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Entry tags:

On a roll

Since I worked from home today, I was able to mend Keldor’s thick sweater as he drove to work this morning. The call wasn't long enough to get all of the holes darned, so I opened the [Marcy Rockman Inspirational Lecture from Swedigarch web page](https://swedigarch.se/index.php/2024/02/07/marcy-rockman-inspirational-lecture-video/), and listened to that as I kept mending. The talk was just long enough to get the Sweater fully mended, and then I sat to the computer to work, taking the time to reach out to Marcy to say:

> I just wanted to let you know that I just went back and listened to your Swedigarch Inspirational lecture from last winter and really enjoyed it. It was an exceptionally well prepared, presented, and interesting talk. Thank you for making it.

>That I already knew from more recent Sedigarch news announcements that you moved to Sweden some months after doing that talk because your research topics are now discouraged in the States made the talk even more powerful.

Marcy replied later that day with thanks, and saying it was nice to meet us when she visited our uni. She's looking forward to collaborating with us. Somehow, I seemed to have learned to do networking.

As my work day was winding to a close, I thought of the Sead data structure Obsidian vault I made so that I could look at the database in the cool Obsidian graphs, and how I want to use it as a tool for data mapping, and inspiration hit.

First I went in to the extra folder I had added with the intent to use it for mapping the radiocarbon data set to SEAD's structure. This time, since I have been working on filling in the spreadsheet we use to do the input, I was able to start filling in instructions on how to do what I have already done with the Site information in the spreadsheet and with the information on references associated with those sites once I did that I thought it would be fun to test and see how the vault translates to a web page.

I could have followed exactly the same steps as yesterday when doing the setup for my blog, but that results in two different vaults, one that gets turned into a blog, and the one that already existed before starting the project. Therefore, instead of "forking" the Quartz GitHub package and then adding my Obsidian vault folders to it, I decided to try the reverse process, just copy the non-data folders from the personal blog Quartz package directly into the Obsidian folders for the SEAD structure vault. This worked, but not directly. First I had some error messages to deal with, so I called in Copilot to help. It took some time, but we resolved the problem, and I learned a lot in the process. If the folder you need is called source in the Quartz package, don't name it Source, GitHub will throw error messages at you till you fix it.

In other news, the cats are seriously cute. They came and helped me work, one at a time, on and off all day. Once I finally got up from the computer to do my evening yoga they both came and took my chair.

Alas, i still don't have my blog set up to push to GitHub from my phone, which means that the Dreamwidth copy of this post won't get the photo of the cats till after I get to the computer.

Entry tags:

obsidian,
snow

a blog version of this journal

This morning was the first day I could take the spark to the bus stop this year. Yay! No heavy backpack on my shoulders. The conditions were perfect, the snow was white and lovely everywhere, but on the street it was perfectly compacted, and no gravel had been spread on the road, so that the spark glided smoothly. Ideal early winter weather. If only it could have lasted. But no, it warmed up to +4° C. So even though I got to take the early bus home, by the time it arrived at 16:00 the roads were wet slush, combined with gravel that the city council had put out as they like it when people aren't crashing their cars, or falling over. Luckily, Keldor also finished work at a reasonable time, and got to Lövånger only one minute after me, so we put my spark in the back of the van, and I got a ride home.

The housekeeper was there working magic, so to keep out of the way, we took the extra wheelbarrow (that Keldor had sold on FB marketplace weeks ago, and left out in the driveway for them to come pick up, but they never did, despite several reminders) over to Bryan's house, tucked it into the garden shed there, and shovelled and swept the slush off his stairs, driveway, and walkway, so it doesn't freeze later. One might think it doesn't matter, since Bryan won't be moving in till August, when the snow and ice will have long been melted. However, we may need to sleep there when the plumbers are installing our new toilets, and perhaps we may have enough people staying here for New Years that we need to borrow it for overflow crash space. One never knows.

In other news, I am learning how to use GitHub to make a blog from an Obsidian vault. Not long after I started using Obsidian I created a vault for my blog posts, and set up far more metadata (properties) for each note than are possible here. At that point, I started doing my composition there, and copying them to Dreamwidth. Sometimes. Many of them didn't get copied here, even though I had at least bullet points of some things that had happened that day. I also started putting in lots of images, as it is super easy to put images into Obsidian (a direct contrast to Dreamwidth), which meant that the ones I did post here I usually skipped the photos, unless I felt extra full of energy to go to the bother of posting the photos first somewhere else, and then using the url to put it here.

I have also started working my way back through my various Dreamwidth posts, and copying them, one at a time, into Obsidian. While one could write a script to just go harvest them, it has been kind of interesting to look at what I posted as I do. As a result, I have only managed to pull in everything from this year, and I have been using Dreamwidth, and Livejournal before then, decades longer than that.

I have been dreaming about taking my Obsidian vault, and making a blog from it, especially as then I could still echo them to Dreamwidth, but now the photos would exist, and I could, in theory, also put them in Dreamwidth. Yesterday, I finally got around to testing a free Obsidian to Github to blog option, and it worked. It will take time and learning to convert it into something I am truly happy with, but it will do, and my blog is backed up, at least this year. The rest can follow.

But, if anyone reading this wants more to read, or to see the photos that didn't come with the posts I have done this year, feel free to go have a look at my blog: https://riiac.github.io/Kareinas-blog/

Entry tags:

snow and further progress

We woke up today sto the first real snowfall of the year. I am so not counting the ~2cm we had that completely melted away this weekend. Still only about 10 or 12 cm, but much nicer. It was a little on the heavy side, since the temperature was only barely freezing, but I was still able to completely shovel both the parking area in front of the house and the driveway down to the garage in the time it took Keldor to drive to work. To be fair, that took him longer than normal (44 minutes today, instead of 35), as the highway hadn't been ploughed yet. It would be lovely if the snow would survive and we have a proper white winter, but the forecast is still predicting temps that aren't good for snow. I miss real winter.

Today Keldor made some lists to hold the insulation sheets to the attic roof, and they work very well. We put up the first four, and now that he knows they will work, he will make the other type to hold the upper end of the next row down

Entry tags:

games

A pleasing Qwirkle game

During this morning's Qwirkle game we had a set of five diamonds awaiting the green one to be complete. It didn’t appear, and didn't appear, and the board grew into a circle surrounding them, with just enough room available to complete the Qwirkle. The game focus moved to the outer parts of the board. I had a pair of greens, and set them up on the edge of a double green row for like nine points, and was pleased.

A move or two later I notice that set of five diamonds again, look over at that pair of greens I had just played, realized that, yes, I had used a green diamond for nine, when it could have been a Qwirkle. Oops. Confessed to Keldor that I had made a stupid mistake. He said what, and I tapped the green diamond. He gave the board a quick look, saw the row of four diamonds in the other part of the middle of the board, the one with room for one more diamond, but not two, and replied that there wasn't room for it anyway. Realising that he didn't see the potential Qwirkle, I managed to keep my mouth shut, and played on, hoping that I would get lucky.

Then he played a pair of greens in the same corner, also for something like nine points, and I really hoped I would get that final green diamond. But nope, we came into the end game, and it hadn't appeared. I considered placing two of my three blues heading out from one of the other rows such that it would have killed that Qwirkle. Then glanced at the score, saw that I was far enough ahead that it didn't matter if he saw it, so instead played my three blues over there, where they were worth more points.

He never did see that move, and I was very satisfied with my win.

Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

Not the adventure we had planed for today

Woke at 04:10 and did 25 minutes of pilates before his 05:00 alarm went off.

Worked, went to the busstop to take the bus to town for archery practice. The bus was more than 10 minutes late, presumably due to bad roads, as the temperature had warmed up to just above freezing today, rained, and then started cooling down again.

I chatted with Keldor on the phone while I waited. He was driving towards Bureå, where I would get off the buss, meet him, and we would head back to Skelleftåhamn for Archery practice.

The bus finally arrived just after 16:00, a single story bus (I prefer the two story variant I normally take two work--nicer view from upstairs). I boarded took a seat near the back door (in the middle of the bus, and got my coat and boots off, myself settled, my seat belt on, took out my sewing, and then the bus lurched a bit as the driver tried to stop, there was a bump and a loud noise as we hit something and two more loud impact noises and bumps before the bus finally came to a stop (plus many noises from the humans in the buss expressing various levels of fear and surprise).

None of the bumps nor the stopping were enough to damage any of us on the bus, not even those who weren't wearing seat belts.

The car that was directly outside my window, however, was in pretty bad shape, missing the front end of its hood.

As soon as the driver assured themselves that none of the passengers were hurt, he encouraged everyone to move over to the left side of the bus. We had come to a stop near enough the edge of the road, and the back tires just off the road edge that the bus had a gentle lean to the right.

The driver asked us not to leave the bus, as he didn't want to risk that it migt fall over and crush us. We thought this an excellent reason to stay put, and we who had empty seats next to us on the right invited people to come sit next to us. I did, however put my boots on first, so that when it becomes safe to leave, I could do so directly.

Given that I was going no where any time soon we decided that instead of going to Archery practice Keldor would drive towards me, and as soon as we could leave the bus I would walk over to where he could park and wait for me, and we would head home.

As he drove, slowly, down the road towards me, he reported each time police, ambulance and tow trucks drove past him towards us, and when each came into my sight I let him know.

The accident took place just past the Broänge bus stop, at the intersection of the smaller road towards Mångbyn and Hökmark, so Keldor left the Highway at Hökmark and took the small road till he could see us.

Meanwhile, I was watching the people tending to the driver of the munched car directly out my window, who remained in the car for quite some time, and I was very concerned for them. So when the driver eventually got out of the car and walked on their own legs (with people on either side, just in case), I was very relived. They looked very shaken (no way they weren't in shock), but being able to walk after losing the front end of a car to a bus is a very good sign.

After the driver was taken away their car was pulled off to the side of the road. Well, draged, neither of the tires on the side towards me rotated.

I didn't see what happend to the other car, (cars?) But one wound up in the field on the far side of the bus out of my field of view. I hope that everyone in them is ok.

Shortly after the accident I heard the person behind me talking on the phone to someone say that they would be late why, and that their phone battery was nearly flat. At which point I noticed that bus interior lights were still on, so I got out my charger, plugged it into the outlet in front of me, checked to see that it charges a phone, then offered it to the person behing me, who was grateful. After a time their phone had enough, so we passed the cable to the person in front of me, who also needed to charge a phone, so I was useful as we waited.

Eventually the road was clear enough of car wreckage that the police started letting the queue of cars behind us drive past so that the new bus, which had been sent to take the passengers further, would be able to get to us.

When an police officer boarded, around 17:30, the bus to let us know our bus would soon arrive, I asked if I could leave now, as my partner was in a car on the other side of the road, ready to take me home.

Yes, if I wait to cross the street till an officer stops traffic again. Yes, yes I will!

A few minutes later I was home again, where I beat him in a game of Qwirkle, spread more of the coarse saw dust in the attic outside of where the bedroom will be, and watched an archaeology documentary.

Entry tags:

A brilliant plan

Worked from home today as I had a 07:00 meeting with a colleague in Australia to discuss recommend database structure for LA-ICP-MS data, and I didn't want to do that on the bus.

I did a quick 20 minutes HIT during the day as I was waiting for files to be copied from my old computer to the external hard drive.

After work Keldor let me know that he has had a brilliant plan, we will use pandemic technology to encourage he and some of our friends to add a little movement into their lives by having a zoom meeting two or three times a week to do yoga and training with me (and my DownDog app). (Of course I said yes, to the suggestion he knew I would.) We will meet at 21:00 Swedish time zone, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday on even number weeks and Tuesday, Thursday on odd number weeks. Tomorrow is our first session. If you want to join us let me know and I will share the link.

Then we did an hour of work putting up more tar paper in preparation for insulating the attic room.

Entry tags:

Gyllengrans event

This could be considered an odd event for me to attend, given that I am never hungry in the evenings, and so don'teat the feast. The focus is food, and the only scheduled activities are workshops to make food to be served at the feast, which isn't to be served until 18:00 at the earliest. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the day, with a morning of breakfast, sewing and chatting with people. Then I started helping Þórólfr cut out a new tunic from a pale lilac coloured wool.

Just after we got the body rectangle and neck hole cut lunch was served, so we took a break to eat, the put the body on him. Marked the waist and underarm points, and measured how wide to make the side rectangles, and how long the sleeves will need to be.

Then it was a simple matter to cut the side rectangles, sleeves and four triangles to put between the intersection of the body and side rectangles. Now he has a new tunic, some assembly required.

Soon after the tunic was cut he went to prepare for Court as her Majesty's herald, and I resumed sewing and chatting. Court was short and sweet, with a few well deserving people getting awards.

After court I switched to nålbindning https://trello.com/c/Ki2zfhTY, as I knew the feast hall would be lit by candlelight. I started a new psir of blue nålbinded short socks for me of a thick yarn.

This time I decided to start from the ankel and work down. I used whatever the variation of Finnish stitch where you have only one loop around the thumb at a time, but take the needle through both it and the previous loop, from front to back, twist them and pass the needle through what will become the new thumb loop.

I did this stitch all away atound the first pass around the ankle, working one sock left handed till it was long enough to fit, then did the other sock right handed to the same point, so I could be certain they were the same length.

I even picked out the first couple of stitches which are always a little wonky compared to the rest of the row, and tightened the beginning to a nice looking taper.

When I was happy with both starting rows, they were the correct length to fit me and they were the same (other than working direction), I started spiraling, but for this second row I switched to grabbing only the loop from the thumb for the twist, which makes for a more open texture pattern that I think will look nice as a pattern change.

After that row had come all the way back to the starting point I switched back to the first stitch, as the denser pattern will be better for the socks themselves.

By around 21:00 I had gotten the third row of both socks to the point where it opens up to leave room to later attach the heel spiral, taken one of them long enough to start attaching that row to the far side of the foot, and on the other sock about half of the distance before attaching it to the far side of the foot.

I put the project down because Keldor decided he was tired and was going to bed early. He said I could stay up longer, but this sounded like a good idea, so I was in bed by 21:40 and went straight to sleep.

Entry tags:

seger över byråkrati

I had looked forward to workingfrom home today, getting thing packed for this weekend and washing the gambesons after yesterday's fighter practice. Then we saw the letter that the bank has finally (10 months after taking office) approved my access to the shire's bank account, and I just need o bring my ID to the bank and they will give me access.

So I decided instead to head in with Keldor and work at his dad's, and we could go to the bank as soon as he was done with work. So we stayed up later thsn we should to get most things packed and ready, and I got up early today to gather food to take with me to his dads.

When we drove past Bryan's new house on the way home last night we had noticed that the porch light wasn't on, which was weird, but with the flurry of packing, we didn't investigate further. But this morning Keldor remembered, and grabbed the keys to that house, and on our way to work we stopped to check, and the power was off.

The electric meter had the little red blinking indicator showing that the power had been switched off by Skellefteå Kraft. Several phone calls and a few hours later I had sent 6,500 kr to the Skellefteå Kraft Swish number with his account number as the message and customer service assures me that the electricity will be turned back on today.

So lucky that we noticed that the porch light and internal window lights were off and checked today. If not, we wouldn't have known the power had been disconnected. Today's temperature is -13 C, so if I hadn't noticed today the house would have been deeply frozen, and the pipes destroyed before the problem was discovered.

I sent their customer service address a long, carefully crafted letter that started with:

"*This letter is a request to change one of your corporate policies. I would like to you change them such that the electricity for a house which has just changed owners is not turned off without an explicit acknowledgement from the new owner that they are aware that you will turn it off. Or, at least, it will not be turned off if the temperatures are colder than +1 C.*"

And ended with:

"*While I am writing, I also wish to thank each of your employees with whom I spoke today. Each of the people I spoke with (both through my initial call to the "Felanmälan" number (020-77 27 00), and during my follow up call (once they opened) to the Customer Service number (0910-77 25 50) were kind and as helpful as they could be. You have good people working in customer contact positions. Please adjust your policies so that the entire company shows the same level of compassion*."

Writing the letter took much of the morning. I had considered writing a Swedish version, but instead, I just added a ps:

"PS I chose to write in English because it is faster, and I have more control over the finer nuances of meaning and grammar use. However, I read Swedish fluently, so if you choose to reply, svara gärna på svenska."

Much to my surprise, i got a reply this afternoon! (In Swedish) Thanking me for my thoughts, expressing joy that I got the help I needed, and assuring me that my suggestion will be forwarded to the appropriate department for consideration.

After I got the letter sent off and packed up the computer Keldor picked me up, and we picked up Þórólfr and his stuff, then went into town to the bank, which had a sign on the door saying that they don't open till 13:00 (it was around 11:00). It never occurred to any of us that they wouldn't be open at that hour, so we didn't check.

So we headed south towards our house, stopping at Bryan's to check. Yes, the electricity was on again, and the heaters were warm. We gave Þórólfr the tour. He thought the house was big after he'd seen the workshop, garage, cellar, and first floor. Then we took him upstairs and showed him the master bedroom, craft room and large guest room with its own fridge, stove and sink. Yah, it is a nice place. He will love living there once he moves.

Then home, pack the food and pillows and other last minute stuff and get on the road. The bank in Umeå is also only open 13:00 to 15:00 on Fridays, and we managed to get there before they closed. Given the months worh of hassle to get the paperwork perfect, I was a little worried about this visit. It went amazingly well! I not only got my Swedish Personal number attached to the Shire bank account, so I can use my BankId to log in, she also told us about the corporate Swish App, which lets me get real time notifications whenever someone Swishes our account, including their name, which will make it much easier to tell who has paid for events.

Then our customer service person solved a problem that Þórólfr had had when he tried getting a debit card for the Shire at the bank in Skellefteå--on that occasion four different bank employees tried helping him, over the course of 40 minutes, each saying "This should be easy, the push of one button, I don't know why it isn't working".

Today they figured out the problem. The shore was founded in the 90's, before modern Internet banking, when all transactions required the kassör (Exchequer) show the copy of the meeting minutes showing they have the authority to access the account. She made some changes to our profile to bring it into this century, and then issued us a card, which will be mailed to us soon. So now I have multiple ways to access the account and see what transactions have happened.

Now we are nearing Sundsvall, should be on site in about 40 minutes, so a good time to post this.

Entry tags:

fighter training

Fighter practice and bank approval

I managed to work productively before lunch, but never made myself return to the computer after eating my artichoke, which was followed by a bowl of popcorn. Oops. Such low energy, but not sleepy,so didn't take a nap, just read. At least ot was the book i am reading for Swedish class, which I am now much further along than we should be for Monday.

Since I wasn't working anyway, I convinced myself to take the bus into town for figheter practice, our first in months. Moving helped. Alas,towards the end of the session, while we were just using boffers I got hit in the wrist, on the hockey glove I was wearing, and it still hurt, so I quit for the day and took off my armour to see that it was already swolen. Sigh. Nothing appears broken, but the puffy area is likely to look bruised tomorrow.

When we got home it was to a letter from the bank, which has finally approved our application for me to get access to the bank account.

So tomorrow I need to go in with him in the morning and work at his dad's house a couple of hours. Then we will go to the bank for the final step of showing ID to get Internet access.