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Machka - My heart aches for you. :heart: :heartbreak: /Penny
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Dana - I love the bowl garden! When I was little, my mother would take me and my sisters out into the woods around our cottage in New Hampshire to collect moss and plants and maple seedlings and pretty rocks for a bowl garden. If we found a mushroom we might place it there too - for as long as it lasted. Rye wanted to see…
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Change the roast chicken to moose and the fennel to rutabaga and that's exactly what we're having tonight. But we'll be breaking out a muscular red rather than an AF white :wink: Machka: The meat isn't at all raw! Granted, it isn't well-done, but its inner temperature DOES get up to well beyond what causes protein to…
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Ask about "tjälknöl". He/She may not recognize my translation :laugh: Gävle is halfway between Stockholm (where I used to live) and the place where my husband's family had an old farm with forest (and hunting rights). Six hours' drive and still only about halfway north in Sweden. /Penny
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It's official! My weight loss for the past week is 0.9 kg (2 lb). Must design myself that cross-stitch sampler that says "When I log, I lose". The challenge now will be to keep at it. Hubby arrives home from Nepal in a couple hours and we have invited his traveling companions over for dinner tonight. (This would be our…
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Sorry to hear that, Heather. Krya på dig! /Penny
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I'm realizing the same thing. Have our stomachs shrunk? Yesterday evening I was ambushed by two digestive biscuits. I'd taken them out of the sleeve but then decided I didn't need them after all. And I put them back! This evening I cut myself a hunk of hubby's leftover birthday cake, logged it, and started eating. But when…
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About swimsuits: On a trip to India my luggage was delayed and I had to buy new clothes, including a swimsuit. The matron in charge of ladieswear looked at me, a decadent Westerner, and brought out the most risqué swimsuit the emporium had to offer. Patterned with yellow pineapples and blue plums on black, its well-padded…
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Just finished doing my taxes. The due date for most people in Norway is April 30, but those of us who are self-employed have an automatic extension to May 31. I should be getting back a goodly sum :smiley: /Penny at the
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Congrats LISA! Yay!
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Oh and that brings to mind a song with state names woven into it that my mother learned in highschool. A few sample verses: What did Idaho boys, oh what did Idaho? She hoed her Maryland boys, she hoed her Maryland. What did Delaware boys, oh what did Delaware? She wore her New Jersey boys, she wore her New Jersey. What did…
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Thanks Dana! Your neighborhood looks gorgeous and peaceful. And green and leafy. And hillier than expected. I've never been in Arkansas and I'm ashamed to say I know diddly-squat about the state. We-e-e-ll, I do know enough to correct any Europeans pronounce it as though it rhymes with Kansas, which is most of them.…
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Karen that's a wonderful story! Karma may come after you >:) but Mother Nature is apparently more forgiving :heart: /Penny
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Allison - He's not on a trek at all; they're on a week-long whirlwind visit gathering material for a book. The GPS tracker he's got communicates via satellite, so he isn't dependent on the ordinary type of connectivity. All he needs is open sky (and there's a lot of that) plus electricity once in a while to charge the…
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I'm a goose. My husband's in Nepal for two weeks. Before he left he told me he would check in every day by text or email or his snazzmatazz GPS tracker. Of course I took him at his word, so yesterday evening when I hadn't heard from him for a full 36 hours, I started to worry. The worry followed me into dreamland and I had…
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Oh yeah, Evelyn. Polar bears are a real threat in the High Arctic. Speaking of snow, we had a bunch too today, but it sure wasn't pink. We also have a new polar bear in town. This street artist painted a polar bear on the north wall of the grocery store. A totally ordinary looking black-gray-white polar bear. The next day…
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Heather - Your walk sounds romantic! I miss seeing celandine in the spring. I always used to pluck off a leaf to see the orange sap. The plant's Swedish name is "skelört" because the sap was supposed to cure cross-eyedness. (Skelört means squintweed - probably not a word included in your Swedish course :laugh:) Tell me,…
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Machka - Lovely to read about your husband's progress. You mentioned that the caregiving staff had said his recovery rate would pick up after the trach came out, and it appears they knew what they were talking about. I'd never heard of Zwift, so I looked it up online. Wow! I was reminded a friend's strategy for keeping…
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Aw Karen :heart: I'll soon be posting more regularly, I promise :flowerforyou: just gotta get home again. What with teaching (me) and meetings (him), my husband and I haven't been together more than two of the past 18 days. Suffering slight withdrawal, I told him to call me ASAP and ASAP was two days later. :neutral: And…
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Thanks Barbie and others who chimed in. I'm not actually retiring. Rather the opposite! Teaching these courses meant tootling off to Stockholm for a week at a time 3-4 times a year, which in turn meant I couldn't have a regular 9 to 5 job. I'm thinking a few years on a salary will put me in a better place for retirement.…
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Big changes coming for me. After 20 years, I've pretty much decided it's time to quit teaching these scientific writing courses. They cost me an awful lot in terms of mental energy, and the pay has lagged behind. After deducting the cost of travel and accommodations (which, for historic reasons, I cover myself), plus…
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Oh dear... Very sorry to hear that!
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Me too! Hooray that I'm not the only one! Some time ago I accidentally bought the non-lemon-flavored kind. The brand I purchase has a yellow screwcap for the plain cod liver oil, whereas the cap on the lemon-flavored kind is green. I find it SO counterintuitive that the one with the yellow cap is NOT the lemony one. The…
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Kim - Yeah. The only blackbirds I knew as a girl growing up in Minnesota were the red-winged blackbirds. The thought of anyone listening to them sing didn't evoke anything but puzzlement. (This Wikipedia page has a link to a little sound snippet.) The European blackbird isn't even related to the New World blackbirds. They…
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Glorious weather in Stockholm today. I'll be biking to and from the lecture venue so I'll have some chance of enjoying it. Yesterday on my way home I was totally pooped. (These lecture weeks seem to deplete all my glycogen stores. I'm fine until Wednesday afternoons, but then I feel drained and must struggle through the…
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Stopping by to let off some steam. I'm sitting outside the lecture venue, which is locked. A guy comes by inspecting the lecture rooms. He goes in, and when he comes out I ask if I can go in now, as I'm lecturing there soon. With a bit of a sneer he says No, the room will unlock automatically at the booked time. Thanks a…
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Hi ladies. I'm alive and busy. Currently in Stockholm for two weeks of teaching. Stockholm is nice, but unfortunately I'm not in a good place emotionally. Too darn much going on! I hear the reports about the unwanted snow some of you've had. The snow we had at our holiday home when the grandkids were visiting was very much…
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Awww, Kelly. No it's not silly if you want to wear a nice heel. However, I think you've got it backwards when you say our bodies suffer when we're too comfortable all the time. My body suffers all the time when I'm NOT comfortable! As Karen in VA surmised, I've been busy with the grandkids. For several days I didn't even…
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Quick report. Despite long lines at the car rental and challenging conditions on the road, son and family made it to the ferry on time and arrived just after 7 yesterday evening. The kids exclaimed about the "CRAZY" amount of snow all through dinner (pasta and pesto - their favorite). About 8 pm they put on their skis and…
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Machka - I feel for you in this extremely challenging time. Few of my waking hours pass without my thoughts and good wishes going your way. :heart: :heart: :heart: Rori - You wrote that you'd hung up a map of the world in your zen den. I'm curious, does it show Svalbard (Spitsbergen)? Many maps omit latitudes north of…
