Preparations...

 

My Moomin Mamma Mug

I have not yet started the actual "packing", but I've started making lists and gathering things...  

Outdoors, the remnants of storm Floris from Britain has been shaking the trees and throwing water at my windows every now and then throughout the day. 

I was convinced that I had booked the laundry room (in the basement of my building) for this afternoon (12 onward). However, "something" made me go down already around 9:30 to double check... Good thing that I did! because it turned out I had actually accidentally booked the 4th (yesterday) instead of the 5th! ... 

... BUT the laundry room happened to be free until 12... So I hastily re-booked, darted upstairs to gather the things most important to get washed - and managed to get my two loads done before 12. The first one (towels etc) went in the tumble dryer; and even the t-shirts in the second lot got some 20 minutes in the drying cabinet (and actually got almost dry in that time, since there were only a few of them). 

In Swedish we have a saying: "ha tur i oturen", meaning "to have good luck in the midst of bad luck"... I can't think of a corresponding common expression in English? If you can, please enlighten me!

 

Reality Check

This message unexpectedly turned up on my screen the other day -  I think while I was trying to log into a hotel booking site. It took them a while (long enough for me to be able to grab the camera to snap the shot abouve), but eventually I was let in. So I suppose I must have passed the test!

'We are currently checking if you are human' - images by Bing (AI)

To retaliate, I later gave Bing the same message. They responded with various photos of masked people holding up signs in 'Gibberish' - plus the weird-looking man on the left whose face looks like it's been put together from two different photos.

I also asked Bing for illustrations of a woman making holiday plans. This was the best of those. There are no weird-looking airplanes (or palm trees) involved in my holiday dreams - but I'm very likely to need the umbrella.

The plan is that my brother will drive down here in a couple of days, and then we also hope to go off on a little trip together to the west coast (with one night away, which needed to be booked). We're still having very rainy weather though, so our plans still depend a bit on how the weather forecasts develop...

Swedish West Coast according to Bing

Anyway - if you don't see me around in the Blog World as much as usual next week, it may be beacuse I've managed to sneak off on adventures "out of town" for a change. (I don't quite believe it until I see it!)