Carnival

Thursday evening I attended a concert in Lund. The Academic choir had invited the Missouri University choir. They sang some pieces together. It was a marvellous experience with a very powerful sound and varied program. Two colleagues are in the Academic choir and they said afterwards that they too were very impressed by their guests' performance.

The weather is nice but it means that it is now about 28 degrees in our offices. It didn't take long before we started complaining. It's the same thing every year.

This past week I invested in a sun deck chair to have on my balcony. It's not a large balcony so I had to remove the other furniture. In order to get it home I borrowed the storage round car Friday. The library was closed over the weekend so the janitor told me he didn't need the car back until Monday morning. I made very good use of this offer. Saturday I drove to the Archive center to do research in the morning. At 1 PM I continued in to town and parked in the regular spot at the library. Then I walked 200 meters and joined many thousands of other people to watch the carnival parade. Once every four years there is a large carnival in Lund. It certainly is a spectacle. The floats were on trucks and displayed variants of current events. There were references to local politics, the traffic situation, the new university in Malmö, the Me Too-movement and much else. The participants had dressed up (or down) in crazy outfits in all sorts of colors. In between the floats there were also marching bands and dancing groups. The event is estimated to attract about 400 000 visitors to Lund over the weekend.

Sunday I did a nice road trip in the area north of where I live. I visited a small village where there are several second hand stores. I hadn't been there in years and there are even more shops now. I only bought a few egg cups for my collection. After driving further east I had lunch in a town and then went for groceries. It was great weather so when I came home I tried out the new sun deck chair. It was approved of.

Chores

The week at work was interrupted by a holiday on the Thursday, Ascension Day. The first three days of the week we had to cram in three education sessions; one for my closest colleagues and two for general staff members. We have done this a few times now and we are more confident than in the beginning. I even forgot my manuscript on one occasion but I don't think anyone noticed. Friday there were not many people working, as it wasn't a proper working day. The library was however open and it means that a few of us have to be ordered to work. This is usually not a problem, there were five people who agreed to be "ordered" this time. The extra overtime hours you get are a good deal. I had to be there a little longer than the others because I had desk duty until 4 pm. There was quite a lot to do, especially since one patron had asked for several different journals and they turned out to be both large and heavy.

The traffic service here had once again a very bad day Tuesday. I didn't know about the total breakdown until I got to the train station. I turned around, walked back to work and borrowed the storage round car. I had to get to a meeting with the condo association and just barely made it. Of course there had been accidents on the road so getting home took almost one hour. Normally it's a 15 minute drive.

The top I missed out on the previous week I was able to find in a store in Lund instead. It was very nice with purple flowers on a black background. I haven't done that much over the weekend, really. The weather is lovely with sun and not too hot temperatures, 20-22 degrees. I have done some chores like getting plastic and glass to the recycling place, grocery shopping, replanting a dying houseplant, clearing out outdated food, reorganizing part of my book collection and handwashing a few blouses. I have also enjoyed sitting on my balcony.

Trip to Copenhagen

May 1st is a holiday here and I went on an excursion to Copenhagen that day. The weather was rather bad so I spent the day in two different indoor shopping malls. I had a great lunch at a buffet restaurant. Especially the dessert was noteworthy: chocolate pudding and waffles with maple syrup. The shopping was limited; a floral blouse, a peach colored t-shirt and some socks. Still, it was a nice trip.

Thursday I gave a lecture on the new database system to the colleagues in my department. There will be a few changes that will effect our work. Most of the changes will be for the better, believe it or not.

Saturday there was a market fair in the town where I live. I went there for an unusual reason. I collected printed material from all the political parties represented. This year is an election year and the ephemera department at my library has the ambition to collect this type of material. It is not always sent in to us.

Today I made a short visit to a mall in Malmö because I wanted to buy a certain top in a store. I missed out, unfortunately. They didn't have my size. Instead I went grocery shopping.

Long weekend

For the education sessions last week the test database had been upgraded and it did actually cope with the work load. The first session on Wednesday went well even though the "students" didn't bother about doing the tasks suggested to them. Thursday morning I sighed loudly when there was an e-mail from my colleague saying he was sick. It meant that I had to do all of it that day. I hadn't prepared his part and it didn't go that well. At one point I completely blanked out but I hope no one noticed. On the Thursday the students were much more into doing the tasks themselves and that was a relief.

Friday there was a new exhibit opened at the library. It was commemorating the start of the lithographic printing method in Sweden 200 years ago. The staff in the stacks had helped out by retrieving a large number of works for this exhibit. It was interesting to see the displays.

Friday I also managed to get through the last reference book on Geography, so now that entire section is done. I moved about half of the collection to the stacks. I think the next subject will be Natural science.

This weekend turns out to be a long weekend because the library is closed both today and tomorrow. Today is Walpurgis Night and tomorrow is Labor Day. I have taken it rather slow so far, I only went to the nearest mall to get some new flowers for the balcony. I even dared to get a tomato plant.

The weather is typical for the season with high winds and rainstorms. The blue flowers in the park in front of the library have already blossomed.  The spring came late this year but now everything is growing fast.

Education sessions

Last week we held the first education session regarding the new database system that will be implemented in June. It was a terrible experience. Pretty much everything went wrong. It turned out that the test database couldn't cope with that many people logged on at once. It crashed. We desperately tried to make the best of the situation and gave a completely unprepared presentation instead. I had the biggest and most complicated part. This experience was so bad we had to have a debriefing afterwards. The next day we had a session again and it went better because now we knew we had to give a presentation. I talked for over an hour and there were many questions (some of which we couldn't answer...). I have never really done something like this but my colleagues said I did well. For the next sessions starting tomorrow the technicians have made improvements to the test database. Hopefully, it will cope with the work load.

Saturday I went to the archive center to use some of their databases I don't have access to myself. One of my colleagues also joined me there. I visited mainly because my relative in Denmark called me and gave more details about a lost emigrant. I had gathered also other research questions and solved a few of them. I discovered some new information about emigrants on my father's side. While my grandfather was alive, I asked him if there were any living descendants of his aunt or first cousin who had emigrated to the US. He said that there were not. This is actually not correct. On the handwritten family tree put together probably by my grandmother more than 30 years ago there was a woman named Lynne born 1951 listed as a descendant. I have wondered about this and now I was able to find out more. Her mother died already in the 1950s and I think this might be why there was no more information, since the relationship was through her.

Danish relative

My birthday last week was not really celebrated. The only amusement was a chocolate cupcake I bought myself. That same day I went with a colleague to the storage to do some minor projects and to shelve. We got some things done but both of us injured our right hands in this process. She got more problems than I, my hand is better now but she still has hers bandaged. I also have back problems. It's the same as usual and I have made an appointment for Monday at the chiropractor's place.

Wednesday was the funeral for my mother's eldest brother in the home parish church. I did not attend it. I hadn't met him in many years.

Thursday evening I got a very surprising phone call - from Denmark. I have never met the woman who called but it didn't take many seconds before I understood who she was. She was not so interested in family history 20 years ago when I visited her brother and sister in Copenhagen but now she had started on it. We are related, however it's distant. We have common relatives in Australia and that's what she was mostly asking about. It was possible to understand her, even though she spoke Danish. She had actually found a clue for a lost emigrant in that family. Her call got me started on this research again and I spent time at work today to search for more information.

At work we got one more employee who started last week in the stacks. It was not necessary to teach her anything because she is the one who replaced me during my illness last year. She was already familiar with the job. We are very happy to have her back. We were really struggling to cope with our tasks. Many people have also been ill (all sorts of flus and colds) and some days we had to ask our boss and other staff members for help. The piles with returned books were gigantic and we lagged behind with everything. This past week we also got two students to help out by shelving both in the stacks and the open collection. The situation is better now, thankfully.

Yesterday I gave a short speech at a review regarding our new database system, which will be implemented in June. We have open meetings for all librarians once every two weeks so that they can come and ask questions and get news on the progress. It is a very big project. I discovered a bug in the new system (this was not really what the technicians hoped for but rather now than afterwards). They took it seriously and discussed it at length, before deciding to fix it during the migration in June. My speech was about this bug and how and why we need to fix it.

Easter

Last week at work was hectic with five meetings in three days plus lunch with a colleague from the History Museum. It turned out to be a longer week than I had planned on because a colleague was sick. I had to take her desk duty on the Thursday also. That evening I went to the summerhouse for the Easter weekend. My mother and her boyfriend were already there and my sister with family arrived the next day. Even though the weather was wild and crazy with lots of snow and high winds we did some excursions. Over Easter there are art exhibits everywhere in Skåne. Artists keep open houses and show their paintings, sculptures, photos and other things. We made it to Simrishamn one day to look at some pieces of art. It was bitterly cold so the visit didn't last that long but it was still nice. Easter is also about food and naturally there were some eggs consumed. On the Sunday we were invited to my father's place for a big meal. Herring, salmon, turkey, cheeses and Janson's Temptation for instance were served. Very tasty.

The large amount of snow meant some outdoor activities. My niece and I spent quite some time in the back yard (where there was 30 cm of snow) making a snowman and throwing snow balls. Great fun!

I had taken two days off this week so I left today to go home again. Of course the weather has now changed and it's spring weather instead. Sunny and much warmer. Before I left Kristianstad I spent several hours at the city library to do some research in their local collection. I found some more clues for my history projects in books we don't have at my library.

Monday last week I had a doctor's appointment. It was the one year check-up after my illness was discovered. It was a rather unusual visit. It lasted one hour and 20 minutes. (Normally they want you out of there in less than 15 minutes). The doctor was very talkative and when she heard that I had found a supplement in the health food store that is helping to ease the side effects of both the chemo and the medicine I'm on now, she wanted to know more. She was very meticulous and asked me lots of questions. We concluded that my situation was nearly acceptable but I was offered one more medicine (which I said yes to) and she wanted the surgeon to take a look at my scar. Only three days later I was sent a note from the surgeon, with a date for that check-up. There are many bad things you hear about the Swedish health care system but personally I can't complain. They have always taken me 100% seriously and have made sure I'm ok. There are always issues like waiting times and one or two people not really having the right job but in all I'm impressed by the fact that the health system actually functions.