7QT: highest latitude swim, sweden/swedish,

1. On Monday I set a new personal record for the highest latitude at which I've swum. I consider being fully submerged in the water a 'swim' but the Swedes would refer to that as bathing. Anyhow. For the record:

64°31'51.8"N

2. I think my previous highest latitude swim took place at 59.7 degrees. I'm pretty happy with my almost-five-degree improvement. That was a year ago, and I can't quite decide which swim was colder. A river at 59 degrees versus a lake at 64 is a tough call…

3. I'm really pleased that so much of my summer holiday is being spent in various places in Sweden. I really like this country, so I think it is good for me to see more of it (even if the 'more' really just means dance floors in different places).

4. For my Swedish class we had an assignment to write about a musical artist and a song of theirs that we like. It was a fun and short thing to do, but then I felt a little vulnerable when the class listened to the song. It is an interesting thing to share musical preferences with people you don't know well, and I found it really interesting (and sometimes surprising) to hear what songs the others chose. Here is my contribution:



5. When I switched from the evening Swedish course to the daytime course, I also switched my normal seat. Now I am one place closer to the center and one place closer to the front. I always always like to sit on the very edges of the room, often no closer than the middle. But I think I read that it is supposed to be better for learning to sit in the center and toward the front. I'm not sure if it is having a big impact or not, but I like to pretend it does, mostly to justify putting myself in a place that is not my ordinary.

Let's pretend like I have a great plan for these seven takes and am not just rambling…

What else…

6. Have you ever made pinnbröd over a fire?! Apparently we call it twist bread in English, but the literal translation is 'stick bread.' I had never heard of this or seen it before, but it was super tasty. Here is the recipe, using Swedish units. 1 dl = 0.42 cups, and 1 tsk = 1 tsp.

5 dl flour
2 tsk salt
2 tsk baking powder
2 dl water

Mix the ingredients in the order listed, if it is too dry add a bit more water, too sticky a bit more flour. Then you pull off a piece, roll it into a long strip, wrap it around a stick, and roast it over a campfire until the outsides are brown/black. It tasted like one of those soft pretzels to me. yum.

7. Last night for dinner I made pinnbröd, and then wrapped it around hot dogs and put them in the oven for 12ish minutes on a 'hot' temperature. It was a super tasty dinner. On a similar but different topic, I've gotten so laid-back about oven temperatures. Most of the recipes I use have the temperature in F, but Sweden ovens are in C. You would think I'd just need to remember a few important conversions (350/375/400), but somehow I am always mixing them up. I often end up arbitrarily picking a temperature. I think I've written about this before actually… using my oven with the temperature knob set to 'straight down' but when I need a 'hot' temperature then it is a bit higher, maybe like 7 or 8 o'clock :)

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The End & The Link-Up!

How can I be an introvert who gets energized from going to a folk dance with a large group of people, many of whom I don't know?

I love reading about and thinking about introversion and extroversion. I've always known that I am a pretty extreme introvert. I definitely do not get energy from being in a large group of people. However, I've recently noticed that there is one huge counter-example to this generalization. When I go to an evening of folk dance, I leave with so much energy - far more than any other typical introvert activity (jag älskar hemmakväll) would give me.

How can this be?

I've been pondering this quite a bit lately. Maybe this is a sign that I'm sliding more toward the middle of the introvert/extrovert scale? But by any other measure, I'm still an extreme introvert. So, really, how can this be?

My initial thoughts are that folk dances are different from most activities involving a large group of people. Of course, they are different in so many ways, but specifically, I think that the important factor is that there is sort of a prescribed way of interacting with people.

If I get invited to a big party where I will not know too many people, I have to spend a lot of time mentally preparing myself to have lots of small talk with new people. I have to try super hard to not be incredibly awkward. Honestly, I am happiest sitting and primarily listening to conversations, while contributing minimally. Or perhaps I'll get into a more involved conversation with one or two people, and not really talk to anyone else the entire night. Maybe I make this sound harmless, but most people can get uncomfortable with this, thinking my silence means I am having an awful time.

Now, if I am being entirely honest (and Greg would confirm this), most of the time before I head to a dance, I actually get a bit anxious and have second thoughts about going. My heart is just shouting, "Are you crazy, don't voluntarily go to an event with a bunch of strangers, especially if no one is expecting you to be there!" Most of the time, I have to rely on my brain to be the voice of reason, to remind myself that afterwards I'll thank myself for going.

My heart is so quick to judge all large gatherings of people equally. I so easily forget that folk dances have this prescribed way of interacting with others, compared to any other generic gathering of many people. You go there, you ask a person if they want to dance, and you dance. It is simple. There is usually not a lot of time for conversation. There is no expectation to continue conversation while dancing, since most people become worse dancers while trying to talk and dance. And while you may be in a large crowd of people, you are primarily only interacting with this one person, who you don't even have to talk to. To me, it feels like such a healthy reminder that there are ways of connecting with people other than through conversation alone.

Thinking about a lot of my friends who are also folk dance enthusiasts, I'd say most of them are more introverted than extroverted. Perhaps folk dances are events more suited to the introvert - a gathering of people who are all just interacting with only one other person at a time? Perhaps.

As I said, these are just my initial thoughts. I'm curious to hear what others might think. Is there agreement? Disagreement? I've also been trying to think of other examples of situations that we would typically expect an extrovert to thrive in, but secretly the introverts are thriving. I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have!

7QT: bike names, allergies, dance, vals

1. I love the names of bicycles. Mine, for example, is the Viking Elegance 3. I actually saw another Viking bike just the other day, but the name was not quite as good as mine. The most favorite bike name I've seen is one that parks near me at the office. Are you ready for this? The Silver Apron. That's right. Do you have a bicycle? What is it called? I need to start a list of these.

2. Yesterday I went over to Greg's part of the building to water his plant. The first person I ran into saw me and said, "Greg's not here! You should know that!" It was pretty funny. I wish, instead of explaining my real reason for being there, I would have said, "Well I've been looking for him for five days now!" Next time…

3. I might have a cold, but I think it is more likely that I am being allergic to whatever it is that is spreading pollen right now. The pollen report says various grasses. Okay. Last year at this same time of year, I had been thinking I had a long-lasting cold. Eventually I started to realize that it could be allergies, and now it seems to be happening again.

4. Lots of dancing in a week = lots of joy in a week. That is how it has been going for me. I went to Ransäter for my second year in a row, and for now I'm still planning a post dedicated entirely to the event, so I won't write more just yet(:

5. Looking way into the future, I just found out that it will be possible for me to go to the next two Ransäterstämmans… stämmorna? Greg has been working on a proposal to host a science meeting in Uppsala in two years from now, which we just found out was accepted! The meeting takes place at the exact time of Ransäter, which is pretty convenient for me!

6. Now it is evening and I picked up some allergy medicine on my way home. I got a pill and a nasal spray. So far I've only tried the pill. We'll see what effect it has. Here's to hoping for positive results.

7. Right now I'm obsessed with this waltz. Why are waltzes just so lovely?!

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The End & The Link-Up

Allergies!

Last year I discovered I have allergies! Hooray! According to sources online, it is oak and birch that are producing the most allergens right now. The craziest part is that Greg ("he's allergic to everything") is not really having any reactions to whatever is in the air, but I am.

So, putting aside the fact that I now want to watch My Girl…

I've been reading all sorts of crazy articles online about allergies. This morning Greg told me he'd make some coffee, because he usually finds that helps with his allergy symptoms. He's told me this before, and it sounds strange, but it really did help.

That led me to this article, about foods that help with allergies. My reactions? I'm glad I had sushi for dinner last night. And I'm glad I dislike celery. And I always thought that eating spicy foods was good to help clear out your sinuses. I am imagining pollen being in my nose and just getting washed away.

That article linked to this article, about natural allergy remedies. Reactions: I won't be stashing clothes in my garage (I don't even have a garage). I also think I might have read this article last year. This morning we closed up our house to the outdoors, and the cleaning process has begun. Hopefully by the end of the day we'll have dusted every surface and mopped all the floors.

The internet is full of so many amazing facts. Here is an article about allergy facts, which had some information I found to be really astounding.

Answer Me This!

I just love a good link-up. I can't help myself. Here is one I got excited about that Haley is guest-hosting, where you simply answer the questions. I had fun writing these, and I hope you enjoy reading my answers.

1. What's the scariest thing that's ever been in your yard?

Probably a skunk, which is nothing to be too terrified of, assuming you haven't got it cornered. I used to live in a barn (transformed on the inside to be a house) in Vermont, and we had a really high skunk population. Several times I got home late from the office, only to pull into the driveway to see a skunk milling about. So then it would just be a game of timing my escape from the car. One time the skunk was on the porch (possibly eating dog food that one of my house-mates had not skunk-proofed), and that one took the longest to wait for.

2. Beards. Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Thumbs up. See exhibit A.

3. If stuff breaks, can you fix it?

I guess I feel pretty confident about my ability to fix stuff, so I usually at least attempt to fix stuff. The problem is that it often takes more than one try, and the first try might not look so pretty. Imagine my front bicycle light, dangling off of its mount, with some ineffective pieces of duct tape stuck to it in various places, and there you have exhibit B.

4. What was your first car?

A (94?) Nisan Sentra! Black with a purple racing stripe! I loved that car!

5. How often do you eat out?

When I first moved to Sweden, I ate out basically never because restaurants are crazy-expensive here. The prices for lunch are much more reasonable though, so I've started going to lunch once a week with some friends from work. 

6. Why is your hair like that?

For nearly half of my life I've just been on this trend of growing my hair long and then chopping off 10+ inches to donate. The problem is that I really don't love how my hair looks when it gets long enough to be able to donate. Plus my grandma told me she loved my short hair and thought I should always keep it short. 

So right now my hair is just a bit past my shoulders. This second photo is very recent, but I've actually cut a few inches of my hair since this was taken, because the length was starting to bother me. I've been considering chopping it short again, because I like it best, but I worry that I'd pay for a crazy-expensive haircut only to have look not-good.

Initial ginger beer research

There is so much information to know about making ginger beer! I have spent my entire Saturday morning reading up on the different options.

Now I just need to decide how 'hardcore' I want to be about this. The simplest option would be to boil some water with ginger root and sugar, essentially making a ginger simple syrup, which I could add to bubbly water.

Taking it up a notch, I could do the same sort of thing, but add a bit of yeast. This would result in a (probably negligible) amount of alcohol, and a time-sensitive beverage. Here is a really nice article about this method, designed for school children to make, I guess.

The thing is, it is tricky to have and store a sweet and carbonated beverage. The addition of yeast in the beverage will carbonate the beverage by turning sugars into alcohol + CO2. But since you want your beverage to also be sweet, you have more sugar than you want to turn into alcohol. So when you make ginger beer this way, you need to drink it within a day or two of putting it in a bottle. This is probably not a huge concern (especially if you avoid glass bottles), but it does mean making very small batches. And if you have small batches, then you don't really want to use champagne yeast, because the amount in a package would be total overkill. Maybe there is dry champagne yeast, which you could just use as you need? We normally buy liquid yeast packages though. And I'm getting disorganised in my thoughts here, but I've read that using bread yeast can add strange flavors.

The ultimate project then would lead to pasteurization. This allows you to put a beverage with sugar and yeast in a glass bottle, cap it, let it ferment a tiny bit to produce carbonation (while leaving some sugar to result in a sweet beverage), and then you pasteurize to kill the yeast, thus preventing further fermentation and the risk of bottles exploding. Pasteurization is a whole other animal. I'm not sure if I'm ready to tackle these risks just yet.

Actually when I was doing all this reading it reminded me of the time I gave away all our de-labelled and cleaned bottles when we moved from NH to Sweden. Basically I was thinking that we had spent many hours taking labels off of so many bottles that it would be a shame to just recycle them all. So I put an ad on freecycle, just to see if anyone wanted them. I actually got a few responses in a timely manner. I gave them to the first guy to contact me, who told me he was so glad to get them since he had tried making a batch of rootbeer which had resulted in exploded bottles, so his supply of bottles was lacking.

This is getting really wordy, but I have to say, I have a pretty big concern about exploding bottles. That isn't something you want to take lightly.

At the same time, Greg and I (mostly Greg) have a slight interest in making cider, so learning the art of pasteurization could be a useful skill for our future.

For me, it all sort of comes down to my goals for making ginger beer. A few weeks ago I was trying to find an interesting restaurant in Stockholm, and I found a dumpling place and they had ginger beer on the menu, and ever since then I've just been wishing I could more easily get myself some ginger beer. (That restaurant was, sadly, not open on the weekends, which I didn't realise until we were standing outside the door.)

So if I just want the experience of ginger beer, any of these methods should suffice, so logically it makes sense to just do the simplest and cheapest option, which would be one of the first two. Both are really simple, and I'm sure both are quite economical, but I could check the numbers to maximize that benefit.

I think my plan will be to start with one of these methods, because I just really want to drink a ginger beer. Then, after I can do more research on pasteurization and gain some confidence in my (our) skills in that area, step up the ginger beer-making game.

Also, for reference (for my future self, mainly), I read this entire forum which was really useful. And here is one that will be useful for pasteurization research, but really? I can handle 17 pages, but 108?

I've done a lot of other reading as well, but if anyone has tips or sources I'd love to hear about it. Brian, are you still lurking? When you made cider did you pasteurize it? I think we had some friends 'pasteurize' by exposing their cider to some sort of light? I don't know, but is this a thing?

7QT - reading, quaintness, & ginger beer!

1. Here is a fascinating video to watch. It is super long, but I saw it posted on another blog and decided to save it to watch over the weekend. It was really fascinating (double use of this word is noted and left as is for emphasis).

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.

2. Last week I sent in an application that makes me really nervous and excited. I shouldn't talk about this too much before anything is decided, but it is definitely what is on my mind.

Recently on the internet I saw some sort of cartoon that had text along the lines of "Remember that job you applied for that you were sure you would get but suddenly stopped talking about? How'd that go?"

Hopefully this isn't one of those situations(:

3. I realized there is an indentation in the couch in the spot where I normally sit. One solution would be to stop sitting on the couch all the time. The other solution, which may or may not be my solution of choice, is to simply shift myself one person-width to the left. (The couch is super nice over here. Plus I'm closer to the window and nature!)

4. Recently I had a conversation with a Stockholm-dweller who was commenting on the quaintness of Uppsala. I do agree that Uppsala does have a nice small-town feel, despite being Sweden's fourth largest city, and that is part of what I love about this city.

He said it seemed like everything, pubs included, were closed by 6 pm. I assured him that at least the pubs stayed open later, but admitted that I didn't actually know how late they stayed open. At this point I was informed that I didn't exactly have the look of a person who spends their time closing down pubs every night. I was pretty amused by that. Definitely more amused than when he told me my "pajamas" made it look like I just rolled out of bed before leaving the house.

5. Last weekend I finally went ahead and purchased Jen's new book (I have a big obsession with free library books and free kindle books). As much as I like my books free, it is always nice to feel like I am supporting another person's creative endeavor. And I feel like this is a pretty good creative endeavor to be supporting(:

I spent a good portion of the weekend on one spot (you know, shifted to the left of course) on the couch, and Greg made the comment that he wished he had taken a time-lapse video of me sitting on the couch, gradually shifting positions (I guess I move around a lot while reading), while I devoured Jen's book.

6. I am going to make my own ginger beer! I haven't been this excited about a 'homesteading' project since I found out how easy it was to make your own cheese!

I got the tip about making my own ginger beer from Kate, who has admirable knowledge of the crunchy life.

7. I think I might have passed my first Swedish tests! I don't actually know, because I don't know how to say that in Swedish. So if they told me I passed, I didn't understand what they were saying. I do know that they told me 'they were satisfied' to indicate that the exam was over (this was during the oral exam, where you just have to ramble on by yourself). Hurrah! (maybe)

The End & The Link-Up