I normally cut my hair myself, mostly because I’ve had way too many awful haircuts in my life and I figure that if I’m going to have an ugly ‘do I might has well get it for free and have only myself to blame. The last time I had my hair cut in a salon… Read More New ‘do

In Swedish, the word for the number 6 is “sex.” The word for “sex” is also “sex.” This isn’t cause for misunderstanding as often as you might think, but it does occasionally provide for a bit of fun, such as in the following ad that ran in one of our local papers this morning: The… Read More Word Play

When I opened the fridge last night to get out a carton of milk I noticed right away that the contents were even more disordered than usual. Jam jars and margarine tubs and condiment bottles, along with a lone, wayward leek, were jumbled together in a topsy-turvy mess in the middle of the fridge. At… Read More Science Lesson

I know I shouldn’t have, but I have poor impulse control and he was just too, too cute. He’s 12½ weeks old, and his name is Ola, in honor of Ola Svensson, who–in a shocking upset–was voted off of Idol 2005 last Friday. Let’s hope our little Ola fares better with the voters here in… Read More Looky, looky what I got!

On the way to town this morning I said to Olof that it would be great if I had an angle with the driving test examiner. You know, like if he had a particular interest in the States or had lived in Idaho or wanted to speak English or anything special we had in common… Read More The Post You’ve Been Waiting For

I think I haven’t explained before, for those of my readers who don’t know, all of the things that go into getting a Swedish driver’s license. First and most important, unless you are from another EU country or Japan, it doesn’t matter how long you might have been a licensed driver in another country. When… Read More Phase Two, Complete

Poor little Petra is suffering a bit from third-child syndrome — we’ve taken hardly any pictures of her lately. I tried to remedy that a bit this afternoon, and here are a couple of the better ones:

With a bit of luck I’ll have my driver’s license by the end of the week and today will have been the last time I had to do a big grocery shop with the entire family in tow. Lately we’ve been going to town on Saturday or Sunday and trying to buy all our groceries… Read More Sunday

Longtime readers have no doubt gathered that Lydia is a bit of a clotheshorse. I think she has more clothes than all of the rest of us in the family put together. Much of it is my fault, I admit — even though she has plenty, I keep buying new things for her. It’s just… Read More A Seller’s Market