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Sunday, July 18, 2010

Weather and shopping

The Swedish summer is straining on us. It has been quite warm this past week, about 26-28 centigrades. You might have noticed by now that Swedes have to complain/discuss/remark on the weather no matter the conditions. This comes from the time when we were all farmers and were very dependent on the weather for getting food to eat. This habit of discussing the weather was "exported" to the US as a large number of Swedes left for better prospects in the mid-late 19th century. I have rarely talked about the weather as much as on my visits to Minnesota.....

In order to get out of the library building for a while, the janitor and I went to the car dealers in eastern Lund Tuesday afternoon. We need a new car for transportation of books. We are thinking of a larger vehicle than the ordinary Volvo we have now. I especially liked a dark blue Ford. No decisions were made, but we gave our boss some suggestions.

Other activities at the library included three hours of desk duty that was hard on both the visitors and me, a visit from an Italian scholar who was very surprised to be addressed in Italian by one of the librarians (she used to live there), and a minor water leak in the old collection. We have been told that there isn't enough power to keep all the air conditioning going, so they have a priority list. I doubt we are even on it. If I could move my computer to the basement I would, but there are no outlets there and no internet access. I asked for a 75 meter extension cable and was laughed at.....

Since I want to make use of my summer pass on trains and buses, I have done some excursions after work and this weekend. Mainly to go shopping of course. By now the stores are getting more and more desperate to sell their spring/summer collections, so it's getting rather affordable. I was in Malmö Friday afternoon. I got on the wrong bus in the city, but it didn't matter so much, because I figured out how to change to get in the right direction again. I went to a large second hand store, Myrorna (=The Ants). I was surprised to see clothes in large sizes there. Actually larger than my usual size. I got a very nice dark grey long jacket there. Saturday it wasn't possible to go anywhere because of a terrible thunderstorm + rain that woke me up at 5 AM. Today I have been in Helsingborg, there are now three stores at the mall that specialize in plus sizes. I got short white pants, a purple blouse and a brown long top. I also found some fake flowers in pink colors to replace the yellow ones I have had in a tall vase probably since I moved here in the early 1990s. Some things take a long time to get changed around here.

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