kareina

Wednesday I finally got my first dental appointment. The one that had been scheduled for 20 Sept, but the dentist got sick, and was rescheduled for 27 Sept, but they were sick again. This time everyone was healthy, so the first phase of "fix a decade's worth of damage to my teeth" has commenced. They filled a cavity in one of my back teeth, and then did something about the teeth in front left that had the most damage from years of not knowing that brushing one's teeth can cause serious damage. My gums are fine front and center, and longer back, but the teeth just to the side of front, where things rotate to the back, have lost much of the gums covering the roots, and the roots and top edges of the teeth had eroded back, leaving a shelf which caught food in an annoying manner, and looked very disturbing. So my dentist has used modern filling material to build up an outer coating to cover the exposed roots, and make a smooth, planar surface from the bottom of the tooth to the remaining bit of gum. It looks so much better, and feels much better too, other than the part where the surface isn't as smoothly polished as my teeth, so my tongue is drawn to it, feeling the difference in texture. I will ask if it is possible for that to be polished even smoother when I go in next Wednesday for the next phase (more of the same, different teeth, probably the other side), or if I will just have to live with that forever. They did warn me that the downside of doing this approach is that it is possible for the "filling" to just fall off, but if that happens they can replace it again. If it does it within the year, there isn't even a charge for the replacement.

Wednesday afternoon I worked from home, but returned to the office with the "normal" bus on Thursday morning, as I had meetings all morning. When they were done, at 14:00, I took the bus over to help Torunn lift things down from on top of the bookshelves, clean off the dust and pack them up to head to their new homes. It has been a year since she lost her partner to cancer, and getting his apartment cleaned out and emptied has been a slow process, which is not helped by her living in Stockholm, and only having time to come up here and do things occasionally, but incremental progress is still progress, and it will get there. Hopefully, she will keep coming up for our events even after she is done taking care of his stuff.

Then we headed to Uma's social/crafts night, stopping on the way so she could do a daily geocache. It was raining, but the one she chose was under a roof for a bicycle parking area, so we weren't out in the rain much. It was a good night for her to have a friend along, as I could give her the boost needed to reach the cache itself. At social night she encouraged us to take some of the yarn that had belonged to her partner's mom. I don't *need* more yarn, but I do use it regularly, so I took some in colours that I enjoy. Afterwards I went back to her place and we talked a bit longer before I went to sleep on the couch.

I didn't have any meetings on Friday, so I could work from home. I checked the bus schedule before bed, and it turns out that the earliest bus from Umeå to Lövånger leaves at 05:00, but there isn't a bus that early from Tournn's part of town, so if I wanted to take a city bus from there and then transfer to the regional bus home, the earliest I could do it would be leaving at 06:30. Of course, I could also have just gone into the office and worked there, too--once the city bus starts going the buses to the university are around every 15 minutes. So I did the logical thing--I didn't set an alarm, and decided to let when I woke dictate which option I took. When I woke a little after 04:00 I had enough energy to decide to just walk to the city center, which google says is 32 minutes from where I was. Of course, in the time it took to get my stuff packed up and use the loo and head out the door google said that I should arrive at the bus station at 5:07, or seven minutes after my bus leaves. But I know that it is possible to walk much faster than Google's estimate, if one is in a hurry, and the longer the trip, the easier it is to shave off a few minutes, so I decided to try.

Just before I got to the river I saw one of the electric scooters that are available for rent at random spots all over the city. I hadn't used the system before, but thought "why not?", so I scanned the QR code on the scooter, downloaded the app, gave it my credit card info, scanned the other code on the scooter to check it out and wake it up, then rode it the rest of the way to the bus station. I arrived in time to clock out on the ride, add a photo of its location to the system, so the next person can find it through the app, rather than just happening upon it as I did, board the bus, go upstairs to "my" seat (left side, all the way forward, for the best view), take off all of my bags (since I had a pillow with me, the yarn, and a couple of large pewter tankards that Torunn didn't want, I was more heavily loaded than normal), and my coat and get comfortable before the bus started driving. I had time to start working before Keldor woke up and called me. When I described my morning's accomplishment of making the bus on time he told me that I sounded as smug as if I had just scaled Everest. I think he was right, I was pretty pleased.

I did need to take an afternoon nap on Friday, thanks to the extra early morning, but had no problems working till I had done enough hours for the day, and then I switched to thesis-adjacent activities. I *should* be working on my thesis corrections. But I had been wondering lately how to approach the paper I want to write on Swedish steatite artefacts, and I had also been wondering if I wanted to teach a class at Drachenwald's Kingdom University. When I woke up from my nap I did so with inspiration on how I want to approach both, so I started with first filling in the google form for the class, and then starting a powerpoint presentation for it. For the most part I am adapting thesis figures, but I have made a few new slides. I got all the main slides for the talk itself done Friday evening, in addition to doing some correspondence about our upcoming Norrskensbard contest event. But then I decided to do an appendix, and copy in to the bottom half of the talk *all* of the figures from my thesis appendix, showing photos of every steatite item in Swedish museums that has photos, with their locations plotted on maps, and lines showing which item is from where. This is the meat of my research, for that part of my thesis, and the data from which I drew the conclusions that make up the talk itself. There may be people who are interested in flipping quickly through these images, so why not include them in the talk? I wonder if Drachenwald Kingdom University counts as a conference, and if so, if I can put a copy of this talk on my publication list on DiVA?

Of course, when I did the figures for the thesis, I set up PowerPoint to have the same proportions as a sheet of A4 paper, which means when they were imported into this talk they don't fill the screen in the same way, and I can make them bigger. Furthermore, I have a coloured background for the talk powerpoint, while I had a white one for the thesis figures. This means that things like the sample names, which are black text with no background, show up way better in the figure than in the talk, which means the solution is to add a white rectangle behind all of the images that make up each figure and stretch it to the right size and shape to make a nice frame, as well as letting the black text have a white background. Therefore, even though I started this process on Friday, now, well into Saturday, I am not yet done converting all of the figures for the talk, which means I haven't actually started on those thesis corrections yet. It is a good thing I got a six month deadline for them! <pause to look up when "six months" will be, so I quit thinking of it in those terms, as that is an easy way to miss a deadline...> 30 March. I need to have them done by 30 March. I can do that, even without making progress on it today, and preparing the talk is a good way to review everything, and very helpful for that paper I will write. Or, so I am telling myself, anyway.

I seem to have fallen into not posting often, mostly because I haven't spent much time at all near a computer. While I *can* post from my phone, I rarely do so. Therefore I need to see how much I can remember now...

The first week of February Keldor had a number of colleagues down with Covid/Omicron. First one of them was feeling a little under the weather after getting his third dose of vaccine, and, thinking it was the vaccine to blame, chose to go to work anyway (stupid!). Then he felt worse, went home, took a test: super positive. The same week a couple of other colleagues choose to go to work despite feeling a bit sick, and then later felt worse and tested positive. Idiots. Keldor had worked with them the days they were sick, too. Luckily, Keldor's three vaccines plus having survived Covid November of 2020 seems to have done the job--he never got any symptoms, and tested negative. However, on the following Sunday morning he felt dizzy right after getting out of bed, and spent the rest of the day with periodic dizzy spells when he moved his head certain directions.

Therefore he called in sick on Monday and went to the doc instead, where they confirmed that it was "kristallsjuka" (vertigo) and gave him some exercises to do to help shake the crystals in his inner ear into a better position. He took the whole week off of work, because otherwise he would have been working at a great height, and one doesn't do that when one could get dizzy just from turning one's head to look at what one is doing. Therefore I also took the week off of work, and we accomplished a few things around the house, and did lots of art. It was great.

Of course, in my case, I didn't take time off of work, just changed which days I would work. Since I work half-time I normally work two days one week, and three the next. Instead I worked zero days that week, and five the next.

The timing for that was good, as my friends N & B in Luleå were going out of town, and had asked P, who lives in Skellefteå, to house and dog sit for them, and said I could stay there, too. (the timing was even better, since my friend L, upon whose couch I "normally" sleep when I am back in Luleå for work, had a cold.

So I had P's company for the drive north and south, and during the week last week, which was nice, especially as she drove.

Then this week I choose to work only Thursday and Friday, which gave me five days in a row at home, which was nice. Especially as this meant that we made some good progress on cleaning the cellar and hauling away some of the previous owners junk. It also meant that on Wednesday I had the energy to sit down and work on the paper I started months ago to publish some results of my research.

By "work on", I am delighted to report I mean "finished a complete draft". I was so excited. I had gotten it pretty close before I took the suspension of studies some months back, when I went to nearly full time work at the archives, because I wanted to save up a bit more cash before I bought a house.

Now that I have a house, and have gone back to 50% work, I am hoping to get this paper published, and then sit down with my supervisor and see about down-grading my PhD to a Master's degree, and then getting it done. Would I have liked having a second PhD? yes, of course. But with first losing lab access, and then having funding issues, plus pandemic, plus death in the family. Really, it isn't going to happen with this degree. But it would still be great to get a Master's.

Tonight would have been folk dance--our Sunday dance session has switched to Thursdays, and therefore I will normally work on Thursdays (+ whatever other days are needed to bring me to the right number of hours for the week). Sadly, our dance teacher caught a cold, so dance was canceled this week, which gives me a chance to check in here.

the SCA calendar has been filling back up, and we are doing stuff again. But now I watch what is unfolding in Ukraine, and I worry that instead of having pandemic related event cancelations we might have war related event cancellations. I hope it doesn't come to that. [edited to add: which is a very selfish sounding viewpoint. Even more than that I would like countries to quit going to war and invading one another. Wouldn't it be great to live in peace, with no one needing to die in war, or flee from their homes?

I can remember first hearing the term "the information age" back in the 1970's, but, guys, really. We. Had. No.Idea. I mean really. Live maps updating play by play what is happening in the Ukraine, and everywhere else that is related to that. who could have predicted such a thing?

I just had a video meeting with the Museum Director (who has been acting as the boss for the Archive division, since ours got hired away to LTU last spring). She totally supports my dropping down to 50% so I can have energy over to work on the new house (for which she congratulates me), and she has extended my contract as a result, so now I have work through the end of August. She hopes they can extend my contract through to the end of the year (after checking to see if I would even be interested--I am, I don't want to go looking for a new job, I would rather have the energy for everything else in life, like the house, the degree, the boyfriend, the SCA, etc), but they will wait on that decision until the new boss for the Archive is on board later this spring and they see if her request to the Regional Government for additional budget was approved.

She also tells me that I am doing an amazingly good job, and that my colleagues really appreciate me and my work. (That last bit was harder to translate than you might imagine, since the some of the phrases used don't carry the same sense if literally translated.)

This means that I have at least the first 3/4 of the year to see if we can transform this house into something that will sell for enough that my next house hits more of my personal sweet spots. That should also be enough time to make some progress on my degree, which is on pause till August, which means any progress I make on that is off the clock, which is a good thing.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/588108.html

Our snow is pretty much gone. Just a few little lingering thin layers of ice here and there where there had been snow dunes or piles where we had shovelled snow. Each morning this week, as I hop onto my trike to pedal to the Archives for another day sitting alone in the library sorting through piles of papers so that I can enter into the database what we have before putting them into boxes on the shelf, I have been looking at the piles of leaves that had collected last autumn against the rocks at the entrance to our walkway, and wishing I were working from home, so that I could rake them up during a lunch break. However, most of the week, by the time I got home from the afternoon half time job, doing analyses in the lab at the uni, I was really to tired to even think about it.

In fact, on Wednesday evening I was so tired that I got home just after 18:00, did my yoga straight away, and was in bed by 19:30 and slept for nine hours (5 to 7 is more normal for me). This meant that I had enough energy, and enough time, before work to try making some yeast-based naan, after years of making it with baking powder. I shared photos of it to my new Instagram account*, which cross-posts to FB, where one of my friends asked for the recipe, so I typed up what I did.
( Naan filled with Nettle almond butter, and a photo thereof )

Note that this was my first attempt at making Naan with yeast. Normally I just do it with baking powder, having learned that from a newspaper article back in the 1980's.

When I got home from the lab that evening I had some energy left (nine hours of sleep when you are accustomed to 5 to 7 will have that effect), so I did a bit of that raking I had been wanting to do. Whilst in the yard I noticed that the first of the nettles are starting to grow (good thing, I am running low on dried nettles), and that the poor strawberry patch has become quite completely infested with grass.

Therefore, this evening I took the time to dig out the strawberry patch, extracting large blocks of dirt/grass/berry plants and setting them aside. Tomorrow I will go through the squares and attempt to extract the berry plants from the grass, and re-plant them in the patch. Hopefully they will survive the process (they survived being transplanted from the field to this location the summer after we bought the house, so I suspect that they will be fine.

I must admit, when I read post from my friends who are in serious quarantine because they don't dare get sick, or because they live in countries with much stronger restrictions than Sweden has, I feel vaguely guilty that I am still going to work and occasionally get to see people. Plus I am benefiting from the quarantine conditions elsewhere, as I get to join in zoom meetings, and make progress on sewing projects and mending. So while things are hard on so many other people, my life is still pretty darn good. I mean yah, it would be even nicer if we could go to events, and there was someone to cuddle with, but given the global situation, I have it good.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/559446.html

I think she was just cleaning out her closet...

Some time back my mother mentioned that she had put a package in the mail for me it hopes that it would arrive by my birthday, and to let her know when it got here. It still hadn't arrive by Friday before my birthday, but on Monday there was a letter in my box saying I could pick the package up at the local post office (which is a counter and back room within the local grocery store). I had also forgotten my glasses case at work, and we needed a couple of things from store, so that evening I took the car and drove in, picked up the spare glasses, got some groceries, and found out that the fine print on the letter, which I hadn't actually read, said that I could pick up the package on Wednesday at the earliest, it was in Sweden, but hadn't gotten this far north yet.

Tuesday morning was our Lucia performance, followed by a dermatologist appointment. Back in May, when things were a bit stressful (because in addition to work and many personal projects, I was also busy with tasks for running our Medieval Days event at Hägnan this summer, and O. was dealing with yet more deaths in his family) some odd red spots appeared on my waist. When they were joined shortly thereafter by a bunch of friends I booked an appointment at the local health clinic, and when I told the doc there that I didn't know what they were, but I was certain they weren't psoriasis, as I have had that on my knee since high school, and these are very different, he said that psoriasis can take different forms, and it was the easiest guess as to the problem, so he gave me some sort of corticosteroid creme and sent me on my way. I was skeptical, but dutifully tired if for some weeks, during which it got a bit worse, so I quit using the medicine, contacted the dermatologist's office to get on the waiting list, and continued with my busy life. They said their earliest possible appointment was in December, and I said I would take it.

Luckily, those spots have been clearing up on their own--some have faded, and none of them are red and angry looking anymore. Even so, there were enough of them left that the dermatologist was able to identify it as "Lichen ruber planus" in about 30 seconds. She assured me that it isn't contagious and said that it should continue going away on its own. Then, since I had mentioned the Medieval Days at Hägnan as a factor in stress when the spots appeared, we spent the rest of the appointment talking about her niece,

liadethornegge, whom she correctly guessed I would know, and looking at her flicker album of SCA events. I love living in a small world.

After the appointment I decided I was sleepy, and went home for a nap instead of going to work. I really needed that day off. Could have used another, since I didn't really accomplish much at work on Wednesday, either, and wound up going home after only about half the time I should have been there. But then I remembered the package, so, being curious, off I went to the store. Luckily, the package wasn't heavy, and was small enough to fit into the cloth grocery bag I had with me, so it was easy to carry home.

I was, of course, starving when I got home, so I took time to eat before opening the box. It contained a large blue/black cotton scarf covered in silver skulls, an old leather bracelet with her name (Norma) on it (the note said that it was proof that she used to be skinny, and, indeed, the bracelet fits my tiny wrist, so if it fit her she would have had to have been pretty small), another bracelet made of a bunch of pennies glued together (that I remember from childhood), a little green puff ball toy with a single eye (was it always a cyclops, or had it suffered a tragic accident over the years), a couple of boxes of Q-tips (I still had one left from her last visit--the brands they sell here aren't as soft, but I think I have enough now to last for years), a couple of jars of Carmex (I used to blend it 50-50 with something else as a lotion for the psoriasis on my knee, until I moved to Australia, and found the lotion I have been using on it ever since), a button/pin with a photo of her mother's parents, a couple of antique wooden curtain rod ends, and perhaps a few other odds and ends that I am not remembering just now. I think she must have had fun packing the box, and her closet must be much cleaner now.

Today I made up for how little work I accomplished Tuesday and Wednesday, and didn't get home till 17:00. Luckily, we had planned to do pizza for dinner, and my past self was kind enough to leave a bread sponge on the counter, so I put the pizza stones into the oven, turned it on, started kneading bread dough, and by 17:54 I was enjoying home made pizza with artichoke heart, broccoli, spinach and kale. Yum! And half of that pizza is left to enjoy tomorrow.

lord_kjar and C, of course, put quite a few more ingredients onto theirs that I wouldn't eat (e.g. mussels, mushrooms, store bought meat balls, cheese that melts), but each type of pizza left overs got packed into a different type container so we won't get them confused tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have planned housework, finally washing the tablecloths from Norrskensfesten (before we need them for Frostheims Jullegille on Sunday), and running errands, with Phire practice and "mys" in the evening. Saturday I will do a massage trade with a friend, and on Sunday we drive south for

lord_kjar's niece's baptism, and then return north again to attend the above mentioned Jul potluck.

We have had enough snow that I am finally willing to call it "winter", and so very grateful I am, after a couple of years of no snow till late November or early December. However, I watch the forecast and see that it is supposed to go back up above freezing, and I worry if it will be another of those winters where the temps oscillate back and forth over freezing so that what snow we have melts and refreezes into a thin crust. This strikes me as a much better thing to worry about than politics, though not any easier to solve.

Work has been going well, I had my annual meeting to discuss how I am doing with the job, and thus what amount my annual wage will be, and the review went well. Not only do I love my job, but my colleagues are happy with me and the work I am doing. We have several grant proposals out or in the works that could result in my getting more hours, so that is all good.

Norrskensfesten is next weekend, and I am pretty much on top of what needs doing (though I should have emailed the event schedule by now, so had better do that this weekend). We are at 99 registered just now, and I am good with that. I think it will be a really fun event.

I am currently reading a book in English, despite my "no fiction in English" rule. I had been checking Katherine Kurtz's web page fairly regularly, to see if she had written the final Childe Morgan book, but each time I did there was still no word. Then I forgot to check for a while, and didn't look again till this week. The book is done, and was published in 2014. Oops. I guess "a while" is longer than I thought. However, life has been so busy I have been reading it in small doses, rather than all at once like I used to do. I love having so many hobbies, but my 20-something self wouldn't believe it. However, I hope I can get it done this week, because then I will break that rule again by reading

hrj's new book, which is poised to come out, and, since she is good about promoting her book in places I see (like here), I know about it, and will get it straight away. I wonder why none of Katherine's fans bothered to mention it on the email list. Just because no one has posted there in ages is no reason not to mention the book there.

Tonight, after Phire practice we had a fun excursion. Those of us who are new to the group since the last time they had one of these were blindfolded and led from the practice site to the snowy banks of the lake (which isn't quite frozen solid enough to trust it to hold a large group of us, yet), and they welcomed us to the group with a small ceremony, including a dubbing with a fire sword. Then we got to play with the burning toys. Fun. Afterwards we retired to the nearby home of one of the members for pizza and socializing. We played a game wherein we each, in turn told a fact about ourselves which we thought made us unique in the group. Those whose facts were, in fact, unique, got to do another round. I think I could have done quite a few more rounds before I ran out of ways in which I am unique. I was the only one present with three passports, who has lived in 8 different countries (and 6 US states), who has never been drunk, who can remember the moon landing (ok, that was cheating, I was the only one present who was alive then). I was also the only one present with a PhD, but I didn't bother to use that one. However, unlike some of the others, I have never built an electric guitar from scratch (nor any other instrument), I have never crawled under the barb wire to get into a relocation camp, I have no odd growths of bone sticking out from my shoulders where one would expect smooth collarbones, never lived on an Indian Reservation, nor in India. It was an interesting and fun game. Made slightly more challenging as we spoke Swedish most of the evening.

I have previously managed to organize information about rock thin sections in a spreadsheet, but one winds up with lots of extra columns needed to keep track of everything, and lots of empty cells since not every mineral appears in every rock, and not all possible information about each mineral is recorded for every sample. Therefore I have been thinking of creating a database to keep track of it, but am running into issues with the design phase.

I have found pages on line that describe how to "normalize" your data to make certain you aren't wasting storage space on redundant data. One of them had an example where they started with one table that contains a list of student numbers, the name of each student's advisors, the room number of the advisor, and all of the classes each student takes. They then point out that it is better to break this into separate tables, and after a few steps they wound up with one table for showing which students have which advisor, one table showing which advisor has which room, and one which shows which students take what classes.

I can follow this logic, and if I had so few levels of information I would already be done creating my database. However, geology is more complicated than that.

( a summary of what all I have that I want to beat into a database. Please read if you can give me any advice as how best to group this stuff into appropriate tables )

I suspect that to those of you who are used to working with databases this will seem like a very simple, straightforward, easy to solve problem. If so, please tell me how to approach this! How many tables to I need to create? How do I best link them?

Current Mood: cheerful

As I type this it is New Year's Eve—there are occasional sounds from outside of people's fireworks being shot off, and I am contentedly curled up at home with my sweetie, who is at the next computer, within easy reach.

One year ago today I was visiting a friend in Geneva, on my way to Sweden from Italy. One year ago tomorrow I landed in Stockholm, took a train to Tierp to the home of some friends I had first met in Alaska the winter before, and visited with them while

lord_kjar drove south to meet me there for the start of our first "date"—a 10 day road-trip which included a trip to Gotland to introduce him to my Queen, visits to the homes of three out of four of his siblings (and the chance to meet his parents, too, when they also visited one on them whilst we were there), attendance at a play put on in southern Sweden by one of his friends who lives up here in the north, and attendance at the SCA 12th night event, where the above mentioned Queen stepped down and became a countess. Then we did the long drive north to Luleå, and I moved in with him. At that point I had only one suitcase full of stuff with me, and the rest was in storage with a friend in Scotland.

( The rest of January )

( February )

( March ).

Slight pause in typing, while we went to enjoy watching fireworks out our windows. The widow at the front of the apartment gives a good view of the big display being put on at the University, while the window at the back of the apartment gives a nice view of the (much further away) fireworks display happening somewhere over near the city center.

( April )

( May )

( June )

( July )

( August )

( September )

( October )

( November )

( December )

One year after moving to Sweden for love, and I am still head over heels in love. This is the most togetherness relationship I have ever had—we work together on so many projects, we enjoy so many of the same activities. We "click" in ways that make I, who have always been lucky in love and always led a charmed life, go "wow, this is wonderful". I have a good job, a happy relationship, enjoy good health, and have an active social life in addition to having a loving partner. Life is truly wonderful.

I wish all of my friends a Happy New Year, and hope that 2012 brings you all much joy.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Lule�, Sweden

Not surprisingly, this week has been quiet at work as more and more people leave early for their winter holidays. Since

lord_kjar had to work all week, including today, my plan was to spend the week working myself (though today is only meant to be a half day for uni employees, which is why so many just take the day off--they need only take off a half day to get a longer holiday weekend).

Monday-Thursday the plan went very well, and I managed to accomplish some things, despite getting my new work phone (a Sony Ericsson Xperia and losing many hours ~~playing with it~~ learning to use it. I even managed to finish re-doing calculations in Perplex for one of the Tassie samples (this involved having to figure out what thermodynamic model I should use for one of the phases in the calculations now that the one I used back in 2008 isn't in the solution set anymore--a several day process which sparked some interesting conversations on an email list when I asked for the opinions of others). I finally finished that around 15:00 on Thursday, so I sent it to my erstwhile adviser in Tassie and went home early to bake pizza from the left over bread dough in the fridge before sitting down to make a paper pattern for a case for the new phone.

Backing up a bit--it has been a week of late nights--we were up late Monday for no reason in particular. I was up too late Tuesday playing with the new phone (which I got that morning), Wednesday we went to the local SCA potluck holiday celebration (which started early enough that I actually got to eat some food!), and Thursday I was working on that pattern (all of the evenings we were home

lord_kjar happily worked on a programming project of his while I did my tasks).

I was pleased with the timing on Wednesday. Before I went to work I mixed up a bread sponge. Then I came home (10 min walk) for lunch just long enough to mix up and knead a bread dough and set it rising. I left work around 16:45, which gave me just long enough to roll out the dough, fill it with a mix of frozen blueberries and raspberry jam, put it in the oven, and get changed for the event and gather feast gear while it baked. We took the bread out of the oven, wrapped it in aluminum foil and a towel, and left for the feast--arriving just as people were ready to eat.

Thursday evening I did the paper pattern, which took ages because often the little holes I cut to get to a button, or let the camera see, were just slightly offset from where they should be, so I filled it with paper and tape and then cut a new hole in the correct place. Once I was happy with the pattern I then cut it out of leather and stitched it together. Sadly, the leather stretched way more than I had thought it would, so I wound up having to really shorten the parts that go across the front of the phone to hold things on. I also didn't much like the way it gaped at the sides (a certain amount of gap is inevitable when doing a case for a phone that is open to show the screen). But at least I had a nice texture case that I could trust to stay in a pocket, rather than easily sliding out as a plastic phone would. I wanted some sort of leash, but hadn't decided how to attach it, since there are buttons on the side of the phone that probably shouldn't be covered.

So I decided to just go to bed (it was 01:30) and worry about perfecting the case later. I fully expected to go to work this morning, but when I woke up I did so with an inspiration as to how to do the leash--fingerloop braid attached as reinforcement along the opening in the front, and wrapping around to the back edge too. I also realized that the orientation I did yesterday was wrong--the end of the phone case which should be sewn shut ought to be the top of the phone, and the end that opens should be the bottom. Why? Because it it is hanging from a leash around my neck it will be far more convenient to pick it up, leaving the ends of the leash hanging down, rather than twisting it around to see/use it. (That wasn't very clear--I will try again. When hanging from the leash like a necklace the bottom of the phone is up, but when I grab it and lift it to look it crosses through horizontal and rotates until the bottom of the phone moves to down with respect to the world.)

Since I had the option to take the day off, and the day was only meant to be a half day of work if I didn't, I decided to start my morning changing the pattern to make it work with the new design, thinking I would do phone case in the morning, and perhaps I could go in to work later in the day. Had--why do I always thus underestimate how long a project will take?

I did stop for food a couple of times, but even so I was not done with the project till 16:00! (16:30 if you think that "done" includes cleaning up the mess made during the project). So much for work. But I think the case will work fairly well.
( photos under the cut )

Now that I have the case I am less worried about damaging or losing the phone--the wool is thick enough to protect it, there is a pocket on the back side to hold my work id card (which opens some of the doors at uni), my library card, and my uni gym card (why do I need three different cards for these things--shouldn't just the uni id card be enough?), and the leash means that when I finish a call I can simply let go and let it hang from my neck again. The little metal hook means that if it is not convenient to hang it from my neck I can put it into my pocket and hook the loop onto a belt loop, so if it falls out it won't get very far.

Later this evening, or tomorrow morning, depending on when we finish up today's projects, we will head down to his parent's house for the weekend. It will be just he and I and his folks on Saturday and Sunday, but on Monday one of his brothers that brother's wife will join us (they go to her family for Christmas this year, as do his other siblings--last year they all gathered at their parents house, this year they all head to the other families, save for

lord_kjar and I--we couldn't afford a trip to the US this winter--too soon after my job starting, and we would like to build up a savings account so that we can buy a house).

Current Mood: busy

I haven't really posted much lately, so I thought I would take the time to type up what I have been up to for the past 9 days since my last update...

The big reason I haven't made time for posting is work. I am enjoying the job. Since it is academia I have a fair bit of flexibility in when I work, but I am trying to make certain I am at the office and working during business hours. What time I actually get there in the morning largely depends on when

lord_kjar leaves the house. In theory he is meant to be at work at 08:00 every morning, but what time he actually leaves depends on where he will be working first that morning. On the (thankfully rare) days he has to work in Kiruna (about 4 hours drive north of here) he leaves at 04:00, on the days he has to work at an office next to uni (10 minute walk from here) he sometimes doesn't leave till well after 08:00, because the person he would need to meet won't be in earlier than that. As a result my working day has been starting anywhere between 08:00 and 08:45.

At 09:15 (or so) every morning the geologists gather in the tea room for morning fika, and again at 14:15 for afternoon fika. After forgetting to join them the first day I set an alarm to go off at the same times every day. I still don't always make it downstairs for that break, but when I do I enjoy it. There are enough of us in the department from other countries that English is a fairly normal language to hear, but Swedish is even more common, and I am pleased to report that I am catching more and more words when I listen to Swedish conversations progressing at full speed around me.

I have been making decent progress on tasks necessary for publishing papers on my previous research, and have also been making good progress on reading stuff for my new research. On Monday I had my first meeting with folks at the Mine with whom I shall be working for my research. There are several PhD students in our department who are also working on projects with that mining company, so when they heard I was to make the trip south they asked if they could come along because they had things they needed to do on site. As it turned out we wound up splitting up the drive--the uni rental car was delivered to my door at 07:00 on Monday morning (how civilized that it comes to me!), and I picked up student #1 at her home across town on our way south. This got us to the airport at Skellefteå at 09:20, just as the plane was landing. We picked up my boss from that flight, and off we went to the mine.

My boss and I met with a handful of folk at the mine headquarters, and another geologist joined us via video conference from the south of Sweden. I liked everyone I met, and the project sounds like fun. It will take time before they can get me data, now that we have worked out which of the many regions in the area will be my focus, but I will put that time to good use reading the literature they gave me and learning how to use the programs I will need once the data arrives.

After our meeting my boss and I and student #2, who had gotten another ride south drove back north. We dropped him off at the Luleå airport, where his car had been waiting for him for a week while he was off at a conference in Spain, and she and I returned to Uni. I suspect that the slight sniffles I had yesterday and today were picked up on the drive south--student #1 greeted me with the news that she had come down with a cold on Friday, which had interfered with her plans for the weekend. While I didn't touch her or anything she had touched, we were in the car together breathing the same air for 1 and 3/4 hours...

Last weekend was a local SCA event. It was a very pleasant weekend. One of my friends from gaming had been invited along to the event by some of his friends, and since he is slender we were able to dress him in some of my spare tunics. I enjoyed dancing, ran a discussion on the history of the SCA (including reading aloud a "Once upon a time" story about the first ever SCA event that a friend gave me years ago) on Friday night, and I taught a workshop on wool applique on Saturday. I took a nap during the tournament (we had given a friend a ride, so there was no room in the car for my armour, even if I had practiced at all since I got back from Australia--I really should make more time to practice, but the local practice is Sunday mornings, and in the months since my return either we are out of town, or the shire forum contains a post saying "no practice this week", or, occasionally, we are home, and it is on, but we were up way too late on Saturday to get up that early on Sunday.

In addition to the teaching I also enjoyed plenty of SCA dancing and even some Swedish folk dancing at the event. The other violin player on site started playing some folk dance music so first

lord_kjar and I danced, then we taught the Schottish to a couple of ladies (luckily I have been dancing the lead at the folk dance class we taught between Sept and the begining of November). Then one of the ladies wanted to dance with her partner, so I looked around for someone else to dance with. One of the guys watching said that he didn't know this kind of dance, but he can dance. Much to my delight he could, too. It took no time at all to walk him through the steps and have him dancing.

Other highlights of the event include singing and time soaking in the shire hot tub. I even got to eat a little of the feast. The first of the food was served at 18:30, which might have been too late for me to be eating, had I interrupted teaching to go get food from my own stash at 16:00 when I got hungry, but I was busy, so I decided to wait and see if I could manage to eat any of the feast. I pulled it off, but it took some effort to avoid getting grumpy due to hunger by the time it was actually time to eat. Of course the little I ate with the first serving filled me up nicely, and the rest of the feast went by without my tasting a thing, but it was nice to eat with people.

We wound up staying on site till the very end of the event on Sunday. The site was meant to close by 12:00, but with a bunch of us around to clean up things were clean and ready to go well before that time. However, the ride that was meant to pick up a bunch of the young people (including my above mentioned gaming friend) wasn't there yet. We couldn't take them in our car which was too full for their bodies even if seat belt laws didn't apply, but we did stick around to keep them company, and the missing rides did show up right at noon. Since it was only a 20 or 25 minute drive home that meant that we had time to not only unload the car but get things put away and spend a couple of hours relaxing before going out for the Swedish Folk music and dance session at a local cafe.

I am particularly fond of those nights, especially as the first one I attended was right after I moved here--that evening was such a fun night I got hooked on Swedish folk dance in addition to being smitten with the wonderful man I had moved here to be with. As we do every time we attend these I dance all night, but he spends part of the time dancing with me and part of the time playing violin with the other musicians. I mostly dance by myself when he isn't available, but this time I did get one of the other musicians to dance one dance with me after he finished his cinnamon roll (that the cafe provided for all musicians) and before he returned to playing.

In other news this week at choir I learned something that will be really, really helpful. Our teacher stayed after choir to work a bit with me to help me with my singing. She explained to me that the lower notes on the standard lines of sheet music (E and F), which is where most of the songs start for the altos, are higher and brighter in sound than my normal speaking voice, while the middle note (B) is well higher than that, and it is only when we drop a couple of lines below the bottom line that we get to notes wherein I need to sing lower than my normal speaking voice. She suggests that I can use this information to help me start looking for notes in the correct range based on where the dots on the page are, and it will be easier to match what I am singing to what my neighbours are singing.

I think that this will be very, very helpful information--I knew that the altos sing lower (generally) than the sopranos, and since I am meant to be singing with the altos I have been trying (when I think about it at all) to sing low--which generally means lower than my speaking voice. Which is not the direction I should have been going at all. No wonder I have such problems. In addition to not being able to tell if the note I am singing is the same as the note someone else is singing at the same time, I was also not even aiming in the correct direction. (Please note that even though I can't tell, I do, often, get the right notes anyway, or so I am told by the others, and I am told that I have gotten much better in the months since moving to Sweden.)

Last night

lord_kjar and I made the drive down to Piteå (not quite an hour south) to visit his dad. I am pleased to report that I was able to follow much more of the conversation than last time we visited (his dad doesn't really speak English), and I was able to say some things to him in Swedish. He was quite pleased at my progress. It may be slower than I would like, but it is still noticeable.

But this catch-up has gotten long enough--he is asleep in his chair at the other computer, and I have yoga to do before bed, and tomorrow is a work day. This weekend a friend is coming to visit for the weekend, it will be good to see her again, and on Sunday our choir has a performance in town.

Current Mood: happy

When I joined the University of Luleå as an assistant Lecturer this month they asked me to provide them a New Employee Interview for the Uni Intra-Web. So I typed up a short summary of what I will be doing with this job and my previous geology experience, then translated it into Swedish with the help of a friend and GoogleTranslate. (Note that I had been warned that everything on the LTU webpage would be done in both English and Swedish, but that they only use GoogleTranslate, so if I gave them only one language I would have to accept any resultant problems with translation. Therefore I choose to run GoogleTranslate myself, then get a friend's help to clean it up and make it actually say what I think it does. Any remaining errors are the fault of me and Google, not my kind translator.)

When I mentioned the interview on FB I apologized that the link would only work for people with an LTU log-in, so my sister suggested that I do a screen shot for the rest of the world. Sadly, when I tried uploading the .jpg I made from the screen shot I got an error message (and got the same error message when I tried again from home). Therefore I will recreate the article here, including the photo they used.

( the English Version of the Interview )
and the ( Swedish version )

Current Mood: busy

I had started a post talking about the SCA event in Germany and how much fun I had before the event being the one to coordinate the plans for the Laurel Ceremony* and vigil for SvartulvR, the current Prince of Nordmark (who was totally surprised by it all--it never occurred to him that the Crown would present any sort award, let alone a peerage, to a reigning prince), but I never got around to actually finishing it, and another week has slipped past and my new job has started. If I don't just admit defeat on that post and move on none of you will hear about the new things happening in my life, either.

Suffice it to say that the town was pretty, the event a joy, and the travel there and back with other SCA folk from Nordmark much fun.

Then I enjoyed my last week of the extended holiday I have been on since my job in Italy ended with the end of 2010. Today was my first official day of work, but since my boss is off to Finland for a big conference starting today we took care of getting me settled in yesterday. At first he thought that there wasn't any office space available for me anywhere near the corridor where he and the colleagues with whom I will be working are located, and after much negotiation he had managed to find a room on a different floor and a couple of hallways away. Fortunately for me at the last minute one of the rooms on our corridor opened up as one of the team, N, headed off to accept a job in industry.

As luck would have it I actually got to meet N before he departed--there was a short course last week on how to operate Leapfrog, a high-end computer program which takes a variety of different kinds of data and turns it into 3D images one can rotate at will. Since this is exactly the sort of work will be doing I went to the course and got to meet many people from Uni and from industry.

N cleared out his office either on Friday or Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon I got the keys to the room. Normally the office would have been cleaned by janitorial staff at the uni in between occupants, but we moved too quickly for that to happen in this case. However, I was totally ok with that--to me an important part of moving into a space and making it mine is the cleaning thereof.

The office is rather narrow compared to its length, and when N used it the desk was along one wall and wrapped around in front of the window as well, with bookshelves along the other wall. The downsides to this configuration, as I saw it, was the fact that the computer part of the desk was in the corner of the room such that one's back would be to the door, and the nice coat rack that was mounted on the wall was directly over the desk in such a way as my nice long coat wouldn't be able to hang freely.

Therefore I decided that step one would be to rearrange the furniture. Closer examination revealed that the desk was actually two separate sections that were held together by optional metal plates screwed to the underside of the desk. As a single unit the desk was far too long to fit along the narrow end of the room, and simply switching which wall has the desk would have meant that the bookshelves would have to be in front of the cork board (which had been on the wall above the desk).

Therefore I took apart the desk and put the large part (suitable for spreading out a geologic map upon) against the window along the short end of the room (which left just enough room to hang my coat from that hook between the desk and the wall). The smaller part of the desk, which is designed to fill a corner, I rotated into the room so that I could sit at the computer and face the door--that way I will know if someone comes to the door without relying on my hearing to announce them (it is never a good idea to rely on my hearing unless I know that there is something I am meant to be listening to).

I now have one bookshelf on each of three walls, and the path from the door to the coat rack sweeps nicely through the room and through my work station. I can sit in my chair and face the computer, or I can swivel around and face the desk. Cleaning and rearranging and then unpacking my books took all morning, which left me some time this afternoon to actually start work. So far that means doing a literature search, since I have no office computer (and so no 3D modeling programs) and no data, but just reading up on the topic will take up plenty of time as I continue to get settled.

This weekend we head to Umeå for a gaming convention and then we have a weekend off before a local SCA event the following weekend(this will be the first one I attend locally since I missed Coronet by being in Australia).

Oh, I almost forgot--that ear exam last week--I got to look inside of my ears! He has a nifty camera set up, so for the first time ever I got to see my own eardrums. He tells me that from the pattern of my hearing loss (mostly U shaped, but not quite as U shaped as the last time I was tested--I have lost a bit of the high frequencies sometime in the past 7 years) he thinks that my hearing problem is one I was born with, and the many ear infections I had as a child and the tubes I had in my ears and the surgery to correct a hole in my ear drums are only coincidence, not the cause of the problem. He confirms what the Australian doc said, surgery won't help my hearing problem, but new hearing aids might make a difference. Now I just need the appointment to actually get those ordered...
*Note for people who actually click on the ceremony link above--it is a video of the segment of Friday evening's court that led to SvartulvR being sent to vigil, and the actual ceremony from Saturday's court. The quality isn't the best due to having been filmed on an ordinary camera (not a video camera), with some supplemental footage coming from an iphone (where that was better than what the camera did) The ceremony was written by Master SigmundR, and I think he did a good job at getting an Old Norse feeling into it. The filming was done by

Current Mood: cheerful

the rest of the week

where did the last two weeks go?

and it all falls nicely into place, as I hoped it would

now it really is spring

Ok, so maybe it wasn't prezzies

keeping busy

seeking advice on setting up a database

My first year in Sweden

look, posting photos before someone had time to ask for some

10 days slipped by really fast, but take lots of words to describe

LTU New Employee Interview

my new office and a bit of journal catch-up

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May 2025

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