I’ve complained about the cost of international postage before, and it just keeps getting worse. In the five years since 2019, the price has increase by 70% – and another increase coming up in January will bring it up to over double what it was back then.

This is what you get when essential services are privatized and expected to “compete” on the market. We don’t expect the military to make a profit, or the road network, but somehow the postal service needs to.

Now I only have the golden-brown interiors of the sunflower blossoms left.

This is the first jigsaw puzzle where the “sky” is easier to finish than the motif itself. The sunflowers are all the same colour and have no distinguishing features, no lines. So it comes down to the shapes of the pieces – but also to the brushwork. I’m learning where van Gogh has slathered on the paint thickly, where his brushstrokes are long and even, and where the canvas peeks through.

Party #1. The old one. Farewell fika at tretton37 for the twelve (!) people who will be leaving the company around the end of the year. And that’s just for the Stockholm office. Someone likened it to a funeral feast. Usually these events have an element of excitement, because the person leaving is going to something, but now we’re all going from something.

My last day isn’t until the 31st, but this feels like an ending.

Party #2. The new one. Christmas party at Active Solution, with a “Wild West” theme. (The symbolism of photographing a pair of doors closing behind me and another pair in front of me was unintentional when taking the photos, but it fits rather well.)

Nice people, relaxed atmosphere, good vibes, decent food. One obvious difference to tretton37 is the higher average age here. At tretton37 I am older than the majority, and I believe there are few who are older than me. Here, I feel that wasn’t the case.

For a “Wild West” theme party, you could get by with just a pair of blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and wouldn’t need to buy anything at all. Assuming you own blue jeans and a plaid shirt, neither of which is present in my wardrobe. I tried on five or six pairs of jeans at a charity shop, and one of them fit me like a second skin, which is a very rare thing with trousers, so I might actually keep these! I don’t wear blue during the cold season, not out of any master plan but because it just happens, but I can see myself using them in the summer. The plaid shirt… eh, maybe. It has weird epaulette-type things that I’m not too fond of, but on the other hand it is very soft. The suede waistcoat will probably go straight back into the circular economy. It’s done its job.

Hourly power prices above 1,000 (one thousand) öre per kWh, for the first time ever, as far as I know.

Too little transmission capacity between the north and the south of Sweden, and high demand from Germany, and lack of wind. Plus a price model that allows the marginal cost of that power sold to Germany to affect the electricity prices for households.

There won’t be any baking of lussebullar or running the tumble dryer during those hours, for sure.

Adrian took up drums again this year. He tried five years ago but lost interest. Now he’s re-found it.

The end-of-term concert was quite a bit longer than I had expected, and a lot of it sounded better than I had expected, too. I guess my expectations were partly still stuck in 2019.

Adrian played the bass drum in a drumline (which was my favourite piece of this evening), the standard drum set in a rock song, and the marimba for Jingle Bells.

If the photos look weird, it’s because I’ve blacked out other kids who were in the frame.

Adrian came home with a gingerbread house from the Spånga Christmas market this Saturday. It collapsed under its own weight.

I got a lovely fuzzy wool blanket for Christmas last year. Much softer and warmer and more colourful than the threadbare one from IKEA.

I use it all the time during the cold season. So does Adrian, who loves this corner of the sofa.

And so does Nysse. When we get up from the sofa and leave the blanket in a heap in the corner, it of course gets turned into a cat bed. And then we come back and want to curl up under the blanket, but can’t, because it’s got a sleeping cat on it.

The blanket is mine, and I’m not going to let Nysse just annex it, by the power of his cuteness.

The new deal is that tidy up after myself when I get up. I fold the blanket and put it up on the backrest of the sofa. (Or sometimes just throw it there.) No more cat bed – and I get the blanket for myself.

Then I felt sorry for Nysse for taking away his cosy spot. I understand him so well – a wool blanket is the best thing on a chilly winter evening. Now I leave the old blanket on the other end of the sofa for him.

Sunset at three o’clock in the afternoon.

The tracks of a Billy bookshelf, after it’s been standing in one place on untreated pine floors for about a dozen years.

The rectangular shape is the footprint of the shelf itself. The triangular area to the left, a teensy bit less pale, is where the shadow of the shelf has fallen.

Eric and the kids will mostly have brand new furniture for their new apartment.

A lot of what we have here has been bought specifically for these rooms. They’re the right size and shape and colour for their places. It wouldn’t make sense to move this sofa elsewhere and buy a replacement for it here, or the kitchen table, etc.

Bookshelves are an exception. The IKEA Billy is the quintessential bookshelf in Sweden, and unless you’re splurging on something custom-built, it rarely makes sense to get anything else. It’s just a matter of choosing between oak veneer or white.

Since we’re divvying up the books, we’re doing the same with the bookshelves. I helped Eric move half of ours to the new apartment today, along with the first batch of boxes.