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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Freedom at last


It turned out to be eleven workdays in a row, so I was pretty brain dead at the end. The last week I attended two meetings and there were many issues to solve. I managed to clear my desk, and many people commented on this, some even said they hadn’t been sure that they would ever see the actual desk. Yes, I kept an enormous amount of stuff there; books, family history papers and other documents. I had to borrow the storage round car to get all of my personal belongings home. There were eight boxes with candy also.

Easter was spent at the summer house, with my mother and two of her friends. It was the annual art fair event, where local artists keep open houses, to show their works. My aunt visited also, and we all had Easter lunch at Furuboda and celebrated her birthday at the same time. Lots of boiled eggs and pickled herring were consumed (very tasty). Apart from that we did mostly garden work. We mowed the lawn and cleared the area for tree branches and pine cones. I returned home Sunday.

At home I have done a lot of organizing. I have tried to file away documents and old genealogy cases into appropriate folders. Still a lot to do there. I brought two bags with clothes and Christmas ornaments to the charity shop. I have been to the recycling place with paper, plastic and metal. It feels rather strange to have this much time off and I think I will end up getting very lazy. However, I wake up at seven every morning when they start working on the buildings and assemble the rest of the scaffolding.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Candy


The week at work was interesting. I usually don’t work seven days in a row, but these are exceptional times. These upcoming days will be my last workdays for several months, so I have to clear my desk and file away documents. I have noticed that I have an incredible amount of private things here also (mostly relating to family history research). We have had several meetings and I have written a few instruction manuals for my colleagues. They have started to show signs of nervousness and ask me a lot of questions. I’m the one who has been in the stacks the longest and has the most knowledge of the old catalogue. We’ll see how it goes without me. (One colleague suggested that they could scan the request slip and mail it to me, if they had problems finding the book)…

The major thing that happened at work was the arrival of a large display case and about 40 kilos of candy! It was the result of my name being drawn as first prize winner in a consumer competition. I understood it would be large box, so I asked to have it delivered to work instead of my apartment. I put the case in the staff lunchroom and poured the candy into the different spaces. It was a huge success, of course. Many of my colleagues took photos and posted on their facebook-pages (even the library boss did that). They were curious, so I explained the concept of consumer competitions and why my family takes an interest in this (it actually goes back to the mid 1980’s when my mother won some candy).

And like it knew I was going on vacation, the old (1955) metal compact shelving system in the lower basement quit working Friday afternoon. It got stuck when the ball bearings broke into pieces (the electrical moving force is so large that they shatter). There are no spare parts, and the janitor couldn’t do anything. The university maintenance sent two guys over, and they said maybe they could fix it next week. Sigh…

At home things have also been a little difficult. They are going to exchange all the windows in the entire apartment block (five houses) and also paint the exterior. There is already scaffolding on my building, so now I can’t have anything on the balcony. The flowers are inside, the furniture is in the attic and I soon have to remove the wooden floor somehow. We also have to clear the area near all the windows, so I have taken down curtains, moved the egg cup collection, lamps and vases. And I finally got to do my laundry on Wednesday.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Birthday and mishap cookies

This past week we had the annual social club meeting. We managed to get through the agenda in 20 minutes (I had to stay on as chairwoman, because no one else wanted to take over). We had invited a scholar who uses our books and other material quite a lot. He gave a speech about his research topic, which is slavery in the Mediterranean area in the 17th century. Very interesting to hear, and we are glad to know that our books come to good use. Buffet style dinner afterwards.

Thursday was a pretty strange day. I left work early to go home and bake cookies. It went really badly. I ruined more than half a packet of butter by accidentally getting water in it, after having melted it. The remaining butter was not enough to start over, so I had to find another recipe. Choosing chocolate cookies, I mixed everything, only to realize that there was not enough baking soda. I couldn't believe my bad luck. It's difficult to replace baking soda in a recipe, so I decided to make the cookies anyway. They turned out to be very flat and oddly shaped.

At the same time as the baking, I was supposed to do laundry. However, someone had (by mistake, it turned out) locked the laundry room door. Very annoying. I figured out who it was and posted a large, angry note on their own door (they were not at home). This didn't help, they came home too late for me to start the laundry. In the middle of all this, another neighbor showed up and suggested dinner in town, and I thought I deserved it after all this mess.

Friday the cookies were a success at work, but then again they would eat any cookie of any shape and form. Saturday was my birthday and my father and his girlfriend came to visit. We followed the usual routine, and went to a mall (in Lund this time, though) to have lunch. We window-shopped and then went on to the nursery to get flowers for my balcony. I got that as a birthday present. We also made a stop at the grocery store, so I could stock up. Afterwards we had coffee and the famous cookies here.

My sister's (and my mother's) efforts trying to win in consumer competitions sometimes yield winnings for me too. They enter my name on the forms occasionally. I recently got a gift certificate for a spa treatment. Also just found out that I will get a large box with candy next week. Looking forward to that.

Today not much has happened, apart from cooking (meat sauce and cauliflower) for future lunch boxes. Not as many as I planned on, because it turned out to be so tasty, I ate too much of it.

And my long leave this fall (August 15 - December 15) has been approved.