Having Fun
aardvarchaeology | August 27, 2010I've spent three days with my son's class at Ãngsholmen summer camp where the 12-y-os got a chance to reaquaint themselves after the summer and do some fun stuff together. My job, like that of the other three parents who came along, was basically crowd control and security. The camp is on a small U-shaped island, a former base of the coastal artillery, which once defended the Gällnö port narrows on an important shipping lane. There's a sizeable decommissioned underground fort at one end, probably dating from the inter-war years. The kids swam, canoed, sailed Monark Avanti skiffs, did…
aardvarchaeology | August 22, 2010Sunset seen to the NW from the birthday party
Made huntun (wonton) with my wife & kids, "good to eat and fun to make", as the song about cookies that Junior likes goes.
Watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with wife & son. It's a mid-quality Terry Gilliam film, better than the dreary Brothers Grimm that preceded it but not on a par with excellent films like Brazil or 12 Monkeys. Dr. P is beautiful though, and I'm sorry I didn't watch it on the big screen.
Made a mix CD for a birthday boy.
Went to birthday party with the kids, though I had gotten the wrong coordinates and first…
aardvarchaeology | May 23, 2010Chore in order to achieve future fun: my wife called in a stump grinder a few days ago and had the remains of a thuja in one of our planting beds disintegrated. I emptied the crater of wood chips (harrisian single-context fieldwork methodology, you know) and she planted a magnolia on the edge.
Outdoors Chinese dinner party with good food and animated incomprehensible conversation. One guest, a retired Peking opera singer, had made excellent wonton soup where the meat stuffing was mixed with a common garden weed, Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris, Sw. lomme). Nice cabbagy taste, and…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2010This past weekend was full of fun duties. The only thing I did exclusively for fun was read a pretty depressing novel about slavery, U.K. LeGuin's Powers (2007).
Represented the Swedish Skeptics off-stage at the Nordic Conjuring Championship in Uppsala, as our organisation sponsored the event. I was surprised to see different competing magicians do the same tricks, and then realised that of course there are fashions in that too. The winner was Reggie Simon, an excellent performer originally from the US, whose act contained wry references to that country's racism and gun-nuttery.
Directed the…
aardvarchaeology | March 29, 2010Joined Jrette on her first bike ride for the season. Had to raise the saddle 5 cm.
Emceed at the Swedish Skeptics' first full-day conference. We felt that it was time to have a bigger event to make it worthwhile for members to travel to Stockholm for it. Four talks, a mentalist, the annual business meeting plus lunch and coffee breaks. And a good time was had.
Played Agricola with friends. Had a pretty good combo of a pottery business and a clay delivery job, but what really saved my game was that I managed to become yeoman farmer. Still Swedepat won, that evil son of a Värmland.And you,…
aardvarchaeology | March 22, 2010Celebrated the 257th anniversary of the Academy of Letters wearing tails.
Had a fine sunshine brunch on Folly Hill with my wife. The place was heavily dominated by couples born in the 70s and sporting toddlers / babies / big bellies, all probably from the expensive waterfront housing area nearby. The music was all 90s hits all the time.
Watched The Usual Suspects (1995), an OK gangster flick featuring an almost unrecognisably slim and fresh-faced Benicio del Toro who slurs his speech beyond what I thought possible.
Played Agricola with friends.And you?
aardvarchaeology | March 15, 2010Had brunch and a walk in the sunshine with wife and sans kids, a rare pleasure. Strange to think that in just a few years' time they won't need us much anymore. I guess it's one tiny step at a time, setting us down gently. Anyway, it's only 15 years to the first grand-child if Junior repeats my life schedule.
Played Drakar och Demoner, Drakborgen/Dungeonquest and a card game with Jr and his buddy. The latter game has a naughty name that involves bodily discipline of a rambunctious simian who is disrupting the recycling trade.And you, Dear Reader?
aardvarchaeology | March 8, 2010
Last week was skiing break for my kids. I couldn't find anywhere good to stay in the mountains, so we didn't go off on holiday. Here's what we did for fun instead.
Dinner at the home of a Chinese friend. It was one of those no hablar parties that spouses in multi-ethnic marriages know all about. The food was great and everybody there except me spoke Mandarin - loudly and incessantly. I've never minded much: this time I had brought a book and there was a computer to play with.
Birthday party at the home of an Iranian friend. He used to be a death-metal kid. Now he's a pro-democracy Persian…
aardvarchaeology | March 2, 2010Weatherwise, last weekend was thawing and misty and overcast, so I didn't feel like doing much outdoors. I finished reading Daryl Gregory's new novel (didn't do much for me) and started Douglas Adams's fifth Hitch-hiker book. When it appeared in 1992 I didn't bother with it since it seemed too much like flogging an aging franchise, but 11-y-o Junior recently asked me to buy it for him and then he recommended it. So far it seems mildly entertaining.
Had friends over for games: Settlers of Catan and Qwirkle. I was lucky enough to trade my old 80s Junta game for that Settlers box last week. I…
aardvarchaeology | February 22, 2010Friday night I unexpectedly found myself looking at dinner all alone. So I quickly arranged for a visit with friends to a Jamaican restaurant (I had jerk chicken), and after our meal Swedepat beat me and Dr Sandy at Race for the Galaxy.
Saturday was mainly chores, but in the evening the Rundkvist family (including 6-y-o Juniorette) played Dungeonquest/Drakborgen and of course got their characters soundly killed.
Sunday morning being extremely snowy and bright with sunshine, I went skiing twice, once with Junior and once with this awesome chick who likes to hang out with me.
Then in the…
aardvarchaeology | February 14, 2010
Had friends over to play some Abalone, Hell Rail and Balderdash. 11-y-o Junior often joins our board-game sessions these days.
Bought ski boots for Junior and went skiing with him and the Rundkvist ladies.
Watched Where the Wild Things Are. Nice visuals, but the movie unexpectedly turned out mainly to explore the complicated personal relationships between a group of monsters. They all behave like a cross between small children and old junkies and are pretty annoying.
Celebrated Chinese New Year's Eve at an unassuming suburban restaurant that made my wife nostalgic through its genuine tacky…
aardvarchaeology | February 7, 2010Took a walk and photographed two buildings for Wikipedia.
Went skiing on the golf course.
Had friends over, played a game of Scotland Yard and a game of Power Grid.
Painted three walls in the bedroom. This was sort of a chore, but not in fact boring, and having a nice-looking bedroom is fun. The fourth wall is destined for some faux-Japanese cherry-branch wallpaper on pale grey that looks like something out of a William Gibson novel.
Had family over for a fine Korean dinner cooked by two Chinese sisters.
One piece of fun that I missed out on was Midlake's Stockholm gig. It was sold out.…
aardvarchaeology | January 31, 2010
Went skiing twice.
Went skating on Lake Källtorpssjön at the Hellas sporting centre under the watchful eye of the Nacka radio masts. There's a snow-ploughed circuit there, but it hadn't been ploughed recently so there was a lot of snow to contend with, plus ice cracks and a stiff cold wind, so it could have been more fun.
Played two games of Pitch Car, two of Drakborgen/Dungeonquest and two of Settlers of Catan. Didn't win even once, but had fun anyway.
Went around a number of neighbours doing the annual reading of their water meters for the housing-area administration. It's part of a…
aardvarchaeology | January 24, 2010Had a lot of fun this weekend:
Went skating twice, once with each of my kids.
Went skiing with my wife.
Got beaten at Pitch Car four times by my kids.
Took the kids to a birthday party for a charming friend of mine, populated largely by former physics engineers who are now programmers.
Took my son to a concert with 50s and 60s pop tunes performed by a choir and solists.
Had post-concert dinner with friends & son.And you, Dear Reader?
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2010Here's what I did for fun this past weekend.
Watched Avatar.
Had a dim sum dinner.
Chucked out the Christmas tree, lopped off the branches and kept the trunk to bring to my dad's place for firewood. (This doesn't sound like fun? Well, my life consists of fun, work and chores, and anything related to Christmas trees has to be sorted under "fun".)
Went skiing on the golf course.
Had friends over for dinner and a game of Power Grid.And you, Dear Reader?
In other news, Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science has resumed blogging after a long hiatus. Chris is a zooarchaeologist (i.e. animal…
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2010
I just had to swap two hours of daytime work for two hours of evening free time and get out on Lake Lundsjön with my skis. It's amazing, seeing the cliffs where we sim and sun bathe in the summers, but from an otherwise unreachable vantage point two meters above the water's surface!
aardvarchaeology | December 26, 2009I've had this decent idea for a post popping up in my mind twice and then dropping out of it before I had a chance to write myself a note. It's something about fragments, about beginnings of stories stacked onto each other like a collage. Or so I seem to remember. Maybe it will come back to me.
So, instead, here are some random jottings about my Christmas.
We have a lot of snow and I have been shoveling selected bits away from the yard and the outdoors stairs using a shovel that the previous owner of the house left for us in the garage.
I also had to shovel a track to the compost container.…
aardvarchaeology | November 30, 2009[More blog entries about Sweden, photography, manor; Närke, Askersund, foto, herrgård.]
I was headed for a lonely November weekend with wife & daughter abroad and son with his mom. So I rounded up three friends (though Paddy K was kept from coming along at the last minute by a big meltdown at work), loaded my best board games and a couple of grocery bags into the family car, and drove to Stjernsund manor in Närke.
Our way there was kind of interesting. I plotted a course that would be as close to a straight line as possible yet largely follow major highways. This meant that we spent…
aardvarchaeology | October 18, 2009Friday night, I made tacos and chocolate chip cookies with my kids. Saturday, I attended the Imagicon 2 speculative fiction conference, chairing a panel on time travel and forming part of a panel on legal aspects of interstellar empires without faster-than-light travel. I also talked to loads of people and bought a 70s paperback edition of Shea & Wilson's Illuminatus books, which I haven't read before.
Today I finished and submitted a review essay, which is sort of work but fun too, especially since it's the first time I've been commissioned by a major newspaper to write something. And as…
aardvarchaeology | October 11, 2009
I took Friday off from work and drove with my friend Anders to Avesta, an industrial town in Dalecarlia, where our friend Pär and his lovely wife, both teachers, have recently settled. We spent the afternoon and evening walking in the sunshine, admiring their house, eating like kings, listening to some pretty far-out and eclectic music (including Earth, Heino, Om, Demis Roussos and Sunn) and playing the Swedish 70s board game Marinattack. It's notable for coming with an electronic device that replaces dice and outcome tables. They kicked my ass five games in a row. The shame!
Then on…