kareina

What have I been up to?

Today was an SCA demo at a Scout Camp. The entire camp has a Medieval theme, so we fit right in. Some of the leaders of the Scout group have participated with Frostheim before, and they really appreciated the fact that we could come out. We had the whole afternoon available, so the plan had been to do perhaps half an hour of intro, then a good 40 minutes each of dancing, fencing, and heavy fighting. I liked that plan as I would have time to change out of dancing clothes and into armour while the fencers played. However, plans don't always go according to schedule. My first clue was the morning phone call from the guy who organized the day--he couldn't make it, he needed to take his kid to the doc (it turns out to be Scarlet Fever), but he assured me that the local Count and Countess would still be coming. My first thought was "great--that was our one native Swedish speaker", since my Swedish is still poor, and he comes from England and she is from Finland. However, despite not being a native Swedish speaker, she is fluent in Swedish.

Therefore she did the intro talk, and then I started the kids dancing. We had time to do a farandole and I started to teach them the Maltese Bransle before the rain started. Since it was a decently heavy rain we decided to take a break, and the kids scattered to various places under cover. We stood on the porch for a bit, chatting with some of the Scout leaders, and then decided that since it didn't look like it was going to stop raining anytime soon, perhaps we could move the dancing into the hall. It was a bit crowded, but by having an inner and an outer ring for the bransle we were able to make us all fit. We did several more dances before switching to showing the kids the armour and talking about what we do.

With the organizer of the demo out that left only one person who could have done fencing, so we skipped that part, and instead the knight did a talk (in English, translated by one of the Scout leaders, which I appreciated, as it helped reinforce my slowly growing vocabulary) about fighting, passed around his armour to look at, and then put it on and let me hit him a bit. We decided not to fight in the rain--not only is it not so pleasant for the audience, slippery grass increases the odds of injury, especially for knees and ankles. The room's ceiling was far too low to consider actual combat inside, so we didn't bother to put me in armour at all. After showing them the basic blows the rain stopped, so he took the kids outside and let them take turns hitting him. Everyone seemed to enjoy the day.

This week's two biggest work accomplishments have been filling in paperwork to apply for a visa to visit Russia and resubmitting a paper. The visa paperwork took a while. They wanted to know every country I have visited in the last decade (I opted to list only the most recent visit to countries I have visited more than once), every university I have attended, and all civil, professional, and/or charitable organizations I have ever been a member of. These questions did not exist on the form for my collegues, who have Swedish passports. It was because I am using an Australian passport that I had the extra questions. I am curious as to if I would have had even more questions had I used my US passport, but not curious enough as to actually try it.

Resubmitting the paper was nice and easy. Both reviewers suggested that it be accepted, with minor revisions, and I was able to do most of the revisions on my own (I am extremely grateful for the reviewer who took the time to go through the text and highlight typos--no matter what I typed the first time, rocks are not "wildly" distributed across Tasmania!). There were only four points which I felt necessary to consult with my PhD supervisor, so I emailed him straight away, and the next morning I had a reply. His reply included an offer to write a tricky paragraph if I wanted. My first impulse was to say "yes, please", but then I realized that given the time change and the fact that he would be asleep by the time I saw his message, I had plenty of time to try to write that bit myself and then ask him what he thinks--he would still be free to write it himself if my version didn't make him happy. So I did, and he approved, so I submitted the paper in less than 50 hours from first seeing the letter from the editor giving me the reviewer's comments. With luck the editor will be happy, and I am finally well and truly done with my PhD project, and it (or, rather, a short, sweet, distillation from it) will soon be published.

Last week, and the first part of this week, we had a house guest, which was much fun. She joined me for yoga daily, and we got out and practiced silly people tricks. She didn't make it this far north all that often, but I will still miss her when she moves to France to start her PhD.

Speaking of house guests, we have done some major preparation for my mother's visit next month. Mom won't be able to sleep on a mattress on the floor when she is here, so we have created a space in the office to set up the massage table (legs lowered to the lowest setting) to give her a bed. In order to do this it was necessary to take the project off of the big floor loom which had dominated the office floor and take the loom apart. In order to have someplace to store the loom bits it was necessary to block off the corner of the room that lead to our walk-in closet. However that meant we needed to move the furniture in the hallway which had been blocking off the other entrance to that closet. It took all evening, but we managed to do the moving, and now we have many of the boxes and set of drawers that had been in the hallway stacked (in a very different configuration) in the corner of the office, and the hallway is much emptier, with only the treadle sewing machine and a single chest of drawers (upon which now sits the electric keyboard) flanking the newly unburied door to the closet.

I know that other people think I am mad for it, but that that was a truly fun evening. I really do love rearranging furniture, finding a new, improved, place for everything, and cleaning underneath and behind stuff in the process.

In other news, summer has progressed to the state of fireweed being in flower--a very pretty time of the year, but, to my mind, even better because once the fireweed blooms winter can't be so very far off, and winter is even prettier.

Next week I need to make more progress with my data (see last week's entry for how that is going) in hopes of having something to say when I start to put together a talk about my research for the upcoming departmental "kick off" retreat. We should also hear if our visa is approved, and if all of the ore deposit folk in our department are heading to Russia to see some of the geology of the Kola Peninsula the following week.

The trip home took more than 48 hours, but I managed to get enough naps on the flights that I was feeling ok when I finally landed in Luleå yesterday early afternoon. It was so good to be home, and back in archinonlive's arms again that I didn't bother to set up or turn on my computer at all yesterday.

I came home to a house in chaos, since archinonlive had started to do some re-arranging of furniture while I was gone, got part way through, and then wound up spending a bunch of days at the home of his brother working on projects there instead of finishing the job. However, this is a good thing, since once of my favourite things to do is rearrange furniture, and it is even more fun when I have someone to share the project with.

This morning we got the computer corner of the bedroom set up in a much better way than it had been. We took out and took apart the desk, set the drafting table where the desk had been, and set up his desktop computer under the drafting table, and put his three monitors on that. Then we put the monitor arm for my second monitor on the side of the drafting table, and put my recliner next to it, in the corner of the room, facing into the room. I can now work with the computer in my lap, and the second monitor right next to it, and a comfortable height. While we were at it we also downloaded a new driver for my graphics card, which makes it possible to tell the computer that the second monitor has been rotated 90 degrees, to the portrait orientation. Since this monitor is much wider than it is tall (using the pre-rotated sense of direction), it works Much better this way. Before if I opened a word document or pdf on that monitor I could see only a few lines of text if I set it to a "page-width" display. Now I get the entire page in "page width" display *and* the text is larger!

The room feels much less cramped with only one desk in here, and now that I am in the corner facing out, we can look at one another while we are on the computer. Even better, my feet are within his reach, so he can massage my feet while he watches things on his computer screen (which he is doing as I type--life is good!).

We have just under a week to do any other house-rearranging and projects we might want to accomplish before we leave for the Medieval Week in Visby, during which time we also need to pack and organize what we are bringing (and it had better be a minimum of stuff, since we are taking our car, which is not huge) and cook food to bring with us. As soon as we get back from that event it will be time for him to return to work, and I can start seriously looking for something resembling an income myself. Not that we need two incomes to support us as things are now, but it would be nice to move from the slightly too small apartment into a house, and if we are doing that, it would be nice to own the house, and if we want to do that, we need a second income to build up some additional savings first...

But now I am tired and need to do my yoga before I go to bed...

This week was midsummer. I forgot to check sunrise and sunset times for solstice itself, but for today the sun rose here in Luleå at 01:02, and the sun will set tonight at three minutes after midnight; we are around 65.5 degrees north, so still south of the Arctic Circle, so the sun does set, but, as you can see, not for long.

Midsummer is a major holiday here, everyone has that Friday off of work--grocery stores close early (if they open at all), and the Saturday counts as a Sunday for determining if and when shops open. Our local Folk Music and Dance group is Very active in the celebrations. We all gathered in Gammelstead, at the old schoolhouse where we meet for music and dance sessions early Friday morning, all in our costumes appropriate to the area in the late 1800's. I have been borrowing one from one of the other dancers that she can no longer wear, but we managed to get archinonlive's wool shirt finished on time for the weekend's festivities (or, rather, finished enough--a couple of the seams could still use covering inside so that the zig-zagged edges don't rub unpleasantly.

In some ways the morning felt much like an SCA event--friends gathered in costume, some music, dance (practice for the afternoon's shows) followed by a shared lunch (traditional Swedish food appropriate to the era--desert was a jelly-roll style cake served with fresh strawberries and whipped cream, I could not resist!). We had around 40 people in the group, ranging from about 10 years old to probably 70--all of us musicians or dancers (or family members thereof?). The morning weather was lovely and sunny, with plenty of pretty clouds decorating the sky, and we were mostly outside, talking and practicing.

However, while we were inside enjoying lunch the rain that had been promised arrived (we had been checking its approach on the radar images on line on his phone off and on all morning). So as it came time to process over to the stage for the mid day performances the musicians put their instruments into cases and drove over (normally they play them for the procession) and we dancers covered up our costumes either with plastic rain cloaks, or (in my case) a wool cloak, and umbrellas and walked over there with a minimum of fan fare. On arrival we erected the summer pole (wood which had been covered with fresh branches of leaves wrapped around it, some flowers, and blue and yellow ribbons--shaped like a cross, but with big wreaths of more leaves and ribbons and flowers depending from the side arms) with due ceremony and music from the musicians (who, being on a covered stage, were happily dry while the rest of us were in the rain.

Due to the rain the crowds of the public there to watch numbered only in the hundreds--I am told that most years (when the sun shines) there are more like 7,000 or 8,000 people present. Since it was raining and the stage is not covered and the wood thereof would be slippery, it was first decided that we would skip the performance dancing this year, and do only the traditional children's dancing around the pole. So we dancers joined the musicians on the stage to sing the songs to which the children would dance, and the kids from our group were joined by all of the children present for the dancing.

Luckily, the rain stopped during that part of the program, so as the kid's dances finished some of our dancers got out some large squeegee things and dried off the wooden stage, and we did our performance as planned. I danced with our dance teacher, since archinonlive had committed to run sound at the other park this year, and was already there, and her husband is one of the musicians, and so didn't dance. Just before we danced some of the local SCA folk I know got up on stage, in costume, and announced the upcoming Medieval Week that will be held on that site in a few weeks. I would have loved to have joined them, but my costume for the day was centuries too late.

As soon as we finished dancing at the first park we all piled into cars and drove to a park in the city center, where we repeated the performance (including erecting another leaf, flower, and ribbon covered pole for the children to dance around) again there. (We had helped make that one on Thursday, before doing a practice session of the dances--I don't know who made the one for Gammelstad.) After that performance we helped pack down the sound equipment, musician tent, and booths, drove them back to storage in Gammelstad, and were home again by 17:30.

We then spent a bit of time relaxing with popcorn (me) and a beer (him--not that he is in the habit of drinking them--the few beers we purchased at the store that day were the first I have seen in the apartment in the nearly six months of living here) curled up on the couch together watching a video. As you may recall I am not a big watcher of movies, and I pretty much quit watching TV back in the 1980's when I joined the SCA and discovered that I would rather do things than sit around staring at a box watching people do things. I have not owned a TV since, and rarely lived in a house wherein there was a TV. archinonlive doesn't own an old fashioned TV, but he does have a projection system hooked up to his computer and stereo system, so he can watch movies when he wishes to.

Sometime recently he talked me into watching Stargate with him--I had never really heard of it hitherto, so we saw first the movie, and are now slowly working our way through the series--this weekend we saw episode 5. In general I would still far prefer to read a story than watch one, but curling up in his lap to share a story isn't a bad thing, so we will likely work our way through his video library over time, though at the rate I am willing to watch it will take years.

After watching the show we then proceeded with the fun part of the evening--starting the stitching on my winter coat. I had originally started this coat while I was in Tassie, made out of a nice sturdy black wool that we got free from a friend who knows someone in the business of providing theaters with fire retardant curtains--he regards any length that is too short to fall from ceiling to floor in a theater as "scrap", and so many SCA folk who know him have garb made of this stuff. When I cut out the coat then I didn't have a suitable lining, so I cut up an old raw silk dress with which I lined the skirt, and used some nice sturdy black silk I had to line the sleeves and upper body (which makes it easy to put the coat on over a wool sweater when it is really cold out).

Sadly, the old dress had been washed in detergent too many times, and it quickly wore out under the hard use that a winter coat gets, and so the lining was starting to hang in ribbons. I had also not been all that happy with the cut of the coat--the execution and the initial vision didn't mesh as well as I would have liked. So I took it apart and cut new lining for it out of a blue and white wool I picked up in Italy (keeping the nice silk for the upper part of the body, but over the second wool, so the top will be three layers thick), and changed the cut of the pieces so that the waist of the coat better aligns with my own waist--I wound up changing the cut of some of the pieces quite dramatically, and added two new panels that are simple rectangles at the front center to make up for narrowing all of the other pieces. It has been sitting in that state for days now, waiting for us to finish his Folk Dance shirt for this weekend so that we could then start on the coat.

Last night and today we have been making progress on the coat in small bits. Today, after visiting with his brother and sister-in-law in the morning the progress has been going like this: He stitches a seam while I read to him out of the Swedish version of Harry Potter (I have been listening to it in audio book, and am a chapter ahead of what I am reading to him, so that helps, but he still has to correct my pronunciation of a number of oddly spelled words. Who ever heard of silent L's anyway?). Then he takes a break with his computer game in progress while I trim the excess of the parts of the seam that need to be folded inside the flat felled seam. Then he does the second pass with the sewing machine, stitching the seam shut, and returns to his game while I pin the next piece onto the coat. We are more than half way done assembling it now, but it is getting lateish, so I don't know how far we will get tonight. But I am hopeful that we will have it done before I fly to Winter on Thursday.

That will be something of a shock to the system--the temp isn't THAT different--it is 16 C here (at nearly 23:00), and it is 9C in Hobart just now (where it is almost 07:00 tomorrow morning), but the change in number of hours of daylight is going to be really noteworthy. At least there won't be any mosquitoes down there this time of the year--they are quite plentiful here, and one must dress to keep covered unless one wishes lots of bites.

My plan for Australia is: Land in Sydney on the evening of Friday the 1st (ash clouds permitting), train to Canberra the morning of the 2nd, turn in my visa application at the Embassy the morning of Monday, 4 July, then head on to the Melbourne area a day or three later (depending on if the Embassy wants to see me again straight away--they have already seen pdf files of my application packet, but it must be filed officially in person, with proper payment of fees) to visit my step sister and her family, and my mother who is also visiting them. I will fly to Tassie the morning of 10 July (again, ash clouds permitting--mom has had her flight there from Melbourne delayed once already), where I will await word on my visa, staying with mushroom_maiden, whose normal housemate will be in Iceland.

How long will I need to wait? That simply cannot be predicted. Duke Elfin told me at Double Wars that when he submitted this sort of visa application to the Embassy in Canberra back in 1996 it was approved only one week after he applied! However, their web page warns that the process can take up to 7 or 8 months. The cover letter accompanying my application lists my top three dates by which I would wish to return to Sweden and why (before 13 July, so I can teach classes at the local Medieval week and then spend all of archinonlive's vacation with him, or before early August so that we can use the ferry tickets we purchased to attend the Medieval week in Gotland, or before September, so that we can teach the beginning Swedish Folk Dance class we agreed to teach). I hope that they like my application well enough to reach the decision and approve my visa on time for one or all of them.

Since moving to Sweden in January I have been trying to learn Swedish. I am taking classes (we are up to chapter 14 in the text book), reading children's books, learning songs, and sometimes listening to conversations in Swedish and trying to catch words I know. Sometimes archinonlive and I speak a little Swedish at home, but rarely more than a minute or two, before we decide that my vocabulary is too limited to actually communicate and we switch to English.

Last night, however, we actually had a conversation in Swedish! We spoke for more than 30 minutes, discussing the many things that we need to accomplish before departing for Double War on the 27th, I told him the story behind a song that happened to be playing on the stereo, I described the steps to an SCA dance, and several other topics before we picked up the children's book I have been reading aloud to him. This is one of those books that was written in the 1920's and starts out with very easy reading--only one sentence on the first page, and then gradually progresses to more and more text. We are up to the section where there are several paragraphs per page, and it takes more than one page for a section. I am finding it ever so much easier to read and understand these days, and my pronunciation is much better than it has been (though I still have problems with ö, y, ä, sk, sj, and a few of the other odd things that happen when s is involved). I am also about 3/4 of the way through reading the Swedish version of Anne of Green Gables, and I am finding that to be much easier going, too. In this case I am not stopping to translate the words I don't know, but as simply reading the text as is, and using my memory of the English book combined with the words I do know to keep track of the story plot and the overall meaning.

Yesterday was also a good day on several other counts:

Had a nice time visiting with SCA folk at fighter practice in the morning (though I didn't armour up, having stayed up till 03:00 on Saturday night working on projects I wasn't able to wake up early enough to get to practice on time to fight, so we didn't even bring armour, but just went to discuss details on the road trip to Double War).

At the afternoon folk music session I managed to get the underdress in progress finally assembled--all pieces are now attached to one another, and most seams have been finished--I just need to finish the side seams and the dress will, at long last, be done.

The evening Folk dance session went well-- I now know all of the dances that we will be performing the Monday after we return from Double War, and am starting to get down the details that transform them from "sort of right" to "pretty".

This morning has been spent sending emails. I learned on Friday that I will need to return to Australia to apply for a permanent resident visa, so I am starting to work out details of when and how to accomplish that. My deadline to leave is 30 June, which, sadly, is before the local Medieval Days. I had been looking forward to helping out with that event and running dancing there, but now I can't. However, I will hope that it is possible to get my visa application processed on time to return here before the beginning class in Swedish Folk Dancing that I had agreed to teach (it starts in August). Please keep your fingers crossed for that one.