But not a whole lot, to be honest. Yesterday I attended the bar mitzvah of one of my pupils, and realized that that was the first time I'd made it to shul in a month. That pretty much means that I've barely socialized at all in that time. Well, not completely, but I have been far more hermitty than is good for me recently.

( stuff )

I had a busy schedule today, but still didn't do a great job of getting out of the house.

( mild work whining )

It started sleeting heavily some time mid afternoon, and the yucky weather continued. I'd dressed for the spring which appeared to be firmly here when I got up this morning, so I was a bit cold and miserable coming home.

On the way, I overheard two women having an earnest discussion of Latin verb conjugations.

I got home at 10:30, and completely failed at putting chocolate spread on a cracker. It turns out that the state of "oh look, I appear to be covered in chocolate" doesn't have many fun outcomes available when you're on your own.

Well, at least I've got a fair bit of experimental work done. And now I have tea, and don't have to deal with today any more. So that's positive overall, I think.

Things that are pleasing:

1. I have given my two lectures with a degree of success. That was believe it or not the first opportunity I've had to give university-level lectures in my own professional subject. A good group, tiny (officially 6 people but not all of them show up), but really keen. That meant that the lectures were more or less large tutorials or small seminars, but I got lots of good and interesting questions. I'm generally proud of myself.
   
   
2. This means I can now catch up on sleeeeeeeeeep and start attending to the rest of my life.
   
   
3. I had lovely friends supporting me through the painful process of recovering from the worst deadline mismanagement I've ever committed. Thank you all so much, especially darcydodo and cartesiandaemon and rysmiel, for holding my hand and for refusing to accept that needing my hand held makes me pathetic and worthless.
   
   
4. I am blessed with a particularly wonderful beau, who is very cuddly and fun to talk to.
   
   
5. I have lovely, accomplished, enthusiastic bar mitzvah pupils, and generally an excellent Jewish community.
   
   
6. I have booked flights to come to England for Pesach.
   
   
7. Teeeeeeeeeeea

( whining about unpleasing things cut )

I have about a dozen posts I want to make, lots of book reviews, talking about the fun social stuff I've been doing, thoughtful essays about things like the future of LJ, ageing, stuff from Limmud that I still haven't caught up with... However, I am in a bit of an uncommunicative mood, and it's not helped by feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff I need to post about before I can post about other stuff. I have several emails that I've started and am not really making headway with too.

On a practical level, I have the first of my bar mitzvahs this Saturday, and my first ever opportunity to give a real lecture in my actual professional field on Tuesday. Both of those are things that I'm hugely looking forward to, but both require intellectual and logistical preparation, and I'm really struggling with procrastination. So as much as I am capable of getting my act together in this mood, those have to be the priority.

Many apologies; I'm not really managing my own life very well just now, let alone being there for friends. And I don't even know what's brought this funk on, there is plenty of light (bright skies over snow) and I've had lots of highly social fun in the past couple of weeks, and I have interesting things going on at work, and I've been enjoying plenty of really positive chats with friends. But I'm not entirely coping.

Got invited to a Friday night meal, by someone who is, guess what, not originally Swedish. Had a very convivial evening and got on particularly well with another of her guests, arguing about Jewish history and Jewish-Christian relations.

Helped out with a Progressive service, though I was mostly hovering in the wings in case I was needed, rather than doing anything active.

Ran a successful discussion about this week's Torah portion, which has so much to talk about I was spoiled for choice.

Spent about five solid hours chatting to rysmiel, yay for geography-slaying telecommunications! Also had some good though slightly more sane conversations with other friends.

Observed the first snowdrops of this year's premature spring.

Finally submitted my colleague's paper that we've been working on since before Christmas.

Today I spent the afternoon attending a couple of lectures on the northern campus. ( fun things )

The lecture finished at 4:30, which is too late for it to be realistic to return to my lab in the southern campus, but earlier than I usually get out of work. So I walked home as the sun was setting, which suited the pretty suburb very well. And I walked past the carpark shaped like a giant teacup, and various pretty buildings reflecting the golden sky, and across the pretty estuary, to the station. There I saw a girl who looked as if she'd walked out of an audition for The little princess, and I was covertly looking at her to figure out if she was in costume or if this was some new and esoteric form of goth (I supsect the former), when she gave me the most beatific smile.

Days like this make me think I should carry a camera around, but you get verbal descriptions.

This is what I saw from my front window a few minutes ago:



I grabbed a snap of them in the last 30 seconds before my camera batteries (which I haven't charged in months) gave up. It came out better than most of my attempts to photograph the deer that periodically visit, but it's not exactly brilliant either. The deer usually try to run away if you take photos of them, so by the time I got the shot they were the other side of the garden and not keeping very still. But hey.

Other than that, I have just realized that the file I need for my work was saved on the network, not on the work laptop which I cunningly brought home. So I shall either brave the snow and the Sunday transport and go into the lab, or see if I can work from a slightly older version.

Apparently Sweden is marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Seen on the way through town this afternoon:

a series of large bonfires arranged around a central pavillion with banners proclaiming "Holocaust"

a bunch of Christians holding a service in a public square, surrounded by people carrying Israeli flags

While I appreciate the sentiment, neither bonfires nor Israeli flags strike me as a particularly tasteful way to remember the Holocaust...

I am in a foul mood, because I've got next to nothing done in four days. This is making me want to hide from everybody, because I don't want to have to answer the question "how are you?" Hiding from everybody makes things worse, so I have a cunning plan: I will humiliate myself in public by making an announcement to the effect that I suck and have no willpower.

Now I can talk to people again, because you don't need to ask me how things are going and I don't need to feel even more wormy when I have to answer. And if I can talk about some other topic than this, I will hopefully be distracted enough not to be a moooody cow at you. But if I am snappish, I apologize in advance.

PS If you think hugs are the appropriate response to this post, you're an idiot. Sorry, I warned you I was in a bad mood.

So, I'm back in Sweden. The journey was pleasingly uneventful, and I even managed to bring all my bookies and birthday presents with me.

I was going to write a post about linley's book and the privilege meme, but I have run out of energy and brain, in the wake of travelling, a procrastinate-ish first day back at work, grocery shopping, and period pains. So that, and all the emails and LJ comments I want to write, will have to wait until the weekend.

In romantic landscape news, between waking up in the night to go to the loo and actually getting up this morning, so much snow fell that my ankle boots were insufficient to keep my feet dry. Wet feet were rather mitigated by the prettiness though. Not many people are back at work yet, including, it seems, the people who clear and grit the roads. So everything was still pristine when I set out for work this morning, and my town at the side of the fairy lake was absolutely gorgeous, even by the standards of a pretty part of Stockholm just after a snowfall.

...make a post, the saying goes. This has been a bit of a nothing week. So a pot-pourri update to let you guys know I'm still around:

( stuff )

Now to finish preparing my Torah reading for tomorrow...

I've seen this meme / game floating around in various journals, I think I got it from kate_nepveu. The plan is that you should comment and come up with a fictional character you associate with me. Can be any kind of fiction, not necessarily books, and I think the most interesting way to play is if you base it on personality rather than looks. If you're brave enough to play, I'll come up with a character for you in return.

( misc stuff )

I really need to sort things out for the sibs' visit, not to mention catching up on email and LJ. But hopefully I'll have a bit more time next week.

Today I went to a new-ish café on campus for only the second time since its opening. The person behind the counter not only recognized me from my visit two weeks ago, but remembered my precise order from then. Well, it's good customer service, but I thought that was pretty impressive. She's Turkish and has only slightly better Swedish than I do, but we bantered a bit as she was making up my sandwich. It's nice to have enough language confidence to be able to do that.

And in the last couple of days I've been friended on Facebook by two people I've met rather briefly through interfaith stuff, a few years ago in one case while the other is someone I spent less than a week with in 1999! This is partly the advantage of having an unusual name, but even so, I'm very flattered that she remembered me. (She's a cutie, too, with russet hair and green eyes and she used to linger just a fraction too long over hugging me.) OK, the fact that I'm writing this post shows that I remember her too, but not well enough to find her on FB if she hadn't contacted me first and reminded me.

During the week of Succot, I was covering my head, mostly with a small, Israeli style "knitted kippah". Mostly Swedish people are too polite to react openly to unusual dress, but I had some interesting interactions with foreigners as a result:

( What's that weird thing on your head? )

mistressdickens tagged me with a meme. I think that's the first time I've been mentioned by name for one of these in the more than 4 years I've been on LJ. My inner desperate teenager is disproportionately pleased!

( meme cut ) I've been feeling under the weather the last few days. Several migraines, painless at the time but afterwards they seem to leave me feeling headachey, tired and slightly nauseous. I really hope it's just my body protesting at the fast I put it through on Saturday, and nothing more serious. I'm not ill enough to be actually ill, but definitely sub-par.

I made it back to Sweden without incident. And when I got here I discovered that the scary tax situation has been resolved, so I no longer have financial worries hanging over me. Also, home smells homey and feels comforting, though I hate the fact that it is so far away from all the cool people I've been hanging out with in the last couple of weeks.

Two annoying things: I changed my left over money back into Swedish kronor, and tried to use an automatic machine to pay them into my bank account. However, the machine decided to throw an error right at the end, after it had swallowed the money! I am pretty sure that the bank will be able to sort this out, otherwise I'll raise merry hell until they do. But still annoying. And I can't log in to LJ using Firefox on my own computer, so I am reduced to the inconvenience of IE, blech. Again, I really hope it's sortable.

I ought to get to sleep rather than trying to make up for weeks and weeks offline, I think!

I've been feeling horribly in a rut again this week. ( mostly boring whiny stuff )

Oh well. I'll bring shabbat in early, I'm not going to wait until 10 o'clock. And tomorrow I'm going on a trip with the international researchers people, so that should be a much-needed change of scene.

I managed to get myself sunburnt yesterday! ( weekend summary )

I've been meaning for ages to post a link to The ecstasy of influence. It's long, 13 typescript pages, but it's worth the effort; it's a beautiful piece of writing and argumentation. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but it's a refreshing change from the usual ignorant mouthings about intellectual property popular with certain geek subcultures.

For a more topical essay, I strongly recommend misia's response to the recent paedophilia / fandom kerfuffle. It's interesting that the comments to that sane and balanced essay contain an example of exactly the kind of thing she's complaining about: at least one commentator berates her for being insufficiently outraged about paedophilia and all but calls her a child rapist, simply because she mentioned the topic. It does seem a shame that this climate makes it impossible for Misia to write her book on statutory rape and age of consent, but for now at least we get a highly articulate and thoughtful article.

I've had a nice quiet weekend. Pottered about and did a bit of much-needed tidying on Friday, and spent today hanging out with ploni_bat_ploni. She told me at one point that I'm more interesting to talk to than HKB''H [way frum euphemism for God], which is quite the compliment! ( other misc notes )

I'm still gradually working on my backlog of book reviews. So, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Jack Rosenthal's autobiography.

I have been quiet recently, mainly cos my Dad has been visiting and I've been spending time with him rather than online. It's been fun, with some really summery weather.

The main notable things I have done this week are: I attended a lecture by a guy who was wearing a kippah (and a very unconvincing mid-Omer beard) and broke off from his actual topic to clarify the difference between sex and gender. And today I ate lots of icecream at RS' farewell party.

What I haven't done is catching up with my huge backlog of LJ posts from before Pesach, nor have I processed all the photos I want to put online. Right now I'm feeling a little anhedonic, and knowing that it's just hormones doesn't do much to break the mood.

Oh, and I'm back on the eMusic bandwagon. Anyone want to recommend me any music that you're excited about right now? Also, if anyone's thinking of joining, let me know because if I refer you we both get 50 free tracks.

As a hold pattern until I have the motivation for a real post, here's that ( daemon meme everyone's been posting )

I woke up this morning to white world again. Not bad for the Easter bank holiday, huh? Hope everyone's having a good Easter and / or long weekend.

pleonastic said something really cool about gender and mystery and stereotyping and conformity recently. Even though it's personal opinion rather than a statement of fact, I think it's a really good summary of what is wrong with a lot of received ideas about romance and how gender plays into that.

And on the subject of how a lot of journalism is based on stereotyping assumptions, The Gimp Parade linked to an article about media portrayals of disability that really struck a chord with me. There are definitely worse ways of talking about disability than the type that article discusses, but it's a very good example of how one type of basically well-intentioned journalism can be annoying.

---

Today has been more or less: ( a conspiracy of irritations )

To catch up on the weekend, while I'm at it: on Friday evening we went out as a group for a Chinese meal. It was a perfectly pleasant evening, and my new jacket got an outing, and was much admired. But the restaurant, New Peking City in Östermalm, contrived to make it impossible to eat within even my lax standards of kosher observance. Other than that, the shabbat service was fun and I spent most of the rest of the weekend pottering around and unwinding. I managed to get a convincing win at CivII on the King level, and I'm trying to pretend I'm not proud of that.

I haven't updated much because I don't have much to say at the moment. But for those who want to know what's up in my life:

( weekend )

Meanwhile, this week has not really started well. I'll mention the good things, because the negative things are dull. Happy cells, clean underwear, clean sheets and clean hair. Good conversations with pseudomonas and P'tite Soeur. j4's excellent lentil curry. (I didn't have coriander or limes, so I substituted lemon balm and lemons, but anyway, it rocks, thanks for that recipe.)

I finished the evil grant application and submitted it about 40 minutes before the deadline. Yay for friends being supportive when I was whiny about it, and yay for Open Office being able to convert WP documents to pdf with a single click. In some ways I've had a fairly horrible week, spending most of it sitting at the computer without adequate social contact, food or sleep. But at least I have something to show for it, so on balance I feel good about myself!

( other stuff )

Need to book tickets and leave to come home for Passover, which is going to be around the 2^nd April. I will probably be in England from the previous weekend till midweek. The following weekend is Easter, which might mean that the sensible thing for me to do is just stay the whole week. Alternatively I may come back to Sweden before the Easter weekend, possibly bringing doseybat with me as she'll have free time to visit then. If you don't see a post with logistics and planning for this trip by the end of next week, please do poke me.