Avainsana: Christmas

What a week

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It’s been the kind of week you just hope it’ll end safely.

On Monday at work we were wondering why there is a smell of smoke. We checked every place but this time it wasn’t our building. It was the largest coffee roastery in Helsinki which is situated a block away over the football field. The smoke was pretty heavy and as I went to lunch the air was grey with smoke even some blocks further from the fire. Funnily our nearest work lunch place is on the Main fire station next to my work, there were many people from my work having lunch and sitting a bit longer in a smokefree place. I did a short walk a bit further to get some clean air, since we didin’t have clients anymore it was okay to stay a bit longer. The fire continued to Wednesday when the fire department finally got it out. Here you can see a video footage of the fire.

I felt like a smoked ham after work but I met a friend after work in the city centre. We changed gifts and it was nice to have a chat and nice cup of coffee after all day inhaling smoke at work.

On Tuesday the smoke didn’t get indoors anymore but as it was last day before my days off I didn’t much care. I left early as I went to dinner with my friend Mareetta. She had some trouble coming to pick me up from my work as the fire was on one of the main entryways to the city centre. (In twitter someone compalined the fire trucks being on the bicycle lane…) We drove to the seaside to take some pics of the sundown and then went to eat to a shopping centre.

On Wednesday I had my first day off and as youngest son had a short day at school we went to movies after his school to see the new Spiderman : No way home which was very good, we really enjoyed it. The new Dr Strange movie looks good too.

Eldest son was coming to spend the Christmas with us so hubby went to get him and they did some last grocery shopping. In the evening DH started to say his tummy ached a lot and then he threw up from the pain twice and finally around 10pm he was in so much pain he was just crying with pain on the sofa and I said I’ll call the Emergency Services and he said yes. So I did and they send an ambulance to assess the situation, at this point eldest son was already sleeping as he had an early morning next day. The ambulance crew took hubby to the hospital for a check-up and I was left with my old traumas (from when my dad died) to spend the night badly. Luckily eldest one slept through all of this but middlest and youngest one were still awake when hubby left so they were a bit tired too.

On Thursday around 10 am DH got out of the hospital and middlest one went to get him. It was kidney stones and the doctors had decided not to operate as it’d be a too big an emergency operation. Instead he got great painkillers and they’ll call him in for an operation soon, then they’ll blast the kidney stones so they come out more easily. Hubby still has pains as now the stones have moved downward but he’s able to do things at some level. Boys were great help, they carried the Christmas tree indoors and did all the things DH usually does.

This has put a bit of dampening on our Christmas but not much. Yesterday after dinner both elder boys fell asleep as they were so stuffed and we gave gifts later. I had bought the new Abba LP as a gift for DH and me, it was awesome. Even Sirius came to listen to it 🙂

I watched Die hard with middlest son and went to bed around 1am. Today I napped an hour on the sofa and then read a book. Now I’m planning to watch Die hard 2 or Jumanji 2 or Jungle cruise which I have yet to see.

Smokey day, I was on my way to lunch (next to the church).
The fire is where you can see the blue lights
First time in forever we had sunny and cold Christmas Eve weather (-14C)
Sirius thought there were birds in the spruce as the branches melted and moved
I and Jimi’s gingerbread house had a bit of an accident, the roof came down during the evening. I blame the recipe.
The Christmas tree.

I hope this year will end soon and nothing extreme happens next week. I’m quite done already.

Highlights

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from this past month.

Just a couple of days after my previous update we had our team meeting. For my surprise I got flowers and a gift from the City since I’ve now worked 30 years in the different libraries for the City. The gift was five days of paid vacation, I got to choose from actual money (of which they would’ve taken taxes) or two night stay in a spa hotel or this. I think this is the best gift for me, I get to choose when I’ll keep the days or if I want to take one day off at a time so prefect!

In the evening I went to movies with youngest one and hubby to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife which I greatly enjoyed. Paul Rudd was very good and all the old ’Busters’ were there too. It was so much fun! And of course the little marshmallow men really stole the game 🙂

We had very cold weather for a week, around -15C degrees. Sirius wanted to go out but came back in right away. Silly girl.

In the beginning of December I had my dentists appointment. First I was supposed to go on a Tuesday morning and just as I was waiting for the tube to arrive their office lady called and said that we need to reschedule (again) as my dentist had called his car tire had blown on the way to his practice so we moved it in Thursday. I had to make the hours in as it was in the middle of the workday but finally I got four new crowns (and it cost way more than I had thought but now its done). Luckily I have a savings account…

I’ve been working long days but on Tuesday I decided to go to movies to see The House of Gucci. I went alone as none of my friends were able to come but I didn’t mind. As a teen I used to mostly go to movies by myself (at least the company was good) so it’s no biggie for me. I enjoyed the movie. I’m not a great fan of Lady Gaga’s but she was really good as Patrizia Reggiani and Adam Driver was so hot… Jared was great as Paolo and I really liked Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci. The scene with the two latter ones at the airport was so good, both sad and funny. The soundtrack was awesome too. ( I flove this pic of them.)

On Wednesday as I was walking towards my workplace I stood to watch that there was indeed a firetruck outside our building door. Gladly it was such early that there were no clients and all classes are finished already but still. So I go to the inner courtyard and ask one of the office ladies who always comes in early what’s the problem and she said one of the doormen had forgot to turn off the stove after he had cooked porridge, luckily there was nothing on top of the stove so when we got in finally there was just a god awful reek in the lower floors. We are also lucky to have the fire department right on our backyard (we go there for lunch). That one doorman has a drinking problem and we are a bit concerned of him, his bosses have had a talk with him already but it remains to be seen if he can continue working for us.

I’ve also been preparing for Christmas by baking gingerbread cookies and I’ve bought all presents too already. we’ve done grocery shopping and hubby got the tree from the Uni forest students near his workplace. Youngest one wants us to bake more gingerbread cookies and try to built a huge house and I kind of said yes.. I’ll take pics if it turns out okay.

We had our library teams Christmas coffee at the nice cafe next to our workplace on Thursday, it was nice. There’s just three of us so it was pretty low key.

So this is news from my corner for now. Here’s a song for you!

Happy Christmas

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To all of you on the other side of the screen.

Today we here in Finland celebrate Christmas, my family and I have already had Christmas dinner (nobody wants to eat anything today.. except some chocolate..) and soon it’s time for us to exchange gifts Santa has left under the tree.

Middlest son comes home on Boxing day and has leave until Epiphany. I took some days off-pay leave and I’m also at home until Jan 7th. I feel I’ll really enjoy this short leave. I’m going to read and sew and start my new bujo. My goodreads says I’ve read 100 books but since it counts re-reads twice I have about three books missing from the count. Luckily I’ve got some books halfway through.

Here are some pics from our Christmas.

The flowers I received from my employer from the work I and other workplace stewards do. I think it was really nice of them.

Then there’s our Christmas tree and the gingerbread biscuit village I did and the last one is of the bujo covers I made last Sunday.

ETA I almost forgot! Today me and hubby celebrate our 28th Engagement Anniversary 💕

Just some update

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Youngest son’s nose is fine and straight again and I truly hope we’re done with hospitals for this year *knocks on wood*.

At work we’re now closed again since the Covid19-situation got worse here in the Helsinki met-area. I also didn’t get to my last Pilates lesson this year as they were closed too.

We are still working in the library and there’s things going on so I’m not going to telework from home much. At the moment we’re going through the expired loans and client register which has been ignored a while. I also need to refresh my InDesign skills with our Spring happenings leaflet.

Next weekend I’d do some reading for my Communications studies and make Christmas cards and bake and so on.

This is my Spotify Christmas playlist if you’re interested in listening to Christmas songs. I genuinely dislike most Finnish Christmas songs since they are very dreary.

Happy New Year

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January is here, with eyes that keenly glow,
A frost-mailed warrior
striding a shadowy steed of snow.
– Edgar Fawcett

 

I just wanted to say Thank you to everyone reading this blog. I know I don’t update enough but that’s just life, it happens.

In the beginning of this year I made a promise to myself to read more and spend less time in social media and I managed quite well, today I’ve read 90 books instead of the 80 I had planned to read. I’m quite happy about it and I’m planning to continue it on 2020. You can see my read books here.

Other thing I need to do on 2020 is to lose weight. I’m turning 50 at the end of September and I don’t want to weight this much then. At the end of May we’re probably celebrating Middlest son’s graduation and since all our relatives and friends will attend I need to do something pretty quickly and I know what it’ll be: low carbs for me since it works best for me.

I still have a week off work left and I’m thinking about having a Hobbit and LOTR marathon while knitting.  I’ve already finished Eldest son’s scarf and my cardi is coming along nicely.

Here are some pics; Sirius is planning her next attack on the Christmas tree (actually she’s been very good with the tree this year), the ice skating Santa I gave to my dad when I was about 7-y-o and now it’s been ice skating in our tree for several years, Middlest son baked a rye bread (I haven’t got the patience to make a root), and the last one is from Dec 27th when we had -5C degrees which was pretty nice. I didn’t mind the sun either, it’s been raining forever here.

 

Merry Christmas

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I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you all since I’ve been so busy. Now I’ve got two weeks off, I get back to work on January 7th which is wonderful. Hubby’s work and boys’ school begin then too.

Here in Finland we have Christmas dinner and  exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. Since we are just with our own family now (me and hubby and two sons) we’re doing these a bit later, our dinner will be served in about an hour and then we’ll see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. I’m thinking about watching a movie later, now I’m throwing dice between Die Hard I and Fantastic Beasts but I may still change my mind.

Here are some pics. The first one I took on one morning as I left home and was walking to the underground train station, I really like the colors. In the second is a mug of glögg and a star-shaped plum pie which is traditional seasonal treat here and in the last one is out Christmas tree this year. It’s a bit smaller than usually but it’s okay. The cat loves to sleep underneath the tree (the mat is hand-embroidered by hubby’s late mom) and later we’ll burn it as logs in our sauna stove.

Merry Christmas!

Closer to Christmas

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It’s been a busy week again but luckily it was a short one.

On Tuesday I met a friend over coffee, she had a training day here and had a moment to spare before getting home to Jyväskylä. It was really nice to meet her and we selected a nice lipstick for her before we had to rush to the trains.

On Wednesday we had a Christmas thingy for all our clients which was quite fun except I had to take part to two meetings. Between them I made a Christmas cracker with couple of grannies and little kiddoes.

The other meeting was a Union thing and it was at the union house which caused some problems for me since I get symptoms of sick building syndrome easily (I got sick with the syndrome at my work and nowadays I use inhalator when I’m at work). It was also a long meeting, over two hours, because of people votings and economy things.

On Thursday I was so tired  that I had a crying fit when I got home. Part of it was due to a grumpy hubby and a teenage son having a discussion but luckily they solved it quickly. I went to bed early and slept almost 12 hours.

Due to Finland’s Independence day on Friday we had the day off work and it was nice. Youngest son went to a trampoline place with his friend and I just watched an Finnish comedy series and did my bujo. Later I listened to the Independence day ball while making the gingerbread dough and baking chocolate and banana muffinses. The Ball at the Presidential palace is the Thing here, people watch it and discuss the gowns etc. Here are some of the nice dresses, texts are in Finnish. Recycling has been a hit this year, The first Lady Jenni Haukio had an old dress with small changes on and a cleaning service company owner had a jacked made of mops and a member of parliament had National Museum’s banderoll made for a dress.

One of the traditions in Finland is to light two candles to the window. It dates back to the civil war time when the two candles meant a safe house for the White side. Since my mom’s two uncle’s were jaegers (trained in Germany) I find it even more important to hold on to that one even thou people think Whites were slaughters because they killed Reds. Reds otoh would’ve wanted Finland to become part of Russia but civil wars always hard, even harder than the other wars where you have a common outer enemy.

Yesterday eldest son came for dinner. He has lost his phone but luckily has an old one so he was able to use e-mail but then hubby bought him a prepaid. He is going to the Lost and Found to see if his phone is there since he forgot it to the ferry on Tuesday after a student cruise night..

I baked gingerbread cookies yesterday and I also made a mud cake with cherries, it was so good! It’s even better today. Hubby cleaned our sauna stove today and found a dead magpie in the pipe.. We were wondering of the slight smell some weeks ago.  I’ve been knitting and doing my bujo, I also ironed the washings while listening to the Stolen boys. Middlest son got a note from the army: he’s going to the medical tests in January concerning the air forces. I’m glad and worried.