2012: My trifecta year

Probably one of the best remarks I heard this year was a congratulations on my trifecta year. In 2012 I finished my PhD, got married, and moved to Sweden to start a new job (in order of occurrence, not importance).

Finishing graduate school was an amazing and magical thing. Just look how happy I was.

Mainly I am smiling because I love my giant hat. Too bad it was just a rental.

(Sometimes I feel bad that photographers are just trying to do a good job of photographing people, but that is really hard when everyone is turning away from the camera. Usually I end up making a goofy face at the camera, but somehow this person got a genuine smile. The result was me appearing on the Dartmouth Graduate Studies homepage for a bit of time.)

And one quick week after the graduation ceremony was our wedding. As much as I love the phrase "trifecta year" I am guessing that it won't take long before I only remember 2012 as the year that Greg became my husband. 

The actual day of the wedding was a bit of a blur. I remember being awake in the middle of the night and painting my fingernails or toenails. I remember hearing Greg talking with someone before he walked in, when I was still in the basement being unseen. I remember not knowing some of the songs because we kind of got the music program together at the last minute and managed to pick some versions that I didn't know. I remember being bolstered by the lovely loud singing of The Gilbert family. I remember Father Justin giving an amazing homily (and also remember seeing his thumb shaking, even though his demeanor was completely relaxed). I remember being told that there were no plates, but that Bette & Andy just happened to have a ginormous amount of them, so that had been taken care of. I remember dancing, with everyone, but particularly waltzing with Greg. And I remember that he and I were the absolute last two left at the reception hall, and his car was so packed that I was sitting in the front seat balancing leftover cake on my lap.

Here are some of the photos captured by our amazing photographer. 










Oh those Dominicans!




Why bother feeding each other cake when there is a pig roast?


Lamby!

Did Garren get a picture of that face I made just at the end of this little video clip, you ask? Why yes. Yes he did.



I have to cut myself off with wedding stuff, or this post could become outrageously long.

Finally, in mid-August, was my move to Sweden to start my new job. I am incredibly pleased with the work, and with making Sweden home. 

All in all, I'd say the year was quite good!

Keeping Busy

For the past two days I have been partly moping around, but partly keeping busy so that I don't start to feel too sorry for myself and so that no one else starts to feel sorry for me. Greg has had to go back to the states. I am not really looking forward to this Skype-phase of our marriage. I want to be cautious about wishing time away, but I am pretty much wishing this time will go quickly.

The night before Greg left he decided we should make some pepparkakor. This is the standard Swedish Christmas cookie, basically a ginger snap. Normally I have a decent instinct with baking. For example, if I am looking at a recipe that requires 6 cups of flour, I know that the yield is probably a bit high for a household of two, soon to be one. But when a recipe requires 15 dl of flour, then it is just like, 'Okay where is the measuring cup?'. So after we had about half of the cookies made (using our new cookie cutters shaped like a polar bear, giraffe, lion, alligator, and camel), Greg saw that the yield for the recipe was 300. Luckily I don't roll dough very thin, so we only made about 150?



And I cleaned the windows. Riveting! Just look at how filthy they were.



And of course the first day Greg was gone I finished the rest of the Reese's trees that my mother had lovingly sent to me when I panicked about not being able to buy any here. So today I made the peanut butter balls that we had planned to make before Christmas. I guess when you buy a most-delicious cake, any pre-Christmas baking plans get delayed.



Unfortunately (fortunately), though the peanut butter balls look so spectacular in that photo (it is salt sprinkled on top! so amazing!), the removal of peanut butter balls from plate was not a smooth operation. The chocolate majorly stuck to the plate. Unless I let them warm up a bit, in which it stuck all over my fingers. Needless to say, these are not presentable and will not be shared with anyone else. Sad day for me? I put half of them in the freezer so that I wouldn't eat them all in two days. Although a frozen peanut butter ball is probably delicious...

In other news I just like reading blogs and I am now obsessed with Ana's blog. I feel so lucky to have learned about 'super bust-out mode'. Basically, set a timer, pick a task, and get as much done with it as you can in the allotted time. Aim for quantity over quality. I just busted-out on the kitchen and basically got everything done in under the 30 minutes I gave myself. But before, I was looking at all of the mess and thinking about how it would take hours to clean, a task which was too daunting to even start.

I think it helps that I've created a super bust-out mode playlist on spotify. (Spell checker wants that to say spottily.) So far it has two songs, Party Rock Anthem and Kerncraft 400. It took a little searching for that second one, because I only know it as the Hockey Goal Song.

7QT: my favorite photos of 2012

I didn't pay much attention to my photo blog this past year, so narrowing it down to my favorite seven shouldn't be too difficult. In reverse order then (because this week reverse order takes are the thing to do):

- 7 -

A type case at the Dartmouth letterpress studio.

- 6 -

Tiny flowers in my office.

- 5 -

Dartmouth observatory.

- 4 -

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI (which is in a bit of a rough spot, and could be lost forever. To read more or help support the museum, click here.)

- 3 -

 Field of hay bales in Wisconsin.

 - 2 -

Taken in my backyard in New Hampshire.

- 1 -

The "skogen" in Sweden.

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!

Up to 50% of Sweden is doing this right now

Kalle Anka
I love how the article is titled "Sweden's bizarre tradition of watching Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve".

Spoiled with good snow!

I can't remember the last time that I experienced the first snow of the season being a good snow. The kind of snow that actually sticks around. Has some abundance to it. I am remembering the last few Christmases as either having no snow or just a very little sprinkling (that probably melted away afterward).

Here are a few photos I took out of the windows of our apartment.







Since I took these it has actually snowed quite a bit more too. So, needless to say, it looks like we'll be having a Very white Christmas.