Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Happy Virtual Halloween

Soon almost all of life's experiences will be available online. If you don't want the mess of carving a pumpkin, or if you want to experiment with different expressions, try them out on this website:

http://www.cubpack81.com/images/carve_pumpkin.swf

Or if you just want the pumpkin to do all the work itself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L0TOcB3EFE

Happy Halloween!

And Happy Birthday Stefan!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

When women over 50 ride a bicycle in America


Today the sun came out and the temps got above 63 degrees, so I rode my bike to the store to do a quick errand. In Sweden I'm sure it's as common as anything to do that, but not so common here in Minnesota. Luckily there were no tornado warnings. I made it safely this time. As you can see, I am still without a camera. There are just so many to choose from. (using Minnesota/Scandinavian word order) or There are just so many from which to choose.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Dancing or Wrestling?


I went to the Swedish Institute to see a Swedish folk dance group from Umeå, Björkstalaget. They had musicians, mostly fiddlers, who played the traditional music for the dancers. It was a good show. After an hour of music and the dancers, there was a break, and then everyone could dance. We did some large group line-dance style dances, circle dances, other things. Mostly at a walk, or slow skip. It was fun, and everyone could dance. (The average age at the Swedish institute is about 85.) Then the fiddlers started playing the more complicated polska, and one of the Umeåans asked me to dance. I had been paying attention and thought I could do it. The amount of spinning was incredible and I couldn't get my feet quite right as I orbited around my partner. He'd make these involuntary sounds and the end of each revolution as my feet got tangled up, "argh!" in English, "ärgh" in Swedish. I just could NOT quite get it right, and got dizzier and dizzier. I'm sure the polska is part of the training for the Swedish astronaut program. Then another one of the dancers invited me to schottische. Piece of cake, I thought. Miss Feldman had taught the whole class of 7th grade girls in ill-fitting blue gym suits to schottische, and I could remember the basics. One, two, three hop. One, two, three hop. Ha! More spinning! I was hanging on for dear life, and I'm sure my partner felt like he was Tarzan wrestling an alligator in death roll.