Got a fresh haircut today. A colleague’s first, spontaneous reaction when he saw me in a Teams meeting was that I looked like a five-year-old boy. I chose to take that as a compliment: clearly I look youthful and playful.

Also, here’s a splash of afternoon sun.

Wet, heavy snow, quickly followed by freezing temperatures, and then a bit more snow on top of that. Now everything is covered with very picturesque agglomerations of snow.

Everything, including the car, which was properly iced over when Ingrid wanted to practice driving. There wasn’t even that much snow on it – it was just frozen hard and had to be scraped off with much force. Three of the four car doors were impossible to open, but with a bit of yanking, Ingrid got in through one of them and could turn the heating on.

Took a detour in the morning on my way to the train station, to get rid of some cardboard boxes. Got an unobstructed view of the rather pretty sunrise.

On the one hand, sunrise, nice.

On the other hand, the sun barely being up when I leave for work, not so nice.

Over two months to go before the days are of decent length again. Whose idea was it that humans should live this far north, anyway?

Adrian gets an advent calendar with Christmas toffees. Ingrid has a store-bought Moomin-themed one with tea.

I’ve struggled to find a good place for the calendar in the past, especially with Nysse around. This year, after we’ve moved some furniture, I could hang it high up on the chimney wall. Well out of reach for the cat, well in reach for Adrian.

The chimney has been unfinished since we renovated the house, over ten years ago. Initially we dithered about maybe opening it up again – it’s been bricked up since the 1970s – and installing a fireplace of some sort. Of course if we were to do that then there was no point in wasting time and money on finishing it. We never made a decision, and then it sort of just sat there, mostly forgotten. I guess I should do something about it.