Reading

Finally actually working with data

Some mornings 05:20 feels earlier than others, and 6 hours of sleep doesn't feel like enough...

Luckily, it was an interesting day at work, so I managed to stay awake. I had a 9:00 fika with my former colleagues with the research data group at the library, followed with a meeting of the Radiocarbon Isotope Data task group for SEAD. We went over the various data files we got from the Radiocarbon Isotope researchers who are looking to get their data into our database and looked at a variety of available tools for dealing with data and cleaning it up before ingestion into a database. The meeting ended with me taking on the assignment of figuring out the locations of the various sites listed in their spreadsheet. The researchers must have geographical coordinates somewhere, as the spreadsheet includes a copy of their figure 1, showing the locations on a map. However, neither that paper, nor any of the others I could find in the citation chain provided any location details. Therefore, I did the easy thing and sent an email to the author.

After work I tried mailing back to the museum the pot handel I accidentally brought home from Lofoten with me. But the guy couldn't make it trackable, so I didn't send it.

Now it isn't even 19:00, and I am super tired, and I have done my yoga for the day, so I am seriously considering just heading to bed directly after posting this.

To-do note I jotted down this morning: sew a magnet to my backpack, and to my hat, so that the hat can just sit in place, rather than bounce around on the end of the string. Repeat for the other hat.

Entry tags:

summer clearly winds to a close

I took my electric scooter over to the dentist today, and learned the hard way that it is too cold to be out with only a thin cashmere sweater as an outer layer if one is moving at 20 km/hr. Brrr.

Other accomplishments of the day include work, laundry, getting the dried black currants off of the old, kinda broken plastic trays they had stuck to, and ordering a new, larger, food dehydrator with stainless steel trays. It will be interesting to see how well it works.

I am also pleased that whatever caused the muscle aling the right side of my spine to hurt yesterday and this morning seems to have adjusted itself, as it is feeling much better.

Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Entry tags:

bread,
food

two meals cooked, by two people, in one day

I worked from home today, so decided to try setting up a work station in the kitchen for easier reading of the screen (I forgot my new computer glasses in the office on Friday, and they are probably not set up to use the recliner and look up at the monitor anyway. So I unscrewed my monitor from the moving desk in the living room and took it to the kitchen, and found my old external keyboard, in the cupboard where "away" said it would be). sadly, the usb slot in the keyboard doesn't have enough power to run the Wacom tablet, so that has to stay attached to the computer itself, which meant that I had to unplug the hearing-aid Bluetooth thing to attach the keyboard to the computer. (This monitor has no USB slots, perhaps it is time to buy a better one?) I plugged that into the keyboard, but I am concerned that future me will forget to move it back to the computer, so I made a note and attached it to the usb.

During an early break I started a batch of bread dough, with plenty of chunks of garlic in it, and let it rise as I worked, baking it in a bunch of small flat loaves with little pockets of soft roasted garlic, and plenty of garlic brushed over the outside of the loaves before, during, and after baking. Yum!

After work I had the energy to steam a bunch of vegetables I bought yesterday, and make a yummy sauce for them made from peanut butter, boiled garlic, melted butter, soysauce, chili, ginger, etc.

I got my cooking mess cleaned up before Keldor got home. He'd bern given som venison from one of hos colleagues who had hunted it a couple of days ago, so he stopped on the way home to pick up some chanterelle, and at the store to buy some cream and rutabaga. He put most of the meat into smaller bags in the freezer, then cooked up a stew with the other ingredients he brought home, plus som canned tomato and beans.

So we are clearly both recovered from the Norway trip, and once again doing things like cooking.

Entry tags:

Cutting of red wool

At sewing circle this past weekend I dug through my binder of patterns and cut out a new bodice from my self-made and dyed fabric.

Me and Helwig also helped our new member, Anna, to start her own similar project. We drafted a bodice pattern and did a quick first fitting of it, so she could take it home and start cutting out her red wool.

On Sunday I proceeded with the new red petticoat project, cutting out interlining and stitching some lines for light boning and padstitching in the front bodice, and it was lovely to do some hand sewing.

I'm paused to figure out how I want to do my front closing. I think I will try to do something similar to what I did on my original red petticoat, which is lace through the interlining and let the outer fabric overlap and pin it closed. The red petticoat does have hooks and eyes, but my little black dress I use pins on and I love the way it looks, so I think I'll aim for that. Which means I need something else to cover the front edge of the interlining, which currently is just the selvedge of the green and white checked fabric I wove for the Pisa kirtle.

Instagram post with pictures of this process

Entry tags:

berries

More blackcurrants

Last night while watching the movie my legs started cramping up. I was also super tired, so I did my yoga, and then lay on the ccouch with my legs on the rotating ball massage tool till it turned itself off. Around that time Keldor came back upstairs to say that he'd returned to the garage to continue what we had started earlier, and now he'd moved the long table that came with the house aeay from the wall, moved the safe into the corner where it had been, and the secong hand old fashioned carpenter's bench we bought not long before heading to Norway against the wall.

I felt bad that I had been too tired to even notice that he'd gone downstairs, let alone help, and super impressed he managed to move that heavy safe.

I got up the first time today at 05:30, fed the cats, did a load if laundry and got the dried red currants out of the dehydrator and started the white currants drying. Then I went back to sleep for a couple of hours (I don't think Keldor even noticed I had been up).

We started our day with a game of Qwirkle, then added the weather stripping around a couple of windows, that should have been done ages ago. The others will have to wait till we get more.

Then he went out to pick chanterelle, and I curled up with a book, then delt with some Exchequer paperwork, and finally went out to see how many black currants our bushes have this year 7 bushes between them yielded a good handful of berries (they are clearly starting to think about forgiving us for transplanting them, but aren't really ready to do any serious berry production).

So I hopped in the car are drove to the place a couple of km on the other side of the highway where there area bunch of black currant bushes, and picked for an hour or so,which gave me enough to fill the five trays of my dehydrator. Hopefully I will get back out there at least once more this year.

Entry tags:

A productive day

Oops, forgot my second set of vitamins yesterday afternoon. Second time this has happened.

For first time in several days, the cats left a tiny bit in the bowl, so I could water it with a mix of the last of the sauce in the bag plus warm water, so the food wouldn't dry out. The watering the left overs is our normal procedure, and, often, they go back later and finish the food. Sometimes they just drink the water, and, if I notice, I water it again. Usually the food either dissappears before the next morning, or it dries out and will never be eaten. On the days it dissappears early, if they ask for more after work they usually get a second bowl, which gets the same watering treatment, and which often dissappears before breakfast time (if it didn't dry out). Sometimes the second breakfast (as we call the occasional serving of soft food after work) doesn't completely dissappear before breakfast the next morning. On those mornings, they won't get a second breakfast after work, though they do get snacks. (So the extra meals get tied to days where one or both of them were hungry enough to eat everything the day before, though if it wasn't eaten because it dried out, we assume they were hungry enough and still get second breakfast, as drying out is on us).

Since getting home from Lofoten they have been cleaning their plates at first serving, even when they ask for second breakfast (which is most, if not all, of this week). Today is the first day we are back ro the previous "normal" Of leave a little. I guess they have now had enough second breakfast days in a row to feel like they are well enough feed to leave something again?

...and mid afternoon Skaði came back and ate up what was left, and then they both asked for second breakfast an hour or so later, which they devoured directly. We may have become a twice a day wet food for the cats family.

Today was otherwise a productive, but easily distracted day. We unloaded the lumber he'd brought hone yesterday, and started cleaning the garage, so we can bring it in.

This lead to the first distraction. His running treadmill was moved to the garage months ago, with the plan to build an under base for it to compensate for the slope of the garage floor.

Today we decided to move it to the downstairs guest room, where the floor doesn't slope. So we rearranged the furniture in that room, stood the treadmill on end (it is designed to do that, and hung the rowing machine on the wall). We moved the desk dresser full of fishing gear to in front of the window, where, if anyone wants to open it and use umit as a desk, there will be better light, and the big dresser on the wall holding shut the door to the laundry room.

As we finished with the guest room and returned to the garage we found distraction number two. The table he built to take to events was also in garage, and should be in the attic now that camping season is over and we will be sleeping indoors at events.

Carrying it up reminded us that he'd cut that plexiglass to fix the broken attic window. The one that broke some time before we bought the house, and which someone had shoved a mastress in it to keep the snow out. Keldor had cut some plate metal the right size to screw over the window frame the first week or so after we got the keys, and for a little more than 3.5 years that end of the attic has been dark. I mean, yah, we had run an extension cord and a lamp back there, but it didn't help as much as one might like.

So today we cleaned and organised that end of the attic, took down the window frame, took off the metal, and screwed the plexiglass in place and put the window back. My, it lets in a Lot of light!

By then I was getting really hungry, so I took a "break" and made a quick pot of soup, with homemade noodles. Yum! Amd curled up with a book. Then Keldor fell asleep on the couch, and I decided to bake some scones. Because I am nice I woke him when they came out of the oven.

I had thought to return to working, but he voted for watching Snowwhite, so I made progress nålbindning his socks instead. Now I feel tired, so time for yoga and bed.

Entry tags:

planning

Planning more home improvements

I got nearly 8.5 hours of sleep last night, and could have slept more, but I got up with Keldor at 5:30 nonetheless. We had our normal half hour call as he drove to work, and then I sat down to the computer for work. Yay! Working from home!

I had an 08:00 zoom meeting, looked into travel options for the work trip to Stockholm next month, took a nap. Actually booked the flights and hotel, emptied my inbox, and suddenly the work day was over.

Then I measured the second hand door we bought, marked the wall with tape to show where it would go if we install it in the space next to the wall that currently seperates the kitchen from the small room next to it. Then also marked the floor with tape showing the latgest size pantry that could go in the corner between the space for the door and the corner, and between the window on the other wall and the corner, assuming the shelves on the outer wall are 18 cm wide, and the entrance to the pantry is on the corner, 45 degrees to both walls.

That pantry space looked small to me (I grew up in a house with a pantry so big there was a big stand in freezer in the smaller end of the space), and if we did then change that way then the piano would have no where to go.

If I made the pantry longer, long enough for the piano to fit against its outer wall, I like the pantry space better. However, thst would mean I would have to take our the wall and wall of cabinets that I have wanted gone since I bought the house.

I like this idea, so I spent some hours at the computer drawing up that idea. Meanwhile, Keldor stayed after work to tale apart some very large pallets that he thinks would be good for some of our projects.

He started driving home around the time I finished with the computer, and we chatted on the phone while I tidied up in the kitchen and started cleaning the red currants I picked yesterday and getting them into the dehydrator.

Keldor got home as I was nearing done with that task, and I showed him my drawings, and he commented that he had been thinking of a pantry even smaller than the smaller of the two I had marked with tspe on the floor. His version is a square i stead of a rectangle.

He also reminded me of his concerns about taking out that wall. We don't know if it is load bearing, if it goes we need to replace both flooring and ceiling. All valid concerns.

The load bearing part got me to check the kommune's web page to see if there are any architectural plans for this house in file available for download. Nope. So I filled in the form to order some, if they exist.

Entry tags:

More heddles than I thought

Turns out, after counting a bit more carefully, that my Victoria loom has 120 - 140 - 140 - 120 heddles on each shaft, not just 100 per shaft. This is most excellent. It seems to me it's set up for herringbone twill, which I love.

I might also be able to get some more heddles that fits this little beauty from a weaver friend. She was going to check her stash for what she might have. I should also measure the bag of tied heddles I picked up at the car boot sale along with the wool.

Next weekend, not this Saturday, but the week after, there's an event in Holmrike (our neighbouring shire) and the options I am considering is 1) bring the loom and dress it there or 2) bring the cape and work on that.

I think, possibly, I'll do the easier thing and bring the cape. Because there are plenty of tables I can set up to do some full-scale layout at a decent working height. Currently that project is stalled because I have the new loom on the table, and the table is at any rate a little too small to fit the entire cape laid flat.

Entry tags:

berries

More berries!

Yesterday Phil, one of my colleagues told me that they have more red currants than they need, and do I want to come pick some? Yes, yes indeed!

Since we had a working meeting after lunch today we decided that I would head home with him directly after the meeting, pick berries, and he'd drop me at the bus station after.

This is exactly what we did. They have only one red currant bush, but it is very prolific! I was there 45 minutes, and didn't quite empty the bush! They also have one black currant bush, that they will keep the berries of, and a white currant bush, which he gave me (he picked the white, while I picked the red).

Then I caught the 18:00 buss 100 north. That one doesn't stop in Lövånger, as it is an express bus to Haparanda, so Keldor drove down to Sikeå to pick me up at 19:00, which meant I was home at 19:30.

I am too tired to start drying the berries tonight, so I sm going to bed early (it isn't 20:30 yet). Tomorrow I will work from home.

Entry tags:

obsidian

Still tired from the drive

Busy day at work. During one meeting a colleague noticed that I use Obsidian, and we happily geeked out about it.

I also had a meeting with someone at Skellefteå kommun, who let me know what rules currently apply for the home improvement projects I have been dreaming of (carport and bicycle shed, a back door and a deck) and the fact that the rules may change with the new year, as the government is considering a proposal to make renovation easier.

Then we had a Shire meeting, during which I finally started actually inserting the photos I took during my inventory of Reengarda stuff in the storage unit. The timing is good, as it was only this week that Obsidian added the new Bases core plugin that turns the vault into a database, with the option to display the contents as cards with a cover photo, if one sets up an images property that contains a link to the relavant photo. This meant that I could do that step as I put the photos in. I am too tired now to put the photos of the result somewhere that I could share in Dreamwidth, but you can look at them in the Readme file I created for the inventory

Now I really need to do my yoga and get to sleep!

Entry tags:

I bought a loom!

I have bought my first loom!

I went to a car boot sale, and a loppis (think semi-permanent yard sale) outside Uppsala this weekend, and a 70 cm wide Glimåkra Victoria table loom (Glimåkra official site with image) jumped into my care. I spotted it in the barn at the loppis, and asked the little old lady about it. Asking if it she knew it was complete. She said she'd be willing to sell it for 50 SEK to a person who could take care of it properly.

So, we went to take a look, pick up all the pieces and see what was there, and it turned out to have all the parts, and so I paid her 50 SEK for a perfectly good 4 shaft table loom.

At the boot sale earlier I had crouched down to look into a big blue IKEA bag containing wool yarn, and the man at the table said 'I'll sell it to you for 50 SEK'.

So, I came home with something approaching 2 kg of 6/1 Bergå wool in a few colours, and a loom for the low low price of 100 sek in total.

Instagram post with picture of the loom and yarn, and one bag of hand tied heddles

My Öxabäck floor loom is not going anywhere, so now I have two looms. OK, three if we cound the band loom that I haven't touched since 2011.

In completely other news - I think I finished the central back applique on my cape. I might be adding some additional outlining, but possibly not.
Instagram posts showing

First day back at work

Didn't really want to get up this morning, did it anyway. Had a good morning phone call with Keldor as he drove to work, then took my elsparkcyckel to the busstop.

As expected, the 1.5 hour bus ride wasn't long enough to empty ny inbox from all the vacation mail, though I did manage to delete a fair bit.

I tried stopping by hörcentralen on the way to work, as my left hearing aid hasn't seemed to be producing sound at full power. However, they had a note on the door saying reduced drop-in hours right now due to someone being out on sick leave. I checked their normal open hours, and they don't open till 09:00 anyway, so I will need to try again another day.

Had both fika and lunch breaks with Phil. He says they have lots of red currants if I want to come pick some. I said I would love to, later in the week, as I have blueberries drying and black currants in the fridge.

This evening I took the dry blueberries out of the dehydrators, and consolidated the ones that are still moist onto two trays. Then I washed the black currants, and decided that it was too late to tey to dry them, so hust bagged them and put them in the freezer.

Driving home

Reached the Bessešjohka rest area just before midnight, we crawled into bed in the back of the van, and got a few hours sleep. I woke at 05:10 with an ache in hips, so I used the toilet and drove two hours, while Keldor slept in the passenger seat. Then he took over driving at the Lappeasuando rest area and I got a 40 minutes nap, till we came to the Stenbro rest area, where I did 15 minutes yoga under the bridge.

Then we drove on towards David's house, stopping for a sign in the Kalix area that said "blueberries". So I bought a 5 liter wooden box of blueberries gor 450 kr, which is a lot, but I don't have time to pick them, my day is already packed full.

David was home when we arrived, so I was able to get a hug and use the loo before heading down to pick black currants. Keldor lay down on the bed in the van to rest while I picked. After about a 40 minutes I was closing in on 3/4 of a bucket of berries, happily sticking to the bushes in the shade. Then he came down, talking on the phone with his dad, and grabbed me and dragged me over to bushes in the sun which had more, larger, berries. I wimpered a little, because sun, and we filled the rest of the bucket in about 15 minutes, and continued driving.

We dropped off a little gift (a glass testube thingie with a coiled base that we found in the second han store in Norway) for Louise in her mailbox on our way out of town (she had a doctor appointment), and picked up one she left for us (a bag of pretty rocks).

When we passed through Skellefteå we stopped to pick up my new passport. Luckily, the station is very near the highway, so very little extra time needed.

Then home and unload the car. I got all of the kitchen stuff put away and washed the dirty clothes we'd brought home while Keldor dealt with getting the basement stuff put away and mowing the front yard. That leaves the clean costumes and accessories to deal with later.

While driving we saw:

1 deer crossing the road up ahead, while I drove

2 reindeer, one of which majestic and white, with a huge rack of antlers

last day at Lofotr

We started the day with loading the car eith everything save food and clothes to change in to after the after work shower.

Then we went to work and packed up the smithy, took down the tents we had been using, loaded everything onto pallets for Drift to take away tomorrow, and our personal gear into out car.

Then we spent the last couple of hours of the shift up at the longhouse, where I made a small nålbinded bag.

Then back to the house, shower, load the food into the ice chest and into the car, clean the room, and hit the road at 18:00.

We drove just till midnight, and got some sleep at a rest area.

Entry tags:

Identifying as an archaeologist

Today was our last full day of working at the Viking Museum. Tomorrow we have a full shift, but we will spend much of the time packing stuff up. To be fair, we have already started. Today's weather was kinda random, with scattered showers alternating with sunny moments, and a reasonable amount of wind.

As a result of the latter two, the tent we had put over the old smithy was largely dry in the portion that wasn't in contact with the ground. Therefore, we moved my rock carving station to under the grass roof next to the outdoor smithy and unhooked the tent stakes so we could let the tent hang from its ridge pole into the smithy area and get a little head start on drying for a few hours. Then, at the end of our shift we moved it to hang the ridge pole from the wooden frame holding up the grass roof so that it can continue to dry overnight.

Tomorrow we can fold it and stack everything we've been using on a pallet for Drift to drive up the hill and put it away.

After work we did a video call with the cat sitter and packed everything that isn't needed tomorrow and loaded it in the car.

The I did yoga and had a shower, so now I am ready to sleep.

Ps more than once while working here visitors have asked what I do when not here. I reply "I am an archaeologist working at Umeå University. You know what, that feels really neat to say!

Entry tags:

lofoten,
weather

A very rainy day

Woke at 07:00, wrote up and posted about yesterday before I forgot it, and did a quick pilates.

Today was the rainiest day since arriving in Lofoten, and we wondered as we set up our work stations for the day if we would have visitors who would take the walk down the hill in the rain, or if it would be a day of quiet solitude for us?

For the first hour it was, indeed, quiet, but then a few people arrived, and then gradually more, and more again, till the amount of time spent talking with visitors felt like a typical day here. Then it slowed down again as it neared the end of our shift and we packed things up for the walk up the hill.

The nice thing of getting off work at 17:00 now (as opposed to 18:00 or 19:00, which were the two shift end times we have had since arriving) is that I had energy to cook after work, and I made a small pot of chilli. Good thing, too. Keldor failed to eat any breakfast, and didn't eat any of the food we had brought with us, so his day's intake consisted of tea, coffee, and a can of Monster energy drink. Silly boy. He was rather hungry by the time the chili was ready.

Entry tags:

museums

War Museum

Thursday morning I woke motivated to finally start writing my blog post about making the cloak for the Drachenwald Order of the Mark, and made good progress on that before Keldor woke.

Then we had a leisurely breakfast and drove up to Svolvær because he wanted to visit the WWII museum. The war touched this area rather a lot, and there is a very impressive collection of artefacts they have gathered, filling five rooms. Uniforms, other clothing, epquipment, tools, weapons, documents, and quite a bit of amazing art that had been made by prisoners of war. O never remembered that I had a phone that could take photos, but the guy who made a pretty bone knife with a nice wood handle and a lovely braded belt made out of cellofan from cigarette wrappers as a gift for his young daughter did a beautiful job, and I hope she appreciated it. The guitar made of match sticks is amazing.

Keldor did remember to take some photos, but most of them he will never share as this museum contains a lot of items that had belonged to folk on the German side of the war, and there are symbols on those uniforms, toys, etc. That one doesn't share. Ask him if you are curious. The Christmas tree was expecially overwhelming in the amout of efort the artists went to to make ornaments that would have been beautiful if not for the propaganda.

Then he dropped me off at Sandra's house, and went fishing. I think I had the better evening entertainment hanging out talking and sharing stories with a friend, while he was out in the wind, occasionally putting fish he didn't want to keep back in the water (and not seeing any he wanted to keep), but he seemed to have enjoyed it anyway.

Now we have three days left to work before we head home, and our shift has switched to the early one, 10:00 to 17:00, and it is already nearly 08:00, so I should get up and face my day.