Quotation of the Week (48/2010)

If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires.
~ Horace Traubel ~

Getting Ready…

 

It’s the 1st Advent Sunday this weekend.
The town is getting prepared, and so am I. At least trying to.

It was snowing Monday through Thursday this week, and then the temperature dropped even more to around -8°C (17°F). Forecasts say it’s going to remain cold. This means really early winter for south-west Sweden. Most of the years I’ve lived in this town (25 in January) we have not had snow for Christmas. Last year snow came to stay around Mid December. This year the first snowfall was 22 October, and it’s been more or less continuously frosty/snowy since early November. It’s going to be a very long winter! I’m not a fan of long winters. But there’s really nothing I can do to escape. Even the indoors temperature is lower than it was last winter. I feel like I suddenly have to bundle up like the Michelin man even indoors.

Entering the Ice Age

I got an email today saying “soon you will be posting snow photos”. Help. Yes, most likely I will. But I don’t want to think about it. Not just yet…

Frosty morning lawn in the park

Not that one is allowed to forget. We’ve had frost at least five nights in a row now. Sunny days in between, but still... It’s getting cold.

Sunrise over frosty football field

I’ve been having an inefficient and indecisive kind of weekend, or at least so it feels. Haven’t really been in the mood for “doing” much, and on top of that, the things that most need “doing” are indoor things, while we’re still having the kind of weather that says: “A day like this should not be wasted indoors! You should be outside!” On the other hand there is only so much one can do outdoors this time of year, except  keep walking; because it’s too cold to sit still. And there is a limit to how long I can keep walking, as well!

Yesterday I thought I’d combine the walking with some potential shopping. So I walked to a shopping mall that I don’t visit all that often. I kind of regretted the idea when I got there, because this is what I found:

Christmas decorations! Please. We still have three weeks to go to Halloween!!!

I did walk around for a while but ended up buying nothing, except a packet of paper tissues which I could just as well have bought anywhere. And a hot dog and diet coke to give me the energy to get myself back home (by bus). I should have known. Big shopping malls usually do that to me.

After deciding yesterday that there was nothing I wanted to buy; today I found myself walking into town and buying a pair of knee high leather boots.

There are persistent rumours lately (last repeated to me by the shop assistant who sold me these) that this is going to be the coldest winter in one thousand years.

How can anyone possibly know that? And how does that fit in with the global warming?

When I got home, I followed instructions and gave the new boots a recommended dose of spray-on waterproofing, out on the balcony. Maybe that will help adjust nature’s balance...

Bad Hair Days

What can I say? Still snowy and cold!
The cold a little less severe now, but still well below zero (C).

Trying to get back into some kind of normal routines (whatever that would be) after the holidays, but not very successfully.

 I did get back to my physiotherapy in the rehab pool today though. A wonderful 45 minutes in the warm water - but one does have to 'work' a bit extra for it in this weather, with all the extra layers of clothes to put on, and take off, and put on again (all within a couple of hours); and making sure to blowdry one's hair properly... *

Sleep still disrupted; got too little of it during the night, and then got so tired from the morning's getting-in-and-out-of-clothes-and-water exercises that I fell asleep after lunch and did not wake up again until it was too late to get other things done that I had half intended... (Well, come to think of it - maybe that should be counted as getting back to normal routines...)

* I've had to give up all attempts to maintain some kind of "hairdo"...

This picture I found on the internet, but it pretty much illustrates what happens to my hair too in cold and dry weather (static electricity)...

(And that look on one's face follows automatically, when facing a mirror!)

Photography Friendly Mittens

Lately it has been so cold outside (this morning again -17 C) that it has been hard to be without gloves for as long as it takes to get the camera out and take a couple shots. Even when you get your hands back into the fur-lined suède mittens, it takes forever to warm up those frozen fingers again...

But today, in a shop in town, I may just have found the solution:



For the purpose of keeping warm, the ones below are otherwise really what is needed just now... But with those on, I can't even handle the zipper on the camera bag!



PS. This is my second post today, so please scroll down for more reading...

Cold Records

Even the river is freezing now.

Some swans have joined the more common ducks (mallards) in the river. Two of them are grey. Not sure I've ever seen swans of that colour before? The all white ones are the most common here.

I've been trying to remember when we last had a really cold winter like this. I know the first two winters I after I moved to this town were extremely snowy and cold. I moved here on one of the first days of January 1986, and that day it was snowing heavily. I started a new job a few days later, in a village 20 km or so outside town, and had to travel there and back by bus every day(since I had no car). The landscape I passed on the way looked surreal with snowcovered forest and vast fields of deep, untouched snow. The next winter I was working mostly in town, but still had to travel by bus a lot between several different workplaces, and that winter too was very snowy and cold.

This morning, the local newspaper confirmed that my memory serves me right: This winter is the coldest we've had around here since 1987.

The ice sculpture in the Market Square revisited:
The little cub at the feet of the big bear
is now all covered in snow.

My personal cold record is from New Year 1978/79. (I was 23.)
That New Year, our youth gospel choir went on tour to the north of Värmland. Some of the cars we used were not in the best of shape. Our pastor, for example, had to steer his car with one hand and keep using the ice-scraper on the inside of the windscreen with the other hand all the time, the whole way. (About 100 km.) The car I was going in (belonging to a friend) had to be pushed to a start almost every time. We slept on air mattresses on the floor in the local school. From there to the little church where we sang in a couple of services, I think it was about 1 km, and most of us walked that way on foot several times during those couple of days. At midnight on New Year's Eve, we also sang at some kind of club. I caught a cold, and a fever... Afterwards - safely back home - we learned that the temperature had been down to -40C that New Year's night in the village where we had been staying. Probably just as well we did not know at the time exactly how cold it was!!!

New Year 1978/79, Värmland

(The other pictures above are from today.)

Stopping for Lunch

Just as I sat down at the table to have lunch today, I noticed I had company. Well, not actually in the flat, but outside the window. A whole flock of birds invading the nearest rowan and/or whitebeam trees, where there were still some frozen berries left...



Some day I shall really have to get a better camera for birdwatching! At first I thought they were Waxwings (Bombycilla -  sidensvans), but they did not seem to quite fit the image. I guess they were probably Fieldfares (Turdus pilaris - björktrast, snöskata). They seemed to be dark greyish on the back, sort of reddish brown on the chest, and white underneath.



When the birds left, I dare say there weren't many berries left!

Hard times for birds as well as people lately...
-17 degrees C this morning!

One More Day

One more day, and that will be the end of a year.
It has been a rather turbulent one, in some ways.

2009 included a lot of  worries, sadness, ill health, and death.
Looking forward, I don't seriously expect much better of 2010.
I dare say the new year will have its own share of all of those...

However, 2009 also included inspiration, and kindness. Some of it, surprisingly, from people across the world, who one year ago were still unknown to me. That is something I would not have been able to guess, the day before New Year's Eve last year.

And that brings me hope for 2010 as well:
Not every unknown thing that awaits must needs fall in the disasters and disappointments category!

The cold in the outside world around here loosened its grip just a little bit over Christmas - the temperature going up to around zero for a few days, resulting in wet slushy snowfalls, and absolutely horrid state of roads (including pavements and footpaths) when that froze again. Since yesterday, it is again colder (right now -8 outside my window) and the ground is covered by solid, knobbly, unwalkable and treacherous ice. If you don't slide on it, you're likely to stumble...!

Going out for a walk just for the fun of it is not on the agenda just now. If you venture out, it is on some serious mission, like getting food supplies or medicine, or library books...

The cold inside my head and chest is still keeping its grip on me, too. A little less coughing today than yesterday I think - so far. But still basically hibernating, and drinking lots of tea!

New Year's Eve tomorrow I still hope to be celebrating "traditionally" - which in my case means having two or three friends over for some food and a film in the evening, and watching the inevitable fireworks from the windows around midnight. (Living in town, one thing is forever out of the question on New Year's Eve - any attempt to have a 'quiet night' and just go to bed early!)

.~. HAPPY NEW YEAR! .~.

A White Christmas

.~. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year .~.

This year we won't have to wish for or just dream about a White Christmas - we've got it, all over Sweden. In some corners of the world you probably think that we always do, but the fact is that it varies a lot. The further North, the more likely it is. But here in the South-West, if memory serves me right, I think the last time we had a snowy Christmas was back in 2001.

Last night we had another decimeter of it fall down on us, and the temperature has gone up a bit to around zero. But the snow is likely to last for Christmas; we might even get more of it.

In spite of the snow I'm honestly having a very hard time getting into the proper Christmas spirit. The last three days I've spent partly in bed. Not flu, just a common cold, but enough to pretty much drain me of the last of my Christmas ambitions. Monday and Tuesday I did not go out at all. Today I had to go to the local small grocery shop for a few things. In the summer that took me perhaps a quarter of an hour, there and back again. On a winter morning with a head-and-chest-cold and with snow outside, it's a very different story; especially if you also count the time it takes to get properly dressed for the adventure, and then undressed again when you've finally made it home...

In the afternoon the phone rang and woke me up; which made me realise I had been asleep - again. (Lay down for a rest after the strenuous effort of microwaving myself some lunch). Well, at least it was good news, so far: My brother had arrived at dad's house (after a 300 km slushy drive) and so far had found things in working order (no apparent further examples of Murphy's Law going on at the moment). He had even managed already to set up the Christmas tree he had bought (artificial one). And will come to pick me up tomorrow (before lunchtime). (Christmas Eve is our main day of celebration here in Sweden.)

Anyone wanting to know about traditional Swedish Christmas food will have to seek out some other website for information. I was never good at it. I have managed one thing - a small baked Christmas ham. (I had bought it before the cold got the better of me, and managed to prepare it yesterday.) I also have a couple of home-made cakes in the freezer. The rest of the food will have to be bought and improvised. My brother said he'd take an inventory of the fridge and go shop later. We won't starve. There will even be presents although not a whole lot. So I guess it's going to be Christmas after all...

Winter Is Here

Winter is here now, for real. Around -10 C, and a strong wind on top of that. The roads are icy and slippery with a deceitful layer of powdery snow on top. The wind also keeps whirling the snow around. Where I live it still isn't too bad because although it's been snowing on and off for three days now, it has been very small snowflakes, and we have only a thin layer on the ground so far. Reports on the radio tell me the traffic situation has been much worse on the East coast today. I have been out, twice even, because I had to - but it is no fun. The wind is bitter cold and blows right through you, and you (well, at least I!) can only walk in tiny little steps, looking down all the time to watch where you put your feet... Getting home, you find all kinds of muscles aching which you didn't even know you had!



Statues in the park, two days ago.