I suppose I’ve been neglecting this space long enough, and now that the summer is winding down it’s time to get back into (semi-)regular posting. After spending five weeks with us, my mom left on Friday evening to go back home to Texas. The kids start school this coming Thursday, and in a couple of weeks I’ll go back to Uppsala for the first time in nearly two months. Even though I’m not especially looking forward to the chaos of getting us all back into the swing of things, I’m eager to get back to a more organized work schedule and start making some progress on my research.

While my mom was here we didn’t do as much as we often do, partly because the weather hasn’t exactly been fantastic, but mostly because we had other chores keeping us busy. I know I’ve been remiss in not mentioning it earlier, but at the beginning of the summer, my mom and her husband bought a vacation house just a couple of blocks from our place! It’s a nice little house, built in 1930 and mostly not updated since then, which of course means that it needs a fair bit of work. The Swedish summer shut-down was a source of some frustration to my mom when we were trying to get workmen out to look at various things and give us estimates, but we did manage to get an electrician, a roofer/carpenter, and a chimney guy in during the last few days she was here. We’re hoping to be able to get all the big stuff done before her visit next summer, and seeing as we have nearly a year I don’t imagine it will be too much trouble. Nothing much happens in Sweden in July, but most people are plenty productive the rest of the year.