Since moving to Sweden, I usually pay scant attention to the major league baseball playoffs once the Braves are knocked out of the running (which, yes, means that I usually pay scant attention to the playoffs, period). Most years the World Series is barely a blip on my radar. This year, however, it’s a little… Read More Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

Our house has six bedrooms, three upstairs and three downstairs. As our family has grown, tastes have changed, et cetera, the division of these rooms has changed, but the current set-up is this: the office, Tage’s bedroom, and Olof’s and my bedroom–shared by Yrsa–are downstairs, and Lydia’s room, Petra and Brynja’s shared room, and an… Read More Switcheroo

Thirty-three wall clocks, that’s how many I’ve got at last count. I don’t have any particular obsession with time, I don’t think, but I do have a powerful love of clocks. Generally speaking, they please me inordinately, but twice a year, not so much. Tonight is one of those two times, the end of daylight… Read More Fall back

So, it took me only a week after getting home from Stockholm to unpack my suitcase and put it away. If nothing else, that should tell you how the week has been. It wasn’t a bad week, really, just a busy and hectic one. The conference last weekend was great, with plenty of interesting papers… Read More Sunday

The week before last I got my first summons for a mammogram, scheduled for yesterday morning at 9:30. It was surprisingly good timing, as not only was I home that day, but the appointment was late enough that I had time to get the kids off to school before I needed to leave myself. The… Read More Worry for nothing

Gah. This project proposal for the Ph.D. application is stressing me out beyond belief. You’d think I could whip out six pages in nothing flat, especially considering that my proposed topic isn’t too far removed from my master’s thesis, but it’s just not coming easily. I know that most of the problem is that there’s… Read More Anxiety

Headed off in an hour or so to fly down south for a meeting in Stockholm tomorrow morning, then I’ll hopefully be able to attend a presentation by a fellow Early Modern Studies-alum and current Ph.D. student in the afternoon before winging my way home tomorrow evening. These whirlwind trips aren’t my favorite, as the… Read More On a jet-plane

Poor Brynja is having a rough time adjusting to the kindergarten life. After her three very successful years at pre-school, we didn’t anticipate her having many difficulties with the new school, and indeed, she had been looking forward excitedly to the new milieu for a good many months before she started at “the big school”… Read More Kindergarten woes

It’s been a while, I know. This past week has been very busy for me, in a good way, and I haven’t had much time to sit an organize my thoughts into a coherent post. I had thought that when school started up this fall I’d be much less busy than I’d been for the… Read More Higher education

Anybody who knows my husband will not be surprised to read that he harbors strong feelings concerning matters technological. He’s fervent in his anti-copyright stance, fully committed to open-source programming, and a proud member of Sweden’s Pirate Party. Our home is a no-Microsoft, no-Apple zone (apart from Lydia’s personal devices–a parent’s convictions hold minimal sway… Read More (Social) Media Frenzy