I've been wandering round the UK since Sunday evening, including two interviews, and I'm now chez parents.

( 4 days in the life )

The lecturing job said they would let me know that day or the next, but I've heard nothing. This is leading me to suspect that I'm their reserve candidate, and they are waiting for confirmation from their first choice before they turn me down. I shall nag them tomorrow, but I'm prepared for disappointment. The research job said they are intending to do most of their interviews at the end of May, so I won't hear for a few weeks anyway. So now I just wait and hope.

I won't make it to the Carlton as planned tomorrow, since my parents sort of randomly invited my sibs for dinner without consulting me first. I'm slightly annoyed at having my plans changed on me, but I am very happy for the chance to see Thuggish Poet, so I don't mind too much. OTOH I do intend to show up to the Pembury for doseybat's party on Saturday.

I am on my way to Copenhagen to lead the seder for the Progressive community there, travelling by train, and this really does beat flying in every possible way. I have a big seat with loads of space, and I just got on the train at 8:30 this morning and will simply sit here in comfort until I get to Copenhagen mid-afternoon, no stress or messing around. And best of all, there is free teeeeeeeea and free internet. Life is good.

So I have a few hours to post about my insanely busy life in the past couple of weeks. ( why you haven't heard from me in a while )

Because I am completely insane, I'm leading one seder in Copenhagen tonight, then taking an early train back to Stockholm first thing tomorrow, and leading the second seder there tomorrow night. Thank goodness I have the Easter weekend to recover. It's very weird not being with my family for Pesach, I must say. Anyway it should be a memorable experience.

I spent the weekend in Cambridge, partly socializing and partly job hunting. Apologies for not letting people know I was travelling or making arrangements; the weekend ended up so packed that I couldn't have fit anyone else in.

( take that, geography! )

While I was away, compilerbitch posted something amazing and profound. You should definitely go and read it. Seriously, if you only follow one link this month, it should be this one.

If that moves you to care about the issue, read this article about a literal Catch-22 scenario which is preventing trans folk in Oxfordshire from obtaining treatment. Thanks to oxfordgirl for pointing to that. It's a bit long, but it's very informative, and among other things it provides credible, peer-reviewed citations for the somewhat counterintuitive point that sex reassignment surgery actually works to improve quality of life for a lot of trans people, whereas counselling and psychotherapy just don't.

Then, if you are a UK citizen or resident, go and sign the petition to get this stupid situation resolved so people can access the medical care they need. I'm not always a huge fan of e-petitions, but this seems to be exactly the sort of scenario where they're most useful. It's a specific, detailed issue of local policy which needs to be changed in order to make people's lives less miserable, and can readily be changed without changing the entire constitutional philosophy of the country or spending unreasonable sums of money. And note the .gov.uk site; this is official, and people with political power actually read it, even if there is a lot of crap there too.

I've had an eventful and surprisingly refreshing week. Weekend with cartesiandaemon, followed by a trip to Edinburgh and two interviews, and then back to deal with some urgent stuff at work.

( that was exciting! )

I feel really good about the whole trip; two interviews in two days is exhausting, but having cartesiandaemon there made the whole thing a lot more relaxing.

I've been comfortably, but not madly, busy over the past couple of weeks.

( engagements )

Linkies: Epic sysadmin fail from Joanna. And siderea discusses an actually new social problem caused by the internet (as opposed to the online versions of ancient social problems that people keep getting their knickers in a twist about.)

So I'm doing my bit for helping the economy not fall over: before Christmas, so it probably counts in the Christmas retail figures, I finally caved and bought myself a new camera. Then I actually participated, for the first time, in the ritual gift exchange at Christmas. And on Sunday I managed to spend about £180 on clothes in the January sales, which I think is a record for me.

( ooh, stuff! )

In less capitalist news, I meant to add to my New Year social report that lethargic_man very sweetly agreed to meet up with me when I was on the way between Cambridge and the airport. It was really lovely to spend some time with him; we went out to Diwana Bhel Poori, a really excellent vegetarian Indian restaurant just behind Euston, which ewtikins introduced me to in 2007, and I stupidly forgot to write down the name in my LJ report. Happily she didn't mind reminding me of the name and how to find it, so we got to sample the tasty tasty lunch buffet. It just hit the spot, because I'm deprived of Indian food here, and it's amazingly cheap by London standards, and very good, with the different dishes providing really unique flavours. lethargic_man did me the huge favour of accompanying me all the way to Heathrow on the Tube, making the journey incredibly less boring.

This weekend was fun and sociable too; SA invited me and Joanna to dinner on Friday night, and we had some delightfully girly conversation. I was a bit pushed for time in which to get home, sleep, and get up in time to be in shul Saturday morning to lead the service. That went very well indeed; I got the timing right, and could feel that the community were really engaged, and lots of people said very nice things about it. Then I lead a successful seminar on the week's Torah portion. Slightly annoyingly, I had to spend the afternoon in a committee meeting, but we met in the Örtagården veggie restaurant, and the meeting was convivial if the random side discussions meant that it took rather longer than necessary.

Recycling my version of the end of year meme; it's scary how many years I've been doing this for!

( 2008 )

My P'tite Soeur decided to have a NYE party a day early, since she was working on New Year's Day and didn't want to be drinking and partying the night before. My sister does good parties. And then I went to a party with some friends of cartesiandaemon's for the real NYE. Amazingly, the two days just managed to fit into a gap when I was feeling well, so I had a great time.

( a good end and a good beginning )

Then I was ill again on New Year's Day, not in the way that people expect to be ill, but with a really nasty cough and some more minor coldy symptoms. cartesiandaemon looked after me yet again, and we watched Wimbledon and played some Wii Sports and spodded a bit. It's the first time we've had long enough together to be comfortable just hanging out and not necessarily paying attention to eachother directly, and that worked well too.

I got in a muddle with dates and ended up with Mum expecting me home Friday evening when I'd intended to go home Saturday afternoon. cartesiandaemon was really nice about arranging a compromise, persuading all his friends to meet up a little earlier than planned so I could join them for a drink before I had to head home while they went out for curry. He didn't complain about being deprived of my company either, but that's possibly because my company was not actually very enjoyable due to lurgy. So I had a nice quiet weekend with parents, and some good conversations, and we killed a couple of Times Jumbo crosswords and Mum fed me lots of tasty and restorative food. We went to shul on Saturday, which was pleasant and homey as ever, and lots of people were touchingly glad to see me.

Finally the parents took me and cartesiandaemon out to lunch at Alimentum. I was very impressed with the place; it's doing the grand restaurant thing well, with stylish decor, attentive waiters and a decidedly classy atmosphere, but it manages to avoid being pretentious. And the food is actually markedly tasty as well as being artfully arranged on the plate; they don't have a vast choice for veggies but what they do have is good. I had some very interesting carrot soup (with strange confections of raisins rolled up in carrot slices in it), and some pleasant risotto, and the most intensely chocolatey profiteroles for dessert. It cost about £30 a head, which felt like good value for food that was easily twice as good as affordable restaurant food, and three courses plus some very nice wine and tea and coffee. Mum also helped me pack so that I was able to fit my vast pile of Christmas presents into my suitcase. My parents are great, really.

Well, I'm back. As planned, I had a couple of weeks of relaxing and spending quality time with cartesiandaemon and my family. And I took part in cartesiandaemon's family's Christmas, which was completely lovely and much less scary than I expected, and I celebrated my 30^th birthday and the new year.

Less positively, I suffered three bouts of illness during my precious weeks of vacation; no idea if it was the same infection or three separate ones, but it was unpleasant. cartesiandaemon was an absolute angel throughout; he looked after me and was patient and fed me tea, but didn't fuss over me or treat it as a big tragedy that I had a bad cold. And he didn't complain even a tiny bit about my being bad company, or even when he got sick too (though he was a lot less bad than I was).

The combination of being ill, and the country shutting down over the holiday period, meant that I didn't quite manage to see everyone I hoped to. I'm particularly annoyed that I repeatedly missed meeting up with blue_mai, but I also didn't make it to the Pembury for my usual marathon hug everyone I know session, and didn't make arrangements with the guy I nearly dated in 2007. I also missed Thuggish Poet, but that was mainly because he ended up spending Christmas supporting his gf through her mother's funeral.

Still, I think it did me good to have an actual relaxing holiday with a lot of sitting around watching TV and talking to people I care about. I probably ought to do that more often, without waiting for lurgies to give me an excuse!

I got back lateish last night, and it was -14 degrees out! It's a little warmer now the pathetic excuse for a sun is up, but not much. But this is a lot less painful than I might have expected, firstly because indoors is lovely and warm and cosy, and secondly because at this temperature damp is an impossibility. There's an inch of frost on the ground, not snow, frost, and that's where all the nasty wetness has gone. My poor battered lungs are feeling revitalized, and I slept better last night than I have for weeks.

Friday evening I got in to Heathrow late, and blue_mai and cartesiandaemon's attempt at a heroic rescue was thwarted because I ran out of phone credit and couldn't find a way to top up. So I panicked a lot and eventually got the first bus back to Cambridge Saturday morning, which was unpleasant.

I spent Saturday recovering from this, which meant missing megamole's party, to my disappointment. We did manage to walk along the river to Kettle's Yard and enjoyed the current exhibition in the gallery section there. There was a surprisingly high proportion of emotionally striking pieces compared to incomprehensible modern stuff. One of the artists overheard us talking about her Stations of the Cross, but we were only saying positive things so that wasn't too embarrassing. Then there was a gathering in the Carlton with lots of lovely people, so that was pleasing.

As we were leaving the pub my body decided it was a good time to be thoroughly ill, after several days of feeling like I might be coming down with something. So since Saturday evening I've been feverish, headachey, and suffering from a really painful sore throat. I don't think I've been this miserable in ten years. cartesiandaemon was fantastically patient and sympathetic with me; he fed me lots of tea and tasty food that I could actually face, and sat and watched Love actually with me when I didn't have the brainpower for anything else.

I'd promised the parents that I would go and help them with a community chanukah party Sunday evening. Actually I wasn't much help as I was too dizzy to stand most of the time and reckoned I probably shouldn't be handling food. But cartesiandaemon agreed to walk with me to the venue, which was a great relief as the state I was in I don't think I'd have made it on my own, and once he was there got involved in helping with the food prep and even stayed for some of the party.

I had a horrible night, and today I'm mostly just sitting around feeling sorry for myself. My laptop doesn't want to connect to the wireless here so I'm borrowing Mum's computer to post about how sick and miserable I am. I am supposed to be travelling to cartesiandaemon's family on Wednesday, so I hope I'm feeling somewhat less horrible by then.

I had one of my rare whims yesterday afternoon to listen to some church choral music. I thought December might be a good time for that because I imagined lots of American classical stations would be broadcasting Christmas carols. (Swedish radio isn't much use for this, partly because the choral tradition here is rather weak, and partly because they are sensible enough to confine celebrating Christmas to actual Christmas, rather than all the way through the autumn.)

In the end I couldn't really find anything suitable, because while I was right about the Christmas music, most of the classical stations I know of only had 64K streams available. 64K really isn't good enough for classical music (and it's kind of inadequate even for pop, honestly). KUSC is ok, with a 96K stream, but at the time I wanted to listen they were doing a three-hour stint of Wagner, no thank you very much. So does anyone have any recommendations for classical stations that broadcast online at decent quality? (I'm not asking for high quality when I'm not expecting to pay for it, but 96K or 128K is bearable and 64K just isn't.)

( misc diary )

To avoid just being completely wrapped up in coupliness all weekend, I decided to have a little teaparty Saturday evening. I wanted to be sociable, and also to introduce the Beau to some of my Swedish friends. The party was a bit of a disappointment in some ways; I'm used to the idea that you invite a bunch of people and only some of them can make it, but in this case six people specifically said they would be there and only one, Joanna, turned up. The missing five turned out to have more or less decent excuses (one was ill, one was trapped in Uppsala, one couldn't get to the internet to get my contact details or the invitation, one decided she needed to get ready for travelling the next day, and the fifth is just flaky), but it was a bad coincidence that all of them were prevented at the last minute. Still, the three of us had a very convivial evening, and consumed vast quantities of teeeeeeeea and mulled wine. Having mountains of leftover cake is not exactly the greatest hardship I've ever suffered, either.

(I deleted the first version of this post because I realized that all it said was that I did in fact do the things I posted about intending to do. But there isn't anything else to report that I could get away with putting on LJ. We were warm and cosy and relaxed and generally it was a perfect weekend of escaping from the world.)

Wow, I almost need a holiday from this week! Lessee.

( diary )

The other awesome thing in my life is that I'm going to Florence next weekend!!!! This is mainly because cartesiandaemon is wonderful, but I have to admit he can't actually take personal credit for the fact that Florence exists. I'm almost afraid that I won't make the trip because I'll explode from squee first.

My trip to England went amazingly well. I spent time with my cousins, and saw some of my favourite people, and went to several social gatherings where I met people I'm supposed to know but hadn't yet overcome geography to meet them. So now I'm in an amazingly good mood!

( happy Liv )

I've got into a weird phase where I have too much to post about, so I end up not posting any of it. I've also been busy, though; just the past couple of weeks I've started feeling up to having a social life and generally coming out of the weird funk I've been in since Pesach. I'm cautious about saying this, because in the past I've had periods of a couple of weeks where I'm full of enthusiasm, and then fall back to spending most of my time staring into space. And of course not keeping up with stuff while I wasn't coping means that there's a huge backlog now of obligations, social as well as volunteerish and work related.

It's also the time of year where everybody has parties, to enjoy the sunshine and say goodbye to their friends before disappearing for a month or more of Swedish summer vacation. So I've had a very sociable time when I wasn't posting.

( social diary for the past couple of weeks )

And tomorrow I'm going on a trip with the international researchers to Mariefred, an old town with a castle. And at the end of the week I'm going to England to see cartesiandaemon and hatam_soferet and pseudomonas and my Australian uncle, aunt and cousins. Take that, evil geography! Yay for being sociable.

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.