Stage 2

Sooz and I have met up at Heathrow. She had a great time at the Royal Wedding and was able to check all of the baggage with no problem. We're about to leave for Stockholm!!!

UPDATE 1: We've arrived safely into Stockholm with all our stuff...
UPDATE 2: Now at Marcia & Rutger's and all is well!

Our trip has begun

Sooz is already in the UK, visiting friends and preparing to be part of the throng celebrating Friday's royal wedding. She's brought two big boxes of stuff to take onward to Stockholm. I'm sure she'll be picking up a William and Kate tea towel to go with our Daniel and Victoria mouse mat. I'll be leaving from Texas on Friday and we'll meet up (hopefully) in Heathrow on Saturday morning.

The weather has been hot and dry in both London and Stockholm. Rutger and Marcia are sporting tans already and Janne says it's sunny but strangely with no buds on the trees yet. But as the latest weather forecast shows, it will get rainy just as we arrive on Aspö.  (Of course yesterday, the same forecast said it'd be sunny, so who knows???)

Time Lapse Photography

I've read of a photographer, Randy Halverson,  who makes the coolest time lapse movies in South Dakota. I experimented with time lapses last summer, although I'm not nearly this sophisticated!

Logistics

We're getting closer to our trip. This will be the first time we've gone from the US to Sweden, as opposed to the simpler trip from London. We'll be staying a couple of days at Marcia & Rutger's, to see them and do some stock-up shopping.

Marcia is lending us her car for the week (she takes the train to her high-powered job in central Stockholm). So we're going to load it up to the gills with our stuff. I may well take the Stavsnäs bus, freeing up even more space in Marcia's car.

I booked a noon taxi boat on Monday. This allows Sooz to drive to Stavsnäs after the rush hour traffic. It also allows her to grocery shop in Gustavsbergs to pick up fresh items, and, importantly, to stop at the Systembolaget when they open at 10:00 to get a few boxes of wine and a case of my precious Pripps.

It's my hope to get the bulk of our stuff out to the house on this trip, so when we go in June, we can travel a lot lighter.

May 14

...is the date of the Eurovision Song contest, and long-time watchers will know it's fairly early this year. Typically, it's the last Saturday in May. It was moved up this year because the Champion's League final is on May 28, which is the second most-watched television event in Europe! So Eurovision had to move.

The final is at Wembley Stadium in London, and there's a rule that the field can't be used for a minimum of two weeks before the final. This has caused the English Football Association to move up the date of their FA Cup final from its traditional late May to the 14th as well.

And the reason I mention that date change is that it's suddenly become important to me. My beloved Manchester City are in the final and will be playing for their first Cup victory in 42 years.

May 14 has the potential to be a very good day for me!

We're getting closer!

Not just in the sense that it's now less than three weeks until we leave for Sweden, but also because I just received the 2011 Aspö Sommarguide. This is put out each year by the island's bryggeförening, which translates literally as 'bridge club', but I think it more as the island's resident's association.

The bryggeförening organizes summer activities, including two 'work days' in which residents jointly maintain the path and other common facilities; the big trash pickup days with the recycling boat; the yearly meeting; football matches and sailing lessons, and especially the midsummer celebration itself.

This year, midsummer is exactly on my birthday, a fact of which I plan to remind everyone. The recycling boat arrives on June 18, which is also the day I arrive, but I'll get to Aspö later, after the boat, so Sooz and Grant will be responsible for hauling trash that day. However, I will arrive by that evening's inauguration of the dansbanan, or dance floor, at the big midsummer meadow. After traveling straight in from Texas, I'm not sure what shape my dancing legs will be in, but I'll probably give it a try anyways. Especially if Akvavit is involved.

The other good bit of news is the big island meeting is on July 3; I've missed it the past few years and Sooz has by all accounts been very charming in representing us. This year I get to be there myself. I'll try to keep up the family reputation!

Grant's Blog

Grant is keeping a blog of his own as an assignment for one of his classes this semester.

He's not quite up the standard of his old man just yet, but it's a good read nevertheless.

A weather aside

Ollie experienced his first real thunderstorm last night. We had to fish him out from under the bed this morning.

And a clarification from my previous post: Sooz is attending the royal wedding in the stand-in-the-street-waving-a-Union-Jack sense, not in the seat-in-Westminster-Abbey sense.

Four weeks from today!

I'll be flying off to Sweden. Sooz will already be in London, attending the Royal Wedding.

As we get closer, I'll be posting more about our plans and logistics for our trip.... and maybe a bit about Eurovision as well!