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Saturday, December 16, 2017

Christmas party

This past week there have been both good and not so good things happening. Monday I went once again to the Christmas buffet at Ikea. The herring was really tasty. Tuesday was an archive day. Wednesday was not one of my greatest experiences. I had to go to a dentist and it was not something that could wait since I had lost a part of a tooth. The only option given was a dentist in the area of Malmö you shouldn't visit after dark. It's scary even in daytime. I had no choice so I went there. The dentist did a good job, thankfully. On my way back to the train station I did some shopping also.

Thursday there was a Christmas party at work. There were some activities for us to do; we assembled ginger bread houses, had a quiz and ate some food. The menu was very limited and not that marvellous (no herring!) but we survived. The big event was a surprise - seven of our colleagues had formed a live band and performed three songs. We were very impressed by this, we had no idea about it. I found out afterwards that they had only practised three times and that's incredible. In all, it was a great party.

Friday I went to work to attend a meeting. It had been re-scheduled four times already and now the one who called the meeting was at home sick. With the technology of today it was solved because he could attend by Skype. He had a cold and was also taking care of his son who had the same issues. The son interrupted the meeting several times when he wanted to show us his toy cars. It was not the most efficient meeting I have attended but it was alright.

This week I decided to give up the scarves so now I don't have any headwear. My hair is slowly growing and is about 1 cm long. This week I also decorated my apartment in the spirit of the season. The new tree is overloaded with ornaments and there are santas, bells and candles in many other places. In my opinion it looks great. Today I sent out the Christmas letter by e-mail. If any one feels neglected, let me know.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Lecture

This past week was the last at work for me this year. I will however attend a few upcoming meetings anyway. This Wednesday I was at the storage all day. One of the faculty libraries brought about 80 boxes with books to us. They have weeded their collection of journals and given us a large part of it. They shelved most of it, thankfully. I took care of those books that had a hard-to-find shelf location. It was rather exhausting work, especially since I used the waiting time before the transport truck came to shelve some of our own books.

That same afternoon I attended a lecture at the Archive Center (which is the same place as our storage). The lecturer had done a DNA test on her maternal line and had discovered that someone in her ancestry had a sister who had left Sweden in the 1600s and settled in northeastern part of America. Sweden had a colony on both sides of the Delaware River 1638-1655. There are not enough written sources so she couldn't find the names of these people. It was still an interesting lecture showing how much you can really find out through a DNA test.

This Saturday I went with a colleague to a Christmas market in Lund and also to a few other stores. I did some shopping for the holidays and we had a nice lunch. Sadly, this colleague has also been on sick leave a large part of this year so we had some common issues to discuss.

The weather is not really the Christmas holiday kind. It's raining a lot, with high winds.


Monday, December 4, 2017

Archive center visits

The past week was all about research. I had vacation and visited the Archive Center three days. On one occasion I requested old tax records and incredibly enough the staff retrieved the wrong volumes. When I discovered this it was lunch time. This fact didn't stop the receptionist from getting hold of the guy who had made the mistake - he came running from the lunch room. Literally. He apologized several times and went out to the storage to get the correct volumes. I thought the entire event was rather funny but I tried to hide it. Since I have the same kind of job I know how easy it is to make such a mistake.

Tuesday I went too work to attend a meeting only to discover it was cancelled. Instead I did some research. The weekend was also spent at work. There are always more clues to find.

Sunday evening I attended a Christmas concert at the local church. It happened to be the Police Force Choir and Band. It was a very nice performance with many of the traditional carols of the season.

Today it was back to work. I went out to lunch with a colleague who is going to retire. He will be difficult to replace. This afternoon we had coffee and cookies for the social club board members. We had some cash left and decided to spend it on ourselves. We have now cleared out everything relating to the social club.