White rabbits
Mar. 1st, 2009 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI am busy at work, scrabbling a bit to fit in enough experiments to have something to publish by April. I don't honestly think it's all that likely at this point, but I want to give it my best shot.
Thursday evening I agreed to help SS move house (his housemate has apparently gone literally crazy, like threatening to cook and eat him crazy, so he had to escape as fast as possible.) Helping people to move house is not my favourite thing, but it feels like it's good karma somehow, especially as I'm contemplating moving internationally at short notice myself soon. And I really like SS' friends, they're studenty in a way that makes me slightly nostalgic.
I had a very lazy shabbat, which I needed, though I slightly naughtily shortened it at both ends, starting late because I didn't allow quite enough time for my experiment, and finishing early so that I had time to spend a couple of hours in the lab again taking a critical measurement before going out Saturday night. The occasion was Joanna celebrating a year in Stockholm.
She picked a cocktail bar in the trendy south island area, Marie Laveau. The decor (and prices, but what can you expect for Stockholm?) are quite chi-chi cocktail bar, the clientèle more townie; apparently it has a reputation for having seen better days and now degenerating into a slightly seedy pickup joint. Significant gay presence, just glancing around. While not somewhere I'd have picked out myself, it was pleasant, managing an atmosphere that was fun and party-ish without being desperate. And they have quite a nice range of cocktails, not the usual standards but a bunch of house specialties with lots of fruit liqueurs and actual bits of fruit in. The cocktail waiter was delightfully flamboyant, more or less throwing his bottles around as he poured them, and nearly juggling knives and fruit by way of cutting slices. I enjoyed myself rather more than I'd expected; Joanna knows some really interesting people and I got into the conversation enough that I lost track of time, whereas I often end up clock-watching a bit at gatherings in bars. At 11 pm, by which time the place was fairly packed, they turned up the music disco-loud, so I decided that counted as a good time to leave, and was home safely not much after midnight.
That meant I was able to get up in reasonable time for a long, packed day's work today. Coming home I saw a sweet couple, middle-aged, he a larger than life Viking type, she rather petite and somewhat groomed, though she spoiled the effect with a baseball cap matching his. Both probably working class, though the distinction isn't nearly as obvious here as in England. She was wearing elegant ladies' gloves, and I saw him taking off his proper serious winter gloves and putting them over her inadequate ones. And then they kept snuggling eachother, not snogging, but just holding and leaning in to eachother.
The weather is weird at the moment, temperature swings from -10 to +10 within a 24-hour period, and including several heavy snowfalls which quickly melt when it suddenly gets warm again. I think this kind of thing is not abnormal for the transition from winter to spring here.
Thursday evening I agreed to help SS move house (his housemate has apparently gone literally crazy, like threatening to cook and eat him crazy, so he had to escape as fast as possible.) Helping people to move house is not my favourite thing, but it feels like it's good karma somehow, especially as I'm contemplating moving internationally at short notice myself soon. And I really like SS' friends, they're studenty in a way that makes me slightly nostalgic.
I had a very lazy shabbat, which I needed, though I slightly naughtily shortened it at both ends, starting late because I didn't allow quite enough time for my experiment, and finishing early so that I had time to spend a couple of hours in the lab again taking a critical measurement before going out Saturday night. The occasion was Joanna celebrating a year in Stockholm.
She picked a cocktail bar in the trendy south island area, Marie Laveau. The decor (and prices, but what can you expect for Stockholm?) are quite chi-chi cocktail bar, the clientèle more townie; apparently it has a reputation for having seen better days and now degenerating into a slightly seedy pickup joint. Significant gay presence, just glancing around. While not somewhere I'd have picked out myself, it was pleasant, managing an atmosphere that was fun and party-ish without being desperate. And they have quite a nice range of cocktails, not the usual standards but a bunch of house specialties with lots of fruit liqueurs and actual bits of fruit in. The cocktail waiter was delightfully flamboyant, more or less throwing his bottles around as he poured them, and nearly juggling knives and fruit by way of cutting slices. I enjoyed myself rather more than I'd expected; Joanna knows some really interesting people and I got into the conversation enough that I lost track of time, whereas I often end up clock-watching a bit at gatherings in bars. At 11 pm, by which time the place was fairly packed, they turned up the music disco-loud, so I decided that counted as a good time to leave, and was home safely not much after midnight.
That meant I was able to get up in reasonable time for a long, packed day's work today. Coming home I saw a sweet couple, middle-aged, he a larger than life Viking type, she rather petite and somewhat groomed, though she spoiled the effect with a baseball cap matching his. Both probably working class, though the distinction isn't nearly as obvious here as in England. She was wearing elegant ladies' gloves, and I saw him taking off his proper serious winter gloves and putting them over her inadequate ones. And then they kept snuggling eachother, not snogging, but just holding and leaning in to eachother.
The weather is weird at the moment, temperature swings from -10 to +10 within a 24-hour period, and including several heavy snowfalls which quickly melt when it suddenly gets warm again. I think this kind of thing is not abnormal for the transition from winter to spring here.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 09:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 11:24 pm (UTC)One slightly random question: do you have a Last-FM account or similar? I really like the way you use your music field on your posts, and very often when you pick something I recognize I think, ooh, cool song! So I'd quite like to raid your music collection a bit; are you into the kind of social networking technology that makes that possible, and would you mind?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 11:52 pm (UTC)I think the gardening did make me feel better, yes.