For many years now, my mom has come to Sweden for a month every summer. She always schedules her trip to arrive a day or two before Petra’s birthday on July 19 and to leave a few days after Tage’s on August 12, and we have a yearly family birthday party for all the kids… Read More Summer plans

Nothing much is happening here this New Year’s Eve. The biggest excitement was probably that Olof and I both took pictures of our cat, Gwen, snoozing in a box (the top one is mine).

I never get tired of taking pictures of this church.

So, I defended my thesis on Tuesday, and it was completely, totally, beyond-my-wildest-dreams amazing. I presented before an audience of eighteen, including six Ph.D.s (not counting the examiner and my supervisor), three doctoral students, and seven other master students, and everybody was very positive about my work. The seminar went on for two hours, and… Read More Just call me Master of Arts

Tomorrow morning I head down to Uppsala for my last visit there as a master student. It’s bittersweet, to be sure. I’m excited for my thesis defense on Tuesday, and I’m happy to have completed the program in a way that I’m proud of, but I’ll miss my life down there, and I’ll especially miss… Read More Sunday

I know I’ve written about my housekeeping woes here on more than one occasion, but this past several months — with Olof working full-time and me all but consumed by my thesis — the situation has reached near-disastrous proportions. Even at our very best, the house is never what one could call spic-and-span, but now… Read More Ambitions

Last week, before we finally started getting some snow, I took this picture of a flock of birds on the tree behind our garage. Appearances to the contrary, this is a color photograph, not black-and-white. That should tell you something about how grey the days can be up here.

Thought I might as well post a link to my thesis, should any of you find yourself with time on your hands and a yen to learn about what 18th-century Swedish clergyman chose to spend their money on. Happy reading! My work of staggering genius

On my thesis, that is. Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m still committed to writing in my blog. Maybe now that that 77½-page monster is done and dusted I’ll be more inclined to put a few words here now and then. I still have to defend the thesis on the 27th, but after that my… Read More That’s all she wrote

I posted this on Facebook earlier, so some of you may have seen it before, but it’s too good not to record here as well. The other evening, around 8 o’clock, I was out on the front porch with Yrsa. This time of year, it’s full-on daylight at that time. She noticed the moon on… Read More Poetry