In accordance with long-standing tradition, the kids and I dyed Easter eggs on Friday afternoon, in preparation for our family egg hunt the following day. The thing is, when you’ve got as many kids as I do, you need a whole lot of eggs; we had just under five dozen (I had used four eggs… Read More Sunny holiday weekend!

It’s been a terrific couple of days at work. Robert Darnton, a big-time name for us history types, is being awarded an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University and in connection with that award gave two open lectures, one yesterday and one today. I attended both, of course, as Darnton has been something of a hero… Read More Fan girl

So I’m just going to hop over that long absence like it didn’t happen. Tomorrow it’s off to Uppsala again, this time with Lydia in tow. She’s been wanting to make the trip with me for a while now, and it turned out that this week worked well enough for both of us. I’ve got… Read More Moving right along

When I’m lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep, I have a few tricks to help me relax and get sleepy. Usually they involve word games of some sort, but sometimes I play with numbers and set myself some math problems. It was in this way that I discovered, some years ago, that… Read More Mother guilt

Prompted by a thread on Reddit, Olof asked me a few minutes ago, “What’s the best thing you ever heard a kid say?”. Without a moment’s hesitation, I told him it was this. I’ve heard a lot of kids say a lot of great things, but nothing else will ever compare to this.

Some of my readers may have noticed that for the past week or two this page was unavailable. It was something to do with the domain renewal and transfer of renewal rights/responsibilities, techy-techy-blah-blah-blah. In any case, I am back in business again, and this shouldn’t happen again for at least a year. Stay tuned for… Read More I’m back!

I know that when I last wrote I said that summer was on the wane, but it’s looking like Mother Nature forgot to pencil that in on her calendar. After a largely unremarkable June and July, during which we had a goodly portion of rain and temperature mostly topping out at the high teens Celsius… Read More What a long, strange summer it’s been

Petra made her entry into the world, eleven days past her estimated due date and weighing in at a hefty 9 pounds, 1 ounce (4135 grams). We celebrated her day with presents in the morning, a family bowling excursion in the afternoon, and two Splatoon cakes served with homemade peanut butter ice cream in the… Read More One decade ago, today

Olof’s sister, Anna, wrote to me last night saying that she’d be over at her parents’ place today with a big box of clothes that their youngest daughter, who’s 11, has outgrown, and that I could take my girls over to “shop” a little before she took the leftovers to the charity box. We found… Read More Memory Lane