Snow day

Today there was a class 2 warning of the snow storm hitting most of Sweden. Here we might get 40 cm of snow, but the wind will probably be the worst part. Hard time to keep the bike paths open, since the wind forms new snowdrifts all over in a short time and make the paths unpassable.
Questions you asked yourself: Will I be snowed in at work today? Or blown a way?

Of course this was a day were you had to go somewhere after work, a planned meeting downtown. Maria biked there from work, but Olle gave up having unplowed bike paths in front of him. On the way home Maria struggled in the snow and had to walk most of the uphill part. Snow-trudging is workout in itself. For the last part she biked on the streets, instead of the snowy bike paths. Probably the cars didn't like it so much.

Thursday morning Maria biked to work as usual, since it take so long time to walk and the bus is probably not trustworthy in time or too overfilled in this weather. She used the street part of the way, before she found a plowed bike path (taking an alternative way to work, but plowed). Within the University area the paths were nicely plowed, as usual.

Additional choir training

Today the tenor voice of Olle's choir had an extra practice session at one of the choir members. After a couple of hours it sounded quite well. We have sung wrong in some of the parts of the tunes, but today we polished these passages.

Orbitrap up for fight!

During three days we had a service engineer working on one of our mass spectrometers, the Orbitrap that Maria is the main user of. Not that anything was broken, but it was time for the yearly service (the instrument was installed 10 months ago). Maria kept following the engineer about all the steps he did. Interesting to see when he took apart some parts of the instrument (liquid pumps, instrument interface etc), and at the meantime try to learn how to do smaller repairs. He didn't do anything with the most advanced/expensive parts, meaning the internal mass analyzers, these you probably you do more harm than good if you touch.
Afterwards we hope the sensitivity will be higher than before. One way to decrease the background noise, would be to clean the solution bottles and put newly prepared solutions.

Our first ski trip

This week we weren't out so much during the weekdays, not when it's -20 - -25C. More or less only during transport to work or short walks, hardly recognizable behind all winter clothes.

But just in time for the weekend the cold weather loosened its grip and today we had around -5C. With some sun shining as well, it was a shame to not be outside. Yesterday we took a walk in the neighborhood, after our standard group exercise hour.

Today we decided it was time to use our skis for the first time, so we walked to Nydalasjön. Surprisingly there wasn't so much snow on the lake as in the landscape around. We followed the perimeter of the lake, in tracks from earlier skiers. Probably the lake wasn't frozen when all the snow fell, since in some places water had pushed through the ice and mixed with the snow, which now had become slush. This kind of surface was hard to ski on, the skis almost got stuck. We arrived back to the apartment 2½ hours later, feeling good about the time outdoors.
Next time we might try the prepared ski tracks around Bräntberget.

Winter vehicles

Olle took a stroll in the neighborhood the day after we came back. It seemed like the amount of snow that had fallen when we were away was about 1/2 m. Some of the bikes/cars in the area don't seem to have been looked after for a couple of weeks...

New Year on an island

On New Year's Eve we were eight of us (us two, Olle's parents and an uncle and an aunt with companies) who took a boat taxi to the cottage house off the coast of Östergötland. It wasn't warmer than -10 C in the houses when we arrived, but later in the evening we managed to get around 25 C in the larger cabin and about 18-20 C where we slept for the night. The water in the faucet was frozen so we had to connect directly on top of the water pump in order to get fresh water. You have to put up with some more work if you want to stay at the cottage even off season.

We had a nice dinner with champagne shaped ice cream as dessert.

During the next evening the snow started to fall, so the morning of January 2nd we had to shovel for easier access between the houses.

On Sunday the 3rd we drove back north again. This time the roads was more winter like. Not much of cars in our direction, it seemed more like most people were driving south from a trip to the Swedish mountains. Sometimes it is good to live in this part of the country :-).

GOTT NYTT ÅR!

We wish you all happiness and joy. Happy New Year!

Boxing Day in Småland

On Boxing Day Maria's siblings with families came to her parents' house and we celebrated Christmas together. Traditional Christmas dinner again, but now with a Finnish touch, as well as a few more presents. Three days of Christmas is a good Swedish tradition, which means you don't have to travel so often, but instead have time to be whole days with the families.
The picture features one of the meadows outside Maria's parents seen through a frozen window.

On Monday we picked up Maria's sister-kids from "fritids" (after school child care). Several different games were played during the evening, even if the nephew liked the car racing game on the computer most.

Tuesday evening we enjoyed together with Maria's brother with family. Sledge downhill and some rink skating before the kids went to bed.

The next day it was time to end the time in Småland and fill the car to go to Olle's parents again.

GOD JUL!

Merry Christmas to all brave ones that follows this blog!

Early Christmas and an active rest

On Saturday we drove south to Olle's parents. During a few hours we had the sun shining into our eyes, not a bad idea to bring the sunglasses. It felt as joining a light therapy when so active noticing the day light, compared to other days sitting in an office most of the daylight hours. We noticed most of Sweden seems to have winter with snow, but the roads weren't so bad anyway. About two hours south of Umeå we passed the Ångermanälven river on the High Coast Bridge, which has a total length of about 1.9 km.

Already Sunday we celebrated Christmas, since this was the day Olle's both siblings could join. All the families (except one nephew) and grandfather were there. After a traditional dinner, we shared our Christmas presents. As usual it's the smaller kids who are most excited.

In the beginning of this week we shoveled the ice on the nearby lake, on Wednesday that meant several cm of snow. We arranged so we had a round trip of 400-500 m on the lake where we could enjoy skating. We hoped for some sun to melt the surface and get a nice glassy surface, but this wasn't the case. Finally you could question if it was worth the efforts, since we used almost more time to remove snow than to skate. Anyway it felt good to do some exercise.

On Wednesday evening we enjoyed sauna with refreshing dip in the hole in the ice. You have to be clean for Christmas :-)

Christmas Eve was a relaxed day, except some more skating.
On Christmas Day we went to an old friend of Olle, before driving to Maria's parents.

Short winter days

Olle took a walk to Nydalasjön today. The sun does not rise that much above the horizon this time of the year.
The pictures are taken about 11:30.

Group meeting of the year

Today all of Maria's research group went to Baggböle Herrgård. There everyone had a 15-min presentation about the research plans for the coming year. Interesting to hear about all the persons' work, even if in a short version, including the directions for our bosses (our group meetings are combined for two research groups).
For lunch we had a Christmas plate, that showed up to be a three-meal-course with inspirations from traditional Christmas food.


We could notice it was a nice sunny day outside, much more daylight than normal. Good thing that the daylight time is longer than the time the sun rises above the tree line. At 10.30 am we enjoyed the "sunrise" and at lunch time 1 pm it was gone again.


In the afternoon back at work again, we learned more about ribosomes and antibiotics listening to the Nobelprize winner Ada Yonath.

Education also need recovery

During two days UPSC (Maria's workplace) has been to Kronlund outside Vindeln. A lot of seminars from younger scientists at the departments were interesting, as well as to hear more about the new big plant project here in Umeå; sequencing of Norway spruce, the plant of biggest economical importance in Sweden.
Thursday evening we relaxed in the sauna for a while and had nice relaxing chats. When some people had had enough there finally were space in the hot tubs. Maria ended up drinking a few beers and not leaving the hot tub until 1.30 am. Why leave earlier? You can sleep some other time, and breakfast wasn't until 8 am next morning.

For Friday lunch we had traditional Swedish Christmas smorgasbord (=smörgåsbord, "julbord"). There were a lot of different fishes for the first plate/meal. As usual you eat until your stomach is overfull. No need for more food this day.

Before taking the bus back, we had time for a short walk. We were surprised to find Vindelälven frozen, but it wasn't that much more snow over all than in Umeå.

Christmas concert and potluck

1:30 pm the last rehearsal with Olle's choir before the real Christmas concert began downtown at "Kafé Station". At 3 pm the guests arrived, including Maria and Olle's uncle with wife.
The performance took about 75 minutes, 21 songs including talks in between.
The audience seemed to enjoy it, and the choir too. It is always much more fun to perform in front of an audience than just practicing. Olle had only had about three weeks to practice the different songs (the main part of the choir have performed most of the songs earlier years), but taking that into the account, it went quite good. A couple of songs were harder to sing, during these he leaned back a bit on the more experienced tenors.

Half past six it was time for the annual Christmas potluck for the choir. Most of the members showed up, some of them with their partners. We brought home baked bread. Even though it was a Christmas potluck, there were not that many typical Christmas dishes. Olle had some interesting discussions about choir life with one of the conductors.

Dissertation Dinner

An Australian guy had been pursuing his PhD for six years in the lab.
Today it was time for his dissertation, which he managed with great success during the morning.
In the evening there was a dinner with the title "Wild meats and great southern wines". The title was revealed as kangaroo and moose with roasted potatoes and chanterelle sauce. It was the first time we tried Kangaroo, it reminded us of rabbit/hare.
There was also a wine tasting with three different red wines from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
During the evening a spex (=amateur comedy theatre) about the life of the PhD student was performed. Maria was one of the actors.
We went back home about 1.45 am, but the party was far from over at that time.