a real weekend, for once

It's sort of hard to believe that I don't have any work to do this weekend. I keep looking anxiously over at my desk, thinking I should be hunched over it, but in fact I have two whole free days. I plan to do nothing but:

• lay around in bed
• watch football
• grill
• start reading part two of 1Q84
• take a serious nap.

 And check on my garden, of course! 


Översättning: Nu att jag har två lediga dagar ska jag göra precis ingenting, förutom kolla på fotboll och ta en rejält tupplur, förstås!

One down, one to go

I spent every waking moment today (well, almost) at my desk finishing a paper at the eleventh hour. It was exhausting, but I did it! My coursework is done, now I just have to write my thesis and I'm done this degree. Thrilled!

In other good news, I got a new motherboard put in my beloved laptop and we are back together. I love a computer story with a happy ending.

Sorry that I am too tired to write anything else today!

My old friend, you came back!

Well, this is embarrassing. I started this blog a while back because well, you see, during a period of computer upheaval and general business, I honest-to-goodness lost track of my old blog. How does one lose a blog, you ask? It can easily happen if you can easily forget your blog address, lose all the links in your browser, and forget which e-mail account is associated with it, all while taking a long blogging break (partly enforced by lack of access to said blog).  Apparently I am prone to doing all of these things. The happy news is that after many weeks of on-and-off searching, I cleverly remembered that I had listed the address on my flickr and found it again!

The even better news is that this video, which I posted before and which temporarily disappeared from youtube, is back up again:

I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world. The song is wonderful and the video reminds me of the shows I used to watch as a child.

Now that I have two blogs, I have to decide what to do. Should I leave the old one be? Should I move this blog to the old spot, or the new one over here? If I had any readers, this might be an easier choice!

Fast food at the beach

During the week I had to run errands in Burlington and so I stopped at Hutch's for lunch. It's a kind-of-famous super popular place on the shore of the lake, with a good fifties feeling and masses of french fries and hamburgers and ice cream and booths with small jukeboxes that you can listen to while you eat.

 (If you want to follow me on Instagram I'm dawnanthony)

Gentleman

My cat, Gentleman, is sometimes very naughty, but today it looks like he is living up to his name.

Inlagd sil

While I was in Sweden in May, I decided to try my hand at making soused herring (I believe this is how you call inlagd sil in English!). It is preserved herring in a vinegar bath with dill, apple, red onions and elderflower cordial (fläderblomssaft). The result was good but not so flavourful as I wanted it to be. On the other hand, it looked so beautiful that I really couldn't have any complaints. The recipe is from Amelia Vår.

Hooray!

How did I almost forget to mention!??! The Embassy e-mailed me last week and said I am getting my residence permit! I suppose I won't really believe it until the actual thing comes in the mail. But still! Hip hip hooray Sverige I'm coming back!!! ajfkldjakgjdklfjdksalfj!!!!

Asparagus pie

I made dinner for my mum on midsummer, parmesan and asparagus pie (super good and simple recipe here). Pie (or quiche) is one of the best foods I know for leftovers. Alongside is lettuce with the cream salad dressing from Camilla Plum's book "The Scandinavian Kitchen." It's one of those recipes that's so simple and perfect that once you've learned it you feel silly for not having known it already. I can recommend the book too, it focuses on ingredients and is a good choice if, like me, your Danish is not quite up to snuff enough for her other books!

Glad Midsommar!

(to be fair this was taken a few days before last Midsommar, but the weather was so dreary and cold that day that I didn't manage any pictures. A little historical fiction improves everything!).

Elegy for a healthy plant Or, another problem with condos

The yard maintenance person cut down my pepper plant with an edger today. I didn't notice until hours later, when I went out to pick some onions for dinner. I'm truly upset. I don't have a photo, but it already had a good-sized pepper on it, a smaller one, and lots of blossoms that were turning into fruit. It was such a healthy plant! I know it was just one plant, I can get another, shouldn't take it so hard, etc., but I am really upset. When I heard the mower running out back I thought of going outside and asking them to be careful around the garden plots, but then thought it probably wasn't necessary. Lesson learned. This is not a terrible place to live, but I really will be happy to have my own garden somewhere soon, where I take care of everything and there are no nosy neighbours just a few feet away.

Setback

I've had a bit of a disappointment this week. While I was at school on thursday a man from the condo management company showed up as a result of a complaint made by a resident and instructed my dad to remove our compost bin, claiming these are forbidden in multi-person dwellings by city by-law. I haven't been able to find conclusive evidence of such a by-law - in fact our city website presents nothing but praise and encouragement for back yard composting. Regardless, however, of the question of legality, what really irks me is the thought that one of our neighbours has nothing better to do than to peer into others' gardens, and upon seeing something they don't like, to take that complaint to the management like a child who's seen a classmate being naughty. Wouldn't the polite and, dare I say it, adult thing to do be to first speak with your neighbour about your concerns? We live in a long row-house with gardens out the back that are fenced on two sides, with a strip of lawn running beind the open gardens. Our living room has french doors that look onto the garden. I see people walking back and forth on this strip of grass all day long and have always assumed they were simply out getting some fresh air. It makes me awfully uncomfortable to think that they might actually be taking a quick look at everybody's garden (and perhaps inside, too), checking for the least violation of the owner's agreement that they can then gleefully report. I don't understand the appeal of condominiums, I'm not sure who thought they would be a good idea in the first place and it was never a particular desire of mine to live in one. I'm here now though, and if everyone in this building was like my dad and I, unconcerned with our neighbours and what they do in the quasi-privacy of their own yards, it wouldn't be such a bad place to live. It seems, however, that those who are most attracted to the idea of condos are those same people who find the thought of being able to police their neighbours so very appealing in the first place. My friend tells me this sentiment is not limited to condo-dwellers, that her own neighbourhood is in fact populated with busy-bodies, the difference being that here those types have, for some reason I cannot fathom, been given a lot more clout. All I was wanted to do was to take my waste, my kitchen scraps, my potato peelings and coffee grounds and lettuce stems, and turn them into something nutritious, something that can supplement the meagre layer of dry earth and gravel that lurks beneath the grass here. I understand there is a concern about compost attracting animals, but that is only the case if one puts meat and dairy scraps in the bin, which I had no intention of doing. If the concerned party would have come to my door, I might have had the opportunity to assure them of this. I could tell my neighbour that all I'm doing is bringing some diversity and nutrition to this neglected little corner. Instead, community and conversation has been rejected in favour of authorities and rule books.