My first attempt at making Swedish gingerbread men failed slightly. Not so much tastewise since I cheated and used ready-made dough, but we don't own a rolling pin, so some of them were a little fatter than they should have been. And when I tried to make big gingerbread men, they ended up a little bit retarded.Mmmn, glögg...
After my, Dunia, and Johan's sterling effort to eat our way through 40 gingerbread this week, we moved up to the next level of baking skill, lussebullar. My view on baking is that if it contains yeast, other people should be impressed it worked. So please, be impressed.

Do you think they ship internationally?

Two weeks ago.


One week ago.




Time to break out the winter jacket again.

Quiet week eh (I went to see the Cat Empire in Västerås last week, but there's a whole other story right there involving a $250 cab ride). Sinus infection. A bad one.

The cons of a sinus infection:
1. Well to be honest, there's a point where you think your nose shouldn't be able to produce much more green goo, and that's just nasty.
2. When it feels like there's a little man inside your face, pushing and ninja kicking to get out, you know you'd better hit up the pseudo. Which, unfortunately is unavailable in Sweden without a prescription, and there's no way I'm going to the doctor again in this country. Ever.*
3. You feel like you're about to die.
4. You look like you're about to die.
5. You wish you're about to die.

Pros of having a sinus infection
1. You can miss class without feeling guilty, which, since I miss class fairly frequently anyway, is always going to be a good thing.
2. You can watch multiple episodes of Aircrash Investigation online, whilst intermittently napping.
3. You lose 2 kilos without any effort (amoebic dysentery anyone?).
4. You save money as you are in bed sleeping and watching Aircrash Investigation rather than,
a) clothes shopping
b) drinking
c) grocery shopping/eating

But as luck would have it, I did go to class on Monday and Wednesday because we had some huge chunks of lab work to do and I felt bad about not going in. Obviously, not such a great idea. We set up some PCR stuff on Monday afternoon and came back on Wednesday to run the gels. Oh my, they were bad. We ran another PCR, we ran two more gels, we sat around in the lab for 8 hours. Oh, they continued to be bad. We decided we had made a mistake designing the primers. I didn't go in on Thursday. They discovered on Thursday that there was nothing actually wrong with the primers, but we had only diluted them once rather than twice, meaning that we were using about 1000x too much and so were not working as they should.

Look, don't tell anyone...but I'm pretty sure that in my infection/drug fuelled haze on Monday afternoon I diluted the primers. Meaning..oops.


*Luckily Mum had sent me some cold and flu tabs. Strangely, they were not confiscated by Swedish customs though my teabags were. Strange country this one.


PS. Nic visited on the weekend, and it was really good to see someone from home. We wandered around town, went to Saturday fika at Storken, Sunday fika at Kalmar and ate toasted cheese sandwiches. A good weekend all round.


Oh, and just for the record, I cracked the other two eggs in that carton. BOTH DOUBLE-YOLKIES. Could I just reiterate.. what are they doing to the chickens?!

UPDATE
After continuous nights of romping upstairs, I put a note in their letter box!!
Said the note, "Please, either stop having so much sex or fix your squeaking bed." And no, I didn't sign it.


Dear people in the room upstairs,

By my watch you have been having sex, on and off, since 7pm and it's now 10.07pm. Now I don't know what kind of drugs you're taking or how you're going to walk tomorrow, nor do I care, but please, for the love of God, would you fix the squeaking bed?!

Warmest regards,
Ellie

PS. You do this every night and I'm not sure how much more of that squeaking bed I can take before I lose my mind. And I quite like my mind. Spare a thought for my mind.

If the chance of finding a double-yolky is 1/1000, you tell me what the chances of getting four double-yolkies (the other two while I was baking yesterday) in one carton are!

Ärtsoppa och pannkaka: pea soup and pancakes.

Killing kings and feeding the masses every Thursday throughout Scandinavian history (well, perhaps not a king for every week). Not surprising really in a country that has national days dedicated to waffles (March 25), cinnamon buns (October 4), saffron buns (December 13), and a whole month for crayfish (August).

I finally graduated to the second level of knitting: it isn't just a straight line (well actually it is, but a fancy one).



And with the temperature rapidly dropping I now have a hat that will fit over my big hair and keep my little ears warm on those nasty nasty 9am bicycle rides to class.