Life in a Snow Globe

 

 Photo edited in "HDR-ish" mode in Picasa3. 

After a couple of weeks of the weather staying cold, windy and dry, but without throwing more snow at us - yesterday (Friday), it was in snow-globe mood again, the whole day. So we're back to be being pretty much covered in the white stuff again. 

The head cold that hit me from "nowhere" about 1½ week ago has pretty much kept me indoors since then, and I haven't been doing much at all unless you count using up about a ton of paper tissues and cough drops. (The inside of my head has kind of been feeling blurry like a snow globe all on its own, much of the time...) 

(istock image - not my own photo)

Luckily, I had ordered my usual bi-weekly grocery delivery for Thursday - when the weather was still on good behaviour and did not cause any delays. (Besides groceries, I also stocked up on paper tissues and cough drops...) And after I got the delivery sorted, I even managed a short walk to get rid of a couple of weeks of recyclable waste in the right bins; before Nature started throwing the next lot of snow at us. So yesterday I could just stay in and watch the snow-globe-like weather from the comfort of my own home. 

On the whole it's been a long period of "doing" very little. A lot of the time I've just been half-dozing to radio, TV and audio books; with a few excursions into Blogland now and then in between, when I've felt up for it. 

I have got through the whole original B&W Forsyte Saga TV series that I managed to find available on YouTube (mentioned in some earlier post). I watched the 26th and last episode today. I did enjoy being able to see "the original" again, as this was probably one of the first TV series of "grown-up" kind that I ever watched back in my youth. In 1967, I was still only 12 years old, so I'm not entirely sure if I did see it then (might depend on what day of the week and what time of night it was broadcasted?) - or perhaps not until it was rerun again here in 1970? But even so. I don't think any of us back then would have been able to imagine the explosion of various ways we'd have 55 years later of watching pretty much anything, at any time...

A Full Moon for Skywatch Friday

 

Looking out of my kitchen window on Sunday afternoon, I noticed the full moon, and went to grab my camera. I think the photo below is probably the best shot of the moon I've ever managed with my little Sony DSC HX 80 compact camera.

31/01/2026, 16:46

Linking to Skywatch Friday

Window Ornaments

 

Today the February Sun drew my attention to another kind of "bling". I have two window ornaments made of horseshoe nails and glass. One (above) hangs in my study, and the other (below) in my bedroom. (Not easy to tell from the photos, but the one below is smaller, only about 1/3 of the size of the one above.)

I've been racking my brain to remember their history, but the details aren't really clear in my my memory any more. I think that both may have been bought on some family holiday trip in the south of Sweden in my early teens or so - and that orginally, one was kept by us/me while the other was given to my p. grandmother. One reason why the details are blurred in my memory now is probably that later on, my parents moved to live in my dad's childhood home - and I seem to have memories of both ornaments from different windows over time. The only thing I'm sure about now is that at least since 2014, they have both been residing with me! 

Faux Bling

 

The sun happened to shine on my "fake" jewellery on display on the side of a bookcase next to my wardrobes, and tempted me to snap a couple of photos. 

The word that first sprang to mind for me was "bling". But when checking up on it, "bling" seems to actually denote "expensive, ostentatious clothing and jewellery" - rather than cheap imitations that never in their life pretended to be anything else but just that...

I searched on, and found some more definitions:

• Costume Jewelry / Fashion Jewelry: The standard terms for items designed to complement outfits rather than serve as investment pieces.
• Trinkets: Small, inexpensive jewelry items or baubles.
• Faux Jewelry: Jewelry that mimics real, high-end pieces.
• Junk Jewelry: A derogatory term for very low-quality items.
• Base Metal Jewelry: Jewelry made from metals like brass, copper, or aluminum.

I give up. The items on display above are probably a mix of all that - unless perhaps some of them are so old now that they've become some sort of faux antiques? They're all made of materials like wood, glass beads, ceramics, leather and base metals, though... (The few pieces I have of possibly somewhat higher value are not hanging out on daily display.)

I wear very little jewellery at all except on special occasions - and special occasions these days are becoming rather rare! I look at these items every now and then and think that I should give most of them away to some charity shop, as I so rarely use them. The main reason that they're still hanging where they're hanging, though, is that a lot of them are still associated with memories. (And they aren't really in the way either...)

February

 

Photo from 13 February, 2025 - Greenfinch 

A week or so ago I mentioned my habit of using my own photos to have personal calendars printed, and showed the January image I used for this year. Inspired by Ginny I'll try to make a habit of showing the rest at the start of each month. For February I chose another bird photo, this time a greenfinch sitting on the red bird feeder in the old cemetery. That feeder was a new addition there last winter, but is still there and in use. No doubt appreciated by several kinds of birds, as we've been having a persistently cold start to 2026.

My paternal grandmother Sally was born 3 February, 1900.
My maternal grandfather Hugo was born 4 February, 1901.
My mother was born 20 February, 1930.