The most important Christmas video

...oh, I was about to forget! Found this on youtube! My peronal Christmas favorite- in Swedish, though. Sagan om Karl-Bertin Jonsons julafton, by Tage Danielsson/Per Åhlin. I love it!

Last post before Christmas

 I can't get that tomorrow is Christmas eve! Most of December has just flown past... But I'm not too stressed about it all this year. I've finished what I could, except for one hand-made gft and cleaning my flat, but I'll do that tonight. I had my last day of work yesterday, bought the last gift today, and tomorrow morning I'm catching the early train up north - a bit later than usual, but I had no choice as I'll be bringing miss Cat along again and there were no more places (for the both of us) in the pet compartment on any earlier train. But that's ok, I'll be home by lunchtime.

 Christmas will be celebrated in the now traditional order, with family on Christmas eve and with friends on Christmas day. Looking forward to both! Don't know too much about New Year's yet, but looks like it will be spent here in Turku.

Not too much more to report. See you on the other side! And Merry Christmas!

Recommended reading

One of the very few things I did last weekend was to finish reading the before-mentioned biography on Sophie Elkan. (Eva Helen Ulvros: Sophie Elkan: Hennes liv och vänskapen med Selma Lagerlöf) It was a very good read, and I could hardly put the book down. Except for telling the interesting, and sometimes tragic, life story of Elkan herself, who does seem to have been a fascinating person, the biography also highlights much of the life and politics of the time, the changes around the womens rights movement(s) just to mention one aspect.

For now, I'm trying to finish a collection of essays before I return home for Christmas, and should be doing the same with my thesis as well. But this is going painstakingly slow. At least I have finally collected some credits for my recent work, which makes it feel more worthwile, of course. Still, I'm looking forward to the change in routine that the holidays always are, even though this is not (still not, and will never be) my favourite time of year, and even though I'm already feeling the seasonal stress-relaed stomach ache. Let's hope for no tragedies this year (knocks on wood).

The biblio-mat

I love this idea! We should have one here at the library, or maybe at Kåren! I'd definitely use it all the time, out of sheer curiosity...

This week, our main university library has been holding a book sale. I went there yesterday, but bought no more than four books. I had hoped to find more books relating to my area(s), but ended up with only novels (and a biography!). Immediately started reading one of them, a biography on Sophie Elkan (today mostly known as the friend of Selma Lagerlöf, even though in her own days, Elkan was a known and loved author herself). Will definitely write about it later!

on little pink notes and positive thinking

Look, I know you're supposed to photo-post these things, but unfortunately I didn't bring my camera today so you will just have to imagine the thing, OK?

This day started badly, and has so far for most part continued badly too. Just as a hint, I was already close to tears on my way to university this morning. And this of course means being more sensitive to all kinds of negativity for the rest of the day.'

Then, in one of the toilet stalls at my faculty I saw this: [this is where you get to use your imagination] Someone had left a pink, heart-shaped post-it note on the washbowl, saying "Breathe. It's a bad day, not a bad life."

Made my day!

Surfacing

I feel much better today. My workday was much longer than I had planned, and I haven't had the energy (or motivation) to get anything else done after I finally finished, but hell, I still fell good. And the winter has been a nicer kind of winter today; snowy white but without the cold and wind of yesterday. If it's half as nice tomorrow I have to take my camera along when I leave home. I wanted to do it today, but it had already grown to dark when I finally got off work. And I figured out how to continue one of my collage works! Who would I be without my mood-swings?

I still wish the weekend was one day longer, though.