I’m sitting at the public library in Överkalix today, three days into my summer vacation. It’s raining outside, lightly, but it’s been doing so all day, and looks like it will be continuing for quite some time as well. Yesterday was sunny, as was the day before, and during our journey by car the 1100 kilometers up to our summerplace the clouds covered the sky but shed no water - perfect driving weather. We watched as a convoy of old cars sped by on Swedens national day, and spent the night with a couple of old relatives. Great food granted. We stayed with an old friend on the way up the next day, recieved a guided tour over his new establishment by a small torrent. Great place.
We arrived around ten in the aternoon, with the sun still high in the sky (land of the midnight sun, all June & July). I started out the night by thoroughly cleaning out our primitive sauna, floors, walls, ceiling, everything. Filled up the water tanks and lit a fire, and shed a few liters. After the ten hour nap following I woke up and mowed the lawns, and a bit more. Plans for this year include opening up a large new patch of grass infront of our house and a smaller one behind it from the surrounding fields of green. Towing away decades of grassy decay isn’t easy, ground is uneven and a thick layer of dried remenents coat the ground. A brave attempt at clearing the edges of our fields from shrubbery and now larger trees also is in my minds store, with an axe. To get rid of the source, the roots, hacking up the trees and everything beneath them is the only alloted option. There is a potential reapage area of around 40,000(!) steady plants in varied sizes and breeds just waiting to be ripped and hacked away… good exercise. :)
Every summer that passes carries progress with it, so soon the summerhouse will be back in optimal shape (as it was before my parents grew old and stopped tending to it on the previously used regular basis). I plowed up a patch for tomatos too, started expanding the “farm” a bit. If all goes timely i should have built a lifesize chess board in stone/wood, an outside shower with a manually filled water tank and a few bridges around our arena before the sunshine is over.
This is the second run into Överkalix (place where library resides, nearest city, about 20km away). The first time here I planned to schedule a drive up, but I appearantly forgot a password needed up in Stockholm so the attempt failed. I have my second drive up scheduled for Monday now though, by phone, hope it goes well. Thought I would have gotten over my previous nervousity after failing ones, but it’s still here. Had a killer headache yesterday so I was in bed mostly all day. I’ve been sleeping at least 10-12 hours the past two nights, making up for lost sleep the hectic week before I left for vacation (studies/websites gave me no rest), and on Tuesday I was so sore from all work the day before I didn’t have power left to do much of anything. Hmm, week so far has been weaker than I expected it to be, hehe. I’ll catch up though, am still jogging every other day to in shape stay.
Internet connection here is hellishly slow, bugs me like a mountain of ants. To logon to gMail I have to reload the page it seems a dussin times before anything happens, or type in the main adress again, otherwise the “Loading” message runs forever. I can reach the admin panel for my sites fine, but viewing the main site is an impossibility, the graphics are too heavy for this computer. There is good news though, the assignments I stressfuly sent in before leaving seem to have passed judgement … the ones that have been judged thus far that is. I probably won’t be by a computer for a while now, there’s nothing more that needs doing ‘cept checking back on my studies to see if I have anything with remaking mandatory. Have a good sommer peopls!
