Repaired the washing machine Sunday, 16-Feb-25 14:47:06 CET

Sunday, 23-Feb-25 21:26:15 CET

Stayed at our Cottage

This week, we stayed at our cottage in Sweden.

Monday 17 February

The cottage was cold this morning. I fired up the wood stove in the living room and the wood stove in the kitchen. It was the day when our Swedish scaffold would arrive. After breakfast, I called the company. The company still existed, but they had forgotten about us. By way of speaking, it appeared as if I was the customer with the annoying package standing in the way all this time. They will arrange for a truck to deliver the scaffold tomorrow. For the delivery tomorrow, it is impossible to tell when the truck will arrive, meaning we will "sit and wait" for the whole day. We cannot go anywhere, however.

That meant that we had the day off today to go shopping. First, I wanted to determine if we could fill the tractor's cooling system with cooling liquid and if our bottle was enough. It is the same with all activities; they are starting with a research project.

We got it all figured out. We decided on a 50% mix for minus 37 degrees Celsius. I made the mix in several batches. In the end, I used the entire bottle of cooling liquid.

I placed the diesel jerry cans in the car and found a way to fasten them so they could not fall over. It was so clever. I had to take a photo of it so that you could enjoy it too. This car has rings of metal at the bottom of the trunk. They are suitable for firmly fastening things. I call the ring close to the back of the car the front ring, but that is not logical because it is the furthest to the back. However, you will not judge me on that kind of linguistic matter. When standing in front of the trunk, it is the ring closest to you, so it is the frontmost ring. You get the drift. A plastic hook at the side of the trunk can be pivoted out. It would have been easier to strap things if this was also a ring. You can hang a bag on it, but how do you fasten jerry cans on it?

The strap begins at the bottom front ring of the car (1), then goes up through the handles (2) to the plastic hook (3) at the side of the trunk, back through the handles, around the strap (4), continuing on one side of the opening of the jerry can (5), and then down to the back ring of the car (not visible) around the front through the strap (4) to the front ring (1). You might think this is a hopeless, uninteresting matter. When you are standing there and do not want to have the complete trunk of your car filled up with diesel, you realize that it is not a silly matter. Now, I need to remember this trick for the next time I need to fill up the jerry cans. I can always look up the blog.

We went to Smålänningens Marknad in Bredaryd. We found almost all the things we needed. We bought a tiny little air compressor. It was suitable for producing 8 bars, but I consider it a theoretical value. They did not have any work gloves for winter use. We need to go to specialist shops in a larger city for winter gloves. People in Sweden do not do real work in the winter. We found a ventilator running on heat that we can have on the wood stove in the kitchen. The electricity for the motor is generated by heat; it is elegant. We found a cooling liquid.

At a gas station nearby, I could buy diesel. They did not accept contactless payments with the phone, and I did not bring any cards. Luckily, DW had cards with her.

When we returned to the cottage, I tried the new air compressor. It worked. Tomorrow, I will find out if the tire pressure remains sufficient. I filled the wheels with 1 and a half bars each. It is such a little compressor. It has room for the hose and the handle inside a cavity. In another cavity, there is room for the power cable. Usually, I am not in awe of gadgets, but this time, it makes it easier to work with the tractor. It makes me happy.

A fox roamed around on the driveway.

 

Yesterday evening, we could hear it. It sounded like Midsomer Murders. In that series, they often had foxes making sounds in the dark. As far as I can recall, they only used one single fox sound in that series, whereas, in reality, they got a whole range of sounds. If you still don't know how a fox sounds, you must let the Norwegian band Ylvis inform you about it. I think we heard a territorial bark yesterday. But a Sci Show is explaining it neatly. I found the song from Ylvis highly innovative. It was a new phenomenon for me that a song could be educative. Perhaps it is a genre for nerds. When I had just written this, the fox also started to talk. I recorded it. If I imagine deeply enough, are we hearing two individuals here? One is straight in line with the microphone, and the other is behind the barn.

This evening, the temperature was around freezing point. That is warmer for this time of the day compared to the weekend.

While doing the dishes, I listened to Ukraine: The Latest. The podcast discussed developments in the political arena and what is happening on the battlefields of Russia and Ukraine. We don't have high-ranking European politicians who are childish, egocentric, and talk like 6th-graders, so this situation is complicated. They got together in Paris to talk to each other, and we will see what they come up with.

In Europe, since 1991, when the Cold War ended, we have been able to spend our money on healthcare, infrastructure, education, etc. All the things that are good for the citizens of a country. It is easier to be a politician in such conditions. What are the politicians going to tell us now? We cannot spend money on healthcare, infrastructure, education, and civil society because we will spend that money on the defense industry. Not only that, but they will tell us they will spend a lot on defense. The sky is the limit, but seven to eight percent. It will vary in different countries in Europe, but something like that. Who can win elections with such a message? There you have it: Politicians with 6-grader talk can pull it off. You don't have that kind of politician in the center or on the left in Europe. A childish, self-centric politician who talks with simple 6th-grader language that can unite all countries of Europe. There are always complicated words, fluffy messages, and playing peek-a-boo with reality.

What people, in general, do understand is that they do not want their hometown to become a Russian oblast. So, how do we avoid that? First, we want to ensure that Ukraine does not become a Russian oblast. Can we send troops to Ukraine to help them? Then, Russia must be kept busy losing the war in Ukraine with as few Ukrainian casualties as possible for as long as it takes. In a few months, Russia killed one million of its men. One single cluster bomb can kill several hundreds of Russians in one go. It sounds unethical, and it is, but who will stop it? The mothers of Russia? Nope, they are just sitting alone and weeping silently.

Meanwhile, the White House resident (please note I deliberately left out the P) in Washington fired the people handling the US nuclear arsenal and cannot rehire them because they lost the contact information. Putin is laughing his ass off.

Tuesday 18 February

This morning, it was minus 6 degrees Celsius outside and 16 degrees Celsius inside. It was sunny in the morning. We slept well. There was no disturbance from foxes or roe deer barking last night.

When I brought more firewood from the wood house, I noticed the wagon tire had held up nicely under the weight of the fir tree. I think it is a fir because it has an even tree bark. The tree bark would be more grainy and chunky if it were a pine.

Later, I wanted to start cutting the remaining parts of the tree, but I could not get the chainsaw to start. It was too cold.

I wondered how much weight there was on the wagon.

I found a webpage that had formulas for this. I could as well look at that while the saw was thawing.

https://www.skogskunskap.se/rakna-med-verktyg/mata-skogen/volymberakning/volymfunktioner/

I decided on this formula:

Then, I had to know how much it weighs per cubic meter. It is 400 to 600 kilograms per cubic meter.

https://www.skogskunskap.se/skota-lovskog/slutavverka-och-salja-virket/virkesegenskaper/

I entered the values and got it figured out:

There are 1864 kilos of wood in this tree. Two smaller pieces are not on the wagon because I deem them too tiny to cut into planks.

I cut up the two smaller pieces of the pine. We also got old trunks of a tree that had fallen over many years ago. I believe that is a Salix Caprea. I am not sure, but the wood is a little pink and has been lying at the wood place for many years.

I challenged myself to find the images of when we brought these logs. It took quite some time to find them. It turned out to be 25 February 2019 when we harvested these logs. These trees were growing next to the stone border at the side of the property, which we can see from the kitchen window.

In other words, the logs have been lying on the ground for 2185 days. Or 5 years, 11 months, 24 days. Or 71 months, 24 days excluding the end date. Just so that I know. A year later, the pandemic hit us. Then, it took a long time before we returned to the cottage, which we eventually did when we were allowed to cross the borders.

After lunch, the truck arrived with the scaffold. We unloaded the pieces, and the truck continued to Gnosjö. The truck driver was delighted that we unloaded the scaffold so swiftly. In the photo, it does not look like a small truck, but it was big enough to make me wonder if he would make it. It was no problem, but the driver was cautious.

When we started working on the firewood.

DW operated the hydraulic splitting machine. I cut the logs into pieces and served pieces to DW. It would be nice to make a considerable dent into the logs from 2019 before the week is over.

In the evening, I decided to write a song with Swedish lyrics. I was happy about the song as such. I tried to repeat a sentence at the beginning of the verses. Usually, the chorus is for the repeating part, but I decided to make the first line of the verse repeat as well. I thought that was clever and innovative. You can also call it random. I wanted to emulate the feeling of the song Öppna landskap by Ulf Lundell. I made a playlist with songs like that. I call it Jens Swedish Gold.

Wednesday 19 February

When we woke up this morning, I wanted to blog about the song, but the song is in Swedish. Would it not be nice to have it in English as well? I made an English version, and it was not bad either. Both songs needed to be mastered, but there was no time for that. I plan to make an album with two songs.

Today, I got a request from my spell checker, Grammarly, to donate money to Ukraine. That is sweet. I donated 100 euros to defense materials for the Ukrainian government.

The first task in the morning was to turn on the motor block heater of the tractor. I checked the pressure in the right front tire of the wagon, and it was still one and a half bars, so that was fine.

We drove 4.9 kilometers to the carpenter with the tractor, the wagon, and the pine logs. DW drove with our car behind the tractor. There was not much traffic this morning. I drove 10 or 11 kilometers per hour. That is not quick.

The carpenter was Gunnar. We got the logs unloaded. It was a bit finicky to get the logs to leave the wagon. It is heavy logs. I had hoped we would immediately see the logs into planks, but that is not how it works with Gunnar. He will finish it when he has time. Right now, it was too cold anyway. He did not tell us at what temperature he would start to cut logs. He did not want to get a photo of himself, but I made one from a distance. We will see if he got the job done until the next time we go to the cottage. If not, we might delay the visit. We will see how this pans out.

Then we drove home again. I drove slower—about 7 or 8 kilometers per hour this time.

After lunch at home, we went to the big city, to the second-hand shop. DW wanted to buy some clothing for a film recording she would attend. It had to be a blouse that was not black nor white and had no patterns on it. I did not find anything I wanted at the second-hand shop. DW found a blouse, and she also bought a book. I have given up on buying books, and I have stopped reading. She bought Jakten efter vind of Gunilla Linn Persson. I cannot see that it has been translated.

I went to a hardware store and bought work gloves for winter usage. At the grocery store, we bought Semlor. Semmel aficionados will delay their eating until 4 March this year, but I see no reason to eat whatever you like when you want.

When we came home, I was tired. I had a well-deserved nap. That is the luxury of having a holiday. When I woke up, it was early evening. The sunny day had turned into early evening gold, slowly fading to dark.

We had dinner, and for dessert, we ate Semlor. They were delicious! My photo was successful. If I feel like it, I can take good photos.

I rewrote the English text a little of the new song and got it sung by the same singer as the Swedish song. That was nice.

DW started reading Jakten efter vind.

Thursday 20 February

This morning, I started mastering the songs. I decided to bring animal sounds into the songs at different places. I already had all the sounds except the great-tit bird song. I will find that elsewhere. I did not finish the songs this morning.

We worked on preparing firewood. I cut the logs into pieces, and DW split them into chunks with the hydraulic wood splitter. We put the chunks into the firewood house. We finished many chunks for this holiday, although we have not been working on it dedicatively.

After lunch, we decided to go and have a walk at a nearby bird lake. We took an alternative road to the lake. That road had a high middle ridge that touched the bottom of the car. At some point, the car started to make terrible sounds. We looked under the car, and it did not look like anything was damaged.

Nevertheless, something was rumbling at the rear left wheel. It turned out to be a stone that had got into the wheel and rolled around on the inside of the wheel. I had no idea that could happen. When the stone fell out by itself, everything was fine again.

Still on the alternative road, we came across a swan family. I do think this was the Whooper Swan. It was the first time I recall seeing a whooper swan. We would not have sighted these beauties if we had not been driving the unfortunate road. We had left the worst part of the road, however.

	The unfortunate road is in the foreground. The whooper swans in the background.
	Oh dear, a man with a Nikon camera is interested in us. What should we do?
	Let's get out of here!
	Hurry!
	Don't forget me!

We continued to Dravö, the bird lake. There, we did not see any birds at all.

When we came home from our walk, I finished the two songs. Here are the lyrics side by side:

Near nature	Nära naturen
[Verse] We want to spend our vacation in nature, From our cabin, we can see every creature. A few times a year, we travel that way, Once we're there, we paint and fix all day.	[Verse] Vi vill fira semestern nära naturen. Från vår stuga kan vi se alla djuren. Några gånger per år åker vi dit Väl där, vi målar och laga med hurtig flit.
[Chorus] The fox is barking in the night, The deer jump high in sudden fright. The cranes are calling, echoes wide, The woodpecker drumming amplified.	[Chorus] Räven skäller om natten, Rådjuren hoppar av bara fnatten. Tranorna sjunger så det ekar. Hackspetten trummar så du bleknar.
[Verse] We want to spend our vacation in nature, Stone walls stand with steady stature. Deep in Småland's forest green, A bubbling brook—a peaceful scene.	[Verse] Vi vill fira semester nära naturen. Runt vår stuga går den stadiga stenmuren. I västra Smålands djupa skog, porlar bäcken, av det här får vi aldrig nog.
[Chorus] The fox is barking in the night, The deer jump high in sudden fright. The cranes are calling, echoes wide, The woodpecker drumming amplified.	[Chorus] Räven skäller om natten, Rådjuren hoppar av bara fnatten. Tranorna sjunger så det ekar. Hackspetten trummar så du bleknar.
[Bridge] The mouse is searching for crumbs to eat, Two flies lie dead on the windowsill seat. The deer leave pellets on the ground, The mole digs mounds so big and round.	[Bridge] Musen söker efter smulor. På fönsterbänken dör två flugor. Rådjuret släpper svarta kulor. Mullvaden bökar up stora bulor.
[Chorus] The fox is barking in the night, The deer jump high in sudden fright. The cranes are calling, echoes wide, The woodpecker drumming amplified.	[Chorus] Räven skäller om natten, Rådjuren hoppar av bara fnatten. Tranorna sjunger så det ekar. Hackspetten trummar så du bleknar.
[Verse] We want to spend our vacation in nature, But when we paint, the rain's a danger. The wagtail flicks its tail with grace, It hunts for worms at a nimble pace.	[Verse] Vi vill fira semester nära naturen. När det ska målas, kommer värsta regnskuren. Sädesärlan viftar på sin svans söker maskar, trippar med elegans.
[Outro] The holiday must end at last, It's time to clean up, leaving fast. Pack our bags, and south we ride, The great tit calls a last goodbye.	[Outro] Där tar semestern slut. Det är dags att städa ut. Packa väskor, dra söderut. Taljoxen tar avsked med ett tjut.
[Verse] We want to spend our vacation in nature, But when we paint, the rain's a danger. The wagtail flicks its tail with grace, It hunts for worms at a nimble pace.	[Verse] Vi vill fira semester nära naturen. När det ska målas, kommer värsta regnskuren. Sädesärlan viftar på sin svans söker maskar, trippar med elegans.
[Outro] The holiday must end at last, It's time to clean up, leaving fast. Pack our bags, and south we ride, The great tit calls a last goodbye.	[Outro] Där tar semestern slut. Det är dags att städa ut. Packa väskor, dra söderut. Taljoxen tar avsked med ett tjut.

I tried to make one album with two songs, but it was only possible to select one language for the entire album. I decided on two different singles, a language each. The Swedish version had a good rhythm in the syllables. I can continue working on a song forever, but let us not do that. It is what it is.

Occasionally, DW summarized what happened in the book Jakten efter vind.

Friday 21 February

The woodpecker was busy. For the rest, no sounds. There was not much wind, and most of the snow was gone. The weather has been lovely this week; there was a lot of sun and not that much wind. Most of the time, over the day, a couple of degrees below freezing, and overnight, we had down to 10 or 13 degrees below freezing. The weather shifted. It became overcast and slightly misty this morning, a couple of degrees above freezing. It stayed like this the entire day. A couple of showers in the morning made roads extremely slippery, but we did not need to go anywhere, so we were not bothered.

When it was time to start today's activities outside, the front porch made of concrete was covered in a layer of ice. It was very slippery. Luckily, DW discovered this on time and did not get into any accident. She could warn me, so I jumped off the porch on the side and skipped the steps altogether. It was not until 11 AM that the ice had dissolved sufficiently.

This morning, we decided to work more on the logs in our log-splitting yard. In the area in front of the firewood house, we cut logs into chunks and split them into proper pieces. We got three heaps of split wood at any time. One heap is being built, one heap is lying to dry, and we are using one heap. The heap needs to lie two years before we can start using it. So far, we have only wood that has fallen over because of storms. This is over 17 years; we will keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

I had been cutting the Salix Caprea log that fell five years ago and is in surprisingly good shape. Next to that log was a pine log that had been forgotten. It was in terrible shape; we had to discard it. It would be excellent to have a wood-chipping machine for such situations, but we just dropped the pieces on the side of the log-splitting area.

There is one Salix Caprea log left. It will have to wait until the next holiday. Had we not been held up by a pandemic, these logs would have been turned into firewood long ago. It is what it is. We don't have more time or energy to put into this project than we already do.

In the afternoon, I put the tractor back in its garage. To do that, I am uncoupling in reverse order. But first of all, the tractor needed to start, and it did not want to do that. It thought that it was still too cold. I warmed the motor with the built-in 230-volt motor heater. I had to be patient with the process. It is so hard to be patient, especially when it gets dark. I got the tractor started in a pre-dusk.

The first step of the uncoupling is to drive the tractor, crane, and wagon to the wagon hall. I drive the wagon to the opening of the wagon hall. Then, I removed the crane from the tractor so the arms could move freely while the crane leaned on the feet and the middle bar. I lower the arms so that the wagon hook can be released.

Then, I pull the wagon from the hook and retract it a little from the tractor. Now, the arms can go back up to hold the arms again. This is tricky because shuffling the arms up while the crane is not fastened can make the crane fall over; we would not like that. So, the arms need to be positioned precisely next to the pegs of the crane. Today, I discovered that the spring between the arms can be adjusted to the precise width so that the arms are outside the pegs. Had I discovered this 15 years ago, I would have avoided so much frustration. Better late than never. I got the arms up and connected to the crane. With that, the crane can operate again. I put a block on the wire hooked up inside the wagon hall and back to the wagon. The wagon was dragged into the wagon hall when pulling the wire back. Brilliant!

Now, I had to get rid of the crane. I drove to the crane garage. It was well into the dusk, so it was not ideal for photography. Nonetheless, here is the tractor before I removed the crane. DW came to help me with this part of the work. I like the crane, but it needs a bit of love the next time. The release mechanism would like to be tightened a little. It's just a notch. Overall, both the tractor and the crane would need some love. I pondered about that when I drove back home from the carpenter. I will certainly replace the oil in the tractor and give it a round of smearing of all little smearing nipples. To do that, I will need to crawl under the tractor, and I can save that for a day with better weather.

With the crane removed from the tractor, the tractor could return to the tractor garage. Now, it can rest until we return to pick up the planks. It was still a little daylight shimmering over the horizon when we went inside.

In the evening, I watched a video claiming that the 2024 election was rigged in the GOP's favor. What should one think about that?

Saturday 22 February

This morning, we cleaned the house. It was a misty morning. I made a film of the fields around the cottage. Several woodpeckers were busy at that moment. It was interesting.

We opted for a thorough but more straightforward cleaning operation. We did the regular things like vacuum cleaning, emptying the fridge, cleaning the toilet, and all the rest. We put the house in winter mode, turned off the warm water, and put the heating on freezing prevention. DM and DF will look after the cottage in our absence.

While packing the car, a large bird landed on a birch below the oak tree hill. I managed to take one photo of her. Then I checked a setting on the camera, looked up again, and the bird was gone. Majestic!

We left the cottage at 12:30 PM. At 3 PM, we filled up with gas and switched drivers. This was at Glumslov. DW bought a cup of coffee and started driving. I had a nap while DW drove. I woke up in Denmark.

I made an account on Swedish Radio, SR - to upload music. I will upload "Nära naturen," it will be interesting to see how the procedure works. For now, just when we arrived at the island of Fyn, I had my account with SR.

At a resting place, we switched drivers. It was my turn to drive again.

We drove to Büdelsdorf, where the hotel was Heidehof. It was not that expensive but in good order. It was a little too warm in the room when we arrived. That is a theme of German hotel rooms. We turned off the heating and hoped for the best. They liked the granite look; it was everywhere.

After checking in, we went on a walk to a restaurant. We walked through the dark to a Greek restaurant with the name Syrtaki. It was nice to have the torch with us. It appeared to be a well-ordered little town with friendly people. All tables were taken when we arrived at the restaurant. On the one hand, this wasn't good because we had to wait.

On the other hand, it meant this was a good restaurant. A waitress with long dark hair and excellent English suggested that we have a walk and come back in 15 minutes. So we did. We discovered another restaurant that was not nearly as complete on our walk. We concluded that our first choice was a good choice. When we got back, we got a table pretty quickly. Unfortunately, only one waitress spoke excellent English, and the rest spoke no English. We pulled up our nearly non-existent German and communicated that way. DW ordered a vegetarian spinach dish, and I had a steak. We got a glass of Greek ouzo. I had not tried that before. We got a starter with garlic and pepperoni, which was indeed delicious.

I uploaded the track to the Swedish public radio broadcaster when we returned to the hotel. This is the first time I have done that in my entire life. So exciting.

DW was reading from her book Jakten efter vind.

We went to bed early. It was a little too warm in the room for our liking. It would have been better if it had been colder in the room. We had a window open. It did not help—the duvets were made for 40 degrees below freezing in the room. I pulled out the duvet from the linen hose in the middle of the night and slept under the thin hose. That did not help anything, either.

Sunday 23 February

We did not eat any breakfast in the hotel. Instead, we checked out and drove off to the Netherlands right away. We found that we were never eating a breakfast of 25 euros. Picking up something at a gas station works fine.

We stopped a raststätte Aalbek. I filled up the tank and bought coffee. We handed over our cups, and the person behind the cassa cleaned one of them. So sweet of him! We try to buy filter coffee to avoid the shipyard tar coffee. The raststätte at Aalbek had a delicious filter coffee!

From time to time, DW read the book Jakten efter vind out loud. I could not drive 200 kilometers per hour because I would not hear her. So, I drove just around 140 kilometers per hour. She also stopped reading and only summarized what happened in the book. I liked the story very much.

At one moment, I unconsciously fumbled on the volume knob of the stereo as if I could turn up the volume of DW on the stereo of the car to better listen to the book, but that would not work because it was DW reading and not some audiobook. She did not notice this.

I drove to Marum in The Netherlands. I had an issue with the car's clutch and made a mental note of that. We stopped at Horeca Centrum Herlijkheid. I was delighted that we did not stop at a regular raststätte or gas station.

There, we had coffee, and I had a piece of apple pie. The pie was served in a somewhat artistic way. It was sufficiently delicious.

After visiting the cafe, we tried to walk around the local event area. It was a parking lot, but it could have been an event area. I checked if there was any "Kermis" on that spot, and that was so. Every year around easter. It is a traveling funfair or traveling festival. I checked various translations and found that the translation of Kermis at Wikipedia into Swedish and Finnish was wrong. It translated into Church rituals. I love mistakes like these. I am not going to change it. It is so funny that someone from the Netherlands who loves shooting pots from a shelf, roller coasting, and eating pink fluffy candy floss goes to Sweden or Finland, ending up in a church mass. "And now we are going to sing a psalm. Yes, okay, but where is the bumper car attraction?" We gave up walking around the local event area. We went back and continued the drive back home.

We came home and were greeted by Merida, Bea, Hannah, Selma, and DS.

For the rest of the Sunday, we stayed at home. DW finished reading from the book. The story was fascinating until the end. Merida came to sit near me, purring loudly. She was happy; the sheep were happy. There is no place like home.

I do realize that I have written a lot of words this week. 5500 words, to be precise. We got the Swedish scaffold and took logs to a carpenter who would make planks of them. We cut and split firewood. I made a song in English and Swedish and uploaded it to the Swedish public broadcasting company Sveriges Radio.