Glad hjärtensdag 2010

In my list, I said that one of my goals was to write a post a day while unemployed. That went out the window on the very first day, of course, but I intend to do some catching up with short posts: more fika- and pub-småpratar, and similar little stories of odds and ends.

To start with, let's talk about brownies. There's not too much "Swedish" in this story, except that if we weren't here, we wouldn't have met our Swiss friends, and we might never have been given a Swiss cookbook, and then we wouldn't have made our Valentines dinner out of Swiss food (sauerkraut, bacon, and Gruyere spring rolls). (They make brownies here, sort of; it's called kladdkaka, but it's too sweet and gooey for my tastes.) So, for dessert, I made "Basel brownies" from the Swiss cookbook. This recipe is the absolutely fussiest brownie recipe I have ever seen, requiring for instance separating the eggs, and pouring boiling water over the chocolate and then decanting the water, and taking up every bowl in the kitchen while the ingredients wait their turn to be assimilated.

They are really good, by the way; the texture is quite unusual, and they are very chocolately and tasty, even made with Swedish chocolate rather than Swiss. (But really, Swedish, Swiss... who can tell the difference?)

I've got a little list

I suppose I will tell the whole story later, but for now, let's stick with the short version, which is this: due in equal parts to a series of miscommunications and the slowness of the bureaucracy, I find myself temporarily unemployed. It's not ideal, of course, but I have been offered at least temporary employment (as soon as legally possible) to try to finish up one of the projects, so the situation is a little less stressful than it could be.

I knew back in January that I would be unemployed in February, and I thought it would be best if I could treat it as a month-long vacation. Nevertheless, I have been making Plans. Here was my list as of the end of January:

1. Write a post for the blog every day.
2. Finish the review paper I am working on with colleagues from UM.
3. Learn Swedish.
4. Watch TV, especially the Winter Olympics.
5. Become reacquainted with my long-dormant domestic skills: have dinner hot and on the table every night, etc.
6. Do a little here and there on the lake projects (i.e., the things I was hired here to do, in other words, WORK).
7. Relax.


#1? Let's just hustle past that one for now. Because I have been working rather a lot on #2, which as far as I know is now back on schedule and coming along. #3 is a work in progress; I have attended Swedish lunch a couple times (more on that later) and I am duly signed up for the free evening courses with svenska för invandrare, starting next week. More on #4 later. #5? Ah, well, so far, umm, no, not so much.

#6? I have really come to like my project, and for the first week of the month, I kept going on it, more or less as if nothing had changed, out of sheer inertia. I did come to my senses, though, when it became clear that my boss was perfectly willing to let me continue to work 10 hours a day, for no pay, if I so chose. She meant it in a kindly way, I think; she herself lives to work... well, anyway, it was an eye-opener. Hello, my name is Jennifer, and I am a workaholic. Time to start working a little harder on #7... err, you know what I mean.


Hours-later edit: I forgot two other things that I was going to do: write and essay to finish that Linnaeus course that I started last term, and finally read "The Silmarillion." The book was recalled by the library before I could even start it; as far as the course goes, hey, I've got all term to do it, right? (Can you guess why I didn't manage to finish it the first time?)