September Harvest Festival, Part I (Inside)

Borås Cultural Centre contains the town’s Art Museum, Library, Theatre, and a café.

In September, the annual Harvest Festival usually takes place here - with market stalls and music and other activities going outdoors between the Cultural Centre and the nearby early 20th century church…

… and free apple pie and custard served indoors, in the theatre lobby:

This year there was so much going on in September (both in town, and for me personally) that I never got round to posting my harvest festival pictures back then. They came to mind now, however, when I was looking for something to post for Friday My Town Shoot Out.

The FMSTO theme this week is ‘Inside’, so I start with  some photos I took from the upstairs balcony of the theatre lobby (where I also found a quiet corner to enjoy my own piece of pie!) …

While we’re here, we might also take a peek into the Library, which I have to confess I find rather unpersonal these days:

I must confess I still feel a bit daunted by the ‘robot librarians’... Haven’t actually had much to do with them yet. I can browse the catalogue online from home, and then pick up vs leave borrowed books at a small branch library closer to where I live; where they still have human staff behind the counter. Or at least they did last time I visited! My reading habits have changed a bit over the last few years, with 1/ Kindle, and 2/ special (disability) license to download library ‘talking books’ directly online. This does not mean that I read less, but it means that I mostly read Swedish books ‘by ear’ (and some English ones too) and with my eyes in English on my Kindle (classics for free + buy some); and so do not really need to borrow a lot of regular books from the library any more…

(Postcard recently received from book-loving friend in England – thanks John, I do still love to look at printed books even if I prefer reading on the Kindle now for practical reasons!)

~~~

I’ll save the rest of my harvest festival photos for another post (or two), I think.

This November month has been all wrapped in grey clouds so far, and seems likely to continue the same way…

Indoors Wednesday

 

Today has been an Indoors Wednesday for me.

The primary reason was not the weather - even if on that account it was actually a rather good day to have a reason or two not to go out. Those reasons can be seen above: A new fridge and a new freezer being installed.

That’s one of the advantages as well as disadvantages of living in a rented apartment. You don’t have to decide vs don’t get to decide about these things yourself. They either happen or don’t, as the case may be. In this case, I got notice last week that is was going to happen; and further notice on Monday, that it was going to happen today, some time between 8-12 a.m.

Which meant that I was up and about around 7 a.m., just in case. But of course they did not turn up until around 11:30.

On the whole I guess it went smoothly, even if it got a bit more stressful for me than I prefer… Having to hurriedly clean away I-don’t-know-how-many-years worth of grease and grime that had been hiding under and behind the old appliances (while two strong guys carried the old ones out and the new ones in). I’ve lived here six years, but there were things living under the old fridge that I’d never seen before…

Question of conscience: Do you pull out your kitchen appliances every year and clean behind them???

The manuals accompanying the new appliances tell me, of course, that I should.

They also tell me, in visual language, that it’s okay if my new fridge sounds like a cat…

… but not if it sounds like a bear.

Remains to be seen how we’ll get along. So far this afternoon it’s mostly been me roaring like a bear, rather than purring as a cat. This because I’ve not yet got used to the fact that the new fridge only has one, big door; while my old one was a fridge-chiller with two doors that opened separately. (The lower half supposedly keeping a somewhat higher temperature, suitable for vegetables and fruit etc.) What has happened a number of times this afternoon is that I somehow manage to hit my toes with the door when closing it… (being used, I suppose, to being able to stand closer to the cabinet when I only had the upper door open).

I also have a slight grudge going on with the new freezer, which still lacks a proper “front” (which also means it still lacks a handle!). I was given a vague promise this will be added “another day”, apparently by someone else… Until then, I have to open the door by gripping around the edge of it. On top of that, the new freezer also turned out to be a little bit smaller than the old one… And as my old one was more or less full, you may be able to guess some of the initial consequences. No? Okay then: I had to have a bowl of ice-cream for dessert after lunch. And a couple of packets of very icy frozen veggies (with best-before date expired and half-thawed and re-frozen at least once before) had to go…

Minor troubles. Hopefully we’ll learn to get along…

Sunday Simplicity

Orchid in my window
– straight out of my camera for –
SOOC Sunday

♥ ♥ ♥

A simple straight-out-of-the-camera Sunday suits me just fine today. I got enough of editing complications yesterday.

It was when I tried to exchange the header image at my other blog, DawnTreader’s Picture Book, that I got into trouble. For some reason Blogger first shrunk it and then blew it up again and the end result was blurry. This mystified me, because I had no recollection of having had this problem last time. But with things I do not do very frequently, my first instinct is to doubt myself rather than the technology… So of course I ended up stubbornly continuing my experiments for a while; only to end up with the same result again and again: Either a blurry or a very tiny picture.

Eventually I gave up and went to pay a blog visit to Ginny, who changes her header almost daily. Ooops…. turned out she seemed to have lost her head as well… I learned from comments on her post that it was a Blogger issue.

Before I was able to send off a comment of my own, however, my whole internet connection went down! An even more frustrating end to an already frustrating evening!

This morning, to my relief, at least I find myself back in touch with “the world”. Which really puts the header problem in perspective. I’d rather have communication without blog banner than the perfect blog banner without communication…

Straight Out Of The Camera Sunday

I felt in need of adding a splash of colour here after all my snowy pictures, so thought I’d show you the Primula plant I got last Sunday from my aunt and uncle. At least I’ve managed to keep it alive for a week!

This photo is straight from the camera (a flash macro shot), so I thought I’d enter it for Straight Out Of The Camera Sunday at the blog Murrieta365. Finding my way there through Heather I throw in a link to to her post as well. :)

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been keeping myself rather busy lately just with collecting buttons and links for my sidebars. At the bottom of this blog you’ll find a list of buttons to photo and writing challenges covering almost every day of the week. There is a similar list at my Picture Book blog.

This does not mean that I intend to partake in each and every one of these every week - and certainly not from both blogs! But sometimes, and especially in dreary winter weather, I find that these kinds of challenges can be of inspirational help.

I’m sure there are lots more out there but I won’t be adding any without having participated at least once… ;)

Monica