formatting and make a nice pdf I wasn't looking forward to doing it again, and was feeling tired, kinda brain-dead, and rushed to get to the part of spending time with my houseguests, who had arrived the day before, while I was still working. This probably explains why I didn't think of the easy solution right away, and tried to just power through the ordeal of a new compile. I powered too hard.  I opened Scrivener, and the second the program looked open I grabbed the paper, and dragged it to the correct location in the binder. And things froze up.  Tired, frustrated, and totally lacking in patience (see above list for hours worked, and understand that sleep hadn't much happened all week), rather than waiting for whatever process was happening in the background to finish, I opened the windows task manager and closed the program. I Do Not recommend doing this. When I reopened Scrivener it gave me an error message about problems with the search index and suggested I try rebuilding the search index. I did this, after which the program happily presented me with the complete list of all of the documents, sub documents, and research sections that should be there, but said that there are zero words in any of them.

For the past months I have been backing up my data every evening when I was done.  Scrivner makes a backup file automatically each time I shut down, and the next day overwrites it with the next day's backup file, so, in addition to synchronizing all of the folders I use with their copies on the external hard drive,  I have also been copying those backups over, into alternate day folders. Right up to Friday night. Saturday, when I submitted the thesis I didn't have the attention span left to wait for that backup to finish being created, and walked away from the computer, and didn't remember to copy it to D drive before I opened Scrivner to make the change to the position of that paper, and it somehow also got corrupted in the process of breaking the file. Oops.

In my panic I decided that I needed to take the backup of the day before, which is nearly complete, but lacks more than 16 hours of work, and start copying in the revised text from the thesis. So saved a copy of the broken version, in case it becomes possible to fix later, and moved Friday's backup into the active folder, and started copying over the changes from the Word document. It didn't take long to realize that this was going to take ages to do, and I wasn't going to be able to enjoy the company of my house guests during the day, before the New Year's party started. So I went out and asked for suggestions as to what to do, and Sofie came in, got me to explain the problem, what I had done, and that while the Scrivener file has problems, both the Word doc and the pdf have all of the data.

At this point I realized that I don't actually have to do anything in Scrivner to move that Chapter. It is a simple copy-paste job in Word, and then I need to change the chapter title by hand for three chapters, only one of which has a single sub heading that also needed a new number. It took no more than five minutes.  If I had had the brain to do that in the first place, I wouldn't have broken the Scrivener file, nor had an extra hour of stress and misery on Sunday morning.

So, the revised file got submitted, along with a note saying:


Yesterday I got a note from the admin office that recieved it saying they would pass on the second version to the examiners, and that the max word count for the MPhil is 70K, so I am good.  Today I have sent Scrivener support an email asking if they might be able to fix the corrupt files, if so please let me know how best to share them. If they can't (or won't) I will have some hours work to get Scrivener files up to date again, but it is doable. In that case, I think my best bet will be to import the Word document into Scrivener in a new section, labeled "as submitted--archive", and then open each section of the document with the original and as submitted side by side to see what is different and update the original (which has lots of links to the cards for the things cited, and for other sections, etc, which are worth retaining, which is why I am not going to just completely replace the text using the Word version--those links don't exist in the complied to Word version).

Luckily, it will be some weeks before the examiners will have had time to read it, and I only need these files working by the time they come back with a "make these corrections" suggestions.

Weeks ago, at my supervisor's suggestion, the thesis got re-arranged into a part one and a part two, with chapters in a different order. It took several days to get the headings set to the right levels for their new places  so that when compiled the automatically generated hierarchal number system for the chapter sections worked as they should.  Sunday evening my supervisor looked at it for the first time since then, and said that I shouldn't have incorporated the part number into the numbering scheme, and I shouldn't have let part two start over with a new chapter 2.  Sigh. It took all day yesterday to get everything switched over to the correct heading levels so that the new numbering system works properly. I agree with her--by letting the part numbers be part of the hierarchical number scheme they did gett to many levels in the number.  But it meant that yesterday was all about fixing that, and not writing what needs to be written...

 It is my birthday today.  The sixth time I turn seven (by my unusual prefered method of counting age, wherein one ages "normally" till 12, then starts over again with a new childhood at 3, and ages up to 12 again before starting over for the next childhood).

Normally I love birthdays, but this year it is more about trying to finish the thesis.  Today I was up at 05:30 an did half an hour work before my fortnightly zoom call with my sisters, which was a shorter one than normal, then back to work for nearly two hours before my tummy demanded breakfast. Now that I have eaten I will resume work as soon as this posts, and see how much I can accomplish before we head in to town for the shire crafts day, Lucia celebration, and business meeting. Then it will be grocery shopping (since we are in town), and home again, where I hope to make a little more thesis progress before bed.

Yesterday I baked an apple cake in my silicone castle cake pan to take with us and share today. The batter was yummy, and I also baked a tiny test cake in my mini pan, so we could test it. A dense, moist cake, and not sweet (because I have no sweet tooth, so other than the apples, there was only a half cup sugar to the 5 cups of flour in that batter.

This week I have been writing up the comparison of  the laser result for my project, which included making an overview image of which minerals are in which sample. I am quite happy with how it came out.  That part of the project is nearly done, and it will be a relief when it is.

Oh--I got a letter yesterday!  A real letter (emailed, but a real letter nonetheless, with paragraphs and everything, not just a "happy birthday" message) from an old friend (madbaker 's fuzzy upstairs neighbour) I haven't heard from in ages. It made me very happy to hear how he's doing and that he was thinking of me, and I need to make certain I reply soon and let him know how happy it made me to get it, but first I will try to finish this section of the thesis. (So madbaker, if you see him before I reply, feel free to tell him so!)

 I just heard back from my thesis supervisor, and she and our department Postgraduate Research Co-ordinator have worked things out with Admissions and the Business office, and they will be able to turn in new paperwork, to change my enrollment to the MPhil.  They have done the math to count how many months I have been enrolled vs on suspension since starting in 2018, and I am good in my timing for this degree. So long as I turn in my thesis before 31 December it is all good, and I won't need to pay any more fees.  She said that if the examiners don't think my work is good enough for the MPhil, they can recommend downgrading further to the Masters by Research (in theory, the could also recommend upgrading to a PhD, but I am not going to hold my breath on that, and she didn't suggest it as a possibility, implying that she wouldn't were she the examiner for this).

So it looks like I don't get a holiday this winter, but will be working right up till the new year and time to start job hunting. But, if I do it well, I get another cool degree.

Remember when I said months ago that I was drawing the line, and would do no further data processing for this thesis, and the unprocessed samples wouldn't get done?  Yah, right.

I realised that while I didn't have a budget to get my hands on any artefacts from Swedish museums to analyse them to test my provanincing technique, I do have (in addition to the two artefact bits that my friend in Denmark sent me from Hedeby), one piece of medieval building stone from Nidaros Cathedral, which they sent me in 2018 along with the samples from the various quarries they use. At the time they let me know that the stone probably came from one of the two quarries nearest the Cathedral itself, one of which is only two km away from the Cathedral, but has been built over with an apartment complex, so no further quarrying is being done there (and so I don't have a sample that is known to come from there), and the other of which is about 14 km away, and they did send me a sample that is known to come from that location.

Consulting the geologic map, and it turns out that both of those quarries are from the same rock unit in the Trondheim Nappe Complex. There are a handful of other quarries from which I have samples that also come from the Trondheim Nappe Complex, but from different rock units. In theory the rocks from the same rock unit will have a shared temperature and pressure history as they formed, but the ones from other rock units will be a bit (or a lot) different.  My approach to provancing relies on both the "these are the same" part, and "those are different" parts.  

So when I sat down to write up the chapter on the test cases I realised that to do it justice I really need to be able to compare all of the maps made from samples in the same nappe complex as my "unknown", which meant doing a fast version of the data processing, just to get images, and enough of a sense of what minerals have what trace elements,  This sill took all week, because five of them hadn't been done yet (but this is way faster than then 3 to 5 days per map needed to do the full processing wherein I am fully confident in the results). But it was worth the delay (yes, even with the submission deadline looming overhead), as now I can confirm that yes, the sample that might come from one of two quarries in the same rock unit does have the same trace element accessory mineral signature as the one that does come from one of them, and they are both very different from all of the other quarries in the same nappe complex.  (If I ever have a budget to do more analyses I want to go to Trondheim, find that apartment complex, and see if I can get a bit of rock from the hill under it, just to see if both quarries have the same signature (I suspect that they do, being from the same rock unit, and since the craftspeople at the Cathedral restoration workshop can't tell them apart when working on them), or if my "unknown" can be shown to come from the same quarry as it matches.

After I got the figures made (see the two links above), and finished the associated writing yesterday I thought to go to bed at a reasonable hour (with respect to Keldor's work schedule, my schedule doesn't care when I do stuff), but when I didn't fall asleep after resting an hour, I hopped back up and sat down at the computer, and copied the list of research questions I posed in chapter 1 into the conclusions chapter, and answered all of them.  So now that is done, and I got to bed at 04:00, where I slept for 4.5 hours (not counting the little time I was awake to talk with Keldor and then say goodbye, when he left at 05:30).

Now I have "only" to move the discussion stuff I had previously written in the final chapter to the earlier relevant chapters, so that the data and the discussions for each topic are together, so I can let the conclusions chapter stand alone as the bare list of questions and answers, and fill in the various highlighted holes that say "write this", which are scattered here and there in the document, and then clean it up, prune out redundant text and make certain that it flows well enough to make sense.  On time to turn it in on the 24th, before we depart for Glotta Gillet in the Shire of Gyllengran. Sounds doable, right?

Friday morning we had booked the annual car inspection. Since we've never found the time to fix the brakes on Keldor's car (which went last spring--life has been busy), he's been commuting to work in the van. Therefore we had to pick a time that would be doable during his work day. Alas, by the time we actually went into the web page to book, the only time left at the most convenient inspection station was 07:50 on Friday, which, given that he is normally at work at 06:00 is a bit late, but he liked the idea of sleeping in, so he told work he would be late on Friday, we slept in, then drove south together for the inspection. There are two issues that need dealing with, both of which he thinks he can solve on his own, but won't know for certain till he looks. One is wear on the back brake pad, the other is the "spindelled" (I have no idea what that might be in English) on the front tires. We can change to winter tires in October, so the plan is to have a look (and possibly solve the problem?) next week. If it turns out to be beyond his automobile maintenance skills that will leave enough time to throw money at the problem before the deadline to have it done and the car re-inspected.

On the way home we saw a sign saying that it is the weekend for the Harvest Market in our town, and he was feeling tired, so he changed his status with work from "planning to be late" to "will return on Monday" and took a nap while I worked, then during lunch we went in to the market, where we got some fresh veg, some locally produced cheese, and he found a very nice pair of knit, thick felted mittens for only 140 kr. He also bought some shampoo made of tar, not because he has a problem with dandruff or psoriasis (what it is intended to help), but because he loves the smell of tar, I don't much like the smell, so he's taking that bottle to work, since his job is messy enough that he showers every day before coming home, and that should give the smell enough time to dissipate before I hug him again.

Then I resumed work, which is to say learning how to make Scrivener's automatic numbering feature work for everything I need it to do for the thesis, which takes time, but should be very helpful once it is entirely set up, while he worked on carving a scroll into a chunk of moose antler for their Highnesses to present this weekend.

On Saturday I spent the morning working, while he did more on the scroll, then we drove in to Skelleftehamn for Þórólfr's birthday, where he introduced us to the game Dixit, which is a lot of fun. I think it would be fun to make a bunch of cards from period manuscripts, to play at events (not that I will ever have time to do this). When it was time to go a couple of friends asked for a lift to Skellefteå, so, since we were in the area, we also stopped by the big grocery store to get a few things, and by the hardware store next door to pick up things he needed for house projects.

Sunday during the day we worked on home improvement projects--I got the garage door done while he made and installed the box outside the bedroom window cat door, which features two windows. The remaining side wall will be opened up to a passage to the outdoor cat enclosure, as soon as he gets that part built. 

Then he wanted some ice cream, so we walked up to the local store to get him some, and I bought some whipping cream and mascarpone to continue my experiments on almond mousse, and the evening was spent relaxing (and playing in the kitchen).

This week I need to finish getting my thesis automatic numbering working, and then start writing the parts that aren't yet done. Next weekend is Höstdansen in Uma.