Thursday, April 30, 2009

More elk-ness

Hej på dig! As they would say here.

I found an article in the local paper that shows a photo of the elk I saw. Check it out here. It's in Swedish, but you can put it in translate.google.com and read the article that way, should you be so interested.

In other news, I have a Swedish mobile phone now, but no credit on it. So I can receive calls and messages but not send any.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

ELK!

I was walking to dancing last night. It's about a 20 minute walk, over a couple of hills. As I got to the top of the first hill, what did I see before me, but an elk. A freaking elk walking down the street. It was huge!

For those not familiar with elk, here is what one looks like.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Other things to tell you

Hello once again,

Today is a good day for so many reasons. It's sunny outside, I've found out that I only have 2 more chapters of my thesis to fix (of five) before I can submit it and finally call myself Dr Kate. Well, not really, as it needs to be passed first and all that kind of nonsense. But, it's almost to the point that I can leave it alone for a while and concentrate on my paid work.

The paid work, by the way, is going rather well. I have two mutants that I'm working with. One has a distinct phenotype and I've started mapping the gene. The other one I'm yet to really start working on, but I'm hopeful of getting some good results with that one too. I'm currently sitting in the office waiting for my timer to run down so I can set up another wash of the first embryos. Once I've finished with all this washing I can finally go and get myself some lunch. Mmmmm lunch.

The thing that I really wanted to mention in this post today was something that I'd like to remember for a long time. It has been about a week since I first started noticing bumblebees around the place. I've seen lots of flowers and other such things, but I've never before in my life seen a bumblebee. The very first time was about a week ago, as I said. I was walking to work. This is an uphill climb through the community gardens, with their little houses and pretty garden beds. And buzzing around was a bumblebee. They are such fuzzy, fuzzy animals.

For those not familiar with the bumblebee, here is a photo, taken from this persons flickr stream

Monday, April 13, 2009

Photos from Easter weekend

Here are a selection of photos from our Easter adventure on Saturday.


pickled fish!

part of my easter lunch

yummy vinegars

walking to the sea

finding the way down

Spring vs late winter

view from our apartment, Spring!

This is the view from our apartment now towards a large street nearby. I didn't really think that it was that different to when we first moved here. But then I looked at my photos, and found this:

view from the apartment in February

Turns out it's very different and rather delightful now. Hooray! I wish that my allergy prone body didn't really react so well to it though. I'm now in hayfever mode. But at least I've got my eczema and lactose intolerance stuff under control.

I'm going to be DJ Kate tonight. I'm both excited and scared about it. It should be fun, but I just hope that they like the music that I do. It's good though, or so I think, so it should go fine. More photos coming soon.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Swings and roundabouts

So today has been a day of swings and roundabouts. Actually, most of it was lovely, but the last little bit has been not so great. I've recently discovered that I'm lactose intolerant. I stupidly had a coffee with milk in it at the lovely party/dinner I was at. We made it home in time for me to have a good old sit down, but it was a close run thing and my guts were very unhappy.

The other thing that isn't so fabulous is that our neighbours upstairs are having a party and we can hear it. It seems as though they are doing karaoke or something to that effect. We've been lucky enough to hear their rendition of "hit me baby one more time" and many other delightful songs. I hope that they can it before I really want to go to bed.

The good stuff that happened today was something along the following lines, I'll hopefully fill in the rest of the details later. We got some new forks and knives from the charity shop across the road, as well as some new tea towels. We only had two before, tea towels that is, and all our forks and knives are tiny. I think the forks are cake forks or something of that nature. We washed all our clothes and mopped the floor. The floor here gets very dirty, very quickly. I think it partly has to do with the lack of a doormat, but it means that a lot of the time there is a layer of crap attached to your foot when wandering about. I got an opportunity to speak to my lovely friend EE and her husband about the arrival of their daughter two weeks ago. Apparently, according to EE, breastfeeding is like having your nipples tattooed. Mind you, she has never had a tattoo, so it's just a guess. She is, however, happy with every other aspect of motherhood and fingers crossed her nipples hold up under the strain. I got to talk to my parents and my brother for a little while too, which was rather nice. My dad has bronchitis, which he got from his sister. He says he's feeling better than she is and has antibiotics. He should be better soon.

Other good stuff from today: we were invited to a Swedish easter dinner. We went to a member of my lab's house for dinner, starting at 4pm-ish. We were picked up by my boss and her husband and went to S's house. It's a lovely house, near to the ocean and very light and breezy. There were four couples/families there. We were the only one without children. There were 7 kids there, two of whom were called Embla. Three kids were from a newly arrived German family. We had a Swedish easter dinner with salmon, potatoes and pickled fish of different flavours, lamb, salad and bread. It was really tasty. I took some photos and will post them later.

After dinner we went for a walk down to the water, through the forest and had a few adventures up on the rocks. Ask, one of the kids, lost his shoes when dangling over the edge of a small cliffette. He sounded quite calm when he asked for help to get down, so his parents didn't realise how precarious his situation was. But he was okay, his shoes were found and he was hoisted back up the cliffette. On the walk back from the ocean I had the pleasure of a conversation, somewhat one-sided, with Josefine, a 5 year old German girl. She could really talk and required little from me, so my German held up well. She was most amusing. I also put my German skills to use in helping her older sister Johanne (sp?) play monopoly (Gothenburg version) with the kids of the household.

We were there quite late, and had to get a lift to the closest tram stop. We made it there just before a tram arrived and had to walk about 15 minutes home. In that time, my guts were quite unhappy and I was concerned I wouldn't make it home. Fortunately, for me and the boy I made it home safely and without incident. I wish that I hadn't had that coffee with the milk.

The other delightful thing about today was the weather. It was blue skies, sun and warmth all the way and I got to see a bumblebee. That makes me ever so happy. They are such ridiculous looking animals.

Right, almost bedtime, I hope the neighbours pack it in soon, or I'm going to have get all nanna-like and go up there and tell them to please be quiet. I wonder if banging on the roof here would work?

Thursday, April 02, 2009

I love swedish children's television

This was on TV this morning and you don't have to understand Swedish to get the hilarity of it all. Also, in case you are wondering, it's probably work safe, nothing rude, no swearing.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Sometimes you see something that tickles your fancy

I saw this at the supermarket the other day and _had_ to take a photo. Do you think that pussi would taste as good as it looks?

Cat food in Sweden


Edited to add: I'm just looking at the eyes on that cat and I find them somewhat disturbing. Why are they staring so?