I’ve been on Facebook for a couple of years now, but until recently all of my friends there, with just a couple of exceptions, have been people I’ve met in my current life, since I moved to Sweden.  Lately, though, I’ve been catching up with a lot of people I went to high school with, [...]

Well, not exactly.  Or not even close, really, but I’m always a sucker for alliteration, and a goodly portion of my eldest daughter’s hair is black now, so that ought to count for something.  Other than the part where I nearly blinded her, the whole dyeing bit went well, I think.  More important, the girl [...]

I went to my first Tupperware party tonight, and I bought stuff, and I enjoyed myself.  Doesn’t get much more real than that.

I give you tempeh, made by my very own hands.  The first picture is the raw deal, so to speak, and the second is what I ate for dinner tonight, tempeh dusted in flour and spices (onion powder, chili powder, ginger, salt, and pepper) and stir-fried with wok vegetables.  I’ll understand if you’re skeptical–I was [...]

In keeping with the conventions of my adopted homeland, I took down the Christmas trees yesterday.  In truth, I generally like to do it a lot earlier than mid-January, but this year I had a hard time finding the energy to deal with it all, and waiting until St. Knut’s Day seemed a better reason [...]

Shortly after I posted my list of things gone missing, I found my fingernail clippers buried among the clutter on Lydia’s desk (truthfully, that should always be the first place I look for anything that’s been misplaced).  It was no accident that those clippers occupied first spot on the list–the value of good fingernail clippers [...]

my good fingernail clippers
Petra’s Nintendo DS Lite
my wedding ring

It is COLD outside, even for northern Sweden in January.  Depending on which of our thermometers you check, the temperature right now is anywhere from -17°C to -19°C (that’s right around zero, or even a little below, for you Fahrenheiters).  That’s cold enough, even, for kids’ outside activities–like Saturday morning ice skating, for instance–to be [...]

Olof and I took the little kids outside at the stroke of midnight last night so that they could ooh and aah at the fireworks.  We lasted about ten or fifteen minutes out there in the subzero chill before we moved ourselves inside and stationed Tage and Petra at the living room window (please excuse [...]