BaroqueW

Rain…

It’s amazing how wherever I go on vacation- it rains. Always. It doesn’t matter where. Canada, USA, France, Malta, Japan, Denmark, Croatia… Even in Dubai, U.A.E.! It rained in the DESERT just to thwart me! Or perhaps I’m a”Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer,” like the guy in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Luckily, I don’t particularly mind the rain and got to snuggle up to my latest book, White Witch, Black Curse (witches, vampires, werewolves.. what’s not to like?)

Today was also a good day for hair-cutting. So my cuddle monkey is now a prickly hedgehog His dad buzzed enough hair off him to make an entire Lhasa Apso. He offered to cut my hair as well, but I declined his generosity.

Step 1. Shear Max

Step 2. Collect Hair

Step 3. Make Lhasa Apso

Step 4. Try not to wonder who this new person is and what he did with your boyfriend

We also took the van out for a mini-drive, so Max can get a feel for it before we borrow it to go to Corsica. Unfortunately, Max cannot open the door to the van. That would hamper our plans to use the van for transport and camping, except I seem to have no problems at all opening the doors. It’s a good thing I wasn’t supposed to drive though, because I’d had more wine with lunch than I meant to and my lips were numb. (Someone kept refilling my wine glass!)

To finish off our day were the best part of France – the most delicious individually packed “desserts” in existence. I had a tiny mini Tarte Citron meringuée, and Max had a MaronSuis‘, which is a delicious whipped chestnut cream so beloved that it has it’s own facebook group. People rave about French cooking, and yes French food is wonderful. But how do they make these delicious beautiful little meringuée pies in their tiny little individual packages?

June 5th, 2009 | Posted by nikkitaa | Category: Articles in English, Voyage / Travel | Comments (6)

Airports…

It’s amazing how much Stockholm’s Arlanda airport has grown over the years. It was a baby airport with grandious plans 10 years ago, when I moved to Sweden. I miss the simplicity of just walking past a security desk manned by one bored looking fellow – even though I was invariably singled out for inspection. Apparently I look suspiciously innocent.

The vacation has barely begun and I have already spent 2000sek. I didn’t have headphones that are viable for use on an airplane (thanks in part to Dexter chewing on wires and in part to my astounding ability to lose and misplace objects.) 

So I am now the proud owner of a set of Philips SHN9500 active noise canceling headphones  and I shutter at the idea of checking how much

 I was gouged for on pricerunner. They work wonderfully well though!

 They’re also much more comfortable than the alien ear invasion technology Max favours. Depeche Mode, Kidney thieves, Christophe Willem and the sountrack of Serenity melt my brain in a gentle padded embrace and tune out the migraine inducing hum of the airplane engines. Aaaah. 

Of course the headphones also have a “mute” feature, so  you can allow sound in (and it cuts off your music as well) and hear announcements. Thus I was able to find out that the plane that had been scheduled for our flight was found to have “too many” problems, and thus we now had a completely different plane last minute (hence the delay in boarding) and that this plane was “perfectly good”. Thank you so much for putting me at ease by telling me about problems I knew nothing about, so that I can now obsessively wonder if I’ll be on the next French plane to vanish into nothing. 

On a somewhat happier note, I’ve started my “summer school” French lessons by working in my excercise book. With Max’s helpful supervision I have learned many useful things. For instance, I can now inform you that la grêle means “When the sky is pooping ice-cubes.”

June 4th, 2009 | Posted by nikkitaa | Tags: airport, France | Category: Articles in English, Voyage / Travel | Comments (3)

I have set up a calendar open for all to access which lists the games from AIK allsvenska and AIK damallsvenska. The results of the games are available for past games. These are generated using iCalCreator class v2.0 and the data is taken from Svensk fotboll. The calendars are in ics format, therefore compatible with Apple’s iCal and Google Calendar, among others.

You can also still follow the release dates of cinema movies in Sweden via my other calendar (release dates source: SF). This one is only updated once a day.

Enjoy and don’t hesitate to leave me a message if you use one of those!

May 20th, 2009 | Posted by BaroqueW | Category: Articles in English, Suède / Sweden | Leave a comment

Check the drivers for the serial-to-USB module of the GPS chip http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31 on Prolific’s website. As of the writing of this article, the right drivers were:

Then install the GlobalSat utility provided with your GPS data logger and enjoy!

Below, my daily commuting to work:

April 29th, 2009 | Posted by BaroqueW | Tags: GPS, Windows | Category: Articles in English, Tech >> Computer, Voyage / Travel | Leave a comment