Springtime?

I think it would be fair to describe me as a person who is, on the whole, rather fond of winter. I like wearing wool sweaters. I like cold, snowy days. I like being warm and cozy inside on dark, stormy evenings. I even like watching curling matches on the tellie.

But it's April now, and I WANT THE SUN TO COME BACK!

The optimist in me supposes its possible that my backyard isn't covered in snow at all, but rather in freshly fallen volcanic ash. But in my heart, I know it isn't so.

On a more positive note, here's some very Swedish nutritional advice posted outside our neighborhood grocery store today:

Glad Påsk!

Today is Annandag Påsk, a national holiday here in oh-so-secular Sweden, and for once at least it's a holiday we're spending in exactly the way it is intended: a day to recover from the excitement of Easter.

Our local påskkäringar inspecting their haul.

Celebrations got underway the evening of Skärtorsdagen, when all the little girls in Sweden dress up as påskkäringar (witches in Sweden apparently favor aprons, head scarves, and lots of plaid) and go door-to-door handing out "Glad Påsk" cards. Just like last year, we had only one set of visitors (not the same pair, I think), and while Jennifer doled out godis to them in thanks for our card, I waited outside and talked to their father, who made sure to point out

You don't have to give them anything if you don't want to. If you don't have candy, you can give them a 5 kronor piece. Or fruit, you could give them fruit!

Despite this last, somewhat wistful addition, we had no spare fruit, so instead I'm afraid we contributed to the 17 kg of candy each of his daughters will consume this year (that's the national average, anyway). Can the candy tax be far away?

If Skärtorsdagen seems somewhat whimsical in Sweden, Långfredag has a tradition of living up to its name, as up until only a few years ago everything in the country was closed for what has been described as "the most boring day in Sweden." Things have lightened up of late, so now grocery stores and even (gasp!) movie theaters are allowed to open for the day.

Nationalist cascarones for our dinner attendees.

For us, Friday and Saturday were spent mostly prepping for Sunday, as once again we had volunteered to supply the cascarones for Easter dinner with our friends G. and D. We were a party of six all told, so we spent Friday and Saturday making 30 colorful little cascarones, enough for everyone to have a go at everyone else. We also made appetizers again; this year we did vegetable samosas, and some corned beef and cabbage spring rolls that I like to call "Blarney Rolls"—I appear to be alone in my appreciation of the name, however.

Dinner was an outstanding slow cooked lamb along with white beans and salad. Afterwards we adjourned outside, where the weather was surprisingly cooperative. We had feared that none of the snow would be clear by Easter, but a few warm sunny days had worked wonders on G. and D.'s front lawn, so we were able to dash about and get confetti everywhere just like we were supposed to.

Chocolate tarta and blueberry sauce

We followed our exercise up with a lovely chocolate tarta, and then a pleasant evening of brainstorming about the table decorations for G. and D.'s upcoming wedding. By the time we had finished a light supper it was well gone 10 o'clock, and time for a well earned rest.

Has the lovely Påsk weather lasted until Annandag Påsk? Well, at 9 this morning it started to snow again…

Half-teaching

You might remember that last year I had some students in the month of March; my project was once again volunteered for the same class year, but this year I ended up splitting the teaching duties with the Austrian postdoc E. who is in the lake project. He wanted the teaching experience, but would be out of town for the second half of the project; meanwhile, I was unemployed for the time leading up to it, but was rehired just in time to take the over for the second half. His good idea was to take the students out to nearby Lake Ekoln and get a new sample, since all our samples are from the summer and we are interested in finding out how the bacterioplankton is different in the winter. I do enjoy a bit of fieldwork— haven't done any for ages now— so I was more than happy to tag along with the group for the trip to take the sample. Back on 1 March, E. drove us and a trunk-ful of equipment down to the northern tip of Lake Mäleran, a basin called Lake Ekoln. This is the lake which runs all the way to Stockholm, and is what they skate on when they do the Uppsala to Stockholm skate race. On March 1, winter was showing no signs of giving up yet— new snow, a strong wind, thick ice. It took about half an hour for us to drill a hole all the way through the ice (here's me taking my turn). Then the two students got out the water bottles, took their samples, and we went back to the lab where the went through the rest of the procedure for filtering the bacteria out. They were very proud and possessive of their samples, as they should have been, since they suffered wet feet in a blizzard in order to obtain them; the Chinese student, who has never experienced anything like this, was quite pleased with the whole experience.

Jag jobbar jobbigt

So here's my job situation. Late last year, my boss, in collaboration with a couple other professors here, wrote a grant application to the European Research Council. One of the purposes of the grant was to continue funding for my current project; the application included funding for a couple of students and a post-doc, with the understanding that I would be the post-doc. The grant was well-reviewed by the ERC, and at the beginning of December or so I was more-or-less assured of a one-year extension. But the way these grants work is that the actual funding is left up to the research councils of member states. And when Vetenskaprådet (the Swedish equivalent of NSF) received our application, they declined to fund it. ERC proposes, VR disposes.

The "good" news is that at least we weren't alone: it sounds like every application from our quite large department was turned down. The fact that we weren't alone is also the bad news: although my boss (who recently stepped down as department chair) said she would make an appeal for emergency funds at the next faculty meeting, the new higher-ups were so mad about the fact that their projects were turned down that they were not in the mood to make exceptions, perhaps especially in her/our case.

Fortunately, as I mentioned before, my boss did have enough money to keep me employed for two additional months (although back when I wrote that, I still thought I might be back on a stipend afterwards). I had to be hired as an employee, and so there was some additional fuss to the process (all positions have to advertised in the EU, get Union approval, and so forth), made a little more difficult in my case because of course meanwhile my residency permit had expired. All that has worked out now, and so finally we will get to the funny.

Guess how much vacation time I get for a two-month contract. Go ahead, guess. At my age and job classification, I get six days off. That's right, six days. That's as much as some new hires get in a year back in the US. Other job classifications might get even more time, I'm not sure.

The other amusing thing that happened is that I started working in the first week in March, but it took a week for them to get together the paperwork, even after the job had been approved. Also, by Swedish law, I am required to have a six-week notice of job termination. Therefore, the secretary came to me with the papers to sign accepting the job on a Thursday; on the very next Wednesday, she came to me with papers announcing that my job has been terminated.

The title of the post means "I work hard."