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bironicHello! I’ve been here, keeping up with people’s posts; I just haven’t been posting myself. Let’s fix that.
Travels
I went on vacation last month for the first time in 5 years, to visit my friend A. and her husband V. and two kids for a few days in Finland, where they’re from, and another few days in Stockholm, where they live now, finished off with a few days on my own on the Swedish island of Gotland. I’d never been to either country, and it was so nice to see new landscapes and architecture and wildlife and try new foods. The weather offered welcome relief: around 21C/70F and breezy compared to this summer’s record-breaking number of humid 90F+ days at home. Two weeks after midsummer, it never got fully dark.
Helsinki: Restaurant-filled streets smelled of dill. We visited a sauna in a gentrifying harbor area that included a shipping container-style steam sauna with a picture window overlooking the sea, a smoke sauna featuring the hottest air I have ever attempted to breathe, and a ladder straight into the Baltic for cold plunges. The center of town offered a striking amalgam of Soviet, neoclassical, and modern architecture, both in building design and in street/square layouts. We rode street trolleys and caught a tall ships festival. We took the overnight ferry-slash-cruise-ship from there back to Stockholm since A. and V. travel with their car to see parents in various parts of Finland. Foods tried for the first time: real gravlax, blackcurrant herring, salmon soup, Karelian pasty, salty licorice, vegan shrimp.
Stockholm: We visited the outdoor Skansen museum that has houses shipped in from all over the country and reenactments of traditional crafts and a zoo of regional animals, as well as the Nobel Prize Museum with laureates’ scientific and personal artifacts and Prize-inspired fashion; Jewish Museum, which taught about Sweden’s short and rocky history of prejudice and acceptance and notable local Jewish figures; and National Museum with its survey of centuries of Nordic art and design. Wandered through neighborhoods ranging from 17th century to parkland to contemporary hipster. Said hello to the Karolinska Institute. Saw a couple of GIANT urban hares; like, at first glimpse while my brain was trying to process what it was seeing, I thought it was a dog or a fawn. Foods tried: reindeer tenderloin, princess torte, cinnamon rolls & cardamom rolls, pear ice cream, shrimp sandwich (räkmacka).
Gotland: Perhaps my favorite part of the trip. I stayed in a B&B-style inn on the grounds of a ruined cathedral in the medieval city of Visby, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the calmer part of the tourist season between Almedalen and Medieval Week. Much souvenir shopping. I learned about history, prehistory, and geology at the Gotland Museum. Storied buildings, quaint cottages, cobblestone streets, summer roses and hollyhocks, a rocky shoreline for dipping your feet in the Baltic chill. Then took a day trip north to the adjoining island of Fårö to see the fossil-strewn beaches, towering limestone formations called rauks, small museum dedicated to Ingmar Bergman since he spent the latter part of his life and career there, and sheep farms. Foods tried: sparkling tea, local fish soup, langoustines, local lamb and potatoes and vegetables.
Next time maybe there will be a chance to visitisagel and/or naye. I’d also love to see Lapland in wintertime and the northern lights.
COVID
I’d put off traveling anywhere besides visiting family since 2020 because I knew as well as anyone that it raises risk of contracting COVID, and I’d avoided COVID so far. But fumbled policies have left us with COVID being basically endemic, and I wanted to go abroad, so I took extra precautions before and during, bought travel insurance, and crossed my fingers.
Friends, I came down with COVID less than 24 hours into the trip. Which, if the CDC’s statistics on incubation period remain reliable, means I 100% caught it before departing. Sigh. One of many no-longer-"novid" victims of the summer surge.
In any case, I was lucky. The symptoms were manageable, and I didn’t get the crushing fatigue that so many others have suffered. Not even malaise, actually, and I get malaise with every illness. Don’t get me wrong; it sucked; I coughed and sweated and ached and scoured the city for tissues and slept irregularly; but I was able to power through with ibuprofen and fluids and go out and do something each day. (Masked in a KN95 and Purell-ing everything, to be clear. Even if Sweden dealt with the pandemic by letting everyone do whatever, and even if my well-educated friends still insisted I come over for dinner every night because they’d had COVID like five times already and weren’t concerned, I didn’t want to get anyone sick.) My senses of smell and taste stayed intact, or mostly so, which was a huge relief since I wanted to enjoy local dishes. The biggest accommodation was that I couldn’t bike around Gotland because my lungs burned if I tried to do anything more than walk slowly on even ground. So I spent more money than planned and rented a car. But! The travel insurance company later agreed to reimburse it! So all’s well that ends well.
I got home and slept a lot for a couple of weeks. Would say it took one month from first to last symptoms. TBD on any lingering effects.
Health
Like, for example, how my current period has lasted three weeks and counting? More likely it’s perimenopause and/or the fibroids or endometrial hyperplasia an ultrasound found last week, after more than a year of increasingly disagreeable symptoms. The medical investigation is only just getting underway. "Hooray."
Family
My little sister is getting married this fall! Guess it’s time to accept that she’s 40 and not 12. Her boyf is a good guy. Our parents are over the moon that one of their offspring has at last found a life partner, even if there are no grandchildren on the horizon. Insert complicated feelings here about suspecting I am ace and aro + wanting parents to feel like the family line isn’t dying out + general mortality anxiety. The wedding will be fun and the right amount of quirky. It’s at the science museum on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair, where our families used to visit when we were kids and my dad took slides and reel-to-reel tape when he was young. I’m dress shopping. Some relatives I haven’t seen in a while will be there.
My grandfather turned 103 in June. He’s as cognitively sharp as you could hope. A lady with a therapy cat comes to visit him in the assisted living facility every other weekend. Amazing. I wish I could look forward to same, but since he’s my dad’s stepfather, the genes don’t belong to us. Best hope comes from my grandma (dad’s mom), who made it to a week short of 99. The rest died young or youngish, alas.
Pets
Pepper is still here, still cute, still feisty. She’s my condo companion and stress reliever and provider of amusement and affection. If rescue records are to be believed, she turns 5 this month. The average guinea pig lifespan is 6, but there’s a pretty big spread around that number. We’ll see. My sister’s guinea pig—adopted to be a friend for Pepper but whom Pepper categorically rejected—lived until almost 5. If memory serves, our childhood guinea pig made it to something like 8.
Work
I accepted another promotion. Been having mixed feelings about it. Good: money, learning useful new skills, a change after 10 years in the same office. Ambivalent: little time for creative work. What does it mean to focus on management and strategy after 25 years of identifying as a writer and video editor? Am I drifting further away from the ideal artist life I dreamed of, or making a smart/pragmatic decision since various factors have made writing harder as the years pass? Am I gravitating toward something I’m actually better at? What’s the plan? What’s the meaning of life?
THE END
Hello to you all. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to everything if there is one part you’d like to engage with. <3
Travels
I went on vacation last month for the first time in 5 years, to visit my friend A. and her husband V. and two kids for a few days in Finland, where they’re from, and another few days in Stockholm, where they live now, finished off with a few days on my own on the Swedish island of Gotland. I’d never been to either country, and it was so nice to see new landscapes and architecture and wildlife and try new foods. The weather offered welcome relief: around 21C/70F and breezy compared to this summer’s record-breaking number of humid 90F+ days at home. Two weeks after midsummer, it never got fully dark.
Helsinki: Restaurant-filled streets smelled of dill. We visited a sauna in a gentrifying harbor area that included a shipping container-style steam sauna with a picture window overlooking the sea, a smoke sauna featuring the hottest air I have ever attempted to breathe, and a ladder straight into the Baltic for cold plunges. The center of town offered a striking amalgam of Soviet, neoclassical, and modern architecture, both in building design and in street/square layouts. We rode street trolleys and caught a tall ships festival. We took the overnight ferry-slash-cruise-ship from there back to Stockholm since A. and V. travel with their car to see parents in various parts of Finland. Foods tried for the first time: real gravlax, blackcurrant herring, salmon soup, Karelian pasty, salty licorice, vegan shrimp.
Stockholm: We visited the outdoor Skansen museum that has houses shipped in from all over the country and reenactments of traditional crafts and a zoo of regional animals, as well as the Nobel Prize Museum with laureates’ scientific and personal artifacts and Prize-inspired fashion; Jewish Museum, which taught about Sweden’s short and rocky history of prejudice and acceptance and notable local Jewish figures; and National Museum with its survey of centuries of Nordic art and design. Wandered through neighborhoods ranging from 17th century to parkland to contemporary hipster. Said hello to the Karolinska Institute. Saw a couple of GIANT urban hares; like, at first glimpse while my brain was trying to process what it was seeing, I thought it was a dog or a fawn. Foods tried: reindeer tenderloin, princess torte, cinnamon rolls & cardamom rolls, pear ice cream, shrimp sandwich (räkmacka).
Gotland: Perhaps my favorite part of the trip. I stayed in a B&B-style inn on the grounds of a ruined cathedral in the medieval city of Visby, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the calmer part of the tourist season between Almedalen and Medieval Week. Much souvenir shopping. I learned about history, prehistory, and geology at the Gotland Museum. Storied buildings, quaint cottages, cobblestone streets, summer roses and hollyhocks, a rocky shoreline for dipping your feet in the Baltic chill. Then took a day trip north to the adjoining island of Fårö to see the fossil-strewn beaches, towering limestone formations called rauks, small museum dedicated to Ingmar Bergman since he spent the latter part of his life and career there, and sheep farms. Foods tried: sparkling tea, local fish soup, langoustines, local lamb and potatoes and vegetables.
Next time maybe there will be a chance to visit
isagel and/or naye. I’d also love to see Lapland in wintertime and the northern lights.COVID
I’d put off traveling anywhere besides visiting family since 2020 because I knew as well as anyone that it raises risk of contracting COVID, and I’d avoided COVID so far. But fumbled policies have left us with COVID being basically endemic, and I wanted to go abroad, so I took extra precautions before and during, bought travel insurance, and crossed my fingers.
Friends, I came down with COVID less than 24 hours into the trip. Which, if the CDC’s statistics on incubation period remain reliable, means I 100% caught it before departing. Sigh. One of many no-longer-"novid" victims of the summer surge.
In any case, I was lucky. The symptoms were manageable, and I didn’t get the crushing fatigue that so many others have suffered. Not even malaise, actually, and I get malaise with every illness. Don’t get me wrong; it sucked; I coughed and sweated and ached and scoured the city for tissues and slept irregularly; but I was able to power through with ibuprofen and fluids and go out and do something each day. (Masked in a KN95 and Purell-ing everything, to be clear. Even if Sweden dealt with the pandemic by letting everyone do whatever, and even if my well-educated friends still insisted I come over for dinner every night because they’d had COVID like five times already and weren’t concerned, I didn’t want to get anyone sick.) My senses of smell and taste stayed intact, or mostly so, which was a huge relief since I wanted to enjoy local dishes. The biggest accommodation was that I couldn’t bike around Gotland because my lungs burned if I tried to do anything more than walk slowly on even ground. So I spent more money than planned and rented a car. But! The travel insurance company later agreed to reimburse it! So all’s well that ends well.
I got home and slept a lot for a couple of weeks. Would say it took one month from first to last symptoms. TBD on any lingering effects.
Health
Like, for example, how my current period has lasted three weeks and counting? More likely it’s perimenopause and/or the fibroids or endometrial hyperplasia an ultrasound found last week, after more than a year of increasingly disagreeable symptoms. The medical investigation is only just getting underway. "Hooray."
Family
My little sister is getting married this fall! Guess it’s time to accept that she’s 40 and not 12. Her boyf is a good guy. Our parents are over the moon that one of their offspring has at last found a life partner, even if there are no grandchildren on the horizon. Insert complicated feelings here about suspecting I am ace and aro + wanting parents to feel like the family line isn’t dying out + general mortality anxiety. The wedding will be fun and the right amount of quirky. It’s at the science museum on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair, where our families used to visit when we were kids and my dad took slides and reel-to-reel tape when he was young. I’m dress shopping. Some relatives I haven’t seen in a while will be there.
My grandfather turned 103 in June. He’s as cognitively sharp as you could hope. A lady with a therapy cat comes to visit him in the assisted living facility every other weekend. Amazing. I wish I could look forward to same, but since he’s my dad’s stepfather, the genes don’t belong to us. Best hope comes from my grandma (dad’s mom), who made it to a week short of 99. The rest died young or youngish, alas.
Pets
Pepper is still here, still cute, still feisty. She’s my condo companion and stress reliever and provider of amusement and affection. If rescue records are to be believed, she turns 5 this month. The average guinea pig lifespan is 6, but there’s a pretty big spread around that number. We’ll see. My sister’s guinea pig—adopted to be a friend for Pepper but whom Pepper categorically rejected—lived until almost 5. If memory serves, our childhood guinea pig made it to something like 8.
Work
I accepted another promotion. Been having mixed feelings about it. Good: money, learning useful new skills, a change after 10 years in the same office. Ambivalent: little time for creative work. What does it mean to focus on management and strategy after 25 years of identifying as a writer and video editor? Am I drifting further away from the ideal artist life I dreamed of, or making a smart/pragmatic decision since various factors have made writing harder as the years pass? Am I gravitating toward something I’m actually better at? What’s the plan? What’s the meaning of life?
THE END
Hello to you all. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to everything if there is one part you’d like to engage with. <3
Re: And what an epic ketchup it is
Date: Aug. 17th, 2024 09:39 pm (UTC)I wondered the same about the stucco! It seemed to be commonplace.
The shrimps:
Re: And what an epic ketchup it is
Date: Aug. 18th, 2024 12:12 am (UTC)OMG the shrimps are a work of art! (How do they compare to the marine variety?)
The "stucco" could be fiber cement siding, which is very expensive but long-lasting. Sure is pretty!
Re: And what an epic ketchup it is
Date: Aug. 18th, 2024 10:09 pm (UTC)>>OMG the shrimps are a work of art! (How do they compare to the marine variety?)
I wouldn't confuse the two, but their texture approached seafood and they were pleasant!