Monday Mutterings

Weather and walkability

The photo is from last Thursday when it was still icy cold. Since then we had a rise in temperature, snowfall and wind and thaw and rain… I stayed in for three days; until this afternoon, when it seemed streets and walkways looked fairly walkable again (with most of the snow gone). Actually they were mostly walkable again – except here and there.

There’s a lot of “here and there” stuff going on in winter because each property owner is responsible for the pavement outside their own house or yard. And not everyone takes the responsibility equally serious.

Anyway I managed to get myself to a mailbox and a nearby store and back home again without accidents.

Dilemma solved

Maybe someone is curious how I ended up treating the dilemma presented in a previous post? After giving the matter a lot more thought than it was worth, I sent a printed Christmas postcard with no room for extra messages. (Why can’t I just make that kind of decisions straight away? It would make life so much simpler…)

A frustratingly slow Sunday

Yesterday was a very frustrating day because I had constant trouble with my computer or broadband or one or more internet servers, and I wasn’t able to pinpoint where the fault might be – until in the evening, when the broadband gave up completely. Then I decided that had probably been responsible  for all the trouble the whole day (even though at times it seemed to be working) and went to bed with my Kindle and The Lewis Man (the book!)

Again, it would have been wiser of me to give up the internet much earlier in the day and just do something else with my time instead of keep trying to check every five minutes if perhaps...

This morning I slept late and after breakfast found myself in touch with the world again at normal speed.

New worries. Or not.

So it was not until the mail dropped in late in the afternoon that I needed to start worrying again…
(Bear with me, or stop reading here.)

No, nothing to do with Christmas cards this time.
The cause of worry was a letter from the landlord (=The City), giving a very complicated explanation (if it can be called that) of the expected procedure when next year they are going to install a new optic fibre cable in the building, to give us new options for broadband and TV and phones. This will probably be good once it’s all fixed; but my first reaction after reading the letter was PANIC, as it seemed that I may have to move lots of heavy furniture, like bookcases full of books. Which first of all I can’t do, and second of all, there’d be nowhere to put it all without it still being in the way.

Taking deep breaths, reading the letter again… It just makes no sense. Installing a new box in the hall, yes, that bit I understand. And it’s doable. But if they’re going to draw the cables from that box in the hall… Why on earth would they want to draw it (as they say their intention is) to the same place where my old cable socket is? – which means all around the living room, to a spot by the window, which is not a place where most people would want to have their TV anyway. (Well – at least I don’t, which is why I have extension cables from there and half way round the room to a place much closer to the hall…)

Next the letter says they’re also going to put an extra socket in the room next to the living room - which means the one I use as study. They don’t specify which wall in that room, but again it does not seem to make any sense to draw the cable across the room.

What would make sense, to me, would be to put both the new cable sockets next to the door between the livingroom and the study (which is quite close the hall, and also the same wall where I have the TV). That would involve a minimum of cable-drawing – and, as it happens, in my flat no need to move any furniture.

So… I think I shall try to put off worrying until I find out what it is they really mean to do…??

Of Snow and Christmas Cards

I’ve been staying in today, doing my best to ignore the Weather going on outside.

Others chose a different strategy:

(Paparazzi shots through the window.)

Christmas cards from abroad have started to arrive.
I found a new way to display them this year, hanging ribbons on a corner by the doorway to my study.

One card that arrived this week (not included in the display above) presented me with a bit of a dilemma. Not a very serious dilemma, as dilemmas go… But I’d be curious to get a “second opinion” (or more).

I had this penfriend in another European country. We never met. I think we first got in touch via something called “friendship books” sent around between penpals. (A way of making contact with strangers around the world before the internet.) For various reasons we never got into frequent exchange of letters. It almost immediately turned into just a once-a-year Christmas letter/card.

Two years ago, she wrote that she had decided to cut down correspondence even further, so thanked me for years past but said she’d not be writing again.  I accepted that and crossed her off my own list. So was rather surprised last year when I still got another card from her. And yet another one this year! even though I never answered the last one.

Obviously she’s clean forgotten that she “broke up” with me two years ago.

What would you do??

Friday My Town – Holiday Traditions

I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been (inwardly) out of sync with the FMTSO themes. Every Friday seems to spring a surprise theme on me, while I’ve been having something else in mind during the week.

This week, for example, I was convinced it was Rainy Themes coming up, and kept wondering what on earth to do with that, with all this snow on the ground…

 
Snowberries in rain – November

Oops. Turns out Rainy Theme is next week.
This week it’s supposed to be My Favourite Holiday.

As it would feel very odd for me to suddenly start thinking about any other holiday 1½ week before Christmas, I think I’ll stick with the time of year we’re actually in, i.e. Advent.

This means that the regular followers of my blog may find this post repeating a lot of things they already know. But hey… Isn’t repeating stuff what tradition is all about?!

Kaleidoscope – Advent star made from a rose hip.

Because the month of December is the darkest time of year here, we tend to cram it with traditons and celebrations, all the way from the week before the 1st Advent Sunday, and going on at least through the first week of January.

For some people it’s a time of crazy frenzy, but as I don’t really have all that many obligations, I’m more or less free to pick and choose.

 

This year I had most of my Christmas cards done by mid November. (Then of course I still managed not to post some of them until after the recommended date, but that’s another story…)

 I got my red/white kitchen curtains and my electric candles and Advent stars up in time for the 1st Advent Sunday (and, as you can see, before the first snow).

I baked Lucia buns with saffron (‘lussekatter’)

The Buddy Bears exhibition opened in the town square on 1 st December, and I’ve been visiting it more than once since then. Not exactly tradition - as we’ve never had any Buddy Bears visiting before - but I guess ‘Santa’ could do with a holiday of his own for once. And it’s not good to get too stuck in traditions… It broadens the mind to be open to some cultural clashes:

 

The Buddy Bears for Etiopia and the United Arab Emirates

(You can see many more Buddy Bears up close in my Picture Book blog, every day this moth.)

I went to church for 1st Advent Sunday.

Some days it’s been really, really cold. Now there’s a part of tradition you can never control… Sometimes in December “rainy themes” would fit right in; but not this year (so far).

I did not buy a Christmas tree, because I never do.
My personal tradition is to just have a miniature artificial tree, 60 cm high, which will be celebrating its 26th Christmas this year. I’ve not put it up yet – don’t usually do that until the last week before Christmas.

I watched ice sculptures being made in the town square.

See more of the Lucia parade in an earlier post. This one is for Sandra and you other dog-lovers out there.

Lighted trees in the park… Did you know that when you take photos with flashlight in the dark, you can catch ghosts? (“steam” rising from the river, not yet frozen)

3rd Advent Sunday coming up this weekend, and 1½ weeks until Christmas. Time to wrap some presents.

(This collage was made the old-fashioned way.
Christmas stickers on printed photo.)

By the way, in Sweden we open our presents on Christmas Eve. (To add a bit of confusion, that means we get to open them at the same time as people in New Zealand, who open theirs on Christmas morning.)

BTT: Contemplation

So … you’ve just finished reading a book. For the sake of the discussion, we’ll say it was everything a book should be—engaging, entertaining, interesting, thought-provoking. The kind you want to gush over. The question is—do you immediately move on to your next book? Or do you take time to contemplate this writerly masterpiece and all its associated thoughts/ emotions/ ideas for a while first?

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/contemplation/

Actually, I asked myself that question after finishing The Blackhouse by Peter May last weekend. And my answer was to contemplate for a day or so and write a review of the one I’d just read before I moved on to the next. (The link goes to my review.)

I usually have more than one book going at the same time, though. First of all, I nearly always have one audio book going besides my main Kindle or printed read. But I usually also have a couple of “slow read” books lying around (or easily available on the Kindle). A “slow read” book can be a book of facts or essays or short stories or poems, or basically any book where I can just read a chapter now and then without being left with a cliffhanger at the end.

So while I sometimes feel I may need a bit of time between going from one “pageturner” to the next, that does not necessarily mean total abstinence. ;)

As The Blackhouse was the first in a trilogy, I also had to make the decision whether my next read should be the next book in that series – or something different. After a bit of hesitation… I’ve now got started on the next in the series: The Lewis Man. Which shows all the potential of being another pageturner. But I also find it cuts a bit deeper for me emotionally because of some issues involved (parents with dementia)… I may have to turn to some lighter reading on the side, perhaps!

 

Winter Visitors

Even though there is no food offered on my balcony (we’re not allowed to put up bird-feeders because the food that falls to the ground can also attract rats) I get visitors, and lately it’s not been just the usual crows and magpies and sparrows stopping by.

These photos were shot through the window as otherwise I scare them away.

The one above I suppose must be a blackbird…

But who or what is the one below? Can it be a very puffed-up Mrs Blackbird? Or what? (They were not there at the same time.)

 

Even though there’s nothing to eat but snow, they seem to like to come and sit on my fake spruce garland.

This one was eating/drinking snow  - I saw him gulping it down. From what I could observe, I don’t think he tried neither the led-lights nor the plastic needles.