Having Fun
aardvarchaeology | September 6, 2009Played the new German board game Finca that my friend Eddie the heathen goldsmith brought along. It's an abstract system lightly dressed up in a story about harvesting and distributing fruit and greens on Mallorca of all things. Good fun though! Then we played Blokus, always fun too.
Took a sunny six-hour bike trip with my 11-y-o son, had kebab & fries, found three geocaches, failed to find two. It's great when your kid is big enough that he can keep up for hours like that! Quality time.
Went to Circus Brazil Jack with my 6-y-o daughter. As usual a mix of the semi-desperately cheezy and…
aardvarchaeology | September 2, 2009
The 6th Aardvarchaeology blogmeet was a friendly three-hour affair with good food, good drink and good company. 'Twas me, Kai, MÃ¥rten, Per G, Sigmund, Thinker and Tor, and an excellent time was had at Akkurat.
Here's the historical record of blogmeets past. The archaeological record is, due to modern waste-disposal habits, sadly lost.
Wirström's, March '07.
Wirström's, September '07.
Wirström's, January '08.
Akkurat, September '08.
Akkurat, March '09.
Akkurat, September '09.In the interest of consistency -- three blogmeets at each tavern -- we must find a new venue for the seventh…
aardvarchaeology | August 31, 2009Logged four geocaches. One helped me discover a huge vestigial highway overpass. Highway 222 was built in the early '70s, and at one spot west of Nacka high school the road engineers thought that they might one day want to build a four-lane highway crossing the new one. They haven't so far. I rode my bike up this little dead-end road, Birkavägen, and onto the unpaved ground under the great airy concrete vault. On the other side there were just woods with a seldom-used path.
Went to the movies, watched Brüno. Found it equally embarassing and almost as funny as Borat. Been thinking about it…
aardvarchaeology | August 8, 2009[More blog entries about sweden, nature, photography; skärgård, foto, stockholm, natur.]
Tärnskär ("Tern Island") is a low seal-like grey cliff on the outer margin of the Stockholm archipelago. My buddy Dendro-Ãke only goes there when an eastern wind is blowing, because if your engine dies and there's any other wind, you end up on the other side of the Baltic.
The archipelago is a really amazing land/seascape. Imagine a flat gneiss and granite plateau criss-crossed by huge faults and crevices. Now run a few glaciations across it, sanding it down real good, so that everything is rounded…
aardvarchaeology | July 6, 2009
Saturday me and the kids went on an unusual package tour. First we took the 1903 steam ship Mariefred from Stockholm to Mariefred, and got to visit the engine room while the machine was working. Mariefred is a small town on Lake Mälaren whose name preserves that of Pax Mariae, one of the last monasteries founded in Sweden before the Reformation. It is home to one of Sweden's liveliest steam railroad societies which runs a narrow-gauge railroad with a plethora of lovely locomotives and wagons. We saw an amateur musical played at the old railway station, with the actors making entrances and…
aardvarchaeology | June 28, 2009It's been one of the warmest and sunniest weeks in a long time. Saturday I invited friends old and new over: we played a game of Tigris & Euphrates, two games of kubb (no, it is not an old Viking game), made a lovely barbecue dinner and took an evening walk to Lake Lundsjön. Our kubb court was laid out meticulously with the aid of two tape measures and Pythagoras' Theorem, just like when you lay out an excavation trench or grid. Later that night I watched a 2006 concert by Max Raabe & Palast-Orchester on TV.
Sunday me & Juniorette visited some old friends of mine: we had lunch in…
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2009The Rundkvist family right before we went in and apprehended the extraterrestrial. Photo F. Gilljam.
Friday was Mid-summer's Eve. Cycled with the kids to the local maypole celebration. Back home, I assembled the first barbecue I've ever owned and made some really nice souvlaki for our guests.
Saturday we visited Felicia's charming parents in rural Grödinge, not far from where my grandparents used to have a summer house. Learned a lot about beekeeping the hands-on way, saw interesting plants & poultry.
Sunday I took a long bike ride with the kids and logged three geocaches.And your…
aardvarchaeology | June 14, 2009Attended the Where Is the Action rock festival with my wife, heard a lot of good music, much of it new to me. Details here and here.
Shopped for presents and spent an hour having cake and reading, all in the charming company of soon-6-y-o Juniorette. She: Donald Duck; me: Språktidningen.
Celebrated the first birthday of another very sweet and promising little Swedish-Chinese girl.
Played Agricola and had yummy home-made pizza in good company at the new abode of Paddy K.
Mused about the strange fact that soon-11-y-o Junior is at sailing camp. I still feel his baby self in my arms.And your…
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2009The way I like to lead my life is basically Epicurean: "Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear as well as absence of bodily pain through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires." I live for fun. But I try to emphasise the social side of my modest pleasures: I like to have fun together with people I love, not at the expense of others. Call it the Golden Rule.
Now, my work is largely fun, but still I distinguish between work-fun and non-work-fun, because I am by character…
aardvarchaeology | December 16, 2007Yesterday myself & Junior met up with Paddy K. Sr. & Jr. and went to Cybertown, a laser-game place in central Stockholm. Here we paid SEK 60 ($11) per head and donned vests with laser sensors and attached laser guns, forming Team Blue. Teams Red and Yellow each consisted of five ten-year-olds, and Team Green was a dad and his daughter. Then we entered a blacklit dry-ice-smoking dark labyrinth and spent 20 adrenaline-soaked minutes happily sniping at teams Red, Yellow and Green. We won! Not very surprising, given that our team was the only one with two dads. Individually, though, Green…