Gosh wow. We received four Unshelved albums in the mail today — a gift from our friend Jay the Librarian. And all four albums were signed — with a dedication to me!

The envelope was gorgeous, too, covered in stamps, one each in the Wonders of America series.

Gosh and, if I may say so, wow. Thank you so much, Jay.

Stina gave birth to a son two days ago

Added: Here is a picture. He will have to practice a bit before going to his first hard rock concert. (Vital statistics: 49 cm, 2900 g, and everybody involved is doing just fine.)

The Open Directory Project, where I am a meta editor, was down and out (for the editors if not for the public) from the end of October to the end of December last year. We couldn’t log in and edit at all, which led to a terrible abstinence; in fact, I went so far as to start editing intermittently in Wikipedia. I even discovered that I kind of liked it (although I was very happy when the ODP returned) and so I’ve continued to edit a bit there as well. This morning I wrote a short article about the fiddler Gås-Anders. It was nominated for the “Did you know…” section of Wikipedia’s front page, where interesting facts from articles written over the last five days or so are displayed — I am sure it won’t actually be listed in that section but all the same I feel quite pleased.

Writing that article and looking up facts for it also caused me to pick up my violin and play folk music for a good 45 minutes or so. I don’t know how many years it has been since I last touched the fiddle; the bow was in a poor state (and I don’t have a rosin), my fingers were unused to it and my fingernails are too long, and it did squeak rather a lot. But it was fun, and it sounded much much better than I had thought it would. Johan got home from his shopping trip while I was playing; when I went out into the kitchen and saw him he commented that I probably hadn’t heard him return because I had music on — that is, he’d thought it was a record playing! Of course I haven’t played the violin since we married and possibly not even for as long as we’ve lived together, so hearing music playing he would naturally assume that it was a recording. But still, and anyway.

Why do I like the Kingdom of Loathing so much? It’s silly in just the right way to be sure, and the kind of adventure game where you get to improve your abilities and add new skills is always fun (or so I think). But it is also constantly evolving, and I think that’s what makes me keep playing it — I would have discovered quite a lot of what there is to discover by now, not everything but a lot - and just plodding on doing the same things over and over to gain new skills does get repetitive after a while. But they develop it, inserting new puzzles every so often. That’s what makes me keep playing it. (That, and the creative silliness.)

I read in DN that the hottest single record of 2006 in Sweden, the one most sold in shops and most downloaded from the net, is Who’s da Man with 7-year-old Frans. OK, so I know I am not exactly with it when it comes to music, but usually I’ve at least heard the names of groups or artists. Not so in this case.

I am old.

(Looking it up I discover that it was apparently the official team song for the Swedish football team in last year’s World Cup, so there was good reason for me not to have heard it - but still, not even having heard the artist’s name… I am old.)

Recent reads:

* The entire Aubrey-Maturin series (apart from the unfinished one), 20 novels. It wasn’t the first time I read the series, and I predict that it won’t be the last time either; though next time I probably won’t read all 20 in a row without other reading in between. The books are exciting, they are well-researched, and they are laugh-out-loud funny. They contain some of the most memorable characters in any fiction I’ve ever read — as well as very vivid portraits of life aboard a ship during the Napoleonic Wars. I can’t believe I ran out of Aubrey-Maturin books. Waah!

* Santiago by Mike Resnick. It’s a tall tale, a yarn in the tradition of Paul Bunyan or Joe Magarac, with larger-than-life characters livin’ on the frontier — except the frontier is the edge of the civilized parts of the galaxy. It’s a fun story, the kind of story where the plot holes don’t matter, and it was an enjoyable read if not at all in the league of the previous novels I read.

At the moment I’m reading Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines, a young adult SF novel which is quite excellent. I can’t believe I hadn’t even heard of it before.

It suddenly struck me that the other day was the 15th, which was the date when the IPrA were going to decide which submitted papers they would accept, for the 10th International Pragmatics Conference. So I logged in, and found that my Pending status was changed to Accepted. So there I’ll be, lecturing on the use of address phrases in email to the big-name pragmaticists of the world. Eek but also yay.

The Husband and I read aloud to each other, most evenings (that is, every evening unless we are completely knackered). Here is a chronological list of the books we’ve read so far; either I reading to him or he to me:

Frans G. Bengtsson: Röde Orm, 2000
Tove Jansson: Kometen kommer, 2000
Tove Jansson: Trollkarlens hatt, 2001
Tove Jansson: Muminpappans memoarer, 2001
Tove Jansson: Farlig midsommar, 2001
Tove Jansson: Trollvinter, 2001
Tove Jansson: Det osynliga barnet, 2001
Tove Jansson: Pappan och havet, 2002
Tove Jansson: Sent i november, 2001
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Bock i örtagård, 2002
Eric Linklater: Det blåser på månen, 2002
Eva Ibbotson: Den stora spökräddningen, 2002
Nils-Olof Franzén: Agaton Sax klipper till, 2002
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Historier från Färs, 2003
Rudolf Raspe: Baron Münchhausens märkvärdiga äventyr, 2003
Stig Claesson: Vem älskar Yngve Frej?, 2003
L. Frank Baum: Trollkarlen från Oz, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 1, 2003
Eva Ibbotson: Hemligheten på perrong 13, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 2, 2003
Nils Holmberg (transl): Tusen och en natt 3, 2004
Irmelin Sandman Lilius: Enhörningen, 2004
Torgny Lindgren: Bat Seba, 2004
J. R. R. Tolkien: Ringens brödraskap, 2004
Håkan Nesser: Barins triangel, 2004
Fritiof Nilsson Piraten: Bombi Bitt och jag, 2005
Edith Unnerstad: Kastrullresan, 2005
Eric Lundqvist: Ingen tobak, inget halleluja, 2005
Kenneth Grahame: Det susar i säven, 2005
Erik Granström: Svavelvinter, 2005
Michael Ende: Momo eller kampen om tiden, 2005
Håkan Nesser: och Piccadilly Circus ligger inte i Kumla, 2005
J. R. R. Tolkien: De två tornen, 2006
Jerome K. Jerome: Tre män i en båt, 2006
Jules Verne: Till jordens medelpunkt, 2006
J. R. R. Tolkien: Konungens återkomst, 2006
Jaroslav Hasek: Den tappre soldaten Svejk, 2006

At the moment, J is reading part 4 of Tusen och en natt - which is 1001 Arabian Nights, by the way - as you can also see in the left-hand margin of this blog.

OK, one more thing before I sign off for tonight. New Blogger gives posts a time stamp when you start typing them in, not when you actually post them. I started writing that Bill & Bull post before watching the first episode of Lewis and posted it more than two hours later.

This is just something I’ve noticed, you understand - it’s not really a criticism.

I just discovered Bill and Bull, a double planet orbiting Delta Eridani. Oh, ok, so I didn’t literally discover it — astronomers from Uppsala University did. Isn’t that marvellous? Discovering a double planet and naming the constituents Bill and Bull.

And for those readers who were not raised on a diet of Swedish childrens’ literature: Bill and Bull were twin cats who were the minions of the nasty cat Måns, nemesis of Pelle Svanslös (Peter No-tail in the English translations of the books). Bill and Bull were always seen together, and always said the same things, generally echoing what Måns said (and often getting it oh so slightly wrong). Especially Bull had no imagination of his own, he’d repeat everything Bill said, and so in Swedish, “X, said Bull” has become a means of emphasising that X is rather obvious.

Bill and Bull as a double planet. Excellent. I’ll sleep well tonight.