Celebrations

It’s been a shock to the system going back to work. So has the downturn in the weather. I am still reading Swedish books in a bid to cling on to my summer hols feeling. Anyway, it is my birthday tomorrow and so I will be celebrating and coming to terms with officially reaching my mid-thirties. Whilst life has had its ups and downs, I can say that being in my thirties has been better than the years that preceded it. Although I guess if I looked back and thought my twenties, or teen years had been better, the prospect for the future would be rather depressing!

So I shall be celebrating by eating my mother’s homemade goulash and dumplings (mum can never quite understand why I would want to eat that in July…) and last night I went out for a very nice meal with G and a friend from work. I think there might be a few other things planned as well, including some presents. Anyway, happy birthday to me (tomorrow)!

Note to self

You can tell your holiday is over when you spend the evening cleaning the fridge.

Returns

Sweden was great. We loved Stockholm and went on a boat a few times and saw the sights and went on The Millennium Tour.

Then we went to Gothenburg, which we weren’t so keen on (as a city), as it was very busy and seemed to primarily be about shopping. But then we went out to the archipelago and we really liked being out on the islands and that rather changed our experience.

We then moved on to Karlstad, Orebro and Uppsala and all of those were nice cities (and very small cities by British standards). We did all our travelling by train and that was pretty straightforward, although not very well air conditioned.

It was a really good holiday though and we now want to see more of Scandinavia. I am already coming up with ideas for another holiday!

I haven’t uploaded our photos yet, but might put some on my blog soon.

Away

I am so pleased that we are about to go away on holiday. I cannot describe how tired I feel. Due to the combination of not getting enough sleep due to the hot nights and working in an office that is like a mini furnace, I just wanted to curl up under my desk and go to sleep yesterday afternoon.

Anyway, we are off to Sweden on Sunday for two weeks. We are going to Stockholm and Gothenburg and a few places in between. I have my Swedish books to read (they’re not written in Swedish, you understand) and at some point I might get round to packing some stuff for the trip. I am looking forward to two weeks of relaxing and escaping the high temperatures here.

Have a good couple of weeks.

In the balance

I got an e-mail from a friend a couple of days ago. We e-mail each other very regularly. In fact, until a few years ago, I would have called her my best friend. Things have changed though and we have drifted a bit. But we are still in regular contact, in fact we e-mail each other pretty much every day.

Anyway, this e-mail, in passing, said that her baby is being dedicated on Sunday (the Free Church equivalent of a christening - without the water etc). Only I haven’t been invited. We are actually going on holiday on Sunday, so couldn’t go anyway, but I was surprised not to even be invited. I mentioned it to a friend at work who said that if a good friend had done that to her, she would end the friendship and that I was far more forgiving than her, but it seems a bit extreme to throw away many years of friendship over something like this. But even if I couldn’t go to something, I would still expect to be asked. I haven’t said anything to her about it, but I was not very happy to find about the dedication (and therefore my lack of invite) like this.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

CS Lewis

I wonder at what point it is lost?

Dip

There hasn’t seemed to be much point in posting here of late. Sometimes I wonder why I blog, I don’t get many comments and I don’t really get much sense that my presence here was missed. I am not feeling sorry for myself, I think I am just being realistic. But there you go.

Anyway, I might post a few things this week and then I am off on holiday for a couple of weeks, so won’t be about.

I have had a busy week or so. G’s sister and niece were down from Scotland until the middle of last week. Babies just seem to eat up time and the weekend and evenings flew by. I went to see Tony Bennett with my mum and sister last Thursday and that was good. I had been forewarned that he doesn’t do encores, and despite people cheering and him coming back a couple of times and waving, the prediction was true. This is probably a sacrilegious thing to say but he danced a couple of times and I thought that you had to be Tony Bennett to get away with it – if your dad danced like that you’d cringe. But if you’re Tony Bennett somehow it is much cooler.

Work has also been interesting. We had a massive power failure last week and so I had to work from home for a few days. I hate working from home and so was glad when I got to go back to work. But we still have no air conditioning and so on Monday it was really hot at work. Then some air conditioning units were delivered that are primarily humidifiers really and now it smells and feels like we are working at the local swimming baths, except we don’t have a poll to dip in to cool off.

One of my bosses left a couple of weeks ago and I got a really lovely card from her yesterday, which was I was touched by. I brought it home in case it shrivelled up in the damp atmosphere at work. I feel that I might go into work one day this week and find that everything has mould growing on it. I dread to think what my work will be like by the time I get back from my holiday.