I suppose that when you are a published academic, you are expected to be so high above worldly concerns that seeing your name in print is of no consequence. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers (as Terry would say.) I’m published! In vol 66 of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, ISSN 0028-3754; my paper is on p 295-305.

I think that is extremely cool. So there.

Thanks for birthday wishes. Unfortunately, the five days since my last post haven’t all been wonderful: I started feeling vagualy crummy with a bit of a cough on Wednesday afternoon, and went home early skipping the choir because I had no voice left and only wanted to go to bed. I felt too tired and generally out of it to have anything seisible to eat, so just took a mixture of cough drops and went to bed, sleeping very badly. On Thursday, I was supposed to teach from 8:15 to 9, which meant I had to get up at 6; I got up, had some water with honey for my voice, and promptly threw it up again. I didn’t feel too bad though, just very tired, so ascribed it to having had not much sleep and nothing to eat the night before (my stomach does these things to me when I don’t feed it regularly. Silly creature.) So I did go to work, and taught for 45 minutes, and went home again, had a cup of tea and immediately lost that, too. And a banana I tried to eat.

Cutting out sordid details, I was thoroughly sick to my stomach all day Thursday, in addition to the cough getting worse (not a particularly pleasant combination). Johan, being an angel, got me blueberry soup which by the end of the evening I was able to drink and keep. Yesterday — Friday, I feasted on boiled, unsalted cod and toast without any spread. It may have been the nicest toast I’ve ever had.

Today, my stomach is fine, but I do have a whopper of a cold. And I really, REALLY can’t be ill now. I MUST be well by Monday, because I’m teaching almost all day — on Friday it was only one hour and I expect they found somebody to stand in (I did call in sick when I got home on Thursday), but not for six classes! And of course this means I can’t relax cos I’m worrying too much, which is totally counterproductive but I don’t know how not to. And my stupid nose doesn’t work to breathe through.

In addition, this morning I found a grey hair. On myself. I’m old….

(OK, that last isn’t serious. I got a grey hair — big deal. Shows I’m big enough to, er. I’m sure I’m big enough for something.)

Happy Birthday to… well, me.

A good day, on the whole. Luxury breakfast in bed, nice presents; and later, colleagues singing to me and giving me cake; funny cards with cats on them, both the e-variety and paper ones; and a virtual cake with everlasting candles, plus a virtual IKEA Fabergé egg. I know nice people. (And odd ones.)

“Those who can’t, teach.” Well, I’ve taught my first class — and I guess I learnt something from it.

Oh, and it’s snowing. I know you all wanted to know. Waaah…

I give you… the Dala moose. To quote the manufacturer: “Quite an unusal item which leaves few unaffected!”

(If you have no idea what a dala horse is, you may want to take a look here, but it’s not required.)

Woo-hoo! The university IT services dept approved my application for a partially-funded new computer — I was a little afraid they wouldn’t, as only permanently employed people are supposed to get that, and I only have another year or so to go. But they approved it (because the head of my department signed my papers — thank you, Christer!) and hopefully I’ll be looking at a shiny new MacBook Pro, 2GHz, sometime after Easter.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. My old Powerbook, Senex, is no longer portable: every time I close it, a couple of cables are trapped and if I do it too often I’m afraid they will fray and break. So I’ve had to start using the almost-useless computer which is taking up space on my desk at work, and use Senex only at home. In a way it’s nice to have just a memory stick to carry to and from town, instead of a computer, but it wouldn’t work in the long run. So yay!!

Plus the MBP is shiny, and has a built-in camera, and it’s fast like the wind. I’ve only heard good things about it, apart from some stuff that doesn’t really affect me anyway.

It’s March! It’s Early March!! Why are they predicting -17°C for Wednesday night?? Of course it’s an uncertain prediction, all weather predictions are if they are that far ahead. But still. Minus 17! Not to mention the fact that we would need to shovel the driveway twice a day if we wanted to keep it reasonably clear.

March! Get real, Thor.

Right, so this is a) only funny if you know Swedish and b) rather rude. It will help having some knowledge of the Värmland dialect as well (more specifically, in the ways that it is lexically similar to Norwegian).

This was published in Expressen a few days ago. My colleague Kicki (who does have some knowledge of the Värmland dialect) showed it to me, and we wondered together if that was the same edition of the rag in question that was published in Karlstad? Yes, knowing a bit about language is important…

I finished my Master of Arts degree in December, 1998, by submitting and getting a Passing grade for my paper in library and information science. Today I picked up the degree certificate. I am the queen of procrastination! Given that it won’t be that many years (I hope) before I get a much prettier diploma saying I’m a PhD^*, it might seem a little unnecessary. But the department secretary has asked for us all to show our degree papers, which meant I kind of needed a paper to show. The funny thing is that here, at this job, my degree doesn’t make any difference to my pay, it’s just a matter of what letters they put in the university phone book; whereas at my former job it was a substantial difference in pay — but there they didn’t ask to see the diploma, they took my word for it.

It’s a rather nice-looking piece of paper though, with my full name, an embossed seal^** and a water-mark and everything. If I remember it, I might scan it on Monday when I bring it in to work, and post a picture.

^*Wood duly touched.
^**Not that kind of seal. Stop barking.