Is this the end of spectacular sunrises? Sunday, 02-Aug-26 21:13:14 CEST

Sunday, 09-Aug-26 21:30:43 CEST

A week at the cottage

This week we pottered around at the cottage in Sweden.

Monday 3 August

This morning I really wanted to get the lawnmower robot fixed. It has been standing idle since the base station was struck by lightning. Full of energy, I called the company to service our mower. After ten minutes in a telephone queue, I thought it was a little odd. I checked their website, and it turned out they had the company closed this week for holidays. Could they have bothered to set up a message on the phone?

It did not feel good that the company was closed; I wanted to fix this issue here and now. Were there other solutions? Yes, it was possible to buy a charging box, but since I already considered replacing this robot, it would be silly to buy a new charging box and then replace the entire system. I decided that we would cut the lawn manually this week. Then we go home to the Netherlands next weekend, and next Monday I call the company again.

DW picked black currant berries. DS went to Jens stig to clear it. Was there anything else I could do? It feels like I have to do something; I cannot just sit on a chair and do nothing, can I? You could argue that sitting on a chair doing nothing is a holiday, but perhaps I need a course in how to celebrate a real holiday.

I could check why a ceiling lamp was not working in one of the bedrooms. It was a strange problem. I had not brought with me any multimeter, so I was a little handicapped. There was a simple electricity tester, so I tried to use it as well as I could.

Perhaps the local hardware store had multimeters? It is close, but when going there, I could as well buy more things like cement for the repairs at the chimney. It is often like that here. You need a multimeter, and then instead I am climbing up a roof, totally unrelated, it might appear.

I went to the local hardware store to see if they had multimeters. They were out of stock. They had cement, though. Michael, the owner of the store, fetched a bag for me with his forklift. The contrast between the cement bag and the truck that could lift thousands of kilograms looked humorous to me. I took a photo of Michael; he liked the humor as well!

All the cables and fittings in the house are old. Extremely old. The connection boxes are round and made of porcelain. From the on-off switch to the lamp, there were four porcelain boxes. Three of them opened easily. The last one got damaged when I opened it. I made this project worse; it was not going well. The original on-off switch was in a nice, simple style. I took off the cap to inspect it. Could not see anything wrong.

Ideally, it would have been nice if electricity flowed when the switch was turned on. That could indicate that the switch was wrong or that I used the meter incorrectly. This is high voltage stuff; it can go wrong with the open contacts. I had no intention of dying while doing DIY with electricity during my holiday. DW and I discussed the mystery. We found a lamp in an adjacent room, and here we could establish that electricity was flowing when turning on the switch. Moreover, in this room, the lamp was blinking when measuring spots in the porcelain box. The theory became that the on-off switch had stopped working. That is also the only mechanical part. Why should it work after 50 years of operation?

I replaced it. The cable to the switch was so old that the insulation broke into pieces when I bent the cable. I had to replace that as well. I found a newer on-off switch in the leftover stash of the workplace. It is funny this cottage has replacement switches and cables, but the multimeter is missing.

In the evening we went to dinner at DF and DM. This is the abbreviation for Dear Father and Dear Mother, in case you had not figured it out.

Tuesday 4 August

This was the day when we were going into town to order a new passport for DS. He was anxious to get to the passport office in time. He woke up too early, and we woke up as well. This positive time deviation propagated itself through the morning. After a too-early breakfast, we got into town too early. We went to a shop first to buy a multimeter. Could we also buy stainless steel straws in a set of four with a cleaning brush at this shop? We bought a new outdoor lamp. We had expected to be in the shop a lot longer. We arrived at the passport office so early that we had to leave again and come back when the time was right. Now we sat outside a church on a bench and waited for the right moment—all this stress to sit on a bench waiting.

At the passport office, the 30-minute procedure of applying for a passport went smoothly until a system failure prevented the data from being saved. We had to do it all over again. I told the lady that this would make DW happy because she was having a good time at a second-hand shop.

Then we went to pick up DW at the second-hand shop. DW found glass jars for jam. I found a couple of new shirts. It was great.

Then we went to the restaurant of Vandalorum. Here we had the world-famous roasted cauliflower steak with potatoes on a bed of chickpeas, curry sauce, and fresh parsley on top. We did not visit any exhibition this time. Now we had the chance to do something holiday-like rather than doing DIY. Did we do it? Nope.

We went to DF and DM with the trailer. They had bought new beds. We filled up the trailer with the old and went to the nearest recycling center. DM came with us to help us. After emptying the trailer, we went to Friland close to Bredaryd. It is a vegetable farm with a cafe and camping. Unfortunately, it was closed today. It is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They should synchronize their opening times with the opening hours of the nearby recycling center.

In Bredaryd, we went to a shop and bought rubber rings for glass jars. DW's jam production can now proceed uninterrupted.

This evening I tried creating my own tune from scratch using FL Studio. It is a much more elaborate method of creating a tune compared to using AI. It will not be a world hit, but I do hope I enjoy the process.

Wednesday 5 August

This morning it rained. We had not eaten any breakfast, but DW had baked bread. Usually we have a smoothie for breakfast, but not this morning. Then DM arrived. She had brought a professional flour mill with her. I have noticed that she likes appliances. When we talked about the wheat that DS made, of course she had a flour mill.

	In this picture, the flour from DS's grains is coming out of the machine.
	Is this all there is?

 

So now there was flour. What should one do with it? Pancakes perhaps?

It took DS a couple of tries to produce a proper pancake, but in the end it succeeded. He produced a couple of pancakes. It smelled nice. He was satisfied with the result. He concluded that next year he would like to grow a larger field of wheat. We will see how and where we will accommodate that wish. This project started on 2 May. That is 95 days ago. Amazing from seed to pancake in 95 days! In that time, the seeds even survived escaped sheep that grazed the bucket. DS is lucky he could make it into a pancake!

DM also brought jars with her. We can make good use of those for cucumbers and jam, etc.

When DM left, I sat with the old on-off switch in my hand. A question lurked in my head: What if I sprayed WD-40 into the mechanism? Would it start working better? I measured the result with my new multimeter. Sure enough, it worked again—all the issues I had Monday. I spent hours on this contact, and I wish I had known that a puff of WD-40 would fix the contact. I destroyed a porcelain connection box and tore up wallpaper to lay a new power cable. DW asked me nicely if the now-working original on-off switch could be put back; it looks nicer.

So I did that. The broken porcelain lid of the connection box got a bracket holding it in place. The blotch in the lower right corner of the image is not dirt that I left there. It is part of the pattern on the wallpaper. It is a butterfly if you look closely.

The wallpaper around the on-off switch could not be perfectly salvaged, but I painted it white where an earlier generation of wallpaper had been revealed. This was the best I could do to recover this project. DW was delighted with the good result.

Was it time for lying down on a Baden-Baden chair and relaxing as if I had a holiday? No! I had to mix 25 kilograms of cement and repair the seam between the roof tiles and the chimney of the workshop house. Duh.

I had the brilliant idea of arranging a steel wire loosely around the chimney. That wire will be embedded in the cement and act as reinforcement. This would be an improvement on the original design, but for the rest I would only mimic what the previous owner had already done.

I filled up a bucket with about half of the 25-kilogram bag of cement. That looked about right. The entire bag needed 4 liters of water, about one gallon. I administered half of that. I mixed it with the mixing rod, and it looked like wet cement should look, so I was happy. Now I am a bricklayer as well, haha. The next challenge was to bring the heavy bucket up the ladder to the spot where I had to apply the mixture.

I suppose the worst-case scenario would be falling off the roof, breaking my neck, and becoming disabled for the rest of my life. If we avoid that, most of this project will be a success.

One of the roof tiles still had a large lump of cement, and that was inconvenient. I tried to knock it off, and you already guessed it: I cracked the roof tile. We got spare tiles behind the barn, so no big panic.

I got it all back to how it looked before. Almost. Well, it looks similar to the previous situation.

I am pretty sure the ridge pans are not well connected, but that does not matter so much. I expect us to revisit this roof another time. Then the tiles are removed, and we replace them all with a metal roof. We will see.

When all was done, and I stood on the ground, I was happy I had not broken my neck.

Thursday 6 August

We had made good use of the week so far, but Thursday was the last real holiday at the cottage. The rest is cleaning up and traveling back to the Netherlands.

This was a regular morning, breakfast with a smoothie as we usually do. This time we could use our new stainless steel straws for the first time. It is a little funny that we found these straws at the same shop where we bought our very last plastic straws ever, perhaps six years ago.

DS does not like straws. He frowns upon the use of straws. The smoothie was made from banana, apple, peach, raspberries, and orange juice. It was delicious.

While I tried to get Telia to send invoices automatically, DW went around spreading lime on our lawn. This is to decrease the growth of moss. The lawn will be so beautiful with all the nice treatment we are giving it.

I still had work left to do on the road to the cottage. I took out the brushcutter and cleared unwanted growth along the southwest road. I had the idea that I would make a hyperlapse of me clearing trees and shrubs along the road. The wind had picked up, and it became a short film. Two seconds into the film, the tripod tripped over and stopped filming.

We were eager to make the best of the holiday, so DW picked more blackcurrant berries. Perhaps our car will be heavy with blackcurrant jam on the way home.

I wanted to rectify the failed hyperlapse experiment. This time I decided to film when I was replacing the outdoor lamp on the northwest side of the workshop house.

DW cut the lawn with the old lawnmower tractor. We think it will stay sufficiently short for the new lawnmower that I do hope we can receive next week. I am not sure how long it will take to deliver the mower. I cannot be present when it is delivered because we are leaving on Saturday. The worst case would be that the grass has grown too tall. If that is the case, we have to figure out a solution.

In the evening, it was raining, and in general it felt like summer was over and autumn had started. It stormed around the house, and the rain was falling. I went out in the pitch-dark to see if the lamp worked, and it did! I do think it reacts to the cows in the field. I now hope this lamp is of sufficient quality to sit there and do its job for a lot longer than the previous lamp.

When the evening arrived, we felt like we had done our best to make good use of the holiday.

Friday 7 August

This morning it was less warm and overcast. The main goal for today was to clean up the cottage and pack the car. I also made a mess in the workshop-house, so that has to be fixed as well.

Today I fixed another lamp that no longer worked. It turned out that a metal lip was broken. I could replace it with a bit of metal wire properly fastened. It is not good to have loose pieces of metal inside the lamp fixture. I suspect this lamp is the culprit behind a couple of blown fuses last year. It was a complete mystery. The lamp has been standing unused since then.

We vacuum cleaned the house and made things nice. It is not that nice to blog about, though.

Our goal was to have everything ready for travel tomorrow, but that failed. There is just so much energy to spend on a day. Packing things in the car can happen better when it is light outside.

Saturday 8 August

DW did not sleep well this night. I slept well. That is good because much of our wellbeing is reliant on me being alert and awake when I am driving. I had 70 points for my sleep.

We packed the last things into the car. Then we went to DM and DF to say goodbye. We actually managed to get all done on time. The failed goal of yesterday became a success today.

DM showed her progress on a shirt she is knitting. It is an elaborate pattern. Now she was busy with the last things.

We first drove to the hardware store in the village. Here we could discard sorted garbage in designated garbage containers. They do not accept beer cans from the Netherlands, though, because the global environment stops at the border.

Then we drove to Värnamo. At a parking lot along the main road, there is a garbage bin accepting regular garbage. It is here that we dispose of our weekly garbage. You should not think we are not doing our part of the garbage costs. We are actually paying full fees for the garbage, but since we are not present in the cottage, we cannot bring the containers on time for emptying. It is like paying the fees, not using the service.

In Värnamo, we went to EFI, a second-hand shop. Here DW continued on her new curtain project. The idea is to buy white handspun linen tablecloths and use them as curtains. She found a substantial stack of tablecloths. I think it will be brilliant! DM showed up as well. She was also in for finding some curtain material.

We also found a book about herbs. DS found shirts for himself. We picked up three of the world-famous Mora knives. In our time at the property, we lost a couple of Mora knives. I expect them to be lost at the hay shed where we are opening the hay bales, but my search so far has not revealed any knives. Now it does not matter because we got three more.

After the second-hand shop, we went to a regular shop next to a tank station. DW and DS bought candy while I filled up the car with gas and checked the tire pressure.

Then, the journey to the Netherlands could start. We started driving at 12 PM. It was brilliant driving weather—Sun, not too much wind, and not that hot.

We stopped at a cafe right after the Storebælts Bridge in Denmark. When ordering, we had several misunderstandings with the Danish staff. I understood them far better than they understood me. We eventually cleared all the misunderstandings.

DW took over the wheel and drove to Årslev West right outside Hjordkär in Denmark.

I could take a nap while she was driving. After Årslev West, I drove the last part to the Best Western hotel Prisma in Neumünster.

Here we had dinner in the garden outside the hotel. We had our room on this side of the building.

 

DW was really tired. I was not that tired. I even had the energy to blog after dinner. The room had a ventilator. I rigged it so that it would stand on the windowsill and blow fresh air toward the bed. It was a surprisingly silent fan. It was possible to brew a cup of tea in the room. We had received bottles of water when we checked in. DW had a bottle of still water, and I had a bottle of gas. It turned out that the gas did not make it through the machine. It is an interesting idea, though: tea with gas.

The room had one window, but it also had a little fan. I rigged the fan on the windowsill. Now, with the window open, the theory was that the fan would bring in fresh air throughout the night.

Sunday 9 August

The cushion was of the shy type that when you put your head on it, it vanishes under the weight of the head. There was no passing traffic to be heard. The fan was not that loud, and it did the job perfectly; it provided us with proper levels of oxygen the entire night. It was even a little chilly at some point, which is rare.

The mattress was so hard, I would say it felt like trying to sleep on a surgeon's operating table. DW likes the mattress a little sturdier than I do, so she was fine with this all. Surprisingly, I got 76 points for this sleep experience.

The breakfast had everything you could wish for. There were even waffles you could make for yourself, but we did not do that. We had orange juice, tea, coffee, yogurt with müsli, egg, croissants, and toast bread.

Then we checked out of the hotel. I am not sure we will go back there anytime soon. The ventilator was brilliant, but it did not make up for the stiff mattress. Suppose there was another room with softer mattresses? If that was the case, why would they not ask upon checking in what mattress we wanted? Well done, medium, or rare?

In a nearby SVG gas station, we filled up the car. Somewhere near was a train station, and there came a steam locomotive. It honked its horn and spread black smoke from the chimney. That was interesting. The gas station had stuff that gas stations had when I was young: Batteries, tools, oils, etc. It was like a time capsule. Interesting.

At Hashbruch Nord, we had a cup of coffee. I continued driving all the way to the Netherlands to Han Stijkel. We were almost at home, but my brain was mushy at this point, and DW had to take over the wheel. We switched, and I fell asleep right away.

We came home at 2 PM. There was Merida, and she looked at me like, so there you are.

The sheep and Merida were well looked after. They were all happy to see us, although Merida was also a bit annoyed to be left alone.

It was great to be home. I blogged in the evening. Should we be better at just relaxing, or is this how we should enjoy a holiday at the cottage?

This week I wrote 3562 words. Welcome back next week!