Category: Winter.

School shooting.

· 14 Comments ·
So the photos today were taken yesterday, no snow left today.

 

I can finally walk stairs without wanting to cry and wonder if it wouldn’t be better to jut end it all 🙂 🙂 🙂  Now however the coughing is a bit worse, then again I’m not freezing as much so I think I’m half way through this now. 

I heard a bout a school shooting on the tv today and of course I felt sad for You Americans, not only do You have the fat orange as a leader (or isn’t it really the South African nazi?) You have these shootings as well. To my very big surprise it wasn’t in the US, it was here and not especially far from where I live!! (a couple of counties north). The information is still rather fuzzy but it is not small children but I think something like Community college. Grown ups who either trying to get higher grades, repeating highschool to get the grades they need and so on. Still that doesn’t matter but it isn’t small kids that have been shot.

The latest I’ve found out is that ten people has been killed and there are injured people as well. The shooter is a 35 year old man (with a weapons license) with no criminal record and so far we have no info about any motive. We’ve gotten used to drug gangs shooting each other or blowing up doors but this school shooting doesn’t seem to have anything to do with gangs, gangs tend to do that in the big cities and their suburbs.

So this was a nasty wakeup call for us. We do have rather hard weapon laws but I guess they’ll need to make them even harder now. If one has a weapon one really should have to be checked about the mental health, this man can’t be mentally healthy if doing something like this. 

It is time to have that last cup of tea and then check the news again, if they’ve found a motive.

I wish You all a good and safe day!

The flu.

· 6 Comments ·

So I have the flu or something very similar, every single fiber  in my body has been aching, especially in my thighs and it really hurts while walking in stairs 🙂 🙂 Not so great when the computer and bedroom is upstairs 🙂 🙂 It still would most likely hurt really bad but I’m putting on anti inflammatory ointment and it helps enough so that I can hav walks with the dogs and get to the bedroom without wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just sleep in my sofas 🙂 🙂

To be honest it also helped a lot by walking the dogs, terrible in the beginning, got easier the more we walked and it felt almost normal when we arrived back home again. However an hour or so later it felt worse than before 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m freezing like a doge every no and again, not especially sour in my throat but almost no coughing, so far that is. So this could have been far worse to be honest.

Between walks very little has been done though, lots of resting and tea drinking and watching tv programs I haven’t enjoyed and I’ve also read a lot. I only wish I’ve had some rose-hip soup at home so I’ll make sure to buy some next time I’ll go to the store. Warm rose-hip soup with tiny almond biscuits/cookies (when asking google about the name it suggested almond macaroons but to be honest I don’t think that fits at all) they’re only 1cm (two fifths on an inch) big and not in two pieces as macaroons always seems to be. They more or less only works with rose-hip soup or as a sort of snack to be honest 🙂

Yesterday we had a nice thick fog almost all day and today we’ve had a grey and dull weather bit with frost instead. We were supposed to have fairly much snow but only had a dusting and that’s just enough. Still a long time till spring but I don’t mind if it comes early and I really don’t want a snowstorm like we had last April, the snow melted away after a week and then spring sprung but I still didn’t like it even though it happened when Malkolm just had arrived and I was forced to have a week of vacation since I couldn’t leave a puppy in the dog house/ yard in there while I was working.

I think it is time for that last cup of tea for the day and then find that book again. I think I finally have found a way to move the photos from the editing program to the blog, I’m crossing my fingers and holding my thumbs for good luck 🙂

Have a great day!

· 6 Comments ·

Nothing happened here the previous two days so I really had nothing to write about. We had some snow, it melted away, then we had some rain and today we finally had some fog. Only one problem, I missed most of it.

I was just going to apply to a couple of job ads, no big to be honest. The little problem I had was that no matter what kind of document I tried to save it in no site excepted it, not even as a pdf?! I was trying well over an hour seeing how the fog became weaker and weaker. I was so desperate that I finally called one of the bigger companies telling what I had tried and all versions Id tried as well. They were really confused because all versions I’d tried were accepted.

Then they asked me what browser I used and I said Safari and they said oh 🙂 🙂 🙂 Do it via Google Chrome and it’ll work. So then I needed to find chrome in my computer which the computer said I would have and showed what keys I should press to get there. The problem is that I have a keyboard for pc but adapted to Mac, so those hints didn’t help much 🙂 🙂 🙂  So I had to download it from the net instead 🙂 🙂 🙂 Another fun thing that happened was that My keyboard then changed from a Swedish keyboard to a British English one. So suddenly three of the letters in our alphabet suddenly didn’t work 🙂 🙂 🙂 That one was easy to fix though 🙂 🙂

Well all is fine in the end besides that I missed the best fog 🙂 Alma was nothing but good the first two hundred meters (no big difference in yards) but  then she finally calmed down and we did have a nice walk in the end. I heard one bid sing the entire time and oddly enough it was a spring song. Even though this bird starts earlier than the others it still should wait until late February. I must say it did sound so wonderful hearing it though even if I know spring still is far away for us up here in the north. It is time for that last cup of tea and after that I’ll most likely read a book 🙂

Have a great day!

More snow to melt away.

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it was just grey and dull when we went out on our morning walk and from that it went downhill. First some lighter snow with tiny snow flies that couldn’t be seen when they landed on the ground, then rather big and lots  of them that really showed on the ground and then it started to rain. Still lots of snow on the ground but hopefully those slightly higher temperatures they’ve been talking about will arrive as they’re guessing.

I can never capture this old tree trunk properly but I still keep on trying 🙂

Canada geese, many of them refuse to leave when the nasty weather comes.

Besides that very little has happened, the most exiting being that the dogs and I had pancakes for lunch 🙂 The dogs are bored but every time they go outside they want to go inside again. So we have most been indoors being inactive watching tv or napping. The monster cat was active for a while though, one could think that if she tries to do a thing on and on again and fail she finally would understand that it won’t work next time either. I don’t know how many times she failed to pass an orchid by the windows and both she and the poor plant have fallen down to the floor 🙂 🙂

I guess it is time for that last cup of tea for the day but today I’ll try and stay awake since it’s a weekly science program I want to watch, they re-run it several time but for some reason I’ll still miss it if I don’t watch it the first time they show it 🙂

Have a great day!

There’s always a way.

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Computers are great to have, computers can be really fun but computers that behaves like they want to is a really big pain in the a..e 🙂 🙂 Well it isn’t the computer but the photo editing program. I really don’t want to do anything but reduce the size both in pixel size and MB size but it refuses to do the latter. I’ve figured out a way to go around this problem but it takes so much longer time.

I have a slight problem with what photos I post because the icons are so small and I can’t find anywhere to make them bigger in this folder so I can only hope I put in the better ones 🙂 🙂 🙂

Well life could be worse and I do have lots of time now days. Still really annoying. The hunters should have been here today but so far no one has arrived, so we had a walk in the forest and down to the creek. I figured that if they would come we still most likely already had come down to the creek and soon out of their way anyway. A bit windy but much calmer than the previous days.

I haven’t been totally idle today though, I did some laundry for instance. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot of work but I have a sort of manual washing machine. My bathroom is so small that I can’t fit in a normal sized one but since I’m not a big fan of washing laundry by hand I bought one that fits in a caravan. That means that I need to fill up water for washing and rinsing the laundry, no big deal, what is a bit annoying is that when the clothes are going to be centrifuged I need to move it to the built in centrifuge and load it by hand so that it is in balance, if I fail it’ll sound as if the centrifuge is on its way to fly out the cottage all by itself 🙂 🙂  I’ve had it like this for rather many years now so I’ve learned how to do it but still 🙂 🙂

I’ve also baked some French rolls, how much can one change the recipe without having to change the name? 🙂 🙂 I almost always use different flour and sometimes I have cheese in it as well. Turned out really well this time. A warm roll with melting cheese on it is hard to beat 🙂 Tomorrow I’ll keep on doing some laundry, I’m a bit behind, and after that the dogs and I will have pancakes for dinner, I’ve just bought a Black berry jam just for that 🙂

The beavers are back 🙂

It is time to get that last cup of tea for the day and I’ll most likely fall asleep in the sofa after that 🙂

Have a great day!

Snow and rain.

· 2 Comments ·

Just a short one today, the weather is not nice and hasn’t been all day. Very windy with both rain and snow. It hasn’t at all been as warm as they  guessed yesterday so most snow is still on the ground and it’s impossible to walk outside without getting soaking wet. WE. have been in the garden though but the dogs have just done what they need and then wanted to go back indoors again 🙂

In any photo editor I know of in a PC the original photos that one has placed in a file they stay there no matter what one does with the copies we make to put in social media, that’s not the case in a Mac 🙂 🙂 If I reduce size in the copy the size will also be reduced on the original and if I delete that copy so will the original be deleted as well 🙂 🙂 🙂 So today I learned that I need to make a special file for the originals and place that file outside photos, a bit complicated to be honest 🙂 I’m learning more and more every day now 🙂

Have a great day!

Everything tasted bacon :-)

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I tried to aim on the mouse wearing a head lamp at the same time I took the photo, more tricky than one can think 🙂

No snowfall today but we’ll get rain later tonight instead and it will continue all day tomorrow and it will be mixed with a lot of snow as well, but according to the weather sites and the tv forecast it’ll stay above 0C (32F) so I guess it’ll all melt away quickly, at least I hope so. This is a cold hole so one never knows 🙂

We walked the same way today but in the opposite direction, Yesterday I noticed how much of those small fields were worked on by wild hogs and they had been busy last night as well. I do hope they’ll keep their distance because meeting wild hogs in the garden the first thing in the morning is not on my top ten things to do 🙂 🙂 🙂 I think however it will be easier for them to walk in to my neighbours garden since they  only have a thin hedge beside the electric fence that goes around the entire pasture and that fence hasn’t stopped them so far.

I think this is one of those stones they used way back in the days to grind flour. I wonder how old it is, after all people have lived around here since the Stone Age.

Writing about electric fences, today Malcolm learned how it feels to get stung by one and unlike all other dogs he didn’t blame me for it 🙂 🙂 He did keep his distance to the fence after that though 🙂 I was later thinking of the hogs when I was frying some pork for dinner, when I did that I came to think of my mother. She has never been a good cook, quite the contrary and that’s why I learned to make my own food already as eleven years old. She’s amazing making sauces and for some reason she has always been good at making mashed turnips and pork knuckle, well it is her favourite food 🙂 🙂 🙂 Her meatballs however were either hard as a bullet and used like one a moose wouldn’t stand a chance, or they could just disintegrate in to a powder 🙂 🙂 🙂

Anyhow she became a bit more interested later in life. She and her then fiancé were quite often out fishing and always caught a lot of Cottidae, a small and rather ugly little fish but that tastes really good, so she learned how to fry that. They also were out picking mushrooms in autumn and always found a lot of Puffballs, they are edible and quite nice as small and she learned how to like those too. One day I asked her what the fish tasted like and she said: It’s the oddest thing but it tastes like bacon. I asked her if that really was true and she said it was. Well why not but then I asked her if she liked the puffballs as well and yes she did, oddly enough those tasted like bacon as well. I eat that mushroom a lot and they sure doesn’t taste like bacon 🙂 🙂

This is the old well to the cottage the Beekeeper lived, clear and nice water but the well dried out almost every summer.

This was their spare well, never dried out but so much rust in the water that it was almost un drinkable.

My mother belongs to the old kind that if You fry something and there’s fat still in the frying pan she saves it for next time 🙂 Well I think You’ve guessed it, they tended to eat a lot of bacon so every time they fried something they did so in bacon grease 🙂 🙂 🙂 everything from broccoli to any kind of fish tasted like bacon 🙂 🙂 🙂

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day, I might have a banana too but I’m really not hungry after my dinner. It will at least stay above 0C (32F) the coming week but oh how I long for spring!

Have a great day!

Even I thought the weather was nice :-)

· 2 Comments ·

So the hunters were supposed to be here at something we call Förmiddag (pree dinner, which is the same as pre noon which means around 9:30-10:00) but they all arrived just after 11 am 🙂 I couldn’t really walk out in to the forest just in case they would come but I still wanted to have a walk with the dogs because we had a rather nice snowfall, I guess You all now became a bit surprised by me saying that since I really don’t like snow 🙂 🙂  but it was 0C (32F) and no wind to talk about so even I fell for the charm of a light snowfall 🙂

But instead of walking in to the forest we walked down on the road we usually comes home on when we’ve been down to the creek, so today Malcolm had the chance of running leash free at the start of our walk 🙂  We did however not follow the road down to the creek but instead turned left, a road we used to walk a lot until two dogs just as bad as Alma 🙂 🙂 🙂 moved in to a tiny cottage at the end of the road. Too much struggle to go through every time we would have passed. Now days there’s only one dog left there and so much easier to pass, especially since there now is a huge pile of dirt blocking the view for both the dog in the garden there and my two 🙂

The rest of the day has mostly been spent eating dinner, watching the British Antiques Roadshow and looking for a job on the online employment agency. Unfortunately they are now looking for people to work during the summer months, perhaps jobs lasting two to four months but I did find several interesting of those but also a couple of long lasting jobs as well. The ads will be up for at least two more weeks which is good because when I was about to apply for them I realised that my CV, is it called that in English, where You write down something about Yourself and Your work experience? is in my old computer that I so conveniently picked down today 🙂 🙂 🙂 So either  I’ll have to start up the old computer again or write a new one 🙂 🙂 I’ll see what program there is in this computer, must be something like word I guess 🙂

Only ten more days and then we’ll enter February, the next  to most boring month in the year 🙂 It is at least short and that’s when we finally starts to see the change in daylight here. I have a problem in my cool cellar, yesterday when I walked down there I met a foul metal smell on my way down, one of my plant light had died so now I only have one left. Well there is another I can use but it eat electricity lie an elephant drinks water. It is an older quicksilver lamp that also becomes so warm that anything closer than 50 cm (20 inches) will be burned 🙂 🙂 I remember one winter when it was really cold outside and the cellar suddenly had a few degrees lower temperature than 0C (32F) (not a good thing since my water pipes does there) I just turned on that lamp and suddenly it was well over instead 🙂 🙂 Probably good for the cellar but that was back when electricity was cheap.

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that I don’t know, I’ll see if there’s anything worth watching on tv, probably not 🙂

Tiny snowflakes on the Cypress.

Have a great day!

· 2 Comments ·

So this is the pasture the wild hogs now walk around in at night.

We did see the sun shine for a few minutes just as it was setting, otherwise the day has been rather depressing 🙂 A meh fog in the morning, later on just grey and dull.

    

Today I’ve been a bit busy though. First I ordered and downloaded an antivirus program, the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I paid the bill, pressed the link and voila finished 🙂 🙂 The Macworld said it was the best and it wasn’t especially expensive either, I also got a discount for being a new customer and that didn’t hurt 🙂 If all things computer was that easy! I never remember my passwords to anything so I rarely log out from anything but I need to get a new password now when I change computer, since I don’t remember them 🙂 So I tried Facebook. I could just as well hit myself in the head with a hammer! I thought I would get a link via my mail but no not any more. I tried to change it several times but no such luck I’m afraid, now I have no idea if the old one still is there so I can come in to Fb on my old computer 🙂 🙂 🙂

The last snow for this time 🙂

When the first wave of hate towards Fb had calmed down I finally found the old way but it sure wasn’t easy to find it 🙂 What angered me the most was when I tried to change the password their new way it didn’t work so a new page turned up so that I could change the password, the only problem was that I had to log in to be able to do it 🙂 🙂 🙂 Then I needed to do the same for my blog and it took four seconds to let me in again 🙂 🙂 🙂 To be honest I’m not sure I want to stay on Fb anyway but I want to have a chance to say bye if I do decide to log out totally. Now all I need to do is to slowly but steadily add my favourites so things can go back to normal again.

But I have done other things as well, like baking bread, well very flat French rolls 🙂 🙂 🙂 and to dinner I made a shrimp and vegetable pie, not bad at all 🙂 I had a bit too much though so now I’m burping shrimps and Broccoli 🙂 🙂 I think it is time for that last cup of tea for the day. I had too much too late yesterday so I’ll have this cup early so I don’t have to get up in the middle of night again 🙂 The hunters will be here tomorrow morning again, they have noticed that the wild hogs now walk around in the pasture just outside my gate. Wild hogs are good for nature but not gardens 🙂

My hardy Rosemary, survived -18 C (-0,4 F) beside it some Oregano but they survive everything 🙂

The Himalayan Cypress also looks good but the most dangerous time for plants here is when spring starts and those late frosts suddenly kill them.

Have a great day!

· 2 Comments ·

Just as sad weather today as yesterday but since hunters have been out all day we haven’t been able to have a walk anyway. Good thing I  took some photos yesterday and that I have loads in the file “For a rainy day”  🙂

     

I went to the supermarket in the morning so now I won’t need to go there for at least five days 🙂 Good thing because my neighbor hasn’t gotten her car back from the garage yet so she’ll be having my car instead 🙂  I haven’t done much more today to be honest, I did however make pancakes but with oatmeal instead of the corn based I usually do. They did taste a bit different , not much but still noticeable. They’ll be a good substitute if I can’t use the normal one again.

     

I’ve also started to learn more with the photo editing program in my Mac. I normally never do anything else than reduce the size on my photos so they don’t use too many Bites when downloading them to my blog but it is fun to see what else there is. So I tried the sharped the photo thing and I must say I’m impressed. I tried that in my old computer and that photo came out just as blurry as it was before but in another way 🙂 🙂 This time I used a photo that I thought was pretty sharp but realized after sharpening it in the new computer that it wasn’t especially sharp at all 🙂 🙂 🙂 The “new” photo didn’t show any signs that it had been tampered with at all. So now I understand why professional photographers only want Mac computers 🙂 🙂

     

It is time for that last cup of tea for the day and after that I’ll probably read a book. I’m so tired now that I most likely will have problems staying awake 🙂

Can You see that little dark spot on the road almost all the way to the old stable? I thought that was a barn cat but it didn’t run away in panic like they usually do.

So we caught up with her, yes it’s a her because it’s my neighbors cat 🙂 She was so concentrated on catching a mouse he didn’t realize how close we were.

When she did she hunkered down and took a look at us.

The dogs couldn’t see her but knew she was there somewhere 🙂 She really didn’t care about us since she knows my dogs so well 🙂

Have a great day!

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So I picked up the new antenna cable yesterday and after connecting it to the antenna and tv I had better picture than before. I hadn’t seen Malkolm chew on it but since he quickly ran away when I saw what had been done it wasn’t that hard to understand 🙂 So this morning when we were supposed to go out on our morning walk I was putting on my shoes when I looks at him happily chewing on the new cable!!!

 

Two Ravens playing in the strong winds we had yesterday.

I have never really had the need to scold him for doing something he isn’t supposed to do here in the cottage, he has never really done anything wrong or dangerous but chewing on cables, even if the antenna cable is sort of harmless next time it could be an electric cable I really had to do something drastic. I have big lungs so I screamed at him at the same time i picked him up so I could look directly in to his eyes. I feel so sorry for him but that scared the s.t out of him, well pee actually. He is still a bit skittish when he must pass that place. I really hope this helped because I never want to scare him like that again 🙂 🙂

     

Yesterday morning was quite nice, it had been cold during the night with a clear sky and the sky stayed mostly clear all through the walk. There was a thin cloud layer that the sun had to shine through but that didn’t do much to stop the sunlight, Today it was warm all through the night and has stayed that way but the clouds were pretty thick. I can’t really complain about it since it is warm but it would have been nice to see the sunlight again. It’ll be like this for at least ten days, or so they guess at least. Then again I still get daylight and I haven’t had this much daylight at this time of year so that’s a good thing.

     

It’s time for that last cup of tea for the day, I’ve just had dinner so I won’t have anything else today, I have no bananas so I’ll buy more tomorrow 🙂 The roads will be good though, almost no ice left either now, just in a few places where the sun never reach this time of year.

     

Have a great day!

The night crew were still working when we woke up in the morning 🙂

· 4 Comments ·

 

A warm day, well a warm winter day and most of the snow is almost gone now. I found some in the forest and places where the sun can’t reach yet but mostly what’s left is ice. We had a meh fog all morning, wasn’t useful for anything to be honest and to be even more honest that fog was mostly misty rain so small water droplets covered the glasses after a short while. 

   

We walked out to the bog and today I praised both Alma and Malkolm so many times and giving them treats that I think giving them dinner later in the day was just like over feeding them both 🙂 🙂 🙂 I doubt this behaviour won’t last for long but I’m happy for the days I get 🙂 🙂 

   

I have finally figured out how to reduce the size on my photos in the new computer, only took around half an hour and only twenty more to figure out how to save the changes as well, one can say what one wants about PC programs but they are actually quite obvious when it comes to those things. When I do resize the photo I can see how many KB or MB they have become after the change but if I go in to check it in the album the size is right but it still says the original MB the photo was?? Well I’ll figure it out in time 🙂 :-)It is fun to figure it out but it is mostly so annoying 🙂 🙂 

   

Besides that I’ve had a nice calm day. My neighbors car didn’t pass the annual vehicle inspection  so I picked up her in a village called Floby some distance away so she could come home again, there aren’t any communication that comes even close to here unless one wants to have a day trip looking at the environment 🙂 🙂 Wouldn’t have worked today though because it went almost dark before we arrived to the village 🙂 🙂 I love living here but when our cars misbehave it can be a bit of a struggle to be honest.

   

My antenna cable has arrived at the grocery store in Gudhem today, so I’ll go there to pick it up tomorrow morning. I’ll check if I need anything since I’m there, otherwise I had planned to go on either Sunday morning or Monday. I normally just shave off the hair on my head three times a year and since it is as warm as it is and it’ll stay like this, they’re guessing, for a week I did it yesterday. Now I don’t need to think of doing that for three to four months 🙂 I started to do that when I powder painted at my old job, as soon as the hair becomes longer tan two to three centimeters (slightly less or slightly more than inch)the powder sort of became like concrete and wouldn’t move no matter how thorough one wash the hair. Having that paint there gave all kinds of problems and dandruff is the least of them 🙂 🙂 

   

It is time to have that last cup of tea for the day, I’m not really hungry but sort of wants something, I think I’ll have a banana 🙂

Have a great day! 

I put up the wildlife camera for two weeks when we had the snowstorm and the only thing the camera got was this hare, it had found the deer food I had tossed out 🙂