Stand-up show

The work week was pretty ordinary, so nothing exciting to report from the library. Friday was a long day. I went out to eat after work and then continued on to the theater. The ticket was given to me as a Christmas present by my sister. It was a stand-up show by a local talent, and it was really funny. He tried to make predictions about the future and it turned out to be an entertaining show.

Saturday I woke up early, but decided it was too early and went back to sleep. I finally woke up at 1 p.m. and was amazed at the number of hours gone by. It has been a slow weekend spent at home. I have been cooking, tidying up and watching TV. Today was the annual Vasaloppet ski race, run in rather bad conditions. It's not cold enough, the snow turns into slush. It's much warmer than normal, and it seems like there will be no more winter here.

Nice lunch

Work is basically the same, some people are absent for various reasons and the returns are piling up. I'm involved in several committees at the library, and there have been lots of meetings these past few weeks. One day I attended three meetings and felt pretty braindead afterwards. I have now handed in the 2013 statistics from my department, so that is over for this year.

One nice thing was the lunch I was treated to one day. I had done research for a former colleague, and payment was this lunch at a golf club. Very good food. It turned out that I got more research tasks though, because he wanted to know about the other emigrants as well. I have already done it, it was fairly easy as they ended up in the same place as the others (Massachusetts).

I got to talking to one of my neighbors when I was in the laundry room last week. He was apparently very interested in libraries and reading, because he asked for a tour of my library. He was very impressed by our old books and the picture database that we are hosting. His origin was an area in the Middle East where access to libraries was not a common feature, so he is catching up on his library visits here (he has six different library cards).

The weather here is strange. Meteorologically, the spring has arrived in the south. It has been above freezing for seven days and nights, so winter is supposed to be over. The snowdrops are blooming in the park outside the library and the migrating birds are returning. It's really early.

The Olympic Games is turning out to be a very successful competition for us. We have many medals, but only two gold. The last chance is today, when Sweden meets Canada in the hockey game final.

Noise and long hours

It's pretty tough at work. These past two weeks have been hard to get through. I'm working about ten hours a day again, and this is not what I expected. Half of the staff in the stacks are either sick or injured, so we have done only the absolutely necessary tasks. There is a mountain of returned books that we don't have time to shelve. We are running out of space for all the books and have to put them on the floor. It was like this early fall last year and I really didn't want to see that happening again.

It's very noisy at the library right now. They started refurbishing one floor and also installing a sprinkler system. The drilling is so loud that they have given us covers for our ears to muffle the sound. It's going to be even louder next week when they will remove the concrete floor on the highest level. We are not looking forward to this, because we can't escape. We have to retrieve books no matter what.

I was told that we have to send in the statistics to the national library no later than February. This meant that I had to measure the entire book collection. It's about 100 000 meters. I had some old figures, but since we have moved more than half of the collection, I had to measure it again. It took three days.

By the way, the first half of my long vacation was approved. And God, do I need it..... It starts around April 20 and lasts almost three months.

The Olympic Games started yesterday and Sweden already has two silver medals, both in cross country skiing. I watch some of it on TV.

Computer issues

Last week was tough. It was the first week of the semester and the new students all wanted library cards at the same time. We noticed a definite increase in the number of requests, so we were busy. I also had to pick up seven boxes with journals from a faculty library and shelve them at the new storage. There are five faculty libraries that will merge into one and they are now hard at work trying to reduce their collections. If we have the first 20 years of a specific journal and they have additional volumes, they donate their part to us. They will also give us large sets of journals later, so the new storage will soon be full.

I spent the weekend at home, mainly because of the bad weather. It's cold and windy. It happens to snow today, but I guess it will be gone again by tomorrow. In the far north of Sweden it's a little colder than here, they have had down to 42 centigrades below zero. The record is around 52, I think. Not pleasant.

My new laptop was finally installed properly and that was a lengthy process. I handed it over to the technicians at work, so they helped me get some programs installed. Since I work at a university, I'm allowed to use work-related programs also at home. However, getting them to function was not easy and it required a lot of problem solving by the technician. I'm grateful for this, because I have not enough knowledge to deal with these issues.

Bad weather

Last week was a very normal January week at work. We had a fair amount to do. It's already now noticeable what subjects will be popular this semester. Apart from the standard textbooks, the students borrow books about architects, biofuel, mechanics, mindfulness, immunology and a large number of other subjects. The semester really doesn't start until next week, but they have been given the reading lists ahead of time.

This weekend I removed the Christmas decorations and the tree at home. It was hard work (the tree was overloaded) and it took most of Saturday. All of that is now up in the attic again. I did sort some things out to give to charity. Sunday I defied the bad weather and walked across town to a grocery store. I made my own hamburgers, not only for that day, but also for future lunch boxes. Very tasty, if I may say so myself.

It has snowed quite a bit here, but on this side of Skåne (the west) it has blown away again. It's just about freezing and the winds are very high, so this is causing trouble for commuters and others. Parts of the train lines are out, but I think I will make it home this evening.

After-Christmas shopping

I have spent much of the vacation doing as little as possible (and intentionally so), but I have accomplished some things. I have changed zippers in three pairs of jeans (very difficult), shortened one pair and mended a top. I did research for a colleague and that is now finished (interesting case, the ancestors lived in Jämtland, and several family members emigrated to Canada). Went shopping at the after-Christmas sales and came home with something I have needed for a long time - a new laptop. I have been busy removing files from my old laptop, so I haven't had time to install the new one yet. As a preparation for this new year, I have also changed the calendars, filed away old documents and made some plans for the next few months.

Twelfth Day is a holiday here, so the workweek started Tuesday. It was not a pleasant experience to get out of bed that early, especially not after such a long vacation. We were all tired and it takes a while before you get back into the routines. We had the usual problems when a new year begins, one of the databases went down (it does every January 1st), but it was soon fixed.

We are still waiting for the winter here. It's 6-8 centigrades and rainy. The winter resorts in the north don't have any snow and hence they don't have any visitors. I have been watching some sports on TV, like biathlon and cross country skiing, and they have problems getting enough snow for their competitions also in other parts of Europe.

Christmas holiday

The Christmas holiday was very nice, despite the lack of snow. Christmas Eve I took the train to Göteborg, where my sister's in-laws host the festivities. It was the usual buffet with lots of good food (herring, meatballs, salmon, sausages, cheese and much else) and a fair amount of presents were handed out by Santa. I got some gift certificates, a necklace and a ring my mother had made herself by fusing colored pieces of glass, a knitted scarf, a pocket book and both muffin and petit four cases plus a book in which to write my own cookie recipes.

The rest of the holiday was spent in Borås with my mother and sister & her family. We made some purchases at the after-Christmas sales in town (I got a knitted top and a pair of boots). My sister suggested that the family women should visit Sweden's largest discount store, and the women agreed. It's a huge place about an hour and a half away by car, and the prices there are sometimes ridiculously low. Of course you buy more than you really need, but it's practical things like hygiene products, toys, clothes and household items. I found a top and some small things.

Monday I returned home again, after a pretty relaxing week. I celebrated New Year's Eve by eating pizza in front of the TV. I had a nice view of the fireworks from my balcony. Today was the first workday of the new year, and it was incredibly hard to get out of bed at 6 AM after such a long vacation. But I made it, and we have been busy at the library, since there were requests from several days waiting to be processed.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the Christmas letters and holiday greetings! Remarkable how many of you suggested that I should visit the US again soon...