seven quick takes about stuff!

1. In Sweden offices always have a proper kitchen. I really appreciate that everyone eats lunch together and that desks are for working, not for eating. What I don't like is that sometimes people microwave 'food' which smells completely rancid. Exaggeration? Not by much.

Imagine a smell like 20 wet cats who have been living in a room that hasn't been cleaned in a year. Now imagine seeing a person eating the item giving off this smell, and just try to enjoy eating a sandwich. Hopefully you get the picture.

2. This is a great song that makes me really happy!



3. Greg and I have been playing a lot of cribbage lately. Neither of us is very good, but at least that makes us evenly matched. Maybe we're not really playing correctly, but we have a set of rules that we've agreed on based on various sets of cribbage rules we have found. The interesting thing we've found is that a hand that is statistically rare is not necessarily worth a ton of points, so a good poker hand doesn't really make a good cribbage hand. I still get excited if the turn card makes my hand a 'full house' though:)

4. The games we have in rotation that are fun for two people are: cribbage, bananagrams, and bohnanza. They pretty much take care of any type of game I'd be interested in playing. A numbers/card game. A word game. A strategy game. We need to learn the 2 player version of 7 Wonders, but we've been waiting to play the game the normal way a few times first before we play a modified version.

5. I am so glad that Christmas and New Years are on Wednesdays this year. This means we have a full two week vacation. Last year it seemed that everyone just used personal vacation days and didn't show up to the office, but this year we have official scheduled vacation, which is really so much better.

6. Plus Malory is coming to visit us! I think if we didn't have a friend coming for the holiday we would end up sitting at home far too often. I mean, I really do like sitting at home and reading books or playing games, but going on adventures is fun too:)

7. In my last quick takes, I mentioned that I had so many photos out one particular window that I might make a collection of them. Well, last week while I was sick, I went through a bunch of photos and I think I found 28 unique photos from the past year, taken out the same exact window. This will be the most riveting thing I've published to my blog!

The End & The Linkup!

Merry Christmas!

A few photos from our quiet Christmas in Sweden. Perhaps some 'outtakes' from this little adventure will make their way to the blog in the future.











And because I can't resist the opportunity for a good animated gif, here we are, enjoying our glögg.

Santa and our Christmas Eve dinner

Yesterday Santa stopped by.



It happened that I had been talking with my landlord who has five small children and also had a couple nephews visiting, and he asked if Greg and I would be busy in the afternoon. "I don't think so?" "Oh does Greg want to play Santa and distribute the gifts?" Greg agreed, so they met up in the laundry room to go over their plans. The trickiest part was probably the fact that GregSanta had to speak Swedish to the children.



And that lasted all of ten minutes, and then Greg and I cooked our dinner.



Yes that tall candle is one that I made. I know you were wondering. And after dinner we went to midnight Mass, which was actually quite nice. I really liked that it was not overly crowded like a Christmas Mass usually is. Also we sang the Swedish version of Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. Bonus!

Christmas preparations

I haven't really been getting too much into the Christmas-spirit lately. We did cut down a tree, and set up the manger (sans Baby Jesus, and with the three kings in a huddle on top of the bookcase (since they don't need to start traveling until Dec. 25)). Parenthetical clarifications aside, I think part of my hesitation for Christmas-spirit is to avoid being too strongly society-Christmas driven. I just don't want to spend all of Advent listening to Christmas music, and then turn it all off the day after Christmas. And the lights on our tree will be on until the Epiphany, you can be sure!

Last night I did spend some time baking cookies. First I made shortbread cookies (I still don't understand how the combination of butter, sugar, and flour can be SO delicious), and then I made monster cookies. The monster cookies are delicious and gluten-free. We are having a hockey holiday party on Wednesday, so I wanted to make some treats for that. Hopefully they last. I also plan to make this most delicious treat, but I can't make that beforehand because I know it will absolutely Not last.

So I did a pretty good job of forcing myself into the Christmas spirit last night, especially because I played Love Actually in the background (twice) while I was baking. And now today I am listening to this song on repeat: