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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