Thanksgiving

It's time for my traditional Thanksgiving address. Our holiday was a bit unusual this year; we were gifted theatre tickets for Thanksgiving night, so we moved our dinner to the Wednesday. We were joined by Tim's girlfriend, Ashleigh, who was staying with us while she attended courses in London. Sooz made a lovely artisanal chicken along with all the trimmings. Grant had his own holiday with friends in Boston; apparently he was in charge of the bird itself. He certainly doesn't get any of those cooking skills from me!

And as is traditional, we celebrate the anniversary of Ollie's back surgery, which was 8 Thanksgivings ago. I'll say the same thing as I do every year: he's getting a bit older and slower, but he's still a happy and charming dog whom we all love very much.

Pensionsmyndigheten

When we lived in Sweden those many years ago, Sooz worked for almost two years for a Swedish company.

We were struck recently that she may be eligible for a state pension because of her contributions during her employment.

It took some doing to figure everything out. As a non-resident, we had to file a request through the UK to apply to Sweden on our behalf.

After a bit of back and forth, we received word from the pensionsmyndigheten that Sooz was indeed eligible for part of the state pension payments. Effective today, she will receive a monthly payment.

It's not much, perhaps a bit of a subsidy for box wines, but it is something towards our Swedish retirement!

Snow!

November 7

November 8

November 9

November 10

November 12

There was a record-breaking snowfall in Stockholm this week, 39 centimeters (15 inches) to be exact.  There's more snow in the capital today than there is in Lapland!

Both Marcia and Olle reported terrible conditions on the roads. This is far earlier than usual for the Stockholm area.

I took a few webcam snapshots over the past few days. Aspö is beautiful in the snow.

Learning Swedish

Sooz is continuing her language studies at the University of Westminster. She is well into the intermediate courses and has been a diligent student.

Unlike all of her classmates, she doesn't have a Swedish partner (at least not yet!). Her opportunities to practice her Swedish at home are therefore limited.

We have a Sonos speaker in the kitchen these days and have programmed Swedish radio for listening practice. Sooz also gets Swedish news alerts on her iPad.

I found recently that Swedish state radio operates a service for beginning Swedish speakers. A website and daily podcast is in simpler Swedish, and it also focuses on topics of interest to new Swedes.

Sooz gives it a listen from time to time and it is very well done. If you're learning or practicing your Swedish, it is an excellent resource.

October weather

Here's the Aspö end of month  weather review.

The downward temperature trend shouldn't be surprising given the shortening days.

There was quite a bit of rain at the end of the month. Given that our water comes from our well, I'm a big supporter of winter rains!

It was also quite windy. Our house is pretty well sheltered, so to see a 18mph gust means it was damned windy at the shore.

Remember real-time info of the conditions at the stuga can be found on the Mapatmo weather map.

A 3D printed house?

The New York Times ran an article recently about technology that can 'print' a building, eventually without human intervention.

Buildings made in a simple and modular way should be able to increase the options for affordable housing in many parts of the world. In addition, homes that could be easily taken apart and reassembled elsewhere would be very useful in dealing with climate and demographic changes.

The video above is another type of a 'printed' house, this time in China. They aren't very pretty, but they are simple and cheap to build, although the use of concrete is problematic for the global environment.

Many new technologies and methods are being tested in the coming years. It will be interesting to see which of them take hold!

Wooden Skyscrapers

I've posted before about the growing trend of wooden buildings being constructed with engineered wood like our little stuga. The Economist has a recent article about even taller structures being planned.

One of the most attractive things about a wooden skyscraper is its sustainability. Concrete and steel emit a significant amount of global CO², by some estimates over 5% of the annual total.

Wood, on the other hand, captures carbon dioxide, and comes from sustainable sources. When cared for properly, a wooden building can last as long- or longer- than a more modern structure.

The photo is of a proposed tower for central Stockholm, the "Tratoppen" (treetop in Swedish).

Who knows if anything like this will ever be built, but it is a lovely idea.

September weather

I plan to make this a monthly feature now that my weather station is on year-round.

We had only two real days of rain during the month. The temperature only slowly  dropped, but the wind certainly picked up.

It's interesting to see how the house warmed up on the inside on sunny days, although it cooled down quite a bit at night.

Let's see how cold it gets this winter....!

Swedish wine

I posted about a year ago about the rise of Swedish winemaking. Climate change is slowly making southern Sweden suitable for vinyards.

This year is another good one for the industry. Swedish Radio reports on a great harvest due to the warm summer.

Who knows? Maybe one of our wine boxes from the Systembolaget will soon be locally sourced!

We're back!

It was a whirlwind trip. We took the Friday morning taxi boat and had Aspö pretty much to ourselves on the day.

In addition to the quiet on the island, the sea was unusually calm so we went boating around our neighborhood. We went to Namdö and climbed up to the observation tower at Nämdöbote. It was quiet and beautiful!

On Saturday, we worked with Olle and Annika to get all of our boats up out of the water at Bo and Gun's house. It was hard work but it was a lot of fun. Annika and Olle made dinner that night, and we had a great time.

Sunday, we closed up the stuga and went back to Stockholm in the afternoon. That's the saddest part of the year!

I have lots of photos up in a new album, and more posts will be up in the coming weeks, I promise.

Leaving soon!

Off for a 3-day weekend to close up the house and get the boat out of the water.

We'll see Annika and Olle, too, and I think Tony and Ann-Catrin will be on the island as well, so that will be lots of fun. (And of course, we get to stay at the luxurious B&B of Marcia & Rutger, too!)

Photos and comments will follow soonest.

Fireplaces once again

I've posted many times in the past about fireplaces. I usually end up saying it'd be great to have one, but they're expensive, raise my insurance, and we really don't have any need. But still I look. There are so many cool ones out there!

Olle recently told me about a big showroom in Bromma that specialises in fireplaces of all types. Their website is amazing. I've seen a whole bunch of new styles and manufacturers I'd not heard of before.

The one pictured here is by a Danish company, Scanspis. I like the look, and it comes in many varieties- and in white as well.

I still think that we'll need a fireplace when we start using our stuga for our retirement. There are still chilly nights in May and September!

The 6-hour work week, revisited

I wrote recently about an experiment in Gothenburg in which employees of a nursing home worked only 6 hours a day, while still receiving full time pay. This was intended to reduce sick time and raise overall efficiency and happiness.

The test was deemed to be a success and made the news all over the world.

Sadly, this success is not being replicated elsewhere. A recent trial in Umeå didn't have any of the benefits found in Gothenburg. In fact, use of sick leave went up!

It's still too early to say if the whole idea is a failure, though. I like the fact that different things are being tried, at least!

August's weather

One of the tasks I completed during our last stay was to sign up for a full-time internet account.

It wasn't easy to enter a contract, as I don't have a personnummer, but Rutger came to the rescue and signed on my behalf.

Now I can keep my Netatmo weather station running year around and keep track of the temperature (both indoor and outdoor), rainfall, and windspeed.

When I visit in a few weeks, I will add one more thermometer to the 'water house' that holds all of the plumbing to ensure it is the right temperature as well. (Olle told me he checked it once and it was way too hot. No need to over-heat anything!)

It's fun to be able to see all sorts of information about the weather conditions in real time. I can also access summaries as well.

Attached for your interest are the statistics from August just past. The month ended on a cooler and wetter note, but I can't complain as July was glorious when we were there.

Stay tuned for more weather-related observations over the year!

Apologies for the lack of posts

It's been a whirlwind August since our return from Aspö. Both work and home life have been very busy, and I haven't had the time to post.

We will return to close up the house in late September. I have lots of topics to write about, as soon as I find the time. Stay tuned!

It's been a wild week!

And we're leaving today, sadly.

The weather has been so perfect, and we've been so busy outside doing fun things, that I haven't had time to keep the blog updated or manage my pictures.

Suffice it to say there'll be lots of pictures and many interesting updates in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: The photo page has been updated. Enjoy!

We're on our way again

Off to Stockholm again tonight to spend the last week of July in Aspö. Stay tuned for more reports of our escapades!

The 6 hour work week

I read recently about an experiment in Gothenburg with a 6-hour work day. It seems to be working well, for some organizations at least.

Paradoxically, productivity seems to be enhanced by the shorter working hours. “What we can see today is that employees are at the very least doing the same amount in the six-hour workday, often more than they did in the eight-hour day,” said the manager of a Toyota repair facility.

The idea is that workers who are fresher and less stressed can contribute more in their shorter working day, to the benefit of all.

Sweden has a long history of experimenting with work-life balance.  It's one of the things I love about the culture there.

A house of shipping containers

Using shipping containers for building projects is all the rage these days. The interesting thing is that containers can be left visible, as in the house shown here, or camouflaged into a more traditional look.

The trend has now come to the archipelago as well. I found a recent article in the Skärgården newspaper about a family building such a home locally.

My English language readers can click this link for a Google translated version of the article.

Internet Update

I received an update about the archipelago's internet access plans over the past few weeks, and it's not good news, I'm afraid.

When we were visiting the farm shop on Östanvik, one of the owners, Stina, told us new installations were going to focus on the numbers of permanent residents.  Given that Aspö has only a handful, that would put us low on the list.

This was confirmed in a letter I just received from the Nämdö fibre association. Not only will priority be given to permanent residents, but any grant monies will be given in an "all or nothing" format. Previously, applicants could receive a portion of their submittal, so money was spread around. Now, it's going to be only an island or two a year being wired. This puts Aspö even further down the list.

As I said recently, this bothers me less than it used to. My wireless broadband is pretty good these days. In fact, I've just signed a yearly contract so I can keep it on year-around. This will allow me (and you) to access my weather station every day. I'll also be able to use my webcam to have a peek at the conditions, although I'm not sure I have enough bandwidth to keep it on all the time! We will see.

PS. If you're wondering about the photo, it's Tim Berner-Lee's first web server.

Back home

We flew back on Independence Day today (the real one, not the Brexit kind) after a lovely weekend. As always, it's was good to be home and Ollie was very happy to see us as well.

It was a lot easier to leave this time as we'll be back in three weeks, the last week of July. More on those plans later. But for now, back to real life.

Catching up

I've been bad at posting, my apologies. Lots has been going on— and nothing's been going on! We've had pretty good weather, with a couple of spectacular days. Sooz has been working hard on her tan, I've been watching the football, and we've painted the doors and trim a nice shiny blue. The highlights:

• The midsummer celebrations with Peter and Jeanette's family and a fantastic smorgasbord after.
• Olle helping us drag the boat into the water- and rowing it halfway around Aspö himself! Sooz and I both tried to row but we just made the boat spin around drunkenly.
• A visit from Rutger and Marcia and Marcia's mom. We had a beautiful Saturday and a rainy Sunday. Rutger gave me seamanship lessons with my little boat. We spotted a mink of some sort on an nearby island.
• Sooz and I took a few boat trips, one again to the farm shop at Östanvik where we bought a lovely piece of lamb for dinner.

I've puttered around with lots of little things. The days and weeks seem to fly by, even without any huge construction projects! We have kept the photo page updated, though.

Mat Hem

I wrote last year about the grocery delivery service, MatHem. They're big in the major cities in Sweden, and they branched out to archipelago deliveries last summer.

We decided to give them a try this year. They started island service on June 15, and Sooz made an online order from London that day for delivery yesterday afternoon. She was amazed at the range of goods available. When we first moved to Stockholm in 1989, the selections at the grocery store were limited, to put it mildly. Today, she's able to click on just about anything she could want and have it delivered! Amazing.

We bought a few groceries on our way out to Aspö on Sunday, and Sooz took stock of what we had at the house. She was able to alter her online order up until Monday evening, which was quite handy as we were able to fill in some grocery gaps we hadn't realised. We also added a bunch of heavy items like charcoal and bottles of tonic.

On Tuesday, we received a number of status messages from the delivery boat, and they arrived on our dock at 5PM loaded with all kinds of goodies—even a selection of ice creams, which is a rare treat!

Overall, we were quite impressed with the efficiency and professionalism of the service. It wasn't cheap: 295 kronor, although that's the same as 2 round-trip boat rides to Stavsnäs, so the price isn't that far off.

Sooz is worried about another potential cost, though. One of the things that makes life out here interesting for us is that it's a little bit hard. Having to think carefully about what you buy is very different to our lives in the city. It's a fun challenge to think through what to buy, where to buy it, how to get it to the house, how to manage our supplies.

With the ability to just click on a huge array of groceries and have them brought to us, that specialness goes away. What with the internet and HD television, and boat deliveries of ice cream, Aspö becomes more convenient, but perhaps a bit less special, too.

A few more ice creams will help me get over that feeling, though!!!

Hello Again from Aspö

We've had a busy couple of days. Our bag didn't arrive with us Friday night so we didn't make it to Aspö until Sunday afternoon. We were able to have a great dinner with Marcia and Rutger on Saturday night, however!

Everything is fine with the stuga. I spent yesterday on a surprisingly complicated project to relocate the TV antenna. A tree was blocking the signal from its old location, so I decided to fix it properly and move it to another part of the roof.  That took the whole day of going up and down the ladder, and boy, do I feel it this morning! But all's well that ends well and our TV signal is much better. The weather yesterday was superb and it's looking decent for the rest of the week.

I't's the longest day of the year today- the sun rises at 3:30 and sets after 10PM. I found a cool solar graph for Stockholm. Today is the centre line:

The midsummer celebrations begin in earnest later in the week, so more to report on then!

On our way tomorrow!

After work, I'll be hopping on a Norwegian flight for my usual Friday evening arrival. Sooz will be joining me; we had originally planned for her to come a couple days later to match up with our dogsitter's schedule.

However, that dogsitter fell through, so we have found an alternate plan. Ollie is going to spend two weeks in Essex with a family that specialises in posh puppies like himself.  So now, thanks to flexible Norwegian ticket pricing, Sooz is able to travel with me.

Our plan is to spend Saturday with Marcia and Rutger and then go to Aspö on Sunday noon. Stand by for lots of midsummer posts and photos!