Olympics

In the spirit of my blog and after several years there is finally a post again and of course as I always used to do with a photo. I can't believe my template is still working as it is. It does need a couple of updates because a lot of the links on the side are outdated or not my cup of tea anymore but there is a sign of life from this blog again.

So the title Olympics, cause that's what I want to publish a picture about. And it's not the Olympics as in Beijing where the Olympic games will start shortly, but it's the Olympic peninsula near Seattle where I went for a few days after I spent time with my daughter in Seattle.

I had a great time and the scenery just tremendous.

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With my daughter again

After more than a year not seeing her I finally was able to hold my little girl in my arms again. Been talking to her every week and she was excited for me to come over, but still was wondering how she would react when seeing me. But it was better than I could have hoped for. From the moment she saw me, she stuck with me. And I know parents always think their daughter is the sweetest, cutest, greatest, bestest etc.. well I know for a fact that that is true, cause my daughter is all of that :)

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Blog on hold

Blog has been on hold.. there was just nothing to blog about.
But on hold means.. it will come back..
And it has.
/T/

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Skolan i Sverige (School in Sweden)

So I started school in Sweden. Yeah school, and it looks like time has stand still in the last 30 years. I go with the bus every morning to my class in town. The bus takes me there in about half an hour, and with walking to and from the bus and waiting time it takes me a little less then an hour to get to my destination every day. Well let me tell a little bit about my class. I sit in a class which is the class where will be determined if you are ready for the fast track or the intermediate track to the swedish language. But it's kind of funny.. 'konstigt' We have two teachers (yeah they both work part-time) and one has been a teacher since the mid 60s and the other used to work with little children. Well it shows. On the Friday before I started I had with 2 other guys an introduction meeting where we were handed out a pencil. So this Monday pencils were individually handed those who had not received one yet. After this routine on deciding who already had one and who not, there was a second round of items that were being handed out: the erasers. Again the same routine.. those that had not yet received one got one (including me.. yippee!!) and those who had already been given one in an earlier meeting were carefully being skipped. Then there was a problem.. They had ran out of ruled writing pads .. they only had writing pads that were for graphs.. So with the announcement that we would get our regular writing pad later we were given our checkered ones. Then another routine of handing out binders and we were set.
The classes itself are just like the teachers: slow.. We start every day at some time after the scheduled 8:15 a.m. and at 9:30 we have our first coffee break that last a little longer than the scheduled 15 minutes. Then we continue till 11-ish, we have lunch till noon and after lunch we work about an hour to have another coffee break and we finish our day at 2 p.m.
And of the time in school that we don't have a break we have 50% at least what is called "Eget arbete" which means study/work by yourself. The other time is when the teachers actually try to teach something.. maybe it's me, but when we covered the pronounciation on Tuesday of the letters A O and Å, I don't think they have to be rehearsed again on Wednesday... they are only 3 letters. Thank god not the whole alfabet are vowels, but there are still 5 more vowels to go..
To give you the literal excersize of today we had to listen to the teacher say the following:
1. Moooooooooo... Moooooooooo... (here we had to write "mo")
2. Mahhhhhhhhh... Mahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "ma")
3. Moeeeeeeeee... Mowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "må")
4. Soooooooooo... Soooooooooo... (here we had to write "so")
5. Sahhhhhhhhh... Sahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "sa")
6. Ahhhhhhhhhl... Ahhhhhhhhhl... (here we had to write "al")
7. Ooooooooool... Ooooooooool... (here we had to write "ol")
8. Bowwwwwwwww... Bowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "bå")
9. Sowwwwwwwww... Sowwwwwwwww... (here we had to write "så")
10. Boooooooooo... Boooooooooo... (here we had to write "bo")
11. Oohhhhhhhle... Oohhhhhhhle... (here we had to write "ål")
12. Bahhhhhhhhh... Bahhhhhhhhh... (here we had to write "ba")
I wonder what surprises await me tomorrow.

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Julgran

This week placed our landlord, who owns most rental units on this island, the "Julgran" in pretty much every street that they rent out. So far I am pretty happy with our landlord. When we moved in we had quite a list of things that were not in a good state and about we informed the landlord. And pretty much everything has been taken care off. Yesterday we even got a comlete new hardwood floor in our livingroom because we pointed out some water damage by previous occupants. We had already our kitchen, hall, 2 bedrooms and one bathroom painted and/or wallpapered and now we also have a nicely lit Christmas tree to enjoy in these dark days before Christmas.

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Ads on legs...

I never realized that with the cold in Sweden there also comes the neccessity for dressing animals. This picture I took here on the island when I went for a walk the other day while it was still freezing cold. The horses are all wearing their wintercoats. And as you can see they come in a variety of colors. It turns out that there are plenty of resellers for all kind of horse blankets, and a little image search on google gave me tons of different colors and patterns. I wonder if the horses care what color they wear. And if they don't maybe they could be used as live billboards.. Having a horse with a big NIKE logo on it, or maybe even have a Marlboro add on it, so that the Marlboro man just becomes a Marlboro horse. Or am I going too far now with my ideas? If anyone sees at some point a horse with a big ad on it's blanket, then trust me they got the idea right from this blog ;)

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Weather blog?

This photo I took on just 3 days ago on a very short distance from my home. It was November 21st and this is what the weather looks like. Everything is icy and snowy, and it is only November. It looks like the change from Californian winters to Swedish winters is definitely on my mind. Every post lately is about the weather in some way. So does this mean my divers blog is slowly changing into a weather blog? I show the temperature almost live on my blog, I post images of the cold weather. I'm wondering if you are even interested to hear/read what the next coldest temperature shall be. And winter has officially not even started. Well I'll do my best with a variety of photos, but please let me know if you have seen enough snow and ice ;)

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Morning Moon

This morning it was even colder than the day before, it was a clear sky and the temperature had dropped according to the thermometer outside the kitchen window to -6.5C (20F). The roofs of the houses get more and more icy and it looks like the Swedish winter has really started now. And since the (full) moon was still shining into the window it was a great morning to show you the view from the breakfast table.
The first photo shows the moon in close up with the very common "skata" (black-billed magpie) in the trees.And the photo below is the view of the street I live on taken through the kitchen window with still the same full moon.

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First snow of the season

This morning I woke up and everything outside was covered with a thin layer of snow. I thought ok, let's go out and take some photos near the bridge to/from the island and show you the island in it's new colors. Well eventhough there is snow here at my home and on the rooftops, near the water there was pretty much nothing visible. But since I have not showed any photos of 'my' island yet.. here are some for you to enjoy:The first picture shows the bridge with a view towards the island.This second picture shows the island in a southward direction.This third picture gives an idea of the different typical Swedish houses you can find here on the island.

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Hurry before it's dark...

It's still more than a month till the shortest day of the year, but since the clock has changed 2 weeks ago it feels like every day it is dark before you know it. So I checked what today's official sunset is: 3:13 PM!! Luckily the sunrise is still before 8 in the morning, but when I am typing this I have not much time left before it is dark again. But still enough time left to type this post without turning the lights on. The move to my new home in Sweden went good. The place I moved to is a nice townhouse on a quiet area near the center of Alnö. We had the landlord over pretty much every day the last week to fix all kind of little problems we had with the appartment, but it all get (slowly) taken care of. What made quite a stirr in the neighbourhood was that we discovered "råttar" (one word for both rats and mice) in our home before we moved in, but with the poison placed they were gone (dead) in no time. Now I am here for about 4 weeks the biggest thing I miss is my car that I am still waiting for. The container with my furniture and my beloved car should arrive in a few more weeks and only then I will be able to call this home. Being without car makes me tied to my home too much. The supermarket is still on walking distance but too far to haul a big load of groceries on foot. And for other things you need to have your car because those things can not be found here on the island. Ikea (short for the big mall around the IKEA store) is about 8 miles from our home and is the main shopping area for the whole Sundsvall region. Ikea itself is building a much bigger store there in their ugly blue and yellow trade mark colors and it's current store which gave the mall it's nickname will be replaced by 35 other stores. Well it's only less than an hour before sunset, so I'm ending this post to get a little bit of sunlight outside and will keep you informed more soon.
Below a photo of our place that I took just before the move.

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Missed me? I did!

Thanks for all the comments on previous post, I was unable to access the internet for more than a week because of our move. The internet provider has some kind of policy that when you move it take 8 business days for them to press a button in their computer that the new address has access to the internet. And if you call customer service they say it's because of this department in their company determines that, and that department does not take customer calls.. The only thing is, that they forgot to mention it when we moved. Oh well.. at least they stuck to their 8 business days which meant that as of this morning they did press that button on their end and I am back!
And to honor my return I show you what I meant earlier with the beautiful colored skies they have here. This photo I took on Halloween (10/31) at 4:30 p.m. And since Halloween was here almost a full week later I still feel I have the right to post it on my blog. And welcome back to my blog for those that did miss me.

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IKEA and Moving within Sweden

Now that I am in Sweden for 2 weeks I get to experience what it is to move within Sweden. With my wife and her kids we move from her current appartment to a new appartment, something I would call a townhouse. And what struck me was the same weirdness that I remembered from when I was living in the Netherlands and that is the stripping of all items in an appartment. All light fixtures are gone all blinds are gone including the curtain rails etc. when you get the keys of your appartment. So the first thing you have to do is restore what the previous owners took with them. And that is when I figured out that it must be IKEA's idea to have it that way. Because on Saturday we went to IKEA (what other store is there?), and there I experienced something I only know from TV in countries like Russia: in the middle of the day we had to stand in line to enter the IKEA store. It was like getting into an amusement park. They had a big gate rolled down halfway.. first I thought there had been an accident or a fire.. but no, it was as it was explained on a sign (which indicates this happens on a regular basis) that for the "safety" of the customers they don't let in more than a certain number of people in the store. So when the number had gone down they opened up the gate and let in this huge line of people at the same time. (I guess that was a safe thing to do???). Anyway we did our shopping, got some of our curtains and things we needed but with these crowds of course a number of things were sold out and now we have to wait for it to arrive in the store again. Looks like IKEA will be ruling our lives now.

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Where are the updates?

Yeah, it's been a while since there was a single update on this blog, in fact there hasn't been one since I left California. Well, those reading my Front Doors blog, must have noticed that I still am blogging, there has just been too much around me that has slowed down the posting. But I still take photo's ;)
The first Swedish photo I show here will actually be a photo I took only 2 months ago near Indal. The reason I post that one is to show the last sliver of summer, because as of today the temperatures have reached below freezing during daytime already.. Looks like it's going to be a long winter so there will be plenty of opportunities to show you the snow and ice and the incredibly beautiful colored skies that often come with the season too. So more to come later!

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Moon over California

This is the moon the way it looked on my last evening in California before my move. I took this photo last night when I took my rental car to see the area by night. Next time I see the moon, I'll be on another continent.

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My move - the packing and picking up.

With this little truck and only 2 people the moving company showed up at my door at 9:00 in the morning. I thought this is never enough for all the stuff. Not enough people and certainly not a big enough truck.But after just a mere three hours this is what my home looked like on the inside.the kitchen areamy livingroomand my bedroom. And in this bedroom I was sitting on the floor with my laptop connected to the cable modem. Yeah they left me a little corner next to my suitcases for me to hang out.
Then the young guy who was definitely in charge started labeling the boxes and writing the inventory list while the other guy was carrying everything down the stairs. And the loading of the truck began. More packing was done in the garage area and slowly the truck started to fill up.And to my surprise it all got done in 6 hours total. They filled up the truck it all fitted in there and left me with an empty house.What I think is strange, but they apparently think is efficient is that they will unload the truck and pack everything in a container. I wonder why they dont pack the container at my door. When I moved from the Netherlands to California, they loaded the container and sealed it in front of my door and when it arrived in California it arrived in that same container at my door. Would have liked it if it was like that again.

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No sleep till... Sweden

With my bed taken apart (see photo) and my mattresses brought to the dump for which I had to pay $14.00 per mattress, is there not that much sleep for me until I will arrive in Sweden on Friday.I have already slept in my home on my camping mattress, that served me well during several camping trips in the past. But it was not a great success to sleep in your home on a thin little camping mattress without the fresh air of the outdoor living. Yes, it is quite a different experience. If I didn't have my tent moved, I might even consider going to a campsite and sleep there. But tomorrow the movers will pack everything and load it into a sea container. All that will be left for the last few days here are my suitcases. And... my laptop to keep you updated on my move. I'm tired already. But then again, I did organize everything for the movers to take out what should be moved. To be continued...

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Coming weekend

These photos I took a little while back, but it will give you an idea of what I will be doing this weekend. And with my move coming up it will be a long time before I can go there -as in Happy Hollow- again.

And the reason I'll be going there is because Sydney loves animals. She just can't get enough of every animal that exists and the fact that she can pet all the goats is the best that she can think of. And then there are some merry-go-rounds that she enjoys too. Maybe she can get to ride the little train again. By the way the cute little boy is Aiden, the son of a friend of mine.

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2006

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FedEx "Airmail"

Today FedEx dropped a package off in front of my door and if I had not known what I had ordered I would never have guessed what was in the package. The box that it came in was 12" x 9" x 6" and all I ordered was a tiny little memory card for my camera.Well as you can see the memory card did fit in the box. But considering the memory card is only 1.5" x 15/16" x 1/16" it could fit in the box with another 7381 of the same items. Well now I know why FedEx is doing so good, they ship air and get paid to do it.

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Windy Hill

With my new camera straight out of the box I went to the nearby Windy Hill open space preserve to see if I could capture some wildlife. I didn't have the extra memory card yet, only the out of the box 16MB, so I had room for only 6 photos, but for a short hike I thought that is ok for now. In the past I've come across quite a number of different animals there and I thought let me see what I can capture. Well here is the result of my 2 hour hike at Windy Hill:As you can see I wish I had the extra memory card.. When I ran into the coyote I had to delete photos first to make room. I wish I didn't have to delete those few hawk shots first, because the coyote took off when he spotted me strugling with the still unfamiliar camera. So I only got a distant shot of that one and not even smiling at the camera. I also ran into at least 6 deer, a couple of rabbits and all of them I could not capture because of the fact that the camera was full. Well according to FedEx, my 1GB memory card will be there tomorrow. Let's hope for that so I can shoot as much as I want.

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Custom Calendar (1/12)

And here is the January photo of my calendar. This photo is another Yosemite photo. People who are familiar with this park will recognize that this is the top of Half Dome covered with some snow and sticking through the clouds. I took this photo in the first week of May 2003. And because I like it so much it also is featured as the front page of my calendar.

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Custom Calendar (2/12)

The lake in this photo is located in Yosemite National Park and it's called very appropriately "Mirror Lake". I took the photo early May 2003 when the higher parts of the mountains in Yosemite were still covered with a little layer of snow. It was cool weather and very cloudy, but the clouds helped in creating a good light for this photo.

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Custom Calendar (3/12)

This photo I took on the 17 mile drive at Pebble Beach, CA in January of this year. The Monterey Bay is so beautiful, so another California coastal photo made it to the calendar. Again the light but also the fine mist over the water made me decide to put this one on the calendar.

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Custom Calendar (4/12)

This photo I made on the slopes of Mount Diablo in the middle of April 2002. I have never seen an area with so many California poppies. And when you see them in such abundance, it's not strange to understand that it is the state flower of California.

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Custom Calendar (5/12)

The always impressive Grand Canyon, that I got the opportunity to visit after 15 years again in April 2005, stood model for this photo. Something that I have realized is that there is no way possible to really capture with a camera the overwhelming image that it leaves in your mind. But of course one can always try. I liked that I was able to capture some of the depth with this photo. But it still doesn't come close to the live image.

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Custom Calendar (6/12)

When you drive along the California coast, you can find many little beaches that are limited in access and size due to the cliffs surrounding them. This photo I took near Big Sur in September 2004.

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Custom Calendar (7/12)

This photo I took at the Big Sur Coast of California in september 2004. The coastline here is so rugged which makes it the most beloved and also the most photographed stretch of the Central California coast. And eventhough I am not completely satisfied with the quality of the photo, it still made it on my calendar.

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Custom Calendar (8/12)

The photo for August is this photo I took at the Kaanapali Beach during sunset at Lahaina on Maui, HI. The calm ocean, the little boats, the clouds over the mountains in the horizon, it all give it a real peaceful feel to it.

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Custom Calendar (9/12)

The photo for September I took on the island Maui on top of the volcanic peak of Haleakalā at a height of 10,023 ft (3055 m). In the the eroded valley carved into the mountain recent signs of volcanic activity are still evident as you can see from the various colors of the soil. What played a big role when I took this photo were the strong winds that pushed the clouds over the top of the vulcano and gave it its magic.

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Custom Calendar (10/12)

Many who have been in Yosemite should be familiar with this view from the Yosemite Valley. What I like a lot in this photo is the light that makes it very dramatic. It was early in the evening and the sun only showed its face from time to time. And I was able to get this shot at one of those moments when it lit up a nice part of the valley. So this became my October photo of my calendar.

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