Part of the reason I've not had much time for LJ recently has been that I'm very busy with work just now, and on top of that it was Pesach, and on top of that there was teaching. Teaching makes me very happy, so I'm going to talk about it.

( lots of teaching )

I love teaching so much, and I'm more and more thinking that I need to find a job where I get paid to teach, instead of doing odd bits of volunteering that is a distraction from my main job, even though I get far more out of it than what I'm supposed to be doing.

OK, since the motivation collapse some time around Friday afternoon, I have managed a few worthwhile things. I shall record them, because I want to remember happy things far longer than I'll want to remember being annoyed at myself this week.

( diary stuff )

Oh, and thank you to all the people who were brave enough to come and cheer me up in spite of dire warnings, in between writing this. You guys are really wonderful.

My own version of the end of year meme, since I don't like the standard ones:

( 2007 )

I sort of knew this Christmas was going to be completely manic. But it exceeded even my expectations; really really concentrated and amazing contact with a whole crowd of people I see far too rarely. My head is spinning!

( I think this is what is known as a full diary... )

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone. I am enjoying reading all the retrospectives and thoughtful posts about aspirations for 2008 on my flist, and I'm almost tempted to go through and comment with "happy new year" to everyone, though that would probably be a bit corny. Lots of you are just reminding me why I like you.

I got to the airport far too early and let myself get funneled through beyond the decent shops. At least they have cheap internet, so I can give you a brief catch-up of the last week or so.

( family visit and Xmas stuff )

Now I have used up the dead time between clearing security and boarding the plane. I'll probably add more links and explanations to this when I have more time. I am going to be in England until 3^rd Jan, though most of that time I'll be pretty hard to contact as I'll be at Limmud or various Christmas parties. I am looking forward to seeing some of you, which should partially make up for being offline. UK mobile number is 07803 000865, though I shan't have my phone switched on all the time.

After a somewhat frustrating week work-wise, I came into a round of chanukah events.

( lots of celebrations )

I have failed entirely to write about the last couple of weeks, which have involved quite a number of parties. There are more coming up too; we're just entering the festival season.

( festivity )

Two xkcd cartoons that speak great truth: package tracking from a while back, and yesterday's reasons to hate geography. A certain person with whom things were just starting to develop interestingly is moving to South Africa this week, which I think means that that little potential isn't going anywhere.

The same moon which ends Ramadan this year is the moon that ends the absolutely hectic month of Tishri. It's also the first approximation of a weekend I've had since I got back to Sweden. I haven't made the best use of it; I didn't really get going with my domestic chores yesterday, and today I've mostly spent curled up on a sofa drinking ginger tea and reading LJ. I'm being gentle with myself because did I ever need a break!

( reasons why you haven't heard much from me for the last several weeks )

Still not caught up with my reports from my summer holiday, and not even slightly with the book reviews, and I've only made the smallest of dents in my email and communication backlog. I think my life is going to be a bit more manageable in the next couple of weeks, though.

The high point, and indeed the point, of my Grand Northern Europe Tour was ploni_bat_ploni's wedding. It was marvellous, absolutely the best wedding there could be. And I promised I'd write about it, so I should do that before it recedes into ancient history.

( skip if you are allergic to weddings )

---

Within a few weeks of that wedding, three people dear to me decided to end relationships that they had intended to be permanent. The first two divorces among my peergroup are proceeding as amicably as it's possible for these things to be, but I'm still desperately sad for my friends. And it makes writing about the perfect wedding a little bittersweet.

I've been fairly busy workwise, though there were a few fun things too. And this week MF is visiting so I'm mostly hanging out with her rather than online. (I am LJing now because she hasn't come home yet; I do hope she isn't lost!)

( diary stuff )

Other than that we've talking our heads off about every possible topic, and I have introduced MF to The Armageddon rag, which she seems to be appreciating. I'm only semi keeping up with LJ, and I'm a bit behind on emails about logistics and stuff.

I'm back in Stockholm. I have a new cousin and new hair (pics to follow). Also good to see sibs, parents, Granny and a choice selection of the best cousins.

I also have rather a lot of lesson planning to do in not very many hours. So a telegram will have to cover it for now.

I have pupils! And they are the best sort, full of enthuiasm and generally wonderful. I didn't realized how much I'd missed teaching until the bar mitzvah class happened to me.

I have a DRESS! Just the most amazing thing I have ever owned, an orange silk two-piece. My heartfelt thanks to ploni_bat_ploni for helping me with the shopping, everything from steering me away from shiny purple things that were otherwise unsuitable, to reminding me that I can't wear plain black lace-ups with a dress this formal.

The reason I needed the dress is because my cousin J is getting married on Saturday. I am heading to England very briefly to attend the wedding, and while I am there I shall get my hair cut and dyed auburn again. The downside is that I have hundreds of things to do before my flight leaves and not enough hours left for both sleeping and preparing everything.

I shall do my best to get some photos taken of me in the DRESS, and I shall be back on Sunday evening.

I can't believe it's the festival for the end of Passover already. I have packed all kinds of things into this week, most importantly seeing some of my favourite people.

( to summarize )

I will leave until another post the second half of Passover, where I brought Bat back to Sweden with me and we did touristy things. Also I should process and post some photos, and write lots and lots of book reviews (a combination of travel time and some amount of leisure time means I've read rather a lot of books this week).

I made it home last night, thanks to some good Samaritans who rescued me from being stranded and gave me a lift for the last couple of miles. (Had they not done that, I probably could have walked it, but a big suitcase and a lot of rain and the fact that it was 1 in the morning would have made it unpleasant.) Now I'm going to make a list of all the stuff I wanted to write about in the past three weeks, before I forget it.

( insanely busy )

I have found my mobile phone. I can't remember the phone number though, so if anyone has a record of it, could you give me a shout? Edit: Thanks to lethargic_man and ewtikins who got back to me within a few minutes of posting! My mobile number is +44 780 3000865, valid for the next week or so.

I didn't make it to pseudomonas' party for Pseudojonathan's birthday aka the Jewish new year for trees. This is because I was invited to a New Year party months ago, and the party had to be postponed until this weekend due to the host's ill health. I hadn't realized until I arrived that she hadn't just picked an arbitrary date a month after NYE, but instead had intentionally moved the party to the new year for trees.

( diary stuff )

Happy New Year, all. I'm really enjoying seeing everybody's retrospectives on 2006 on my flist, so I'll add one of my own:

( 2006 )

I had a very enjoyable NYE, with a some friends of RS's who live right in the grand part of Stockholm and just round the corner from the perfect firework watching spot. It was a highly civilized party, with excellent food and excellent conversation. And the fireworks were great; lots and lots of separate parties who all let off their fireworks simultaneously at midnight, which is a lot more fun than one big firework show.

I'm not doing brilliantly with the communication thing just now. Working on it though. I've had a couple of good phonecalls with people I care about, and written at least some of the emails I intended to write this week, though I still have a huge backlog looking at me accusingly. And I'm just now getting round to posting about what I've been doing and reading this past week. Luckily this time of year people are busy enough not to worry too much if I'm silent on LJ for a while.

( week in review )

I assumed LJ was going to be quiet and boring today, but in fact there is plenty going on on my flist. Times are really changing, if people have internet access even when they are travelling or visiting elderly parents. So anyway, happy Christmas to those of you who are celebrating it.

Wow, fun few days. Busy, but fun.

( *bounce* )

Oh yeah, and happy chanukah to everyone who celebrates it.

Various stuff worth recording this week. Besides which, a few lovely concerned people worry about me if I go for ages without posting anything, so here's an update.

( diary stuff, with a few pics )
Two annoying things, though. Firstly, my phone is being unreliable again; it's giving an engaged tone to people who try to call me, when to me it seems fine and is not at all engaged. This has caused me to miss calls from people I really wanted to talk to, pseudomonas and compilerbitch in particular. So if you've been trying to get hold of me and not managed to get through, that's why. I suggest writing me an email and asking me to call you if you want to speak to me, just to be sure.

The more serious negative is that Lyndon LaRouche's evil "Novelle Solidarité" group, the people responsible for the anti-semitic murder of my brother's friend in 2003, have set up a stall in the station just outside the campus where I work. They look like your standard lefty student protest group, with posters about how evil Bush is and protesting about the Iraq War, maybe just a smidge more glossy and professional than some. I don't even know what they're doing in Sweden. I guess looking for more naive students with lefty, anti-authoritarian views to sucker into their scary cult. They have no way of knowing that I'm Jewish, of course, but I'm really concerned about seeing them here.

I'm back from a very enjoyable long weekend in England. *bounce*

( yay family, yay party )

The remainder of the weekend I spent helping Mum set up her new computer to be more usable for what she wants. This included giving her a link to this journal, so if you're reading, hi Mum! The other happy thing was that I came back to Stockholm to find we have a temporary reprieve from winter; it is warm and sunny again here.

Today I did something I've never done before: I laid tefillin in public. There are a number of reasons why I haven't done this before, and a number why I decided to do so now. I am not going to discuss them until I've got over being deeply embarrassed by the whole thing.

I didn't have a chance to get all introspective over this, though, because a really amazing visitor turned up to synagogue. An elderly Lithuanian Jew who decided to stay in Lithuania after the horrors of Nazi occupation, waiting patiently through the equally horrific Soviet period for some Jews to come and find him so he could tell his story. The Jews who eventually did so happened to be Swedish, and brought him to Stockholm to bear witness. He was speaking in Yiddish, partially translated by the community into Swedish, both of which are languages I can vaguely guess at but no more than that, so I only got the rough gist of what he was saying. Family and friends murdered by Russian troops... viewed the Germans as liberators at first... Jews more frequently shot on the spot in Lithuania and buried in mass graves there rather than sent to the death camps... Jewish tombstones dating from the 14^th century used as building materials... surviving family now in Israel and South Africa. The community asked him to lead us in the mourners' prayer, the Kaddish, which he did, somewhat stumblingly, and he commented afterwards that it was the first time in fifty years that he had prayed with a Jewish community.

Then I went to work and had a good knock-down argument with my boss. In some ways I had a similar sort of creative relationship with boss S back in Dundee, but my current boss is less likely to need reminding that he isn't my mother. So now I'm all buzzing with ideas and plans. I also discovered a note that someone had found the incubator broken on Friday and rescued all my cells, for which I am deeply, deeply grateful.

I really wanted to spend the train journey home reflecting on all this, but ran into Milo so I had to be polite to him instead. And I've spent what was left of the evening buying and preparing food so I can feed ploni_bat_ploni tomorrow.

I should probably talk about how I spent the weekend too, but I'm overwhelmed and also tired. Oh, I'm really getting into ellen_kushner's Swordspoint at the moment.

I'm doing my own version again: making lists of five (or so) representative things and people that sum up the past year for me.

( 2005 in 5s ) And I've succeed in my goal of staying single for the whole year. All 365 days of it, yes sir.

I was very aware of issues around Aboriginal culture when I was visiting Melbourne. I have a fairly muddled set of impressions, not a coherent view on all this, and I'm sure I'm not saying anything terribly original but not at all sure I can say anything without offending someone.

For a start, even the terms Aboriginal and culture are problematic. Most people involved in this sort of political issue seem to use the word Aboriginal, including the couple of people I met who were of Aboriginal heritage themselves. But a couple of times I got glared at for using it: I think you'll find the word is indigenous. Please be assured I don't intend any disrespect by the term; I'm very much an ignorant outsider here. And as for culture, there are problems with that too. I take erudito's point, but I want to use the most intuitive term I can think of to indicate the kind of things I want to talk about, which I think normally come under the heading of culture.

( Anyway, with that disclaimer in mind )

Since Saturday morning, I have:

• Been to a shabbat service
• Spent a pleasant afternoon with pseudomonas
• Attended a party with loads of cool people []
• In the course of which, found myself in a very snuggly situation with someone I've fancied for absolutely ages (this being very much a novel experience for me)
• Slept through a major explosion
• Seen lethargic_man rather briefly
• Spent a lovely few hours wandering around northwest London with ewtikins (who knows an awful lot about urban foraging and other cool things)
• Spent a joyful evening with NZ
• Enjoyed some fun exhibitions at the British Library
• Seen part of the Three Emperors exhibition of Chinese art at the Royal Academy
• Attended my first LJ meet with some of theladiesloos community
• Had a fascinating and involved conversation with doseybat and compilerbitch
• Had lunch and more fun conversation with compilerbitch and pseudomonas
• Attended a lecture on machine learning and its applications to systems biology
• Networked with a colleague of compilerbitch's
• Spontaneously invited compilerbitch to dinner

I'm in a really strange state of being mentally extremely energized by all this socializing and good conversations, but physically absolutely shattered from running around London and getting no sleep for three nights running. (Partly because I was busy and partly because the smog from the explosion was making all my mucous membranes so irritated I couldn't sleep for the few hours I was in bed.) I'll aim to post some of the detail in the next few days.

Oh yeah, and I'm pretty much skimming friendslist.

I'm hoping to expand some of these soon, but I want to start by making a list so I don't forget what I want to talk about!

( what I did on my holidays )