Advice, Please!

From my living room window: A deep and dark November evening. Only a couple of weeks to go now until it’s time to put up the first Advent decorations…

Checking my Picasa Web Album, it says I’ve used up more than 75% of my storage space. I’m trying to think ahead a bit, not to be overcome by surprise the day it suddenly says it’s full…

Here’s what I’ve been thinking:

I don’t want to pay for more storage space.

I don’t want to erase my old posts. I want to be able to go back to them myself, and I also might want to be able to link back to some.

Moving one of the blogs to another account would mean messing up already existing links.

It also does not seem practical to have separate accounts for each blog since that would mean a lot of confusing logging in and out.

So I guess the best thing would be to leave the blogs as they are, and just continue with “part 2” on a new account. I guess that means losing a certain number of followers – but hopefully the ones who are really following will make note of the change and adjust to it. I know I have done so with other bloggers myself.

I have already started making preparations (setting up a new Blogger account). But I’d really appreciate advice and points of view from others, before I go ahead. Maybe there are aspects of it I have not thought about?

I suppose after New Year might be a good time to make a change. (It will then be two years since I started this blog.)

BTT: War Stories

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/war-stories/

Deb @ 1:36 am: It is November 11th, known here in the U.S. as Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day to remember the end of WWI but expanded to honor all veterans who have fought for their country, so … Do you read war stories? Fictional ones? Histories? 

I live in a country (Sweden) that has not been at war since 1814, so we of course do not have this special holiday. My first thought was actually to skip this question, but then I started thinking... ;)

I was born in 1955, i.e. ten years after then end of WWII. But even though Sweden was not directly "involved" in the war, there were still a lot of references to it in my early childhood; especially when visiting the grandparents.

At my paternal grandparents' house, for example, they still kept an old wallet filled with food ration coupons from the The War. I used to play with that. Grandma was also in the habit of saving things like used pieces of  wrapping paper and string... Out of habit from The War, when things were hard to come by. I suspect that's also where my own father's habit of collecting everything, and throwing away nothing, came from. He was born in 1931, so grew up in the shadow of The War. Even if Sweden was not "in" the war, it was all around our country, and everyone and everything was affected by it. That much I think I always understood.

Among dad's few childhood books were some about Biggles - First World War pilot. I read those several times over when staying in that house. At my other grandparents' house there were books aimed at Young Girls; books which had belonged to my mother and my aunt. Those were often about young women who went off to work at some farm, or possibly as nurses, while the men went off to war... Yes. I dare say the War (one War or another!) was there in the background in a lot of books I grew up with; and in later reading too. Just think about it. Many a great love story has been set against the backgrond of a war. Gone With the Wind... The Sound of Music... In addition to Swedish, English and American literature I've also read quite a few French and Russian classics. Besides being in WW I and II those countries also had their own Revolutions. A few years ago, I read Tolstoy's War and Peace.

I mentioned The Diary of Anne Frank in connection with some other BTT question quite recently. One of my early favourites; many times read. Her diary is about being in hiding, while the war goes on outside. We know she later died in concentration camp. I've also read quite a few survivor's stories from the Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. And then of course there are countless fictional stories involving spies, and prison camp escapes, and rescue operations etc. I think the kinds of war stories I've been most interested in are "ordinary people" struggling to survive, though, rather than actual stories from "the front" and involving military strategy etc.

Then there is the Bible. It's full of accounts of war. And then there is the world of Fantasy... War against Evil, in endless varieties: The Lord of the Rings... The Chronicles of Narnia... Harry Potter...

So yes, I do read war stories. Fictional and historical. Not as particulary interested in warfare as such; but because war is part of human history and reality.

An Ordinary Day

Above and below: Traffic pictures from the local newspaper.

Yesterday we had a snowstorm again. I did not have any plans to go out anyway, so I just stayed in, and wasn’t really much bothered. I was rather surprised to learn in the afternoon that it had been so bad that it brought a total stop to all the bus traffic in town! It did not look all that bad from my windows. I could see there was a strong wind, but the layer of snow was not very thick. But apparently the roads were really icy, and lots of road accidents were reported from all over the area. And in town, the busses were standing still, and people had to walk, or call for taxis, or stay where they were.

Today I had a lunch date planned with a friend. Doesn’t happen too often and I was looking forward to it. The storm has passed, and the snow was thawing again this morning. I was all set on going out for lunch. But it was not to be. My friend woke up with a cold and called to cancel. So I guess I’m in for a less exciting and much more ordinary lunch today: Soup from a can…

Better get used to it, I suppose. All of it: Snowstorms, colds, cancelled plans, and canned soup… It’s winter.

 

Quotation of the Week 45/2010

"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~

(PS. As for the picture… Use your imagination!)

The Magic Number 9999

This is the 9999th photo taken with my Nikon Coolpix 4600. It happened yesterday morning, while waiting for the bus to take me out of town for a visit to The House. (See yesterday’s post.)

I had no idea what number the camera was on until I transferred the photos to the computer and noticed that the count had started over from 0001 again.

I bought the camera at the end of April, 2006. Below is the second picture I took with it. Spring flowers on my balcony (different place from where I live now)

 

Over the next three years, I took on average 400 photos per year. But from July 2009 (six months after I started blogging) my use of the camera took a sudden “jump”, and since then I’ve been taking on average 550 photos per month. In spite of not having travelled anywhere.

No wonder that since then I’ve found it hard to catch up with my own filing and sorting of the photos taken (and all the edited copies and collages on top)…

Below is the new # 0002, taken as I got off the bus out in the countryside. I shall have to explain its message to my English-speaking followers, though: The name on this sign is “Intet”, which means “Nowhere” or “Nothing”. It’s kind of fun getting off the bus here, just to be able to say that one did…

Lost And Found: One Hour

I’d been waiting for a morning like this for weeks. I.e. a morning when I’d wake up to a sunny day, feeling like I might just possibly have the energy within me to go out to the House; which stands empty since Dad moved to an assisted living group home two months ago.

An increased incentive for going dropped in through the mailbox on Friday. Authorities wanted me to put a sticker with a barcode on the wheelie bin. This, they claimed, will give us better service and be much safer. Hm. (I wonder how long before we’ll have to put a sticker on every garbage bag?)

Had the wheelie bin been in my own garden, this would have been a two-minutes-job at the most, no big deal. However, when the wheelie bin is in the garden of an empty house out in the countryside, and it takes me an hour or more to get there (by bus), and even longer to get back… For me, it’s a full day’s work.

However, the sticky little job solved one dilemma for me: Whether to pay a visit to the House, or to Dad, since the two are no longer in the same place. Sometimes “in my dreams” I manage both but the realistic me knows that without a private chauffeur I don’t. And sometimes I suspect myself of ending up not going anywhere as much from inability to choose as from other, more valid reasons.

So waking up this morning, feeling reasonably well rested, and seeing we had a sunny (and frosty) day coming, I decided to get the sticky job over and done with, and reassure myself that no big bad wolf had blown down the house since I was there last; and just  combine that with a bit of a photography walk, and no other overambitious plans.

I got off the bus a stop or two early and took a roundabout walk down by the lake. It really was a great day for photos…

At the House, things appeared to be in the same order as when I last left the place. The roof was still on. (A few months ago some tiles were not, so that’s why I’ve been a bit worried during recent stormy nights.) After my initial round, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I was surprised to find how quickly time had passed. 12.45 already? Oh well… I had been walking rather slowly, taking photos, not thinking much about the time on my way there… So I decided not to rush but stay an extra hour. (Busses go regularly once every hour on weekends.) Found a pie in the freezer and heated that in the microwave for lunch. And had my tea.

The wheelie bin turned out to already have a sticker on it. In my eyes they looked exactly the same. I did not, however, compare the code bar by bar. I decided to just believe, for my own peace of mind, that they must have made some very important and life-saving (or at least money-saving) change there…

I also went through a few drawers in the bedroom and threw away some stuff no one is likely to miss (might as well make use of that carefully marked bin!).

Then I walked to the bus stop, and caught the bus back to town. Feeling that it had been a looong day, but that on the whole I had made good enough use of it...

Sitting on the bus, I glanced at my wrist watch. It showed 1.45 pm. Not 2.45 pm, as I had expected it to. At first I thought there was something wrong with the watch…

… But there wasn’t. While at the House, I had looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Which was still showing summer time, since no one had put it back on winter time! Never occurred to me! And my “body clock” is still a little confused, as well…

So that’s how I lost an hour, and got it back again, in the same day. I was back home around the time I had originally planned. But somehow… I still feel as tired as if I had been away at least an hour longer…

I guess I’ll have to blame it on jet-lag!

I Sit Beside The Fire And Think

I sit beside the fire and think
~ by J.R.R. Tolkien ~

I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door