7QT: Are these starting to sound the same each week?

1. The Sushi Bazooka, alternately titled The Sushezi.

I don't have this or want this; I just think it is amazing.

2. I love the public library so much. Normally I like to plan out what books I'll look for before I actually go to the library. This way I can check off a book that I've actually been meaning to read. Greg often likes to just browse to see if he finds anything that looks interesting. Every time this happens, I end up finding books too (or sometimes I find books and he doesn't). For example, did you know that Lauren Graham (of Gilmore Girls fame) wrote a book?

The other great thing about library books is that I'm more motivated to actually read them. I don't like to leave a book unfinished, and I am not a huge fan of renewing the books (because obviously I pick the best books and other people are surely waiting for them). Also, I like to have the book I'm reading, plus one on hand for when I finish. Sometimes, I'll get a surprise email saying a book I was on the reserve list for is available for me, and those you have to pick up within a limited time and you do not have the option to renew. All this adds up to reading rates that I am quite satisfied with:) Thank you, Library.

3. I feel like I write about Anki, the electronic flash-card program, quite often. A thing I really like about it is that you can look at a nice display of graphs and stats. Normally I just look at the stats of individual 'decks' but the other day I checked out the stats for all the 'decks' and there were some interesting things there. I found out that on average, I am studying Swedish vocabulary for about an hour each week, and normally this is done with 20 minute sessions on three days of the week.

In my mind I have this goal of studying vocabulary for twice this amount of time. I really wish I would only skip one day of studying per week, but that never seems to work out for me. It is sort of a mixed bag of feeling glad that I am studying vocabulary for so much time (compared to the nothingness of the majority of my time living here) and feeling disappointed for not doing more. I can really tell that it makes a big difference in my Swedish skills, but somehow that doesn't give me the motivation to do more.

4. In Swedish you can sing an alphabet song to the same tune as the english alphabet song. There are three extra vowels at the end of the Swedish alphabet, so once you get the 'lmnop' section, there are really no pauses and you also never say 'and' before the last letter. Also, people of my generation do not include w in the Swedish alphabet, but when a 3 year old sings it, he includes it. Just some Swedish alphabet facts for your friday.

5. Here is a fun fact about the northern lights: If you are seeing a really faint glow in the sky, near the northern horizon, and you are wondering if you are seeing aurora or clouds, check to see if you can see a star through it. You can see stars through aurora, but clouds block out the stars.

6. The northern lights are called norrsken in Swedish, which sounds like norr-when but you have to imagine the person pronouncing the when like a person who has a strong h sound when they pronounce the word white. Norr means north, and the only other place I've seen 'sken' is in the word solsken, which means sunshine (sol = sun).

7. Folk dance tomorrow, and folk dance next saturday too! It feels lucky to be me!

__________________________

The End and The Link-up!

7QT - I wasn't expecting the ducks!

- 1 -

I spy...

- 2 -

"When is ikea the least busy?"
That is what I googled yesterday. That led me to this nonsense. Then I realized that Swedish shopping habits don't really resemble US shopping habits, so the googling is fruitless unless I translate to Swedish, which would probably be more effort than just sucking it up and going to the ikea.

- 3 -

And also this. Horsemeat scandal. ruh roh.

- 4 -

Yesterday I had a headache, and I was thinking that it was the first non-caffeine-related headache I had had in as long as I could remember. Then this morning I went to get coffee and it came out of the machine with no coffee, just water and milk. The coffee cartridge needed to be replaced, which could very well mean that yesterday's coffee was a reduced version as well.

And then I thought, let that be shared with the world via my blog.

- 5 -

Have you heard of Humans of New York? I just read about it on another blog, and I have quickly fallen in love. I mean, honestly, this lady? "I wasn't expecting the ducks!" is going to be my new life motto.

- 6 -

My 2013 book count is on track. About a month ago, I discovered that I was way behind if I wanted to even approach my book and page number counts from previous years. Thanks to Anne of Green Gables, I have now doubled those numbers, which puts me back on track. Plus I still have the two Chronicles of Avonlea books to read. Plus I love the public library, so I am really motivated to finish the books I currently have checked out so that I can go get some new ones.

- 7 -

For the past two weeks there have been no more than 5 people in the office (normally we are around 25). In Sweden, it is very very typical for people to take the entire month of July (also maybe some or all of June and August) off of work for holiday. At first it seems so strange for every single person to be on holiday at the same time. But recently someone was describing to me how it is a pretty good system actually. At an office in the US, where people are taking vacation whenever they please, it can often happen where there is at least one person missing every time there is a meeting, which can delay decisions or whathaveyou. In Sweden, if everyone is off at the same time, then that just doesn't happen. 

- The End -

Linking up with Jen!

7QT: allergies, swedish, and reading edition

- 1 -

Last week I meant to link to this article that I read for one of my takes. Luckily I only forgot about it for one week, and so now it makes its appearance. I like Jonathan Safran Foer's writing, and I didn't even realize this was written by him until I was mostly through the article and had to check who the author was.

"Let’s assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers."

- 2 -

And now I have allergies. How a person can spend nearly 30 years with no allergies and then have them is a very unpleasant mystery to me. Allergic to Sweden in June. I am not good at finding good weather forecasts in this country, so keeping that in mind, I found some webpages with pollen counts and allergy info. (I am implying that these sites are either not good or unreliable.) The next three days is in the category of "extreme" or "very high" or "three orange dots" depending on which page you check.

My husband is a longtime sufferer of allergies, and now I think I sort of get it. Why have I gone through three boxes of tissues this week? Because I have allergies. Why are my eyelids all puffy? Because I have allergies. Why don't my clothes match today? Because I have allergies. Is it really possible for a person to sneeze this many times in a day? Yes, yes it is, if you have allergies.

- 3 -

Is it proper English to say I need to bolster my reading habits? I love goodreads, and I love looking at the stats, but 2013 is not looking so good for me. See for yourself.

I hope 2011 wasn't the best it will ever be. Time to start reading children's books to increase the number of books, even though that doesn't do much to help with the page count. I actually have been reading the Anne of Green Gables books, which are quite entertaining. I don't think I had read any of them but the first either, so this is quite nice.

- 4 -

Plus they are mostly free for kindle. I got them from the Project Gutenberg page. (Amazon tried to make me pay $.99 for Sense and Sensibility. No thank you. I'll get it free from these guys instead.) The problem is that they do not have book #4 or #6. Luckily the local library had #4 so I got myself a library card. I love libraries. Also, this book return system is so high tech with a conveyer belt and everything. Unfortunately the library doesn't have #6 (in english, bara på svenska) so I'm not sure what I'll do.

Although maybe I should be reading the books in order of date published, as opposed to chronological order in Anne's life? I don't know. I need an Anne expert to help me out with this one.

Either way, I'm eventually going to need Anne of Ingleside. And borrowing the Swedish version is not my ideal choice. That would basically be doing the opposite of bolstering my reading habits I think.

- 5 -

Home rememdies for allergies that I might consider trying:
-saline solution (least appealing option, as it is intended to be sucked up the nose and allowed to drain out of your mouth or nose)
-shower more frequently (also not very appealing)
-drink mint tea (very appealing)
-keep the windows shut all the time (not ideal, but would solve more than one problem)
-eat wasabi peas (okay)

- 6 -

I was really excited to find this Swedish word of the day page. (Sidenote: this is why I can't quit google reader! I signed up for bloglovin but it won't let me import any ole rss feed.) Unfortunately, on thursday I noticed that listening to the pronunciation is not always correct. The sentence was something about "they sell" and the Swedish word for they is 'de' but it is pronounced 'dom' (which is actually pretty strange, even for swedish I think). So, I'll still try to use the page for new vocabulary, but I definitely cannot trust the pronunciation. Too bad.

- 7 -

For the first time in my life I was not the bona fide mosquito magnet! Normally mosquitos love me, but for some reason they were leaving me alone and bothering someone else. I was told that what you eat can make a difference, which is how I ended up finding that article. And, well, not to try to say a sample of one is statistically significant, but I cooked a dinner last night that was heavy on the garlic, and then ate leftovers for lunch today. Garlic for the win!

PS The food I invented was pretty delicious so I will share my methods. Frying pan on stove. Heat olive oil. Add shallots. Add carrot. Add green chili peppers. Add garlic. (The previous items were all added after the amount of time it took me to chop said item.) Add diced tomatoes or tomato sauce. Add a can of black beans. Season with salt, garam masala, coriander, a little cinnamon, a little ginger, a little chili powder, maybe a little turmeric. Let simmer while making rice. Delicious!

- The End and Jennifer's linkup -

A riveting Saturday!

One day, I thought to myself, "I wonder if Uppsala University has a letterpress studio.."

And well, as far as I can tell, they do not. But in my searches I found out that there is currently an exhibit about bookbinding at the library. So I went by to check it out yesterday. I had brought my camera with the hopes that I'd be allowed to use it, but alas, I was not. Either way, it was such a great experience that I will write about it sans photos!

It was a pretty small exhibit, but I read ALL the signs and I stayed in there for over a half hour. I am usually the kind of person that hates history, but man, someone just needs to tell me about the more interesting things and I am completely enthralled. Here are the highlights I saw.

1. A first edition Principia by Isaac Newton. I maintain that, as a physicist, this is the coolest book I could have ever seen. Here is a wikipedia article on the book. Apparently, this particular book had been stolen from the UU collection about forty years ago. And somehow it ended up in an auction in New York, where some kind soul bought it and donated it back to the university. Pretty crazy.

2. The Silver Bible. This is Sweden's most valuable book, I guess. It is actually just the four gospels, not the entire bible, and it is in the Gothic language (they also had a bible that was the first complete one printed in the Swedish language). Mostly I just loved reading the phrase "Swedish war booty" at a bookbinding exhibit. Here is some info on the UU library webpage, including a picture that someone must have illegally taken.

3. Carta Marina. This map was huge and awesome! And it is surprisingly accurate for being made in 1539. It is made in nine pieces that, together, make a map that was four feet by five and a half feet. On the webpage you can look at each of the nine blocks, and get just a tiny taste of the detail that is on this map. The sea creatures are fantastic.

After I got home I made this white hot chocolate, because anything that is equated to a form of frosting is a thing I've got to try. And it was sooo amazing. I seriously don't know how I lived my whole life without this stuff. As a side note, even though it is a Swedish-inspired recipe, I managed to forget to buy pearl sugar and almond flavor, so I just made it without. I also think I used nutmeg, but it could have been allspice. I don't really know, and I didn't feel like looking it up, but I smelled it and was in favor. I also used a bit of cinnamon, since I was missing the almond flavor. I even invested the time in whipping up some whipped cream, which was completely worth the time spent.

7QT

Another round of quick takes.

- 1 -

I don't know how long this has been going on, but on my boss's door, just under where it says his name, it says "Jedi Master."

- 2 -

Earlier this week I realized that it was not totally dark at 3:30 pm. Hooray! The days really are getting longer!

- 3 -

I did some recruiting for the concert and dance on Saturday. I feel so true to myself! Also, it is like a tree of recruitment. I invite one person, who then invites two more people. Big things are happening here.

- 4 -

I watched Downton Abbey. Obviously it was good. The reason it is worth writing about is that I managed to spoil it for myself. I wasn't actually too worried about spoiling it, and guess what, the wikipedia page contains spoilers. Who knew?! It also doesn't help that I accidentally watched an episode from season three first, which was really confusing. It was like the time I accidentally read book two of the Dragon Tattoo Girl series first. I kept thinking about how much I had to focus to figure out who all the characters were and whatnot. At least with Downton Abbey I went back and watched all the episodes. With the Dragon Tattoo books the first one was never available at the library so I figured since I had already read the second I could just go for the third. And the first never ever became available, so I'll just never know how they started. Probably that influenced my rating on goodreads, but whatever.

- 5 -

If you need to work on the muscle tone of your teres major and teres minor, learn to dance the Bakmes.

- 6 -

You were hoping I included a little hockey clip, weren't you?



How crazy is that?

- 7 -

If a recipe name contains the word "skinny" I immediately lose respect for it. Can't we all just agree to stop that now? No one eats a chocolate chip cookie because they are looking for a healthy snack. I think in general I am just not a fan of adjectives in recipe titles.

I am not this kind of doctor (I really need to incorporate this phrase into more of my life), but I do have strong opinions on this topic which I'll share here. Recipes that replace items with all sorts of magical zero-calorie "foods" just sort of freak me out. The only item I am comfortable with consuming that contains zero calories is water. If we put other things in our body that are zero-calorie, it is because our body does not recognize these items as 'food'.

Around here lately

My evenings are looking something like this lately. Soon I will need to replenish my supply of candles. I like that Sweden is pretty into candles, and I really like that you can buy candles for low prices here. So far it is the only thing I have found and considered to be inexpensive. I guess the price of frozen salmon isn't terrible either.

Pre-AK Blog

It is possible that Roton has been spending more and more time sitting on me because cats just like to be in the warmest place possible, but probably, the more likely explanation is that he knows I am leaving for six weeks and just wants to spend as much time with me as possible. Obviously.

My lists lately have gotten a little carried away, which means my departure is near. The biggest dilemma is figuring out what shoes to bring, which probably requires the start of a new list of times I have never felt more girly. Seriously though, the big blue snowboots, the hiking boots, the regular nice boots, running shoes (I've got big plans for those guys!), and then possibly some sort of regular shoe. Oh and I might get to go to a contra dance, so possibly shoes that I can dance in without getting blisters. Six shoes is insanity, but none are easy or apparent to eliminate.

The other thing that may need reducing is number of books. I think right now I want to bring at least 6 non physics books. And I really ought to have a few physics books along, so we are looking at 8 to 10 books. sheesh woman. Also, Roton is perched on my arm in a horribly cute way.

I think my last big decision is whether or not to bring a mansuit. I do have my own snowpants, which will be smaller and more manageable but there is just something about those mansuits...