My audience is growing

I received an email yesterday from Scott Hedges, an expatriate American living outside of Stockholm, who's familiar with the X-Houses and is a big fan of Swedish building and design. He found my blog through Stefan.

Scott pointed me to the website of Gregory La Vardera, an architect practicing in New England. Greg keeps a blog, and Scott has posted a few 'letters from Sweden' there which are much more informed than my ramblings here.

Scott's emails have made my day, and I plan to read Greg's blog regularly. I'll put up a link so all my other readers can, too.

A (non) update

Janne called Per today- but Per's on vacation this week, so no news. Janne will call him next week.

Our hope is that we will get from Per the preliminary OK to do the foundations- or get an indication when we will get that OK. Stay tuned...

A funny aside

We were in Brussels this weekend, visiting friends. While at the Grand Place, a family came up to me and asked- in Swedish- if I could take their photo. I did, and used my tiny Swedish vocabulary to conduct a very brief conversation, all in Swedish.

I was feeling fairly proud of myself until I saw the look of mortification on my son's face. And here I thought I was going to be a 'cool dad' when I became a father...

A sort-of update

I talked to Janne this morning; just hearing his voice brightened my mood. Anyways, he will call the kommun next week as most everyone is away for Easter. We hope there will be progress when he speaks with them as the 'new building' map should be done by now.

Janne has also delayed ordering the electricity just yet. There's a monthly charge and he doesn't think it would be smart to pay for power for a couple of months if we don't need it. It should take only a couple of weeks to get it installed after we say 'go', so once our schedule firms up, we can do that.

Still planning towards a late-May foundation build and an August 5 house delivery...fingers crossed!

Taking my lumps

I just transferred over another chunk of change. The exchange rate I got was exactly 6.00. Sigh.

What's annoying is that six weeks ago, it was 6.40. Here I am like a sucker, waiting for the dollar to rise when I should have stopped complaining and just moved. Oh well. At least I made a good decision when I got married. The rest is just details.

Sweden selects

Charlotte Perrelli has been chosen as the winner of the Melodifestival with her song, "Hero". She came second in the popular vote but the expert panel put her through to Eurovision. Details (in English) are in The Local and Swedish Television.

Personally, I thought it was the best Eurovision song of the finalists. And she easily had the best costume; to me, anyways, her dress was fantastic. Only 69 days to the final.

Mobile Blogging

I visited a tile store in town to get a few ideas. We're going to tile the bathroom and I want the floor to look like the granite the house sits on.

The room is small so I don't think it would be able to take anything too dramatic. The tile pictured here is about the right colour but it has a subtle linear pattern too, which I think would look good.

Blogger has the ability to make posts through email so I snapped the photo with my iPhone and sent this post in right from the shop. Cool, huh?

Island webcam

The boat operator, Waxholmsbolaget, has a great English-language website. They have webcams at the bigger islands, one of which is Sandhamn, not that far away from our little Aspö.

Here's a direct link for their Sandhamn webcams. There are three views, changing every seven seconds. I'll put this as a permanent link, too.

A song for Europe

The UK has chosen its entry for the Eurovision song contest. It was a 90 minute show, as opposed to the six-week traveling extravaganza held in Sweden. The song wasn't too bad, though; at least it wasn't a comedy routine. I did vote over the phone, although not for the eventual winner. I'm not very good at picking winners in the contest.

P.S. I saw a video of the Slovenian entry. Looks like a winner to me!

A new drawing

Stefan forwarded a new drawing of the foundations. They've decided to add an additional support beam right down the center of the house. It's not strictly needed per the building codes, but Stefan said they are now adding the extra support as a matter of course.

It's a bit more concrete for me to carry, and two more pilings to make, but better safe than sorry. I appreciate Stefan and his team thinking of us even during the quiet days of winter.