Olof’s got a new toy–he bought Helena’s desktop computer from her–so I expect I won’t be getting much quality time with him this weekend.  We’ve made big plans to clean up our downstairs living room and put the rest of the downstairs in order, but already I’m doubting whether those plans will come to fruition. … Read More Housekeeping

Close to a year ago, in January or February, Lydia saved up her allowance for a couple of months and bought a little mp3 player. She put a few of her favorite songs on it and carried it around everywhere for at least a month or two, then it disappeared. For a long time we… Read More And the music played on . . .

Now, I’m as happy about Britney’s split from K-Fed as anyone, but I do think it’s going a bit far when CNN puts it on a par with the U.S. midterm elections. Of all the things happening in the world right now, a pop star’s impending divorce was the only non-election-related item included in a… Read More Newsworthy!

It happens occasionally, most often on the telephone, that Lydia and I will have a conversation entirely in Swedish.  I don’t much notice it while we’re actually talking;  if someone speaks Swedish to me, I’ll speak Swedish back without even thinking.  After we hang up, though, I always feel a little disoriented.  It’s just weird,… Read More Say what?

Olof insisted that we observe Guy Fawkes Day by watching V for Vendetta this afternoon.  He’d seen it before, but hadn’t been able to convince me to watch it.  I’m just not much on comic books–oh, excuse me, graphic novels–either in print or on the big screen.  He finally brought me around by appealing to… Read More Remember, remember, the 5th of November.

We’ve been on a drinking binge lately. Ordinarily we drink water, milk, and pop (not necessarily in that order), and, when the weather’s colder, coffee and tea. Late in the summer we started branching out a bit and put a fair amount of energy into iced coffee. For several weeks Olof and I were drinking… Read More It’s all about the beverages.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that one of the upsides of being married to a programmer is that when someone–sometimes he himself, but more often me or one of the kids–messes up my computer, he puts it right again. When I woke up this morning, all my bookmarks were restored and my… Read More Giving the husband his due.

One of the downsides of being married to a programmer is that he thinks he needs to upgrade everything all the damn time.  Upgrades are good in theory, of course, but often they turn out in practice to be downgrades. So here I am coming to you from a “new and improved” Mozilla Firefox, which… Read More Movin’ on up

It’s that time of year again, when the aspiring writer’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is a challenge held in November every year, the goal being the completion of a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. Piece of cake, right? Hardly. I’ve participated only once, in 2004, and though I… Read More One Down, Twenty-Nine To Go