A fabulous weekend!

We went back to Aspö this past weekend, bringing along Sooz's childhood friend, Lauris, on her first visit to the island.

The weather was spectacular. In fact, we're starting to worry that it's been too sunny and nice. But we all enjoyed the fine weather nevertheless. Flowers were in bloom everywhere, and the girls got to work on their tans.

Annik sand Olle took us out for a ride on their boat, and we visited Guns Livs on Nämdö to see what the new owners were up to. We had a nice chat with the new manager, who filled us in with their plans for the future. This summer will be pretty much the same with the grocery and cafe, but there will be a lot of work to upgrade the facilities over this winter to prepare for a new start in 2019.

I have a small photo page up of our visit. We will be back for the first two weeks of July, and we can't wait!

Unintended consequences

I posted over two years ago about Sweden's progress in becoming a cashless society. I can report that project is still on track. It's no longer a surprise to find small shops that take cards these days; I find more and more places that refuse to take cash last all. Some in the government are wondering if things are changing too fast.

The scarcity of cash is causing Sweden's criminals to change their behavior. A recent article in The Atlantic points out that besides fraud and cybercrime being on the rise, so is old-fashioned theft of valuable objects.

Going cashless can certainly help the tax authorities, and it is much more convenient for the seller and buyer alike. But sometimes fixing one problem just causes another...

Report from the island

We're back from a surprisingly eventful week. The weather the first few days wasn't great, but it became glorious the past few days. Although we hadn't planned it, we were able to have dinner with Annika and Olle, Peter and Jeanette (with Niklas and Noelle), and drinks with Tony and Ann-Catrin. So a much more social time than we had planned, which was great!

The house was in great shape, save one little issue I'll blog about in an upcoming post. We did our usual tree-trimming and brush clearing. I helped Bo's boat get into the water; we're going to wait a bit to float ours, though.

One bit of excitement (for me at least) was that the fibre-optic cable has made landfall on Aspö! The plan is for it to be installed around the island in the second part of next year. Vattenfall are going to be replacing the old poles and overhead wires with underground cables, which I think is a great idea. Those old poles are unsightly and require a lot of maintenance. The fibre will be laid along the power cables, so I may soon, at long last, have broadband at our little home. There's a picture of the cable (with lots else) on my photo page.

On our last day, we went into town early and finally I got to visit the ABBA Museum. To say I enjoyed it is an understatement! We had dinner that evening with Janne and Margaret, who were in good form. They are planning to visit us on Aspö when we're back in July.

Before that July trip, we are making another visit late in May for the bank holiday. One of Sooz's girlfriends from the US will be joining us. We always love to introduce new friends to the island.

April's weather

It's getting slowly warmer over the month. What's interesting is the sharper rise in the indoor temperature. That's driven by the increased sunshine as we pass the vernal equinox. The house is being warmed through the big windows in the afternoons. There will likely be days in July when it's too hot! But I look forward to having that as a problem.

I left the sound meter reading in just for fun. It's quite obvious when we're home!